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    Silent Court
    Silent Court
    Silent Court
    Ebook277 pages4 hours

    Silent Court

    By M. J. Trow

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Second in the thrilling new Kit Marlowe historical mystery series November, 1583. Desperate not to let the Netherlands fall into the hands of Catholic Spain, the Queen’s spymaster orders Cambridge scholar and novice spy Christopher Marlowe to go there to assist its beleaguered leader, William the Silent.

    However, travelling in disguise as part of a troupe of Egyptian players, Marlowe encounters trouble at the home of Dr John Dee, one of their tricks ends in tragedy - and an arrest for murder . . .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSevern House
    Release dateOct 1, 2012
    ISBN9781780102177
    Silent Court
    Author

    M. J. Trow

    M.J. Trow is the author of almost 100 books covering crime fiction, true crime and historical biography. He is a military historian by training, lectures extensively in the UK and overseas, and has appeared regularly on the History and Discovery Channels. He lives in the Isle of Wight.

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      Book preview

      Silent Court - M. J. Trow

      ONE

      He remembered to pull the hood over his head as the boat glided under the archway. The drips from the green-slimed stones stung like hail and the soft fingers of hanging weed stroked his face. He shivered again. All the way along the river, past Limehouse and Ratcliffe, he’d felt the raw cold of that November morning. The gilded turrets of Placentia were white with hoar frost and winter, he knew, would come early this year.

      Beyond the archway, the boatmen busied themselves. The oars came upright, clear of the sluggish water and pointing to the leaden sky. He could hear the clang and thump of the shipwrights working in the yards and along the wharfs at Petty Wales. Her Majesty’s yeomen in their scarlet livery saluted and escorted him, with their halberds at the slope through the barbican and up the hill.

      He had always hated this place, its noise and smell. His Uncle Ned had been Lieutenant of the Tower in the reign of Good King Harry and it had left its mark. The rankness of the river gate had left his nostrils now, only to be replaced by the stink of shit from the animal pens. All very colourful of Her Majesty to own a menagerie, but she didn’t have to smell the place day after day. He wondered what they were feeding the poor creatures; some of them were clearly far from well.

      ‘Sir William’s expecting you, sir,’ a yeoman told him, clanking with keys and looking grim under his helmet rim.

      He nodded in response, too cold to make his jaw work yet. The river’s wind had bitten through his cloak, doublet and shirt into the marrow of his bones and he felt his knee click as he climbed the turn of the stair. The grey morning lit this part of the passageway and he was soon padding along the rush-strewn floor, past the oak panels that William Waad had put in to make his nest that little bit cosier. When you’re Lieutenant of the Tower, you need the odd perk. It was a dour old building, with walls that sweated out the dank smell of fear. No amount of oak panelling would make it feel like home, but the man was doing his best.

      ‘Mulled wine, Francis?’ William Waad was a solid, square-shaped man, with a florid face and a curious grey curl which he combed carefully forward to hide from the world that his hairline, like the river at ebb tide, had long receded. He had the twinkling eyes and roguish smile of a favourite uncle, except that men like Francis Walsingham didn’t have a favourite uncle. Not even Uncle Ned.

      ‘I thought you’d never offer, William.’ Walsingham smiled, taking the warm cup gratefully. ‘Bitter on the river this morning.’

      ‘You’ve come from Placentia?’ Waad ushered his guest to a chair near the fire, dismissing the guard with a nod.

      ‘I have. And I swear it gets further away every time I make the blessed journey.’

      William Waad had been waiting for Walsingham for three days. He knew you couldn’t hurry men like him without running the risk of calling the white-hot beam of his attention on to places perhaps it would be better kept from. After all, oak panelling didn’t come cheap and it might be better if the power that was Francis Walsingham did not think about that too much. Mr Secretary Walsingham kept his own counsel and moved at a pace not used by other men. In his more poetic moments, Waad imagined Walsingham as a spider, sitting at the centre of a web that shimmered like gossamer in the morning sun but which would hold you fast in a deadly and final embrace.

      Mr Secretary leaned back in the chair, letting the feeling flow back into his frozen feet as the fire cracked and whispered in the grate. He closed his eyes and let the warmth of the wine do its work. Then his eyes flashed open again and he was himself, dazzling, mercurial, a man with a job to do. ‘What says Master Topcliffe?’ he asked.

      ‘You know Richard.’ Waad chuckled, pouring himself a warmed goblet too. ‘He always gets his man.’

