of the taproom.
Boltfoot shook his head in dismay. Sarjent’s verdict was true enough. It was easy to imagine powder disappearing from this place; from this distance, on a bridge over the Lea some six hundred yards away, it looked as watertight as a malkin’s colander.
‘They should have stayed with flour milling,’ Sarjent said.
Boltfoot looked at his companion curiously. ‘What do you know of this place, Mr Sarjent?’
‘It was a flour mill. There were three of them here, hence the name. Then two. Now one of those two is a gunpowder mill, founded five years since at the time of the Spanish Armada. See how she straddles the Lea? The river is tidal here, and it is the ebb that drives the wheels.’
‘Have you been here before?’
‘Aye,’ Sarjent said, his voice quieter now. ‘I was deputed here in ’88 when it was converted by the Knaggs. That’s Thomas Knagg and his father, who is now dead. But we fell out. I did not like their methods. They were not military men and seemed unaware — uncaring — about the dangers of powder.’
Boltfoot said nothing. He shook the reins of his mount.
Sarjent kicked on after him. ‘Come, Mr Cooper, let us go and pummel a few skulls.’
The keeper of the Counter prison in Wood Street was pleased to accept two shillings in his hand from Shakespeare. ‘Don’t you worry, sir,’ he said. ‘Mr Morley will not escape from here.’
‘Leave us now, master keeper. Send a turnkey with ale.’
The keeper, a bony-handed ancient with a long, ash-grey beard, bowed and backed out of the small cell. Morley sat hunched on a pile of clean straw, his back to the damp wall. He had the cell to himself, but there were no comforts other than this straw and the weak light that slanted in through a barred window high up in the thick stone.
Shakespeare stood by the door and eyed his miserable captive. He was surprised to see real fear in his face; he was used to the curled lip of sneering contempt from this man. ‘Well, Mr Morley,’ he said at last. ‘You are a shambles of a human being. Not one of the creator’s finest works, that is certain.’
‘I am brought to penury, Mr Shakespeare. I cannot work as a tutor without a recommendation from the Countess of Shrewsbury, and she will not give me one. Nor can I sell my odes, for no one has coin in these straitened times.’
‘What do you bring me? If you wish to stay out of Newgate, you had best tell the whole truth, and soon.’
‘I will tell you nothing without assurances of freedom — and silver. You have to protect me.’
Shakespeare cupped his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘Protect you, Morley? All you will get is iron, fire and the Tyburn halter if you do not tell me everything I wish to know.’
‘Tyburn!’ the prisoner attempted to laugh at the dread word, but it came out as a sour bark. ‘Tyburn holds no terrors. It would be a blessed release from my woes. Nothing you threaten can make me more afraid than I am already, Mr Shakespeare. The men I talk of have forgot more about inflicting pain than the Spanish Inquisition ever learned.’
‘Why have you come to me?’
‘I told you: I need your protection. There is no one I can trust and I took you for an honourable man. You must give me the means to get to a place of sanctuary, as far from this rotten town as a man may go. Give me that and you shall have all the information you require.’
‘How much do you think you need?’
‘A hundred sovereigns. No less than that. I must have money to leave here and start life anew.’
‘I could not find such a sum and you know it, Mr Morley.’
‘Cecil could.’
‘Then give me something worth taking him. He would laugh and order in Topcliffe if I brought what you have told me thus far.’
The turnkey returned with ale. He was a gnat of a man, no more than four and a half foot tall, but square built. His keys rattled at his belt. In one hand he carried two beakers of musty ale. He picked a large lump of something unpleasant from his nose and scraped it into one of the beakers, which he handed to Morley before exiting with a smirk.
Morley hurled the defiled beaker of ale to the ground.
‘This is your life now, Morley, or what is left of it,’ Shakespeare said, handing him his own stale liquor. ‘If you do not cooperate with me you will live with rats and taste London’s prison holes until the hurdle draws you to your death.’
‘I will tell you what I know. But you will have no names from me until you return with one hundred sovereigns.’
‘Speak, then.’
Morley supped from Shakespeare’s ale and immediately spat it out with a retching noise.
‘Start with Marlowe. You said you were the intended victim, but that cannot be — Poley knew Marlowe well. There could have been no error there.’
‘This is poison, not ale!’
‘Marlowe…’
Morley wiped his grubby, threadbare velvet sleeve across his mouth and tangled beard. ‘I have oftentimes being confused with Marlowe. Our names can sometimes sound the same and we were both university wits and poets from Cambridge. But that is by the by. The one who ordered the killing was befuddled. He believed Marlowe wrote the placards by the Dutch church. An easy mistake to make — why, even the Council was deceived, so I am told.’
‘But it was you?’
He shook his head. ‘Not me alone. A group of us. But the one who paid for Marlowe’s death believed I was a threat to him, for I recognised him and realised he was not what he seemed. He will know soon enough, though, that he has had the wrong man killed.’
‘Was he one of your confederates?’
‘I cannot tell you. But I do now believe they want me dead, for they are convinced that I have betrayed them.’
‘But who are they?’
‘Bring me the sovereigns.’
‘Tell me — without names, if you must — what manner of people are they?’
Morley hesitated, as if wondering how much information he could afford to divulge.
‘I must have at least this, Morley.’ Shakespeare’s voice was less harsh. ‘The ones who wrote the placards must be the powdermen, yes?
‘Do not ask too much, or we will both die.’
‘Well?’
‘Mr Shakespeare, I will help you all I can. But I beg you to be circumspect. We — this group and I — wish to see the strangers sent home from our midst. There are many others. More than the Council could ever imagine: apprentices, merchants, even noblemen… men who do not like the strangers’ ways. They take our business. Why, I do believe the Countess of Shrewsbury herself has replaced me with a German or some such. They are like leeches or some canker on the body of England.’
‘But among these many opponents of the strangers, there is this smaller group? A core of men prepared to use force of arms and powder to achieve their ends?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many?’
‘Six… ten sometimes. They used me for the poster-writing, for I have some small skill with words, but I think they never intended I should live. Not once he had seen me and realised I recognised him…’
‘He?’
Morley said nothing.
‘Was Glebe among them? Walstan Glebe?’
Morley seemed to think a moment, then shook his head slowly. ‘I know no one of that name.’
‘And Poley — Robert Poley — how was he connected to this band of malcontents?’
‘He was not. Poley is nothing but a hireling. A killer for money, a mercenary. Had he been one of these men,
