The Kit Marlowe Mysteries Omnibus by M.J. Trow

Author:M.J. Trow [Trow, M.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House

SILENT COURT

M. J. Trow

ONE

He remembered to pull the hood over his head as the boat glided under the archway. The drips from the green-slimed stones stung like hail and the soft fingers of hanging weed stroked his face. He shivered again. All the way along the river, past Limehouse and Ratcliffe, he’d felt the raw cold of that November morning. The gilded turrets of Placentia were white with hoar frost and winter, he knew, would come early this year.

Beyond the archway, the boatmen busied themselves. The oars came upright, clear of the sluggish water and pointing to the leaden sky. He could hear the clang and thump of the shipwrights working in the yards and along the wharfs at Petty Wales. Her Majesty’s yeomen in their scarlet livery saluted and escorted him, with their halberds at the slope through the barbican and up the hill.

He had always hated this place, its noise and smell. His Uncle Ned had been Lieutenant of the Tower in the reign of Good King Harry and it had left its mark. The rankness of the river gate had left his nostrils now, only to be replaced by the stink of shit from the animal pens. All very colourful of Her Majesty to own a menagerie, but she didn’t have to smell the place day after day. He wondered what they were feeding the poor creatures; some of them were clearly far from well.

‘Sir William’s expecting you, sir,’ a yeoman told him, clanking with keys and looking grim under his helmet rim.

He nodded in response, too cold to make his jaw work yet. The river’s wind had bitten through his cloak, doublet and shirt into the marrow of his bones and he felt his knee click as he climbed the turn of the stair. The grey morning lit this part of the passageway and he was soon padding along the rush-strewn floor, past the oak panels that William Waad had put in to make his nest that little bit cosier. When you’re Lieutenant of the Tower, you need the odd perk. It was a dour old building, with walls that sweated out the dank smell of fear. No amount of oak panelling would make it feel like home, but the man was doing his best.

‘Mulled wine, Francis?’ William Waad was a solid, square-shaped man, with a florid face and a curious grey curl which he combed carefully forward to hide from the world that his hairline, like the river at ebb tide, had long receded. He had the twinkling eyes and roguish smile of a favourite uncle, except that men like Francis Walsingham didn’t have a favourite uncle. Not even Uncle Ned.

‘I thought you’d never offer, William.’ Walsingham smiled, taking the warm cup gratefully. ‘Bitter on the river this morning.’

‘You’ve come from Placentia?’ Waad ushered his guest to a chair near the fire, dismissing the guard with a nod.

‘I have. And I swear it gets further away every time I make the blessed journey.’

William Waad had been waiting for Walsingham for three days.

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