Scorpion's Nest (2012) Read online

  Babington scorned the services of the Puritan priest at his elbow. He would have made a speech to the crowd but, at a signal from Walsingham, the drums and tabors struck up and the man’s last words were drowned out. Bull squinted across to the balcony where he knew Walsingham stood. He saw the huge ruff, the black robes, the cold, glittering eyes and he saw the man nod. The hangman grabbed Babington’s hair and hauled him backwards, looping the hemp noose over his head in seconds and hauling on the rope.

  Anthony Babington, gentleman, somebody’s husband, somebody’s son and graduate of Lincoln’s Inn, was given a bird’s eye view of the city as he twirled at the rope’s end. As his eyes bulged and the veins stood out on his forehead, he saw the dead stone walls of the Tower that had been his recent home, the merchant ships riding at anchor on the Queen’s wharves, the cluster of church steeples and the smoke rising from a thousand homes. As he twisted in a desperate attempt to take the appalling pain away from his throat and chest, he saw the ancient walls and the golden fields stretching away to the north, the harvest done. The sky was just darkening for him and his lungs were threatening to burst when Sam Bull cut the rope. Babington’s feet hit the planks with a thud, followed by another as his body followed. The air rushed into his lungs as the hangman loosened the rope, screaming past his tortured throat in a sound audible across the crowd, a sound never to be forgotten by any man jack of them there that day. The crowd roared as he dragged the half-conscious conspirator across the scaffold floor and kicked his legs apart.

  ‘Now!’ he grunted to the four men, masked like him, standing at the gallows stairs. The drums thundered and the tabors rattled as each man knelt beside Babington, each taking hold of a fist or a foot nearest to where he knelt.

  Bull looked across at Walsingham again. And again the Secretary nodded. The billhook rustled as it left the velvet and then it was slicing through the shirt and skin of Anthony Babington, biting deep into his sternum and into the soft and vital tissue below. Blood sprayed the hangman’s hands and arms and dripped through the boards of the scaffold into the dark recess below. Soldiers stood here with halberds at the level, their spikes pointing outward at the crowd. Walsingham didn’t want Anthony Babington to die a martyr or any misguided soul waiting below to catch the man’s blood in a phial and add it to the superstitious claptrap of the Roman church.

  By the time Babington’s body had stopped twitching, the crowd had fallen silent. So had the drums and tabors. Only the wild bells still rang out, music to Walsingham’s ears.

  ‘One down, six to go,’ a voice murmured in the ear of the Secretary.

  Walsingham turned as best he could, given the pain he was in. He knew the voice and understood the intrusion. ‘Not exactly, Nicholas,’ he said.

  Nicholas Faunt raised an eyebrow. He had wondered for a while whether he’d be able to get through the rank-smelling multitude in time to witness the passing of this present danger. But he was in time, especially as it was Sam Bull’s next customer, the slippery Father Ballard, he’d come to see dispatched. Babington was a simplistic fool, a knight-errant born out of time. Men had followed him because of his rank not because of his brain. Men like Ballard were a different proposition. If he hadn’t known better, Faunt would have thought that Ballard served the Devil. He saw the disquiet on his master’s face and took the slip of paper from his hand.

  ‘What do you read there?’ Walsingham asked.

  Faunt looked at the document. ‘Today’s bill of entertainment,’ he said. ‘Babington, Ballard, Tichborne . . .’ He was reading the list of the damned.

  ‘Turn over,’ Walsingham told him as he watched the four men throw Babington’s ripped and mutilated body into a coffin, prior to its being quartered.

  ‘Tomorrow’s delights,’ Faunt said. ‘Habington, Tilney, Jones . . . I don’t see . . .’

  Walsingham fished inside his doublet and pulled out another piece of paper. This was parchment, good-quality vellum and on it were a series of ciphers and squiggles so small he could barely make them out in the shade of the awning.

  ‘This is Phelippes’ nonsense,’ Faunt said, dismissing it. ‘You know I can’t make head nor tail of it, Sir Francis.’

  Walsingham took it back from him. ‘That’s why we’ve got Phelippes. You have fourteen names on your paper,’ he said, ‘conspirators against Her Majesty, men guilty of treason to the crown. One of them has died today – six will follow later. Tomorrow, the next seven will join them. And we’ll all sleep easier in our beds by cock-shut time.’