      Walsingham looked at the Lieutenant of the Tower. ‘Oh, I have no doubt of that,’ he said, ‘but these are dangerous times, my dear William, and speed is of the essence. What’s been tried?’

      William Waad was a meticulous keeper of records, but he didn’t need to consult the ledger lying on his desk. He knew Topcliffe’s methods, as did Walsingham, but the man was endlessly inventive in the world of pain. Subtle methods were all very well but they were usually slow and, in this case, timing was everything. ‘Beating, of course,’ he said, quaffing his wine. ‘The screws. Not strappado, however. You know Richard doesn’t like it.’

      ‘Too . . . Spanish?’ Walsingham asked. He couldn’t imagine Topcliffe objecting to a man hanging by his wrists for any other reason.

      ‘It smacks of the Inquisition, yes.’ Waad nodded. ‘But I think it’s a mechanical thing with him. Too many ropes and pulleys, I imagine. He believes in art, not science.’

      Walsingham smiled. ‘What about the rack?’

      Waad shrugged. ‘Waiting for you,’ he said. ‘Er . . . you have the warrant?’ The Lieutenant of the Tower was a careful man. For years he had sat at the back of the Privy Council meetings, scratching with his quill and dipping into his ink pot. He carried nearly as many secrets in his head as Walsingham and one thing he had learned very early on was never stick your head over the parapet or somebody will blow it off. Only the Queen could give permission for the rack.

      Walsingham fumbled inside his coat and produced the vellum, with its wax seal and the royal cipher. ‘"Ad immo",’ he quoted from the document. Then, as an afterthought, he doubted the level of Waad’s scholarship and he added, ‘To the utmost.’

      Waad chose to ignore the man’s condescending air. Had it not come from the lips of Francis Walsingham, he would have thought it kindly meant, but with the Queen’s spymaster, it was never possible to be sure how anything was meant. ‘Shall I have a guard take you down?’ he asked.

      Walsingham stood up and drained his cup. ‘No, no need. I know my way. Good morning to you, William.’ He shook the man’s hand and turned in the doorway. ‘You know, I like what you’ve done in here.’ He waved to the panelling and the tapestries. ‘Very . . . homely.’ And he was gone.

      ‘We’re pretty proud of this,’ Richard Topcliffe grunted in his hoarse Derbyshire vowels. He ran his hands lovingly along the wooden frame, letting his stubby fingers play lightly over the gear mechanism, easing the levers. ‘Francis Throckmorton,’ he said with a leer, ‘allow me to introduce the Duke of Exeter’s daughter. I’m sure you two are going to get on.’

      Francis Throckmorton wasn’t sure how much more he could take. His nose was broken, he was sure of that and speaking was difficult because of his swollen lips. His right hand was crushed, the fingers black and bloody from Topcliffe’s screws and he had no feeling at all in his right arm. He had heard of the rack, of course, whispered of in hushed tones behind the locked doors that had become part of his nightmare world. The recusant priests on the road had worse tales to tell, from high Germany where they broke men on the wheel and spurred on their wild dogs to rape women of the true faith. And Spain, where they strangled men with wire to the delight of the crowd.

      ‘This is how it works,’ Topcliffe said, beaming with satisfaction. ‘We’re going to tie you down, the lads and I, one wrist here –’ he pointed to a corner of the frame – ‘the other here. Your ankles –’ he pointed to the opposite end – ‘and then . . . and this is the beauty of it. I can operate this by myself.’ And he cranked the lever so that the planks jarred down and the ropes creaked taut.

      Throckmorton gulped, saliva and blood filling his mouth.

      ‘Of course,’ Topcliffe said, ‘something’s got to give. You’d think the ropes would snap first, wouldn’t you? But no, that’ll be your joints, laddie, first your arms, then your legs. By then, of course, I think you’ll be ready to have that little conversation we talked about.’

      ‘Mother of God,’ whispered Throckmorton.

      ‘Now!’ Topcliffe suddenly barked and his men dragged Throckmorton upright, dragging him across the floor slippery with blood and lashing the ropes around his wrists.

      ‘Stop that!’ a voice thundered from the doorway overhead. Topcliffe clicked his fingers and the men let Throckmorton drop, sprawling on the rack in pain and fear. They all looked up as a black-robed figure padded down the half twist of the stone staircase and stood in front of them.

