Silent Court Read Online Free

will rally to Guise’s standard, march to wherever they’re holding Mary of Scots and overthrow the Queen. The Thames will run red.’
    ‘Stop!’ Shelley bellowed. ‘These are the ravings of a madman, sir.’
    ‘Indeed they are.’ Marlowe nodded. He was almost whispering.
    ‘And what has any of this nonsense to do with me?’
    ‘In the county of Sussex,’ Marlowe continued, as though reading a litany for the dead, ‘those Englishmen loyal to the Bishop of Rome include Charles Paget, Esquire, His Grace the Earl of Arundel, Sir Aymer Middleton, Roger Bantry… and William Shelley, gentleman. Husband, father.’
    ‘Employer of Christopher Marlowe,’ Shelley added in a low growl. ‘Spy and traitor.’
    Marlowe stood up sharply. Shelley knew the man carried a dagger in the sheath in the small of his back. His eyes flickered across to his own broadsword propped in the corner. Marlowe was younger, fitter, faster. He had already given up any thought of silencing the man when the door crashed back and half a dozen armed men burst in, their swords drawn, their faces grim.
    ‘No,’ said Marlowe levelly. ‘Not traitor. That label belongs nearer to home.’
    ‘William Shelley,’ the sergeant-at-arms barked. ‘Under the powers vested in me by their Lordships of the Privy Council, I am placing you under arrest on a charge of High Treason.’
    ‘I trusted you with my children,’ Shelley hissed at Marlowe as they hauled him round and bound his wrists behind his back.
    Marlowe closed to him. ‘And I trusted you with my country,’ he said.
    ‘Take him away,’ the sergeant ordered. ‘And get the women.’
    ‘No!’ Marlowe blocked the doorway.
    ‘Walsingham’s writ says the whole family,’ the sergeant snapped at him. ‘Wife, Catherine; daughters, Jane and Charlotte.’
    ‘Show me,’ Marlowe insisted.
    The sergeant fumbled in his purse and dragged out the tatty scroll with Walsingham’s seal. Marlowe read the contents briefly by the flickering candles; then he tore it up and threw the pieces in the sergeant’s face.
    ‘I don’t give a rat catcher’s arse for Walsingham’s writ,’ he said. ‘Does the Privy Council make war on women and children now?’
    The sergeant hesitated. He hadn’t expected this. Whose side was this man on? Judas Iscariot with a conscience? Well, yes, it made some sense. He had four men at his back and Marlowe was alone. Even so, the sergeant was a man with an infinitely flexible spine. They didn’t pay him enough to take on one of Walsingham’s men. And there was something in Marlowe’s face he didn’t like.
    ‘Just him, then,’ the sergeant grunted. ‘But there’ll be questions asked,’ he warned Marlowe. They bundled William Shelley along the corridor to where their horses waited in the darkness of the courtyard.
    Marlowe watched them go. He saw Catherine rushing across the stones in the dim light from the hall, her servants tussling with the guards. He knew there was no point in going down himself. It was all over in seconds. No one was hurt, just two ladies, consoling their weeping mistress and baffled serving men watching the knot of horsemen cantering into the darkness of the night.

TWO
    R obert Greene stood at the corner of Lion Yard that Thursday evening. The curfew hour for the University scholars had come and gone, yet they were still there, whispering and sniggering together in the shadows, scurrying from The Swan to the Brazen George and always to the Devil. It had been the same in his day, when the most exciting thing in the world was a roll in the hay with some girl and beating the proctors at their own game, shinning over college walls and sliding down roof ledges.
    It was damned cold there on the edge of the marketplace, the stalls silent and deserted now, cloaked in the November dark. He stamped his feet like a sizar without money for his coal and blew on his hands. Where was the man? He’d said half past ten of the clock. Quite distinctly. Now it was