  ‘Well, then . . .’

  Walsingham turned to his man. ‘Except we won’t, Nicholas. We won’t. This is one letter I didn’t get Phelippes to forge.’ He slipped the parchment away again. ‘It’s one we intercepted from the Queen of Scots and it mentions one name not on that list of yours.’ He looked his man fully in the face, the eyes cold, the skin grey and drawn. ‘Matthew Baxter, The fifteenth man. One of the fish has wriggled through the net.’

  Faunt nodded grimly. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘So you want me to . . .’

  Walsingham turned back to the entertainment as Father James Ballard stood on the gallows with a rope around his neck and a prayer on his lips and the crowd was baying once again. ‘I want you to find Kit Marlowe,’ he said.

  ‘Marlowe?’ Faunt looked at the man he had served faithfully for more years than he cared to remember.

  ‘You have someone else in mind?’ Walsingham asked him.

  ‘That depends what’s involved.’ Faunt scanned the baying crowd below, looking for any faces he knew.

  Walsingham turned to face the projectioner, a man who might one day wear the chain of office that he himself wore. ‘Nicholas,’ he said softly, ‘we are a conspirator short. I thought I made that clear.’

  ‘Indeed, Sir Francis, but . . .’

  ‘And where would a Catholic conspirator run, Nicholas, knowing the hounds of Hell were after him?’

  ‘Anywhere out of England,’ Faunt said. He knew as he said it that he had left the options rather wide. Walsingham was obviously looking for an answer smaller than the rest of the world.

  ‘Oh, come, Master Faunt,’ Walsingham tutted, smiling. ‘I thought more highly of you. Where would a Catholic conspirator run who still wished to be of service to the Catholic cause? Where is the one place in the world where an English Papist can lose himself?’

  Reality dawned on Faunt. ‘The English College,’ he said, a little too loudly perhaps and checked himself. ‘The Rue de Venise.’

  ‘The English College.’ Walsingham nodded. ‘Late of Douai, now in Rheims. A nest of scorpions devoted to the cause, the cradle of every Jesuit assassin we’ve found in this country these fifteen years.’

  ‘But Marlowe?’ Faunt came back at him. ‘That fiasco with the Stadtholder . . .’

  ‘William the Silent was a marked man, Nicholas, we both know that. He had death written all over him. Marlowe kept the man alive for months longer than I, for one, expected.’

  Walsingham looked at Faunt, head cocked on one side, but carefully, to spare his neck. He could see his man was not convinced.

  ‘And Marlowe is a new face on the road,’ he continued. ‘Dr Allen won’t know him or what to make of him, and that gives Marlowe an edge . . . unless, of course, Nicholas, you’d care to go yourself?’

  Nicholas Faunt had tangled with Dr William Allen, Master of the English College, before. He’d rather sup with the Devil. He favoured his paymaster with a small smile and a nod of acquiescence. ‘Marlowe it is,’ he said.

  The noise of dozens of scholars and tutors breaking their fast had settled to a dull roar when Robert Greene slid into a seat at the end of one long table, worn smooth by the years. He held one hand protectively inside his jerkin and flinched if anyone came too near or made a sudden movement. He kept his eyes down on his plate and ate like an animal, nervously and urgently, afraid that at any moment a lion might leap out at it and grab it by the throat. A movement across the table made him glance up quickly, taki
ng in the view from beneath his brow. It wasn’t a lion, but it was the next best thing.

  ‘Good morning, Robin,’ Marlowe said with a bright smile. ‘You’re quiet this morning. Not feeling well?’

  ‘I feel perfectly well, Dominus Marlowe, if you please.’ A ghost of the old, confrontational Greene emerged from the shrinking shell. ‘Why are you here? I understood you were to keep to your own college Buttery.’ He paused for effect and then said loudly, ‘That’s Corpus Christi.’

  Marlowe waved the suggestion off with a flourish of a hand. ‘A serving suggestion merely, Robin. I’m here to see you, as a matter of fact, and I wasn’t sure where else to find you. You are as slippery as an eel these days.’ Greene didn’t speak, but continued to peck away at his oatmeal. ‘Busy writing, I expect,’ Marlowe ventured. Greene shrugged, but with just one shoulder. ‘Wonderful new play, I wouldn’t be surprised.’ Marlowe dipped his head to come into Greene’s eyeline. ‘I said, a new play, Robin? Is that why you are cradling your hand? Writer’s palsy, perhaps?’ He straightened up and looked around the room then cleared his throat. ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ he called. ‘Of medicine, that is. Dominus Greene has a painful hand here that needs attention.’