      ‘Sir Francis.’ Topcliffe half bowed and the guards did likewise.

      ‘Mother of God, indeed.’ Walsingham knelt by the rack, looking in horror at what he saw. His cold eyes flashed again on Topcliffe. ‘You, rackmaster, you’ve gone too far this time. Does Sir William Waad know of this?’

      ‘I . . . er . . .’

      Walsingham stood up. ‘You’ve beaten your last victim,’ he snarled. ‘Get out. You, man,’ he snarled at Topcliffe’s assistant, ‘bring me butter and honey. And get this man some water and some brandy.’ They all dithered. ‘Now!’ Walsingham roared and they scampered into the shadows to do his bidding.

      Walsingham was on his knees on the cold stone. ‘Francis, Francis,’ he soothed. ‘I had no idea. What on earth happened?’

      The man’s shoulders slumped and Walsingham helped him to sit up. ‘Can I . . . get off this thing, Sir Francis?’

      ‘My dear boy.’ Walsingham took the lad’s weight and half carried him to the chair. This wasn’t much better; Topcliffe’s fetters were still clamped to the arms. Walsingham unhooked his cloak and draped it over them for sensibility’s sake.

      Throckmorton looked at the older man. ‘But you know, surely?’ he said with as much clarity as his swollen lips would allow. ‘You had me arrested.’

      ‘Me?’ Walsingham looked puzzled. ‘Francis, I assure you . . .’

      ‘Trumped up charges. Letters to the Queen of Scots. Mendoza. It’s all nonsense.’

      ‘Well of course it is.’ Walsingham patted Throckmorton’s good hand. ‘No, no, that wasn’t me, dear boy.’ He sighed and looked furtively around him. ‘Lord Burghley, I’m afraid. You know what he’s like.’

      ‘No,’ Throckmorton mumbled, tears welling in his eyes. ‘No, I don’t. I’ve never met Lord Burghley. I know nothing of those charges. Topcliffe said—’

      ‘Topcliffe!’ Walsingham snorted. ‘You’d never think the man came of a good family from Derbyshire, would you? Such an oaf.’

      ‘Oaf?’ mouthed Throckmorton. ‘That’s putting it mildly, Sir Francis.’

      ‘Well,’ Walsingham said firmly, ‘he’s unleashed his bestiality for the last time. It’s positively barbaric.’ He looked around him, the dank walls, green with mould, the corners of impenetrable black. ‘I had absolutely no idea, Francis.’

      ‘Where are we, sir?’ Throckmorton asked, gripping the man’s sleeve. ‘Are we near the river? I keep getting a smell . . .’

      ‘No, no,’ Walsingham explained. ‘This is the White Tower, dear boy. The river’s . . . er . . . that way.’ It took him a while to get his own bearings.

      ‘It’s just . . . the rats,’ Throckmorton whispered, his eyes wild. ‘I’ve never seen so many rats.’

      Walsingham nodded, his face a mask of sympathy. He looked at Throckmorton’s crushed hand. ‘We’ll get that looked at,’ he promised. ‘Honey works wonders, I’m told. And the Queen of Scots?’

      Throckmorton blinked back the tears. Then he sat upright, as far as the pain would allow him. ‘I am not a traitor, Sir Francis,’ he said solemnly.

      ‘My dear boy,’ Walsingham patronized. ‘Whoever said you were?’

      Throckmorton tried to chuckle, but it was just a gargle in his parched throat. ‘Topcliffe, for one. Lord Burghley, apparently, for another.’

      ‘They just misunderstood,’ Walsingham assured him. ‘The letters they claim you wrote . . .’

      ‘I just felt sorry for the Queen, that was all.’

      ‘The Queen of Scots?’ Walsingham needed to be clear. There could, after all, only be one queen.

      ‘She’s in prison, Sir Francis,’ Throckmorton explained, as though to a village idiot. ‘I know how that feels.’

      ‘Indeed,’ nodded Walsingham. ‘So there was no mention of the Spanish ambassador?’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Mendoza.’

      ‘Um . . . there may have been. I don’t remember.’

      ‘And nothing about . . . what was it again, that ridiculous notion, an invasion by the French under the Duke of Guise, linking up with English Papists?’ Walsingham was chuckling at the patent absurdity of the idea.

      ‘That was William Shelley’s rubbish. I warned them . . .’ His voice tailed away to silence.

