Martin Stephen - The Conscience of the King

Gresham sensed rather than saw or heard the movement from further up the. roof and instinctively swung back behind the beam. There was a flicker of silver and the knife — an Italian throwing knife, Gresham had time to note — swished by like liquid metal to embed itself, quivering slightly, into the next beam along.

Marlowe was standing now, fumbling for a second knife, eyes blazing hatred. It was not clear if he recognised Gresham. Without stopping to think, Gresham reached up to the rear beam, dragged the still-trembling knife from deep in the old wood and hurled it back to its owner.

It was a bad throw, taken in too much haste. Instead of heading for the centre of the rib cage, it veered to the right. Marlowe was holding the second knife now, hand and arm upraised, ready to throw. His own returned knife sank into his wrist, just below the hand. Marlowe was flung backwards, the second knife flying out of his grasp and landing with a clang on the centre of the vaulting, from where it rolled down to the side. His scream was more animal than human, a tearing, wrenching noise that opened the doors of hell. He crashed to the ground, looking in appalled horror at his own knife embedded in his arm, the blood starting to seep down to soak invisibly into his black cloak. With a last, croaking cry, he passed out. Or had he?

There was red in Gresham's eyes. The overwhelming, overriding urge to survive had him in its wildest grip. He must kill the brute with no tongue. He must kill Marlowe. Now, while both were defenceless. Now, before they could rise up on either side of him.

He had his sword raised over the throat of the brute nearest him, choosing him first.

Then he stopped.

Fool! Was he an animal to be dominated by a blood lust? He needed Marlowe alive, needed him to tell him the truth, needed that truth to plot Gresham's own survival through the tangled paths of Coke, Bacon, Overbury, Andrewes, King James and the ghost of Robert Cecil.

With all his force Gresham kicked the huge man in the stomach. He hardly moved. Satisfied, Gresham ripped the man's tunic further apart at the neck along the stitching and dragged it half down over his unresisting body, pinioning his arms to his side. Then, for good measure, he took the flapping arms of the tunic and tied them across the man's back in a fierce knot, making an impromptu strait-jacket.

Eyes on Marlowe's prone figure, he crept forward. His every sense was on sword edge. There was no need to test Marlowe's unconsciousness. The knife through his arm would have him screaming if he were conscious. Noting distastefully the blood that lay around the body — it would not be a fair gift to Jane to pick up a dose of the clap from this man's bodily fluid and pass it on to her — he picked up Marlowe's booted foot, noting the stench of the man as he did so, and dragged him, head bouncing off the floor, to join his servant. He took a leather studded belt off the servant and used it to bind Marlowe's feet together. That left Marlowe with one arm free. He would not be using the other to unpick any belt or rope, not with his own knife embedded in it. Time! Time! This was all taking far too long! He would have to bind Marlowe with his own doublet, then hope to carry him unseen through the streets. The other servant had better be imprisoned too, which meant Mannion and others coming back up here, all before dawn. Time! Why was there never enough time?

Time stopped. Motion stopped. The world froze.

A noise.

A noise of hasty breath and a footfall. Faint. Very faint. A flickering shadow of a noise, as of the softest of feet making the quietest possible-haste along the corridor alongside the vaulting.

He had no more time.

Was the man on the roof, waiting? Or was the noise him fleeing the violence below? It made sense to have him on the roof at the start. Send someone in ahead — someone to unlock the door even — to scout out the ground. Mount to the roof, wait there in silence. Hang the tiniest of lights from the parapet — no one to notice it at that time of night — to show the coast was clear. Whoever it was may have left his post to greet Marlowe when he saw him scuttling across the green. That would explain why the watcher had not seen Gresham, following on and skirting the edge, a minute or two later.

So was he on the roof? Or waiting in the corridor outside? Damn! With enough lanterns lit to guide an armada, Gresham had lost his night vision. If he doused both the lanterns now the listener would have the advantage. There was no alternative. He chopped the light, then crouched back against the wall, having first placed Marlowe's lamp across the entry a man would have to walk over if he entered the vault.

Silence. Not even a breath of wind. Harsh moonlight cutting through the end window. Even the upward side of the vaulting was beautiful, though only a handful of men would ever see it.

Gresham rose to his feet and moved carefully out into the corri-dor, then up a few flights of the tower's circular staircase and on to the roof. Inch by inch, he crept upwards. His sword he extended at full length ahead of him. Anyone lunging down would be pierced before they could reach him. The coward's way, an old sergeant had laughed at him in the Lowland Wars. Three weeks later the man was dead, killed storming a tower. Not the coward's way. The sur-vivor's way.

The door was open at the top. Gresham could see an arch of the night sky outlined at the stair's head. Quandary. Was there room behind it for a man to hide, to plunge the door into his face as he had done with LongLankin? He moved up on to the last step. The slightest breath of night air touched his face. He had not noticed his thin sheen of sweat. He took two or three deep, silent breaths. Then, gathering himself up into a ball of muscle, he hurled himself through the opening. As he landed over the threshhold, out in the open now, his foot caught in the clumsy wooden duckboards that ran alongside the roof. He fell, still gripping his sword, with an almighty clatter.

He rolled forward, freed his sword. Silence. Nothing. He lifted his eyes to the line of the roof.

Nothing.

The thin rooftop passageway in which he lay was faced to his left with ornate stonework, shoulder high, the parapet wall of King's College Chapel. To his right, the roof rose steeply to its ridge. The moonlight showed there was no one in sight. Yet the further along the channel the eye went, the more the shadows merged into each other.

Where would Gresham have hidden?

Suddenly he knew the answer. It was a terrible risk. He knew what he would have to do to find his enemy. It would hinge on a moment of balance, a reaction a split-second early.

But life was risk. It was not the fear that mattered. All people felt fear. It was the ability to conquer it.

The roof ladder, laid flat on the roof itself, was a clumsy thing, roughly fashioned out of unseasoned timber, leading up to the ridge. Its partner would lie on the other side. To crawl up it or to stand on its bottom rung and walk up? He stood.

The ladder was rock firm, surprisingly so. As he walked up the roof, ever so carefully, measuring each step, his sword arm upraised, his other arm flung out preposterously for balance, he sensed rather than saw how high he was. Something dropped in the pit of his stomach as he imagined his height above ground. With each careful step he took, the ridge line of the roof dropped one notch towards him. Agonisingly slowly, the top line of the roof came to his head height. Next step and his eyes were above it. Next step and his shoulders…

The man had lain himself flat on the other side of the roof, by the side of the ladder. As Gresham's head appeared shadowed against the moonlit sky, the man leaned slightly down on his left shoulder and slashed his sword arm from the right side of his body through the area occupied by Gresham's head and neck.