The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [62]
"Indeed." Marlowe frowned. "He contacted Skeres, Poley and Frizer, and together they concocted the tale of my death. The Coroner of the Household of our Lady the Queen was bribed to pass a verdict of death in self defence. Frizer was not punished in any way - indeed, the Privy Council were very pleased with him for removing me."
Shakespeare's head was awhirl with fragments of thought. He could hardly reconcile sixteen years of belief with what he had just been told. The two contradictory stories sat together in his mind, indigestible and uncomfortable. "I tried to find your grave at Deptford," he said finally, "but it was not marked."
"As befits a man who has no truck with God or with churches,"
Marlowe laughed. "I am alive, Will. Believe the evidence of your own senses."
"I'm confused," Steven Taylor sighed from the other side of the table.
"But... sixteen years!" Shakespeare breathed. "Where did you go?
What did you do? Why didn't you communicate with any of us?"
Marlowe looked away from Shakespeare's accusing, wounded gaze. "Do you remember," he said, "three years before my purported death, I disappeared from London for a year. Nobody could find me."
Shakespeare nodded. It had been a minor scandal of the time.
There were many who had believed that Marlowe was on the run from his debtors, or from justice, or both.
"During that time," Marlowe continued, "I travelled to the New World, to the Roanoake colony that had been set up in the land of Virginia by Walter Ralegh."
"Ralegh?" Shakespeare cried. Heads turned around the tavern.
Marlowe smiled at Shakespeare's expression. "Her Majesty was suspicious of Ralegh, believing that he was not loyal to her. You must have known that Ralegh too was an atheist, Will. A group of us used to meet at his house and debate theology. The School of Night, we called ourselves. Not knowing then that I shared his beliefs, Her Majesty instructed me through Walsingham to obtain statements from the Roanoake colonists as to Ralegh's demeanour, and his statements about Her Majesty to them. I had to be seen to go, otherwise I would have been tarred with the same brush as Ralegh. I shall not dwell on the journey, which was long and tedious, but while I was there, the colony was wiped out -
attacked by animals the like of which I pray that I will never see again." Marlowe winced, and raised a hand to his head. "Strange creatures of this New World with hard skin, wings and many arms.
I was knocked unconscious, and the animals left me for dead.
When I awoke the next day, the bodies had gone: eaten, I presumed, or taken for strange, unnatural rites. The colony was deserted. I returned to England on the next supply ship, having survived until then on the dead colonists' supplies and local food, and I reported the matter directly back to the Queen, and to John Dee."
"Who's Dee?" Steven Taylor asked.
"Doctor John Dee," Marlowe replied, "the Queen's personal astrologer. Some of us believed that he had more influence upon her than was entirely healthy. Shortly after that, while wandering around London, I saw one of the colonists from Roanoake! I recognized her, as clear as day, but when I approached her she ran! I swear she fell beneath a brewer's dray and was greviously injured, and yet she climbed to her feet and ran off as if her leg were not bent almost in half."
"Are you -?" Shakespeare began.
"Sure?" Marlowe nodded. "As sure as I am that you are sitting here before me. I told Walsingham the news, and he suggested that I should investigate what had happened to the colony. Shortly after that, I "died"." He laughed. "But I hear you took on my mantle, Will, and discovered Ralegh to be a traitor."
Shakespeare nodded weakly. "Walsingham put me to spy on him.
As William Hall I infiltrated his circles and passed reports back.
When Elizabeth died and James was made King, ten years after you... after you vanished... Ralegh plotted with various Catholics to kill the King and enthrone his daughter. His plot was discovered, and-"
"Discovered?" Marlowe clapped Shakespeare