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guessing. ‘About William Shelley.’
    ‘Shelley’s in the Tower and singing like a lark. He isn’t the problem.’
    ‘So who is?’ Marlowe knew it wasn’t him, or he would be dead by now, knifed silently from behind in any dark entry you cared to name.
    Faunt put the goblet down. ‘You are, Dominus Marlowe. You still have uses left in you, or you would be dead by now.’
    Marlowe stepped back, grimly satisfied to hear his thoughts come back to him. He had room for manoeuvre, should this secretary prove to be as slick with a blade as he was with words; the poet could recognize the type from a thousand paces, or whenever he looked in the mirror. ‘I assume this is about the women,’ he said.
    ‘This…’ Faunt bellowed, then checked himself. ‘This is about tearing up Sir Francis Walsingham’s warrant and taking it upon yourself to disobey orders.’
    ‘Is that what I did?’ Marlowe had honed his expression of hurt innocence on the grindstone of nurses, teachers and lecturers until it was well nigh perfect, big eyes peering out from behind tumbled curls and a pouting lip. Many a tab grown too big for comfort had been covertly disposed of by barmaids the length and breadth of Cambridge who could not bear to see Master Marlowe in distress. But he knew it was pointless trying it on the implacable secretary and so kept his face poker straight.
    ‘You know very well it is,’ Faunt snapped. ‘Sir Francis is very displeased.’
    ‘And so he sent you to… what? Smack my wrist? Slit my throat?’
    Faunt hesitated for a moment, looking as if he would like to do both, one after the other and in that order.
    ‘Neither,’ he said. ‘Do you by any chance speak Flemish, Dominus Marlowe?’
    ‘As a matter of fact, I do. I may be a little rusty, but back in Canterbury, some of my best friends were the Huguenot weavers along the Stour. But, Master Faunt, you know that already or you would not have ridden so far and so hard to find me.’
    Faunt looked sternly at the man, then guffawed, slapping Marlowe’s shoulder. ‘I like you, Kit,’ he said. ‘And Sir Francis has a little job for you.’
    ‘Indeed?’
    Faunt crossed from the window, mechanically checking the door. He leant his back against the studded wood, arms folded. ‘What do you know about the Prince of Nassau?’ he asked.
    Marlowe poured more wine for them both and passed the goblet to Faunt. ‘Statholder of the Netherlands,’ he said, ‘leader of the rebels against the overlordship of Philip of Spain. They say he has outlandish ideas. Every Jack’s as good as his master, that sort of thing. Men call him William the Silent.’
    ‘He’s a marked man.’ Faunt sipped his wine.
    ‘A Protestant leader in a Catholic country? Of course he is.’
    ‘But it’s more imminent than that. He’d been relying on the Duke of Alençon to front his cause, but that’s fallen apart now, largely because Alençon is an utter shit. That leaves the Statholder somewhat exposed. There have been attempts on his life already. He’s had to move his court to Delft.’
    ‘I don’t see…’
    ‘Walsingham wants a man to watch Nassau’s back.’ Faunt finished the draught. ‘You.’
    ‘Me?’ Marlowe laughed and shook his head. ‘You’ve read me wrongly, Master Faunt. I am a scholar…’
    What happened next was a blur of velvet, leather and steel. There was a dagger in Faunt’s right hand and it sliced in a vicious arc towards Marlowe’s throat, but the scholar was faster and he hurled his wine in Faunt’s face and kicked the blade aside. The next thing the secretary knew he was biting the wood of the door with his arm rammed painfully up behind his back.
    ‘Scholar, my arse!’ he mumbled against the oak and slowly Marlowe released his grip.
    Faunt tugged down his doublet and straightened his ruff, realizing only now that his lip was bleeding where Marlowe had banged his head on the door. ‘I believe I’ve made my point,’ he said, clearing his throat and