      Walsingham smiled and patted the man’s shoulder, the one that had come so close to being dislocated. ‘I must go, Francis,’ he said. ‘I’ll see that the brandy is brought to you. Get a doctor down here. Then I’ll see William Waad about your release.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s an outrage that an Englishman can be treated like this in Elizabeth’s England.’

      ‘Thank you, Sir Francis.’ Throckmorton was still swallowing blood.

      ‘Think nothing of it.’ Walsingham smiled and swung his cloak over his shoulder on his way to the steps.

      Beyond the door, he accepted the goblet of brandy from Richard Topcliffe and the men drank together. ‘Your very good health, Richard.’

      ‘And yours, Sir Francis.’ The rackmaster grinned. ‘Any joy?’

      ‘Oh, yes, indeed. Never fails, does it? Nasty torturer, nice torturer routine. Good job, by the way.’

      ‘We like to please.’ He smiled. His assistants appeared at that moment with butter and water. ‘You won’t need those, lads. Get ’em back to the kitchens.’

      ‘Could I trouble you for quill and parchment, Richard?’

      ‘Of course.’ Topcliffe rummaged in his desk, sliding the heavy manacles and collar to one side.

      ‘Mrs Topcliffe well?’ Walsingham asked. ‘And the little Topcliffes?’

      ‘Never better, sir. Little Dickie had a touch of the croup last month.’

      ‘Hmm,’ Walsingham sympathized. ‘It’s this damned weather. If we had a summer this year, I don’t remember it.’ He dipped the quill and scratched a quick note on the parchment before binding it and dripping the red, molten wax from Topcliffe’s candle on to the ribbon. ‘Right,’ he sighed, hauling on the cloak. ‘I think I’ve got what I came for. Love to Mrs Topcliffe.’

      ‘Sir.’ The rackmaster beamed.

      ‘Oh, Richard, I don’t want to tell you your job; gammers and egg-sucking and so on. But work on the other hand now, there’s a good fellow. It disorients them.’

      ‘Very good,’ Topcliffe said, always happy to improve on his work. ‘And the rack?’

      ‘Er . . . yes, why not? Have your dinner first, dear boy. We’ve got Guise. I just need times and places for the planned invasion now. Oh and strength of the enemy, if you can. There’s a bonus in it for you.’

      ‘Oh, sir.’ Topcliffe was hurt. ‘I don’t do it for the money, you know that.’

      ‘Yes.’ Walsingham nodded, frowning into the man’s bright blue eyes. ‘Yes, I know.’

      Under the grey sky, the one that Francis Throckmorton would not see again until the day the axeman sliced off his head on Tower Hill, Francis Walsingham stood by his messenger’s horse, stroking the animal’s muzzle and nose.

      ‘You can take this letter to Master Christopher Marlowe, fellow.’ He threw the horseman a purse. ‘Michelgrove, near Arundel. You will find him at the house of William Shelley. He’ll know what to do.’

      ‘Very good, sir.’ And the horseman wheeled away to clatter through the barbican, making for the Bridge.

      The mist curled along the Arun that Sunday morning as the bell of St Nicholas called the faithful to church. Christopher Marlowe reached the packhorse bridge that crossed the river and looked up at the great, grey castle towering over the town. Through the frost of the morning, the good folk of Arundel were making their way in twos and threes up the hill to the church. Marlowe had received Walsingham’s letter by galloper that morning and he had it in his hand now. He looked across to where the carriage rocked to a standstill and the footmen busied themselves helping the family down.

      Catherine Shelley was a beautiful woman, tall and stately, with soft, fluttering hands and a musical voice. She nodded to Marlowe as she reached the ground and started clucking around her daughters. Jane, at twelve was already beginning to look like her mother, with a finely drawn, nervous face and slender body.

      She stood looking down at the ground, feeling gawky and awkward in a dress which was stiff and unyielding. She had begged her mother for a more grown-up dress and was regretting it already. The stiff lace collar dug into her neck and made it sore. The layers of petticoats weighed heavily on her bony hips and made her stomach ache. She felt that every move had to be planned, that to walk at all needed a momentum that she just didn’t seem to be able to gather together. And still Master Marlowe seemed not to be aware of her existence, only speaking to her to correct her Latin or Greek. She would flounce in and out of the dining hall so that he would notice her, slamming doors and dropping things, get her Cicero wrong so that he had to spend more time with her while correcting it. He filled her dreams. She was in Hell.

