chamber, his pulse racing, his face triumphant. Walsingham’s private secretary greeted him cordially and announced his arrival.
Walsingham was in conference with Robert Poley, severe as always with a sun-beaten face and his greasy black hair pulled into a knot. In this state one would take him for a brigand or a soldier, not a gentleman who had matriculated from Cambridge.
The first words Marlowe spoke to them were ‘I have it!’
Walsingham looked down his narrow nose. ‘Let me see.’
Marlowe opened his writing case and proudly slid the parchments across the desk. Walsingham plucked them up like a hawk swooping on a vole. While he pored over them, Marlowe stood, pinching white hairs from one of Mrs Bull’s cats off his doublet.
‘This is good, very good,’ Walsingham said. ‘I’ll have the cipher sent to the brewer immediately. Mary possesses the new code?’
‘She has it,’ Poley said. ‘It was in her last keg. She will safely believe that no others could have deciphered it.’
‘May she answer soon and reply forcefully,’ Walsingham cried. ‘Once we’ve intercepted her letter we’ll have her fucking Catholic head, by the stars!’
‘I’d like to be there when it happens,’ Marlowe said, imagining the bloody denouement.
‘I’ll see to it that you are. And you’ll be there to see Babington with his insides out, howling to his God. And the other plotters too. Then the serious game will begin. The Pope’s lot will want their revenge for Mary’s downfall. You know what that will mean?’
‘A war, I should think,’ Marlowe said.
‘Not one war, many. Europe ablaze, and in due course the world. And ourselves as the only clear winners. Taking pleasure in the growing piles of Catholic corpses. Seizing land and commerce from all parties. Swelling our coffers.’
Marlowe nodded, still standing.
‘Sit,’ Walsingham said. ‘Have some wine. You’ve done well. You always do well. Whatever task we’ve given him, be it in Rheims or London, Paris or Cambridge, he’s handled it with dispatch, wouldn’t you say, Poley?’
Poley stiffly raised his glass. ‘Yes, he’s quite the marvel.’
‘Thank you, my lord,’ Marlowe said. ‘I seek only your pleasure and the furtherance of our cause. But to continue to do so I will need a letter from the Privy Council to the Master’s of the University excusing my absences. They aim to deny me my Masters for they believe that I go to France to mingle with and encourage the Papists.’
‘That’s because you are a convincing actor,’ Walsingham said. ‘Poley, give him the letter we’ve prepared.’
Marlowe read it in gratitude. It was perfect. Short and authoritative, leaving no doubt that Marlowe had been serving abroad in the service of Her Majesty. ‘That will do nicely.’
Walsingham took back the document and began to heat some wax to affix the Privy Council seal. While he was fussing with the wax and candle he said, ‘Let me ask you something, Marlowe. I am most curious to know why you seek to engage in the frivolous business of writing plays. I hear the Admiral’s Men will perform one of your works before long. How does this most effectively further our cause? I can set a brilliant mind such as yours to a hundred tasks that will credit the Lemures. How can this be a higher priority?’
Marlowe poured himself a goblet of the Secretary’s wine and tasted it. It was excellent, far better than his own usual swill. ‘Have you ever been to the theater, my lord?’
Walsingham nodded disdainfully. ‘I do so only because the Queen is keen on such things and oft requires her Privy Council to attend her. What about you, Poley? Are you a theater man?’
Poley snorted. ‘I’d rather spend my evenings with a whore.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of the trail of destruction you leave when you go a-whoring.’
‘I can’t very well leave them alive once they’ve seen my arse.’
‘Hardly,’ Walsingham chuckled.
Marlowe leaned forward, ignoring Poley. ‘So, my lord, you’ve seen then the effects that plays have on the audience. How they stir emotions like a cooking ladle stirs stew. How they evoke all manner of passions – mirth, rage, ardor, fear – and make those in attendance think as one. I will use my plays, my lord, to stir discord, to start fires in men’s hearts, to set Protestants against our great enemy, the Catholics. With my plays I can make mischief on a grand scale. And I am good at it. No,
Walsingham walked slowly around his desk and sat beside Marlowe. He took some wine and began to laugh. ‘I cannot disagree with your ideas, Marlowe, or the confident state of your mind. It is not our usual way but there was one of us, a very great one, a long time ago, who fancied himself an artist. Do you know of whom I speak?’
‘Was it Nero?’
‘Yes, indeed. He was, it is said, one of the great performers of his age. But you know what happened to him? He went mad. All his gains came to dust. You won’t go mad, will you, Marlowe?’
‘I would hope to remain sane.’
‘That’s good. If you were not to do so, I might have dark words to impart to Mister Poley.’
Summer passed and then the autumn. The new year came and, with it, frost on the fields and ice on the ponds. And in February, with the winter winds howling across Northamptonshire, Marlowe arrived by coach at Fotheringay Castle.
The stabbing air couldn’t chill his hot excitement. These had been heady months. From the day he’d drafted Babington’s letter in Mrs Bull’s green garden to this moment when the massive doors of Fotheringay were cast open for him, he’d felt as though he was living his destiny. His bloodlines and his intellect had always given him a sense of mightiness but the actual wielding of real power was truly intoxicating.
After Walsingham intercepted Mary’s reply to Babington he quickly rolled up the plotters. Marlowe was there at St Giles in the Fields on the late-September day when Babington’s confused stare found him in the crowd moments before the unfortunate young man was hoisted by the neck onto the scaffold and then strapped to a table, very much alive. His executioner used a none-too-sharp knife to slice open Babington’s flat belly. The brute in his bloody butcher’s smock slowly roasted Babington’s entrails and his severed penis as his screams finally faded to silence and his eyes went mercifully dull. Some of the crowd that day were sickened by the ordeal. But not Marlowe.
The trial of Mary followed and though it was conducted with all the proper formalities that great matters of state required, the outcome was never in doubt. The hour of her execution inside the Great Hall of Fotheringay had come, the same chamber where her trial had been held.
Marlowe, for obvious reasons a keen student of theater, marveled at this particular stage. A black-draped platform, five feet high, twelve feet wide, had been erected beside a log fire which blazed in the huge fireplace. Mary stood between two soldiers, her ladies weeping behind her. The hooded executioner stood, hands clasped across his white apron, his ax standing against the scaffold rail.
As Mary prayed in Latin and wept, Marlowe pushed his way through the crowd to be near the stage. When the time came for her to disrobe, she managed to say, ‘Never before have I had such grooms to make me ready nor ever have I put off my clothes for such a company.’
The audience gasped at her petticoats: blood-red satin, the colors of her Church, the colors of martyrdom.
Marlowe held his breath as the executioner raised his ax high over his head and brought it down with all his might.
Nonetheless, the blow was clumsy. It missed its mark, hit the knot of Mary’s blindfold and glanced off, cutting deeply into the back of her skull. The Scottish Queen made a small squeaking noise but stayed upon the block, still. The second blow found a better mark and the blood gushed as it should, but even that blow failed to completely sever head from body. The executioner was forced into a crouch, whereupon he used his ax like a knife to cut through the last bits of gristle.
He grasped her head by its pinned cap, rose and held it high. But as he shouted his practiced line – ‘God save the Queen!’ – her head fell from his grip and he was left holding the cap and an auburn wig.
It had been known only to herself and her ladies but Mary had gone almost completely bald. Her bloody head
