The flames of his torch flickered on the rough stone. Spiders scurried from the light, rats scuttled from the soft padding of his footfalls. This was a kingdom of darkness, a realm of silence. He had no business here, this man from the air, this refugee from the sun. Yet, here he was. And he had every business here.

A door loomed ahead of him at the end of the passage, ancient oak thick with webs, its studs rough with rust. He slid the dagger from the small of his back, the lethal blade flashing silver in the guttering torchlight. He tapped its tip against the metal. A padlock. How apt. And he found himself smiling. One twist of the steel and the old iron gave way, cracking loudly in that silence. He put his hand to the door, then his shoulder, and it swung wide under his weight, the hinges growling with anger at the intrusion of this stranger.

He held his torch high, taking in the small chamber that lay before him. There was a crucifix set high in the far wall, nails driven anew through the Lord's hands to anchor it to the crumbling masonry. There was a table, oak again and covered in cobwebs, dense and complex as damask. An inkwell – empty now save for rainbow echoes of the ink it once held caked around its mouth – held a quill, its feathers frowsty with age. He touched it and it disintegrated, dissolving into dust. At the far end of the table stood a chair. And on the chair, sitting watching him, a man. He had been dead for years, all life gone, all light extinguished. His hands stretched out ahead of him, as if he had been about to rise when something had stopped him.

The intruder rested his torch in the iron bracket and bent to peer at the keeper of the chamber. He wore full armour, rust-brown and obsolete, the spiky work of the master smiths of Augsburg, the rivets no longer holding the plates, the hinges welded with the passing of the years. Over the breastplate, below the corrupted mass of mail, the tabard had lost its colour, but he knew the heraldry like he knew his own face. The quarters of Diencourt and Holand, the silvered bars of Rotherfield and the snarling lion of Burell. He glanced down. There it was, on the ankle now, the once plump calf long withered to nothing letting it fall from the knee, the faded blue of the garter. Evil to him who evil thinks. He smiled. The time of evil was nearly at an end. It had been a long time coming, but justice would prevail and God would be in his Heaven again.

He probed with his dagger, lifting the metal chain of office that still lay across the shoulders of the dead man. He stooped to look into that face. It was not human now, a mask of death with holes for eyes and the brown teeth jagged in the jaw. The hair was home to the spiders, white straw wild over the shoulders. He glanced down to the table where the rats had long ago gnawed the fingers and left the parchment, rolled and old, to the dust of the ages. His dagger tip clinked against the silver lupellus, the wolf-dog at the apex of the chain. He snatched it, ripping it from the dead man's breast. This was what he had come for. This would be his talisman in the days that lay ahead. It was a trinket, nothing more. But its power was immense. He could feel it as he took the torch again, feel it as he eased the door back, closing the dead man again in the utter blackness of his tomb. Feel it as he made for the light, for the world he was about to change forever.

'Have you actually met the Queen, Marlowe?' Robert Cecil was asking. Mr Secretary was now Sir Robert, a member of Her Majesty's Privy Council and a married man. But he still had to look up to everybody. A careless nursemaid had dropped him as a child and his back was crooked, his feet wayward and his gait clumsy.

'No, Sir Robert. I have not had that exquisite pleasure.'

Cecil looked at the man at the far end of the table with those penetrating hazel eyes of his. He was Christopher Marlowe, the scholar, an alumnus of Corpus Christi in the increasingly Puritan town of Cambridge. That was good. He was also the Muses' Darling, all fire and air, the playwright who had dared God out of his Heaven. That was not so good. And he was, on the third side of the coin that few men even knew existed, Francis Walsingham's man, a projectioner of cunning, an agent of Her Majesty as elusive as quicksilver. For all he was now the Queen's Spymaster, Robert Cecil couldn't read a man like Kit Marlowe.

'Well, I doubt you will now,' he said, 'but she has a job for you nonetheless.'

'I am flattered, sir,' Marlowe said, his face a mask of theatricality when he wanted it to be, 'but I fear I must decline.'

Cecil jerked his head back and looked at Marlowe with basilisk's eyes. A taller man would have leapt to his feet, but Cecil stayed in his chair; to rise would merely accentuate his little stature and he would have to look up to Marlowe all the more. 'Decline?' he repeated. 'Why?'

