4 A Plague of Angels: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery (29 page)

‘Tell me. If only to pass the time while you wait for your enemies to give up.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he said to himself. ‘I know he was wearing one of my old suits, but still…Mother, if you were looking for a popinjay courtier and you saw one man in a woollen suit and one man tricked out like me, which would you pick?’

Nan smiled and pointed at him.

‘Quite. But I distinctly heard them address him as Sir Robert…by my name, and ignore his denials.’

‘Perhaps a friend of yours pointed out the wrong man.’

‘Yes, but…why? Why not have them arrest somebody completely different. Why Dodd? It doesn’t make…’ He stopped and stared at her without seeing her at all. ‘I wonder. Would he do that? Why?’

Nan said nothing, only addressed an heretical prayer to St Bride and also St Jude to do something to help the young man. It seemed her prayer was answered for he suddenly smiled at her radiantly.

‘I’m a fool. I’ve treed myself again. He’s probably waiting outside with a good force of pursuivants. When is the Sunday Service?’

‘In about an hour, at nine of the clock.’

‘Excellent. Mother, would you run an errand for me?’

She smiled impishly. ‘Walk, certainly. Run—no.’

***

Kit Marlowe waited for his henchmen, sitting perched languidly on the churchyard wall of St Bride’s. He was annoyed with himself and with Carey. He hadn’t thought the man so dense, had in fact considered him not far off his own intellectual equal, for all the Courtier’s lack of the classics. And you could see what King James of Scotland saw in him; such a pity Carey only liked women.

Marlowe had one man to cover the side door and was himself watching the main door. It was possible of course that the Courtier had found another way of escape, but Marlowe doubted it because his men were scattered strategically around the various alleys and he would have heard the noise if Carey tried to get past them.

Londoners dressed in their best clothes were arriving in the courtyard, the women gathering in bright knots to chatter, the men talking and nodding among themselves. Oh now, that was annoying. He had forgotten that Sunday Service would be starting soon, but it meant he couldn’t search the place, even after his men had arrived. He should have gone straight in.

A little old woman came out of the church, trotted past with her hat on, as short and round as a chesspiece. He moved to block her path.

‘Goodwife, a word please.’

‘Yes, sir?’ She curtseyed and smiled at him.

‘I am looking for a Papist gentleman, very well dressed in cramoisie velvet, lilies on his hose, dark red hair, blue eyes, a little the look of Her Majesty the Queen. Have you seen such a man?’

Her round wrinkled face blinked up at him. ‘A Papist gentleman, sir? Fancy!’

‘Yes, a very dangerous man. Did he come into your church?’

‘Why would a Papist go into our church?’

‘To hide from me.’

‘Oh, sir. I’ve not seen any dangerous Papists.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To fetch vestments. Why, sir?’ she said. ‘Are you waiting for the service to begin?’

‘Yes, goodwife,’ he said shortly.

She nodded her head inanely. ‘Isn’t St Bride’s beautiful in the sunshine?’ she said. ‘Isn’t it a work of God to see it. We have a well of miraculous water, you know? Did you know that Our Lord drank from the well, our very own well?’

‘Did He?’

‘Oh, He did sir, it’s quite certain.’

Marlowe rolled his eyes. ‘Thank you, goodwife.’

‘Then I’ll see you at prayer, sir.’

‘No doubt.’

‘Well, God be with you, sir.’

Marlowe didn’t give the normal reply, only turned his face and stared pointedly at the beheaded saints on the church wall. ‘I very much doubt it,’ he muttered, and ignored her curtsey as she trotted past.

The church was definitely filling up fast now, mothers with their children in clean caps, arguing and being threatened with beatings and bribes if they made as much noise as last time, elderly men with long beards and fine gowns…All of Fleet Street was there, and Fleet Lane and Ludgate Hill.

