The Silver Skull

CHAPTER 8

hese are dark times." Still drunk, Mayhew stared out of the carriage window with a dazed expression that revealed a depth of troubles. The White Tower was silhouetted against the rosy sky, the first rays of the sun gleaming across the rooftops as London slowly stirred.

"Take charge of your tongue, Master Mayhew," Will cautioned. "A man in his cups says the strangest things."

Mayhew flashed Will an apologetic look for speaking out of turn with Nathaniel in the carriage.

"Worry not about me," Nat said tartly. "I have no interest in the affairs of Lord Walsingham's great men."

Returning his gaze to the waking street, Mayhew sniffed, and said, "You should watch your servant. A sharp tongue and an independent mind are dangerous flaws."

"Nat keeps me honest, Matthew, and I will hear no word against him," Will replied. He watched the first market traders spill onto the street, blearyeyed and yawning. Soon there would be a deafening throng heading for Cheapside, the broadest of the capital's streets, where the market sprawled along the centre from the Carfax to Saint Paul's. There, it was possible to buy produce from all over London and the rapidly expanding villages just beyond the city walls: pudding pies from Pimlico and bread from Holloway or Stratford, root vegetables and sweet cakes, horses and hunting dogs, and peacocks and apes from the foreign traders.

The danger was apparent with each face Will saw. London was the boom town of Europe. The population had more than doubled since Elizabeth came to the throne, and the city elders struggled to cope with the problems caused by the influx: the overcrowding, the crime, the beggars, the filth, the disease. Larger now than the great cities of Bristol and Norwich, London bloated beyond the city walls, eating up all the villages that lay beyond. In that thick, seething mass of life, an emboldened Enemy could bring death on a grand scale.

What was the nature of the missing weapon? Was it truly as dangerous as Walsingham feared?

"You have your directions?" he asked Mayhew.

"I will wait among the rabble on Cheapside for the others to join me while you attend your secret assignation. We question the market traders about the gangs who prey on the innocent near the Tower, and meet again at noon to exchange what we have learned."

"Very good, Master Mayhew. I like a man whose brain stays sharp even after wine."

Mayhew didn't attempt to hide his displeasure. As Will stretched an arm out of the window and banged a hand on the roof of the carriage, the driver brought the horses to a halt with a loud, "Hey, and steady there!"

Half stumbling, Mayhew clambered out of the carriage without a backward glance and weaved his way towards the shade at the side of the street.

"Master Mayhew has a choleric disposition," Nathaniel noted. "And he likes his wine more than you do."

"Life is a constant struggle between virtue and vice, Nat. We cannot all be as worthy as you. Master Mayhew has served the queen well across the years, but what has been asked of him has taken its toll. Do not judge him harshly."

Will banged the carriage roof again and the wheels lurched into motion. After a pause, Nathaniel enquired with an air of studied disinterest, "This business is truly pressing?"

"You know I cannot say more."

"Yes. Better I remain in ignorance than be dragged into duplicitous affairs that could cost me my sanity or my life. The view from the poles above the gatehouse tower at London Bridge is not one to which I aspire." He paused. "But still. An assistant's work is better carried out with a little light."

"You do your job well enough, Nat. I have no complaints. I would not add to your burdens."

Nathaniel shrugged, but Will could see the curiosity burning inside him. It was difficult to move so close to the secrets without peering too deeply into the shadows; Will understood that urge well and had learned to control it within himself. But to know more about Will's work truly would be dangerous to Nat's life and his sanity. The less he knew, the safer he would be. In his ignorance, Nathaniel did not understand, of course, thinking the only threat was a few Spanish agents, but for all his barbed comments he remained an obedient assistant, and had worked much harder than Will had anticipated when he promised Nathaniel's father that he would employ him, and keep him well.

The carriage turned north away from the cobbles of Cheapside into the rutted, narrow tracks that formed the majority of the city's streets. Soon the choking stink of the city swept in through the open windows, the dung and the rotting vegetables and household waste deposited morning, noon, and night from doors and windows of the ramshackle hovels into the narrow thoroughfares. Even the mayor's order to burn each home's rubbish three times a week appeared to have little effect. Nathaniel coughed and spluttered and clutched his hand to his mouth and nose, futilely banging the pomanders hanging within the carriage to try to extricate more scent.

The heat of the day was already growing by the time they arrived at Bish- opsgate. The Bull Inn was a three-story stone building with rows of tiny windows looking out from dark, low-ceilinged rooms. Without breaking its pace, the carriage rushed through the arch into the cobbled yard at the back where plays were regularly performed. In one corner, members of the resident acting troupe intoned loudly and performed tumbles, though many of them were still clearly hungover. A pair of carpenters lazily erected a temporary trestled stage.

Nathaniel waited with the carriage, and after a brief exchange with the vintner, Will made his way to a small back room set aside for "private affairs," usually gambling or the plotting of criminal activity. Smelling of stale beer and sweat, it was uncomfortably warm. While two men snored loudly in drunken sleep on the floor, a third wrote at a table.