'I have chained myself to Master Henslowe at the Rose,' Marlowe told him. 'I owe him a play.'

'Really?' Cecil sneered. 'What is it this time?' Marlowe smiled. He wasn't about to share his genius with the Queen's Imp, Walsingham's successor or no. 'It's a rewrite of Ralph Roister Doister,' he said, folding his arms. 'Long overdue, I think you'll agree.'

'If I knew a rat's fart about the drama, Marlowe, I probably would. But that's precisely why you're here.'

'It is?'

Cecil sighed and rang a small silver bell on the table in front of him. 'Won't you have a seat, Marlowe?' A liveried flunkey appeared from nowhere, in the crimson of Her Majesty. 'Claret? A sweetmeat or two?'

Marlowe shook his head, smiling. He was in a declining mood this morning. Cecil clicked his fingers and the flunkey disappeared. The Spymaster looked out of his Whitehall window, his eyes following the road that ran like an arrow to Westminster, the abbey's turrets a pale grey in the morning sun, the bulk of St Stephen's Hall looming behind it like a thundercloud. 'Her Majesty,' he said, 'is going on another Progress this summer. She was with my father at Theobald's last month, but her plans for July are rather more extensive.'

Marlowe frowned. He knew, as all men knew, about the Queen's Progresses. They were the stuff of legend; Gloriana, conqueror of Spain's mighty Armada, riding in pomp at the head of a glittering and adoring procession. She rode a horse as white as milk, her robes all cloth of gold, with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. It was as though Cecil was reading Marlowe's mind. 'She shall have music wherever she goes,' he said.

Kit Marlowe had the voice of an angel, soaring to the fan-vaulted ceiling of the great cathedral at Canterbury, carrying the genius of Byrd and Tallis to the ear of God above. He laughed. 'Surely, Her Majesty can do better than me as choirmaster,' he said.

'Don't be flippant, Marlowe.' Cecil wasn't laughing. He wasn't even smiling. 'Whatever you've heard about the royal Progresses, they are as carefully orchestrated as a galliard. Or perhaps, more accurately, as any of the Duke of Parma's battle plans. On the surface, you'll be going ahead of her to arrange for revels – masques, music, fireworks, a few laughs. She particularly likes it when people fall over, so it doesn't need anything too sophisticated in that line. But, in reality ...'

Reality. Marlowe was the man who had conjured the love affair of Dido and Aeneas. He had invented the Scythian shepherd, the limping Tamburlaine. He had crafted Barabas, the Jew of Malta. He had even summoned the Devil in Dr Faustus. What did he know of reality? Yet he felt the hilt of the dagger just between his back and his chair. He knew all about reality. And more than all the Hells of Faustus, it frightened him every time.

'In reality?' He couldn't leave it there.

Cecil narrowed his eyes. He knew how highly Francis Walsingham had rated Marlowe. He was a man to trust, he said, with his life, the life of the Queen, the life of England. But Walsingham was dead, laid to rest with Philip Sydney and marked with a simple inscription in wood. Wood that would rot, as Walsingham rotted in Paul's. Secretary Cecil smiled. 'You know, at Theobald's last month, my father offered the Queen his resignation.'

'He did?'

Cecil's father was Burghley, the grand old man who had guarded England now it seemed for ever. Whether reading Aeschylus from the saddle of a donkey, screaming at Francis Drake, restraining the Queen from her more dangerous dalliances, Burghley had been the rock of ages. 'He's getting on,' Cecil said. 'The eyes are going, the gout's slowing him down. He's seventy, for God's sake. Know what she said?' Marlowe shook his head.

'Asked him if he wanted to become a hermit,' Cecil shook his head. 'Told him he was – and I quote – "the chief pillar of the welfare of England".'

'That's more or less true, isn't it?' Marlowe asked.

'Politics is a young man's game, Marlowe. You and I, we're players, albeit at different levels. The only way the Queen is going to grow old disgracefully is if younger hands hold her, catch her if she falls. The King of Spain still lives and he's fanatic enough to launch another thousand ships against us. The Duke of Parma still holds the Netherlands, whatever those Dutch peasants like to think.'

'I understand that the Earl of Essex was to lead an expedition against him.'