‘There you are again, sir,’ said a perky cracked voice beside him, and the cleaner was simpering up at him again, puffing hard with a heavy cloth bag in her hand. ‘Well, would you care to see the vestments? Very beautiful, made of silk, you know, as beautiful as a rainbow.’

‘No thank you, goodwife,’ said Marlowe impatiently, watching hard for anyone going against the throng. If he was there, Carey would almost certainly wait through the Service and then try to slip out with the crowds of folk as cover—it was the obvious thing to do.

One of Marlowe’s men came over for orders as the church cleaner went in at the sacristy door, and Marlowe disposed them as best he could. He was a hunter, and his fox had gone to earth. What he really needed were terriers and an ecclesiastical warrant. Unfortunately, it took at least three days to get one from the argumentative church courts. But Carey had to leave the church at some stage if he was going to do anything now he had no men to his back, and that’s when Marlowe would nip him out. Then they could talk.

Marlowe sighed. Somebody had to go into the church, to be ready by the door, but not him. Carey knew his face too well.

Divine Service had never seemed so long before. Marlowe presumed the vicar was preaching the evils of atheism and the essential nature of God’s church, with no doubt some lurid and dubious tales of Hell to keep the congregation in awe. It passed his understanding why anyone ever believed anything a priest said: how the Devil could anyone know what happened in Hell, since nobody was ever going to come back and describe it?

The church itself was nothing but a vast playhouse for instructing the people in subjection to their betters. He supposed it was good enough for the general run of men and for all women, of course, but anyone with a real brain must see through the mummery. However, hardly anyone did. They repeated meaningless words and yearned towards the void like the sheep they were.

At last the congregation was coming out. Marlowe stood straight and paid attention as the men took their leave of the vicar and the women started their ceaseless starling chatter again.

He waited, beginning to grow concerned. Leaving one man to watch the main door he went round to the side door but found it still locked. His man confirmed that none had come out.

He hurried back again and asked the man he had left there who had come out. An important family, some country bumpkins visiting London, another family, children, serving men.

‘Any courtiers?’

‘I’d have stopped him if I’d seen him, sir,’ said the man, looking offended. ‘I know what we’re looking for. Tall, dark red hair, blue eyes, lilies on his hose. Right?’

‘Nobody like that has come out?’

‘No, sir. Nor anything even similar.’

The crowds were thinning, a few boys were being shouted at by their mother for tightrope-walking along the church wall. Marlowe folded his arms and his lips thinned with anger. Surely Carey hadn’t given them the slip. His men weren’t bright but their job involved watching carefully for men described to them and they were good at it. Also they were afraid of him and his power from Heneage. They wouldn’t have missed Carey. He must still be skulking inside.

‘Oh, the hell with this nonsense,’ snapped Marlowe. ‘We’ll search the place.’

With his henchmen to back him, Marlowe went into the church and because he had to maintain some kind of respectability in front of his men, he took his hat off.

‘Vicar,’ he said to the portly man putting out the candles on the altar. ‘I am going to search here for a Papist traitor I am seeking. Please don’t put me in the position of having to order my men to lay hands on you.’

The vicar stood stock still, and seemed on the verge of protesting. Then he took a deep breath and gritted his teeth. ‘I protest, sir,’ he said. ‘And I will be writing to the bishop this very afternoon.’

‘Do as you like,’ said Marlowe and nodded to his men to quarter the church.

They did, very carefully, and then the sacristy and that was when one of them came hurrying out, triumphantly waving a lace with a glittering aiglet.

Marlowe took it between his fingers and held it up to the light. It was a beautiful piece of work: gold, with the sharp point of the aiglet formed in the shape of a stork’s beak. Nobody except a courtier would bother with such elaboration. The lace had been snapped by someone in too much of a hurry to untie his doublet points properly.

There had been no naked men in the crowd. ‘Devil take it,’ growled Marlowe. ‘He changed his clothes.’

He spun on his heel and barked at the vicar, still standing at his altar. ‘What did he put on?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Don’t pretend to be any stupider than you are. What was he wearing when he slipped out?’

