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.
'Well, well,' said Gresham. 'My old friend Kit Marlowe.'
'Why should he want revenge on you?' asked. Jane, bemused. 'You helped him get away, didn't you?'
'1 think I know,' said Gresham. 'Hold on here while I fetch something.'
Gresham left them in the breakfast parlour and moved through the corridors with a greeting, by name, to the servants who bobbed, curtseyed or doffed their caps to him. He went to his private study, at the centre of The House and guarded by its stoutest door. Lifting the extravagance of carpet that lay on the floor, he revealed the planking. He gave a sharp tap on the end of a join, indistinguishable from the others. The plank-end jumped up, and settled down a half inch or so higher than its neighbour. Gresham lifted it, revealing that it was hinged at its other end. The cavity exposed as the plank swung back had a dullish sheen to it. Gunmetal. There was a metal box beneath the floor, with its own lock. Gresham swung back the heavy door with a key from his golden keyring. No money lay there, as might be expected in a rich man's house, a rich man who had gone to the expense of constructing a special metal box hidden beneath the floor of the most secure room in his property. Nor were there deeds of land, or sureties, or any of the paperwork beloved of the lawyers. Rather, there were letters. Letters and papers. Of no apparent significance or value to the idle viewer. Gresham smiled inwardly as his eyes lit on some of the papers. Monarchies, kings and queens were compromised by those innocent-looking documents.
Men have to tell their secrets, to prove that they are men. Great men merely have to know great secrets, and tell no one.
Gresham found the two letters he had come for and closed his private store. Would it survive a fire? he thought. For a while, perhaps. It was gunmetal, after all. More likely, the survival of it and its contents would depend on him or one of his very few trusted servants making the gunmetal box their only priority in the case of a fire. Nothing was certain, Gresham thought, except death. The readiness is all. You cannot predict. You can only prepare.
He brought the two letters back into the room. Mannion had replenished his tankard, Gresham noted.
Two letters,' he said to Jane, 'three months apart. Both from Marlowe. June and August 1602. Someone had just tried to kill him, he said. I hadn't saved him at all, he said. I'd set the whole thing up on Cecil's orders, so Cecil wouldn't be embarrassed by the revelations Marlowe would have made at any trial.'
'They weren't planning any trial!' said Mannion with a guffaw.
'No, but Marlowe'd obviously imagined one, with himself playing the heroic role. He'd been meant to go to France, but went to Spain instead and sold himself as a spy to them. Worked with them for years, as I understand it. Then he fell out with them, and blamed me and Cecil for poisoning the Spanish against him.'
'Had you?' said Jane.
'God help us, no,' said Gresham. 'To be frank, I'd more or less forgotten about him until these letters came. He'd have been better off dying in The Tower, he said. There, you can read it. He was in poverty. He'd never had the recognition he deserved… and more. And, of course, the accusation that it was Cecil and I who'd tried to have