  A few men rose to their feet, but uncertainly.

  ‘He can pay a fee,’ Marlowe added.

  Ten more got up and there was a gentlemanly scuffle as they made their way to Greene’s end of the table.

  ‘I am quite well,’ the erstwhile playwright snarled. ‘Dominus Marlowe will have his fun. Ha. Ha.’ He glared at Marlowe, who smiled happily back.

  ‘You clearly have a problem with that hand, Greene,’ said the first fledgling doctor to reach him. ‘Here. Let me see.’ He grabbed Greene’s elbow and pulled his hand from inside his jerkin. A crude bandage emerged like a genie from a bottle, blood soaking through the rough linen. ‘Good God in Heaven, man,’ the doctor exclaimed. ‘This is no palsy. What have you done to yourself?’

  Greene snatched his hand away from the man. ‘I caught it in a door,’ he said, tucking it away again. ‘An accident.’

  ‘Sharp edges you have on your doors, here,’ Marlowe remarked. ‘It pays to be careful in St John’s College, I can see that.’ He cocked his ear as a clock struck in the quad. ‘Hark. Time I wasn’t here. Aristotle awaits. Get well soon, Robin. I’m sure I will be seeing more of you, but perhaps if you wait for an invitation that would be best. I must be off to sharpen my door.’

  The physician looked after him as he left. ‘He’s an odd one,’ he said to Greene. ‘Clever though. Have you read his Ovid?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Greene snapped. ‘And I am surprised you have, seeing that you are a student of medicine. I had always assumed such as you could not read.’ And, pushing his plate savagely down the table, he strode out of the refectory.

  Dr William Allen stood in the doorway high in the eaves of his home along the Rue de Venise. It was a Sunday and the bells of the cathedral were calling the faithful to prayer. But Allen would not be with them today. He crossed himself as he entered and waited until the shutters were thrown back and the windows opened. Sunlight fell sharp and unforgiving across the bed, showing the blood a dark crimson, pooling and still liquid on the floor.

  The doctor was still shaking his head when he heard Gerald Skelton clearing his throat. It was always a sign the pompous idiot had a pronouncement to make and, normally, Allen didn’t give him too much rein. This morning, however, was different.

  ‘Well, Gerald?’ Allen looked at the man. ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘We need a physician, Master,’ Skelton said. ‘Canon law is my forte. I have no experience of . . . this.’

  ‘This’ lay sprawled on the left side of the tester. It had once been Father Laurenticus, tutor in Greek at the University of Douai. Now it was a stiffened corpse with the head thrown back in a silent scream. Allen came as close as he had to and saw the nightshirt ripped and torn from half a dozen wounds across the chest and throat. The dead man’s knuckles had locked around the coverlet and his sightless eyes stared at the crucifix high on the wall to the bed’s head.

  ‘No.’ Allen shook his head. ‘No physician. We both know that Father Laurenticus has met his Maker. I don’t need a physician to tell us that.’

  ‘They have ways, Master,’ Skelton pointed out. ‘Knowledge of the humours . . . Galen . . . I understand that there are more modern views.’

  Allen bent over the body as far as his rigid old frame would allow. ‘There is nothing modern about a dagger to the vitals, Gerald,’ he said, softly. Then something, a flicker in the morning sun, caught his eye. Near the dead man, on the smooth, bloodless side of the bed, lay a ring. It was gold and carried an enamel device, small and exquisitely cut. Allen took it up and held it to the light where the gold gleamed like fire in his gaze. He reached down and took the cold hand of the dead man, wrenching it free from the covers and tried the ring on his smallest finger. It fitted perfectly.

  Allen sighed and pocketed the trinket. ‘That’s why no physician,’ he said. ‘Whatever happened in this room, Father Laurenticus did not die alone. Or if he did, it was not long after someone had left him. Who found the body?’

  ‘Er . . . a maidservant,’ Skelton said, only now realizing what Allen meant. ‘This is her floor.’