      Her sister Bessie, on the other hand, had no such pretensions. She loved Kit Marlowe with the undying passion of a little girl who had been ignored by everyone for most of her life, who suddenly is the recipient of smiles and hugs, no matter how absent-minded, from a man who seemed to make her mother, her sister and all of the maids blush and go weak at the knees. That both Bessie and Marlowe were equally unaware of why this should be was to their credit. He encouraged her in her pirouetting and posturing, her turning cartwheels, even if he had to constantly disentangle her from her petticoats and help her find which way was up. She declaimed what she could remember from the simplified verses he set her to learn and never walked when she could skip, never skipped when she could jump. She danced to his lute playing and sang with his songs. In spite of her constant motion, she was still a plump little thing and held hidden in her padded cheeks the secret of the greatest beauty of all the Shelley women, still to come.

      ‘Good morning, Master Marlowe.’ William Shelley was wearing his best today, his ruff well starched, his beard trimmed.

      ‘Master Shelley.’ Marlowe half bowed. He had known this man for three months and had lived in the attic room of his house for two. They had even fished the Arun together, vying with each other for the best catch of mullet. He had come to know him as well as any casual tutor could – that had been his brief from Walsingham. What Walsingham had not told Marlowe to do was to get too close to these people. It was not safe. Nor to get too close to their home life. But here he was, ravelled in the apron strings of the women, grudgingly admiring the man and beginning to regret the last two months’ work.

      ‘Bad news?’ William Shelley nodded to the parchment in Marlowe’s hand.

      ‘I may have to go back to Cambridge,’ the tutor told him, ‘sooner than I expected.’

      Shelley frowned. ‘The girls will miss you, Kit,’ he said. ‘We all will.’

      Marlowe nodded. Arundel was cold this morning, with everyone’s breath streaming out in front of them. Bessie of course was blowing on purpose, steam coming from her mouth as if she were a horse. She was stamping and prancing to complete the picture. But although it was cold, and noses were red and pinched with it, Marlowe knew it was nothing, in this soft and southern place, to the cold that would already have Cambridge in its grip. There, the wind would be a lazy wind, lazy because it bit straight through flesh and bone, rather than go round a person. No matter how many layers of clothes and piles of blankets, in winter he always went to bed cold, woke up colder still and then it just got worse all day. Here, his attic room was warm with the risen heat of many fires. He had the run of the house and it was his greatest pleasure to go down to the library at night and read by the light and the warmth of a log fire, mumbling comfortably to itself in the enormous grate. Sometimes, Catherine Shelley would join him, and would sit on the other side of the fireplace with her candle in its mirrored candlestick, stabbing at her embroidery and making polite conversation. It was a comfortable life and he realized, standing there on the packhorse bridge, that it had become too comfortable by half. Shelley’s voice broke into his thoughts.

      ‘On your way to church?’

      Marlowe half smiled in that mercurial way of his. ‘Not this morning, William. I just thought I’d wander the river for a while. Helps me think. You?’ He turned to face his employer, never forgetting for a moment why he was really here.

      ‘We’ve been invited to his Lordship’s again.’ Shelley smiled with all the bonhomie at his disposal. ‘No doubt we’ll attend divine service in the castle.’

      ‘No doubt you will.’ Marlowe smiled back and he watched them go, walking in line abreast up the hill, little Bessie leaping and pirouetting on her pattens, Jane glancing back at the black-cloaked figure at the bridge head. The church bell was still clashing and clanging and the bright cross-crosslet flag of the Howards snapped in the stiff breeze overhead.

      ‘You’re quiet tonight, Kit.’ Catherine Shelley looked up from her embroidery at the tutor. For a moment, he didn’t react, but then he raised his head and smiled gently at her.

      ‘I’m sorry. I’m thinking.’ He sat himself up and rubbed his hands together. ‘What were you saying?’ He looked at her in the firelight, her candle throwing its light on to the handiwork on her lap. She tipped her head to one side and tutted softly. ‘What?’ The laugh in his voice turned her heart to water. She had been aware all day that she should store images of Master Marlowe, the tutor, the poet, away against the day. If she could only keep one, that would be it. The eyebrow raised, the mouth smiling uncertainly, the laughing word held on the air.

      ‘I hadn’t said anything,’ she said, smiling back at him, ‘except to say you are quiet tonight.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t meant to be a curmudgeon. I just have a lot of planning to do, with . . .

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