Martin Stephen - The Conscience of the King

'That couldn't happen. now. We take too much care over who we hire as servants,' Jane said. Years earlier Cecil had slipped a spy into Gresham's house.

'It's less likely to happen now,' corrected Gresham. 'The minute you allow yourself to think it's impossible you're placing yourself at risk. Bribing a servant would still be the easy option for this bookseller, or for Overbury. Or there's a knife in your back while walking down a dark street, or a crossbow bolt from a deserted alley. Poison, knife, arrow, gun — if you want to kill someone, why do it in front of two. thousand spectators at the theatre, for God's sake?'

'Go on,' said Jane. There was clearly more.

'And why try to kill you as well?' he said to her, swinging round to face her. 'You're hardly going to carry on the investigation after my death, are you? For all Overbury knows, you're as featherbrained as the rest of the women at Court.'

Jane forgot her depression for a moment and a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She mock-fluttered her eyelashes and swooned. 'My lord, as a Court lady I do not need a brain. What I need is-'

'But think seriously on it,' Gresham interrupted quickly. 'The theatre. That's what's worried me all along. It runs through this in a way we haven't got hold of. Right from the start it's not just been a set of letters from two male lovers, it's been manuscripts of plays. This bookseller… he tells LongLankin he wants the students to put on a play. A man gets murdered because someone wants the manuscripts of two plays. They try to murder us in a theatre.'

'Bloody expensive way to go about it,' said Mannion. 'And risky. Never know what might happen with that many people around. And not exactly secret either.'

'Why does the theatre run through all this like a thick vein? We just don't know!' The tension came through in Gresham's voice, the way he still walked up and down the room.

'Well,' said Mannion carefully, putting down his tankard. 'Mebbe we do.'

Gresham and jane looked at him, startled. 'Come on, old man. Don't keep us in suspense.' 'I've been thinking,' said Mannion.

'That must have hurt,' said Gresham with compassion. 'Have another drink to get over the pain, and mind you don't do it again.'

'Ssssh!' said Jane, irritated at his banter and intrigued. Mannion did have a brain. It was simply not the organ he found most use for. He also had, when he cared to use it, an outstanding memory for faces and people, as well as a capacity to make instant and lasting judgements.

'I reckon as how that bastard with the crossbow wasn't any bookseller, not leastways any one as I've ever seen. I think that bookseller was Christopher bloody Marlowe.'

There was a stunned silence.

'But Kit Marlowe died in 1602…' said Gresham, his mind spinning.

'We was told he died in 1602,' said Mannion. 'But then again, we told everyone he died in 1593, when we bloody well knew he hadn't. If he died once when it was convenient for him, but didn't really die, why shouldn't he do the whole trick again without our help?' 'Now I remember!' said Gresham, clapping his hand to his head. 'Cornelius Wagner!'

'Who's he when he's at home?' said Mannion. it's the name Cecil's spies gave to the "Cambridge bookseller". Coke told me when we met. Cornelius Wagner. Cornelius and Wagner are two characters in Marlowe's play, Doctor Faustus. Wagner is Faustus's servant. It all adds up…' Gresham's mind was racing. 'Are you certain it was Marlowe?' i spent time with him, didn't I? It was me who got him over to France,' Mannion replied.

'You faked Marlowe's death? Got him over to France? Alive? And now he wants to kill you? I don't know this story at all,' said Jane. She felt the great tidal wave of intrigue, of double- and treble-dealing, of plots, of deception, tugging at her, the tidal wave in which her husband had chosen to swim for most of his life. Or was it. a whirlpool, sucking them to their deaths? Together with Gresham, Jane had been swept away by the magnificent verse of Marlowe's Tamburlaine, chilled by Doctor Faustus, horrified by The Jew of Malta and Edward II. 'Tell me.'

Gresham laughed. 'Did we get him over to France? Yes. Did we fake his death? No. That was Marlowe's idea.' He nodded towards Mannion, who pulled his tankard towards him and continued the tale.

'Marlowe'd got himself into trouble. Well, to be truthful, he was never out of it. 'Cept this time it was real trouble. He was a spy, for old Walsingham, spying on the Catholics. Leastways, meant to be spying on the Catholics, but with a nose for trouble that meant he ended up spying* on everybody, including some very inconvenient people. Like the Queen, Pexample. When Walsingham died he started to work for Cecil.

'Always getting drunk, he were, always fighting, always shooting his mouth off. Bad thing, for a spy, that. Started to shoot his mouth off about Cecil being left-handed, so to speak.' Mannion used the slang term for describing a homosexual. 'And loads of other stuff no one could understand. Cecil's father, old Lord Burleigh, decided he were a risk too far and got him summoned to the Privy Council.

After that, he'd have bin referred to the Tower, and probably died of some mysterious illness short after…'

'He never was a very good spy,' said Gresham. Too fiery, too intelligent, too much wanting to be the centre of attention.'

'Anyways, we gets to hear of it too, before Marlowe even. Sir Henry here, well, Marlowe's a bit of a hero for him, literary speaking.'

'I thought the man was a genius,' said Gresham simply. 'A pain in the neck, right enough, but a genius for all that. Burleigh and Cecil wanted him dead and even then I was pleased to do anything I could to put a stop to Cecil's plans. I thought in exchange I might get some real dirt on Burleigh, and on Cecil. And I really did want to stop them killing the man who had written Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine. Think of it as my early patronage of the arts.'

'So what happened?' asked Jane.

'1 warned him that if he went to the Privy Council hearing he'd never walk out of it alive or a free man. I arranged to spirit him over to France,' said Gresham, 'but that wasn't good enough for Marlowe. He had to fake his own death first, with the biggest crowd of villains in the country. We got to hear of that too late to stop it, but we reckoned those particular villains would take his money, do what he'd arranged and then kill him anyway. That way they could claim a second payment from the government. Mannion managed to tail him on to the brig we'd hired to get him over the Channel.'

Gresham looked to Mannion.

'As it was, two of the crew on the brig over to France tried to murder Marlowe in his sleep.' 'What did you do?' said Jane.

'I killed 'em,' said Mannion simply, slurping at his small beer. 'Anyways, I got him over to France. We know he took himself off to Spain after that — separate story. We heard he'd died or been killed in 1602. He always were a stupid bugger, excusing my Ian-guage, mistress. It were no surprise to hear someone had topped him.*

"Are you sure it was him at The Globe yesterday?' said Gresham.

'Yes, I reckon. He's changed a lot. Shrunken, sort of. Lost his hair. So it took me time to spot him. But that's who it is. Marlowe. Back from the grave. Reckon he's got a dose of the pox. Did you see him with that crossbow?'

'I saw him fire it,' said Gresham.

'I saw him put his hand on the release,' said Mannion. 'I mean, he rested the bow on the woodwork, wedged it into his arm and then he put his hand on the release with his other hand, as if he couldn't really feel it. That's what they do with a bad dose of the pox. They can't feel much in their hands or their feet. I know about these things.'

How Mannion had avoided a dose of the pox was a quite remark-able story of there being no natural justice in life. There was no doubt that his extra-curricular lifestyle brought him into contact with many who had not been so lucky.