Dark eyes that appeared old and sad stared out of a young, pale face framed by long black hair. A small moustache and close-clipped chin hair attempted to give him some appearance of maturity, though his sensitive face still made him look much younger than his twenty-four years.

"Kit," Will said. "I thought I might find you hiding here."

Lost to his imagination, Christopher Marlowe blinked blankly until his thoughts returned to the room and he recognised Will. He smiled shyly. "Will, good friend. I am currently not in my Lord Walsingham's favours and thought it best to lay low to avoid his wrath. He has a cold face, but a terrible fire within."

"As have we all, Kit. For good reason."

Understanding, Marlowe nodded and motioned to a stool. "Shall we drink as we did at Corpus Christi on that night when you inducted me into this business of fools and knaves-" He caught himself. "I am sorry, Will. My bitterness sometimes gets the better of me. This is not the life that was promised me, and there is no going back, but you have always been good to me."

"No apologies are necessary, Kit." Will pulled up a stool. Pain lay just beneath the surface of Marlowe's face and Will knew he was complicit in embedding it there. "We are all lost souls."

"True enough. Beer, then. Or wine? Some breakfast?" Marlowe laid down his quill and pushed his beer-spattered work to one side.

"Information is all I require."

Marlowe sighed. "Work, then. One day we shall drink like brothers. I see from your face this is a grave matter."

"The gravest. All England is at stake."

"The Spanish. Those stories of a fleet of warships, an invasion planned-"

Will shook his head. "The true Enemy."

"Ah." Marlowe's eyes fell and for a moment he pretended to arrange his work materials. "Tamburlaine the second is all but done. I have drained myself with tales of endless war and strife." He smiled. "What is it, coz?"

"Last night, from the Tower, the Enemy stole a magical item whose origins are lost to antiquity-a Silver Skull, attached now to an unwitting victim."

Filled with the intellectual curiosity that Will admired so much, Marlowe leaned across the table. "I have never heard of such a thing."

"It is one of the mysteries of ancient times, a great weapon once guarded by the Templar Knights." Will smiled. "Our Lord Walsingham and our ally Doctor Dee saw fit to keep knowledge of it well away from the likes of you and me."

"And that is why they are our masters! I would only have sold it for beer and a night of pleasure! And what is the purpose of this Silver Skull?"

"Our betters have spent nigh on two decades trying to divine that very thing, but its mysteries remain untouched."

"Yet if the Enemy has need of it, it must be a great threat indeed to our well-being," Marlowe said.

Will nodded slowly. "Within a short time of the Enemy taking the Skull, they lost it. Stolen by a gang of thieves and spirited away, like magpies caught by a shiny bauble. The Enemy searches for it even as we speak, and so do we. Whosoever finds it first wins everything."

"And so this thing is an act of God, waiting to be unleashed on the dumb populace."

"Our Lord Walsingham and Dee fear the Enemy knows the key to its use. But more, who is to say one of those rogues could not stumble by accident across it and unleash death in the twinkle of an eye? All our lives hang by a thread while the Skull remains beyond our grasp."

Leaning back against the wall, Marlowe swung one scuffed boot onto a stool and pondered. "I have many questions, about how the Enemy plans to use the Skull when England's defences against them still stand, and the timing of this act-"

"And I have no answers. There is mystery here. But we are out of time." As one of the drunken men on the floor stirred, Will leaned across the table and lowered his voice. "You are our eyes and ears in the underworld, Kit. You know of things that lie far beneath the notice of men of good standing. Who would have the Skull? Where would it be now?"

The brightness faded from Marlowe's face. "Walsingham did not send you."

"No."

"Even in this hour of need he cannot bring himself to deal with me!" A flicker of fear rose in his eyes. "He does not trust me, Will. And in our world what is not trusted often meets a bloody end."

"It will pass, Kit."

Angrily, Marlowe put the toe of his boot under the stool and flicked it across the room where it crashed against the wall. The man who had stirred looked up with bloodshot eyes.

"Out!" Marlowe yelled at him. "Fetch me the ordinary! I am hungry." When the man had lurched away to find the vintner for the Bull's daily stew, Marlowe rounded on Will. "As children we walked in summer fields and dreamed of the wonders that lay ahead. Yet we sold those dreams, and our lives, to defend England against something that can never be defeated, which waits, quiet and patient and still, until we let our guard slip, as it always will, and then we are torn apart in a gale of knives and teeth, unmourned even by our own. Mistrusted by our own! Look at what this business has made us, Will! See what we have become! We cannot trust those closest to us. We fear death from Enemy and friend alike. We are alone, waiting for that moment when it all ends. Where is the comfort in this world?"

"There is little for the likes of us, Kit. We live our blighted lives so others can sleep soundly in their beds. You know that." Will watched the hopelessness play out across his friend's face and it troubled him. He had seen it many times before on others and in every case it ended the same way, an insidious despair that found its roots in the very nature of their Enemy, spreading like bindweed until every part of a person was choked by it. He had seen men kill themselves, others throw themselves into danger with no care for their lives, and revelling when they met their end. More simply setting in motion their own demise through their quiet actions. "If this matter was not so grave I would not have troubled you, Kit. Time away from this business ... a lost week or more in one of your dens of iniquity will help you regain your equilibrium."

