‘I do what I do for England,’ Derby continued. ‘There is no personal gain.’
‘Noble motives,’ the Earl replied with a nod. ‘At first I feared this was some plot to dethrone Elizabeth. If that were true, I would have been forced to move against you. As it is …’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘Cecil’s spies must be removed from the game in the first instance, and then … we shall see.’
With undue eagerness, Derby grasped the other man’s hand and pumped it. ‘You have made the right choice,’ he said. ‘Those who do not stand with us are against us.’
Essex nodded, smiled and made to remove his hand, but Derby held fast. Hasard felt a ripple of unease. Wide-eyed and grinning, the older man leaned forward, a soft, breathy laugh escaping his gritted teeth. With his thumb, he began to stroke the back of the Earl’s hand. The caress was not a suggestion of intimacy, Hasard could tell, but it was still breathtakingly inappropriate. His master looked as if he had lost his wits.
Unsettled, Essex tore his hand free, muttered a goodbye and hurried away. Hasard pressed himself back into the shadows so he would not be seen.
When the Earl had disappeared into the dark along the corridor, the cloaked man slipped into the oak- panelled chamber. With a sly smile, Derby nodded, once more the man Hasard recognized. ‘All is well,’ the newcomer said, still uneasy. His master was a man of propriety, restrained, sophisticated, aloof. He had never behaved in such a manner before.
‘Good,’ Derby replied, beckoning his assistant closer to the candle flame. ‘Our plans move apace. We now pull the strings of the Earl of Essex. In thrall to his ambition, he will do all that we wish.’
‘Our numbers grow by the week,’ Derby continued, rubbing his hands eagerly. ‘Our influence reaches into all parts of the government, and soon, very soon, we will be ready to make our move. For now, I have more work for you and your men.’
‘Another body to dispose of?’
‘Not yet. I fear Cecil’s spies are becoming aware. We must act quicker than we intended. Harry them at every turn. Seek out Swyfte — he is the most dangerous when roused. But his men, too, must be driven off course. Go to Bankside first, where they waste their days and nights in the stews and inns and gaming halls. Search all London. Do not allow them to rest for a moment. Capture them, if you can. Kill them, if you must. They are a threat to England’s future prosperity.’
‘Very well.’ Hasard bowed.
‘I will send someone to help you.’
‘Who?’
‘You will not see him, but he will be there.’ Derby looked past his assistant to the door where Danby the coroner had entered silently, with another, hooded man who clutched four fat candles to his chest. Hasard was disturbed to see a long trail of spittle hanging from the corner of the coroner’s mouth.
‘Go now, Master Hasard, and help us usher in a new age for England.’ Derby waved his hand to dismiss his assistant.
Hasard left, unnerved by the fire he saw burning in Danby’s eyes. As he passed the two new arrivals, he looked into the deep hood and was shocked to see the face of a devil. Only when he had stepped out of the door did he realize it was a mask, fiery red, with a jagged crack running across it.
Hurrying into the palace’s dark, Hasard discerned the faint words of Derby as he greeted the two other men: ‘Now we must listen carefully to the whispers of our masters in the shadows.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Carpenter listened to the terrified whimperings, but his mind was elsewhere. A dark foreboding had gripped him from the moment he left the deadhouse and even the light of day could not dispel it.
On the other side of the cramped room tucked away in the rafters of a timber-framed Bankside house, Launceston pressed his dagger to the neck of the kneeling landlord, his other hand dragging the man’s head back by his greasy hair. The landlord looked like a bullfrog, eyes bulging with fear above a flat, broad nose and fat lips, his filthy linen undershirt barely concealing his large belly and badly worn breeches.
Christopher Marlowe’s secret lodgings had been torn apart, the bed upended, loose boards ripped up to reveal the mouse droppings and straw beneath; the small table lay upturned, the chair in pieces. Shards of plaster had been torn from the walls in a search for hiding places and now lay in heaps everywhere. White dust coated all the surfaces, whipped into whirls by the breeze from the open door so that it appeared to be snowing in the shaft of sunlight breaking through the little window.
‘Who did this?’ the pallid man demanded as if he were asking the time of day.
‘Four men!’ his prisoner gulped. ‘They came in the night three days ago!’
‘And you have not yet cleaned and relet these premises? I have never known a landlord to leave a room sitting empty.’ The Earl surveyed the room’s detritus for anything important that he might have missed.
‘I was afraid. In case they came back.’ Spittle sprayed from the fat man’s mouth.
The room was barely ten foot square, cheap in an area where all rooms cost little rent, but it would have served Marlowe’s purpose, Carpenter knew. Few would have come looking for the famous playwright there among the cutpurses, and apprentices, and poor field labourers.
‘What did they look like?’ Launceston pressed.
‘I did not see their faces. When they forced their way in, I hid in my room until they had done their business,’ the terrified man babbled.
‘Rogues? Or gentlemen?’ Carpenter sifted through a bundle of papers scattered across the boards. It was the remnants of an unfinished play in Marlowe’s spidery scrawl. Nothing of importance, he thought.
The landlord rolled his wide eyes towards the scar-faced man. ‘Not rogues. I saw fine clothes.’
Carpenter glanced over in time to see Launceston’s dagger wavering over the pulsing artery in the landlord’s neck. The Earl had the familiar hungry gleam in his eye.
‘Robert,’ Carpenter cautioned. His voice was understated, but the pale man knew the meaning by now. Reluctantly, the Earl removed the blade and thrust the landlord roughly across the boards.
The fat man clutched his hands together and insisted, ‘I speak the truth! Marlowe only wrote his plays here. He kept nothing of value.’
‘Then why would gentlemen be searching his room?’ Carpenter continued.
The landlord gaped stupidly. Knowing any more questions would be futile, the scarred spy grabbed the neck of the landlord’s shirt and dragged him to the open door. A loud crashing echoed as the man half fell, half threw himself down the winding stairs.
Carpenter kicked the door shut. ‘Our suspicions are proving correct. Marlowe’s room searched on the night of his death. Sweeping up any filthy trail left in the wake of a murder. And no lone killer, either. A plot, then.’
Launceston’s hand was trembling as he sheathed his dagger. ‘Marlowe offended many people in his short life. But this smacks of careful planning and authority.’
The scar-faced man crossed to the small window and peered out over the thatch and clay tiles of the Bankside rooftops towards the river. ‘This is not good weather for any of us. Yet I cannot see a pattern here. In Marlowe’s murder the culprit is known, and no attempt was made to hide the body or the crime. But the attack on Will at the Rose was a different matter, as was the brutality inflicted on Gavell.’
‘If the Unseelie Court truly is eliminating spies who know of them, one by one, there may well be no pattern,’ the Earl mused. ‘Any means of dispatch would suffice.’
‘But this is a conspiracy of madness.’ Carpenter watched the men at work in the fields and dreamed of another life. ‘Men at court working alongside our traditional Enemy? That is like lambs lying down with wolves.’
He had a sense of the world closing in around him. It was bad enough that his only real friend was Launceston, who appeared to have no human feelings and lived only for killing.
‘Hurrm,’ the Earl grunted at his back.
‘What is it?’ Carpenter snapped.
‘The room has been torn apart. Whoever did it must have believed that Marlowe had information which could