  ‘Find her.’ Allen turned away. ‘Double whatever we pay her. Then put the fear of God into her, Bursar. If she breathes a word, Hell Fire – you know, pull out all the stops. I want her mute by Matins.’

  Skelton nodded.

  ‘And Gerald –’ Allen turned back in the doorway – ‘get this mess cleaned up. And do it yourself. As far as the College is concerned, Father Laurenticus died of apoplexy. Called by God.’

  THREE

  The carrack took him by the next tide out of Deptford, butting through the Black Deepes and out beyond the Essex marshes where curlews called in the mists of the morning. All day he faced the wind, his hair streaming, his cloak snapping like the shrouds behind and above. The little ship veered south in the Channel Roads, the gulls wheeling in its wake. As night fell they skirted the shallows by Ponthieu. The Master was an old hand and knew these winds and currents like he knew his Paternoster. France was the old enemy but France was now at war with itself and English ships came and went unhindered.

  They rounded the sweep of the headland at the second dawn and sailed in under the battered old walls of Harfleur where King Harry of blessed memory had lopped the French lilies. The Seine lay dark and brooding as its banks narrowed and the fishing smacks bobbed at anchor by a thousand little jetties and moorings. By nightfall they had reached Rouen, journey’s end, and he bade the Master farewell before setting foot on French soil. As he left the planking, he said goodbye to an old life. As he strode the quay, he began a new one.

  Michael Johns was not feeling in a very chirpy mood. It was true that years of keeping his face set in a sober expression not really natural to it had made it rather difficult to tell how he was feeling, but it was not necessary to be too much of a scholar of the human condition to know that he was not happy. He stormed through Corpus Christi like an avenging angel, whipping the dust of early autumn into little eddies with his passing over the stones of the Court. He reached the door of the Master of the college and threw it open without his customary courteous tap. A man was sitting behind the desk, a slight but satisfied smile on his face. A manservant was standing by, swathed in an apron and holding a broom.

  Johns met both men’s gaze and then spoke to the servant. ‘You. Get out.’ He didn’t raise his voice. It was just a remark. With a doubtful look at the Master, the man bobbed slightly and scurried from the room.

  ‘Can I help you, Dominus Johns?’ the Master said.

  Johns looked at him for a long minute. He ignored the slur to his status. How many times in the recent years past had he longed for Dr Norgate to remember his name and those of just a few scholars? Recently, if the old man could have remembered his own name, it would have been
a pleasure and a surprise. The man sitting behind his desk might have all his faculties, but he was Gabriel Harvey and that far outweighed any good points.

  ‘Well? I am, as you can see, a busy man.’

  Johns looked around the room. ‘I can see you are. I am here to . . .’ He was staring into a corner, where various portraits leaned against the wall. ‘What’s that?’ He pointed. ‘Over there. What’s that?’

  Harvey didn’t even bother to turn his head. ‘Old portraits. I bring in a new era, Johns. We don’t want old faces reminding us of the past, do we? This is the Year of Our Lord 1586. We must move on.’

  ‘Must we?’ Johns said, pushing aside a wooden box and a half-filled sack to get over to the pictures. He looked at the faces. ‘William Norgate. Matthew Parker. And . . . I might have known it. Christopher Marlowe.’

  ‘Upstart popinjay,’ Harvey said. ‘How dare he have his portrait painted? How dare Norgate hang it here?’

  ‘It was painted for him by someone who loved him. The Master hung it here because he liked the man’s style. It reminded him that we were all scholars once.’ He narrowed his eyes at Harvey. ‘Some better than others. It was a signal that anyone can aspire to be anything they want.’

  ‘What a very Christian outlook,’ Harvey said, picking up his quill, after he had quaffed his wine. ‘But as I think I mentioned, I am a busy man. Things have been allowed to slide. Have you any idea how deep in debt the college is? As you go out, please send my servant in, will you? He needs to take some things to the bonfire. And don’t you have some lecturing to do?’

  ‘Surely you don’t intend to burn the pictures?’ Johns was aghast.

  ‘They make excellent kindling. I think it must be the oil in the paint, or perhaps the pitch in the varnish or whatever it is painters use. They go up in ten-foot flames with hardly a spark being applied.’ He smiled at Johns. ‘Pictures can be so inflammatory, can’t they?’