‘Who?’

‘The man I am looking for, on the Queen’s business, Sir Robert Carey. The man who left this on your sacristy floor.’

The vicar looked at the pretty little thing in Marlowe’s fist. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘What was he wearing?’ Marlowe was pacing across the church up to the altar, advancing on the vicar who shrank back at first and then seemed to find some courage somewhere in his windy fat body and faced him boldly.

‘Sir, I was working on my sermon, putting last minute touches to it, in my study. If there was a fugitive here, which I doubt, then to be sure he must have been wearing something. What it was, I have no idea.’

‘The vestment bag. The old bitch coney-catched me,’ said Marlowe to himself. ‘Of course. Where’s the old woman? A little short woman who burbled to me about St Bride?’

‘Do you mean Nan? I’m sorry sir, she isn’t here. She asked for the day off and I gave it to her and she’s gone.’

‘God damn it.’

‘Will you stop taking the Lord’s name in vain in my church?’

‘No, I won’t. It hasn’t done me any harm yet and I doubt it will. I shall have words with my master, Mr Vice Chamberlain Heneage, I shall have you investigated thoroughly for Papistry and loyalty, if it lies within my power I shall have you in Chelsea and question you myself.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ said the vicar with a patronising smile. ‘But my own Lord of Hosts will protect me, quite possibly through the agency of my lord the Earl of Essex who is my temporal good lord.’

Marlowe was outbid and he knew it. In the feverish scheming of the court, Essex was implacably opposed to Heneage and worse, Essex hated Marlowe, whereas the Queen loved Essex and generally did what he asked. And Essex was the ultimate object of all Marlowe’s manoeuvring.

Marlowe wrestled with the urge to punch the fatuous old man.

‘If the gentleman returns who changed his clothes very hurriedly in your sacristy, tell him that Kit Marlowe wants to speak to him. I’ll be at the Mermaid.’

‘Certainly sir. Goodbye.’ As if trying to rouse Marlowe to an even worse fury, the vicar lifted his hand in the three fingered sign for benediction. ‘The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his countenance to shine upon you…’

The church door banged behind Marlowe before the old man had finished his superstitious prattling.

For a moment Marlowe stood in the courtyard, irresolute, his thoughts disordered by anger. Carey had somehow managed to give him the slip, probably by changing into his henchman’s old homespun clothes. He was loose in London; probably he was already on his way to Somerset House to talk to his father, or possibly he was taking horse in St Giles in the Fields, to ride to Oxford.

He beckoned his men over and gave them orders for the search, then headed towards the Mermaid inn for an early dinner. He needed a drink badly and he needed to sit and consider how to rescue his plan.

***

Nan stood by the stairwell in Whitefriars over which there had once been a handsome figure of Our Lady standing on the globe, now defaced by Reformers. The young man she had taken rather a liking to came clattering down, now dressed in a well-made homespun russet suit a bit wide for him and short in the breeches, and a leather jerkin, with a blue statute cap on his head. He had done his best to hide the colour of his hair and the excellence of his boots with mud and dust and he had kept his sword which had anyway been an incongruously plain broadsword. There was no question but that he had been a great deal more fine when in his courtly clothes, but she liked him better now. Also he had pawned the whole beautiful suit he had been wearing and got an astonishing price for it, some of which he had given her, without her asking, which had pleased her greatly. And he had told her to call him Robin which also pleased her.

‘Are you sure about this, mother?’ he asked her with a worried frown on his face. ‘When I wished I could find a nurse for my servants, I never…’

She tutted at him and pulled down her little ruff to show him the round scars on her neck. ‘See?’ she said. ‘I had the plague years ago, when I was a maid. We all got it but I was spared. You never get it twice. That was why I went to the nunnery, you know, my family was dead, except my uncle and he didn’t want me.’

‘I didn’t know you were a nun.’