"Yes, of course, Will," Marlowe lied. "I am tired, that is all. Forgive me."

Though he feared the repercussions, Will pressed his friend for information. Marlowe was right: their business allowed little softness or compassion. The war was everything, and everyone was a victim.

Marlowe ran a hand through his hair as he steadied himself. "A gang of rogues near the Tower over night? No. There are no gulls there for them to prey upon. They would be near the stews or ordinaries, the baiting rings and taverns and theatres."

"They came upon the Enemy as they slipped away."

Marlowe shook his head; it still did not make sense to him. "The villains of London are an army, with generals and troops who march to order and follow detailed plans and strategy. They do not wait for their next meal, for they would starve."

"You say they knew the Enemy would be passing by?"

"Perhaps. As we have spies everywhere, so do they. A guard at the Tower, sending word as the Enemy took their moment. A Silver Skull would be a valuable prize, even if they did not know its true worth. I pity the poor sod who wore it for they will have cut it free by now." Marlowe made a slitting motion across his throat. "Who was he?"

Will shook his head. "This was not a random occurrence, then."

Marlowe shook his head slowly too.

"Then who is the general? Who could place an agent in the Tower?"

"The gangs of London are countries within a country. They have their own spies, yes, and their own forces to keep them secure. They even have their own land where a criminal can find refuge, and no one-not even the queen's own men-can touch them. In Damnation Alley and the Bermudas and Devil's Gap. By the brick kilns in Islington, and Newington Butts and Alsatia. Cutpurses and cutthroats, pickpockets and tricksters, the coney-catchers and head-breakers. Who would dare such an act? Why, all of them, Will."

Glancing through the window to where Nathaniel waited by the carriage, Will saw the inn yard now bright as the sun moved high in the sky. "Time is short, Kit. You run with these rogues. Give me a name. If you were to point a finger at a likely culprit, who would it be?"

His shoulders hunched as if carrying a great weight, Marlowe thought for a moment and then said, "There is one they call the King of Cutpurses. Laurence Pickering. Every week he holds a gathering at his house in Kent Street for all the heads of the London gangs, where they exchange information and drink and carouse with doxies. If Pickering is not behind this, he would know who is."

"I have not heard of this man."

"Few have. He has faces behind faces, and no one is quite sure which one is the real one, or if that is his true name. But I know one thing-he is the cousin of Bulle, the Tyburn hangman. Bulle himself admitted it when he was cup-shotten one night."

"Bulle?"

Marlowe raised an eyebrow at Will's sudden interest. "Why is that brute important?"

The image of Bulle hacking away at the neck of Mary, Queen of Scots, was still fresh in Will's mind, as was Walsingham's account of what happened after her death. "Because there are no random occurrences in this world, Kit. And Kent Street is where I should find this Pickering?"

"No. That is the front he presents to the world so he can pass himself off as an upstanding man. If he has something of value, it will be in one of the fortresses his kind have built for themselves, secure from any lawful pursuit." Marlowe turned over the possibilities in his mind and then announced, "Alsatia, below the west end of Fleet Street, next to the Temple. There is no safer place in London for the debauched and the criminal."

Will understood. "It has the privilege of sanctuary. Only a writ of the lord chief justice or the lords of the Privy Council carries any force there."

"And even then, not much. No warrant would ever be issued in Alsatia. I told you, Will-a country within a country. The citizens of Alsatia are, to a man and woman, criminal, and they will turn upon and attack any who come to seize one of their own. Have caution. If there is another way to achieve your ends, take it. You will not emerge from Alsatia with your life."

Will held his arms wide. "If we took no risks, Kit, how would we know we are alive?"

Marlowe laughed quietly. "How secure I feel knowing the remarkable Will Swyfte is abroad to keep the land safe." With a surprising display of emotion, he leaned across the table and grasped Will's hand. "Take care, Will. You have been a good friend to me, and my life would be worse if you were not in it." Tears stung Marlowe's eyes. His tumbling emotions were a clear sign of the tremendous stress he was under.

"You should know that taking care of myself is my greatest attribute. I will not be led gracefully towards the dark night, not while there is wine to be drunk and women to romance."

Marlowe was one of the few men who could see through Will's words, but he was kind enough not to say anything.

Rising, Will nodded his goodbye, adding, "Heed my words, Kit. Take time to find yourself."

"If this business ever let me, I would." He gave a lazy, sad smile, but when Will was at the door, he added, "I have an idea for a play in which a man sells his soul to the Devil for knowledge, status, and power. What do you think of that, Will?" His eyes were haunted and said more than his words.

Will did not need to answer. As he left the room, Will wondered, as he did with increasing regularity, if he would see his friend alive again. But his mind was already turning to the trial that lay ahead-an assault on the most notorious and dangerous part of London: Alsatia, the Thieves' Quarter.