Cecil blinked. That news was not widespread. Perhaps old Walsingham had been right to put his faith in Marlowe. 'Never trust a man whose beard is a different colour from his hair, Marlowe – one of the first things my father taught me. No, Essex is a hawk, a warmonger. We need peace right now – doves around the throne.'

There was a pause. 'Then again,' the new Spymaster went on, 'there's the Pope.'

'Ah.'

'Nicolo Sfonrati – Gregory XIV to you. Prone to outbursts of hysterical laughter, I'll grant you – they say he giggled his way through his coronation – but he's sharp as a tack and he sides with Spain. You know he excommunicated Henry of Navarre?'

'No!' Marlowe was as outraged as a man could be who didn't give a damn about a man's soul.

'As I live and breathe. More importantly to us, the Bull against the queen still stands. God knows how many killers the Holy See has at their command.'

'You think there'll be another attempt on the Queen's life?'

'The Progresses are always the problem.' Cecil gnawed his lip. 'My father talked the Queen out of them in recent years, but she's determined anew. Wants to meet her people, be assured they love her after all. Last year went well. Lady Russell's girls looked after Her Majesty at Bisham Abbey and Julius Caesar gave her an outfit of silver cloth that must have cost him half his revenue. Stupid name he may have, but you can't question the man's loyalty.'

'And this year?'

Cecil sighed and rolled his eyes upwards. 'There you have it,' he said. 'She'll open the bout at Farnham, then hit the Montagues at Cowdray. Then it's Petworth, Chichester and Titchfield. They'll all try to outdo each other, of course, with fireworks and fanfares, lakes and bloody fountains. It never ceases to amaze me how much cash the aristocracy have lying about. We aren't taxing them enough.'

'Do you have any reason, Sir Robert, to doubt the loyalty of any of Her Majesty's hosts?'

'You've hit the proverbial nail on the head, there, Marlowe. I have none. Who'd have thought that Judas would betray Jesus? Or Peter deny that he knew him? But it happened. Your task will be to go ahead of Her Majesty, snoop, check the lie of the land. All discreet, of course, all under cover. But,' and Cecil leaned forward, standing with his heels on the stretcher of his chair, leaning on his knuckles until it hurt and he sat back down again with a bump, 'you will report to me regularly. If a Papist farts within a day's ride of the Queen's itinerary, I want to know about it. Understood?'

'Understood,' Marlowe said.

'Your cover will be entertainment for Her Majesty. Officially, you're working for Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels. I'll get the necessary paperwork for you. What'll you need? Five stout lads? Ten?'

'One.'

'One?' Cecil repeated. He liked a man who didn't make excessive demands on the Privy purse, but this seemed a little too cheese-paring.

'If I'm to lay on masques, I'll need a stage manager. I'll take the best I know. His name's Tom Sledd.'

Tom Sledd struck a posture in front of the polished tin mirror, aiming for regal, yet man of the people; deserving, yet humble. It involved a lot of repositioning of legs and arms but eventually he could do it without falling over. He moved nearer and tilted the tin towards the light. Time to concentrate on the expression; if a picture could paint a thousand words, then how much more could he express with a tilt of the eyebrow, a curl of the lip. He looked towards the left-hand corner of the ceiling as he had seen Ned Alleyn do as the ladies swooned over him, then swivelled his eyes to check the effect. No, too soulful; the Queen would run a mile. Or perhaps not – Tom Sledd was, if not as handsome as some, certainly well muscled, and he turned a comely calf, one of Gloriana's favourite body parts, if rumours were to be believed. Hadn't she elevated Sir Christopher Hatton just because he was the finest dancer in England? He looked towards the right, downwards, tilting his shoulder and sliding forward his opposite leg; again, he swivelled his eyes to see the effect and immediately fell over, feeling giddy and not a little nauseous. It might work for Richard Burbage, but falling flat on your face in front of the Queen was no way to get a knighthood. He had too much hair to ape Will Shaxsper, so there was no point in even trying.

He peered again into the mirror; this dull old thing was worse than useless, but it was no good wishing for Venetian glass and silver in Henslowe's Rose. Did he look like a man who could manage masques for the Queen? He couldn't tell – his Meg always told him he was handsome, but what else would a wife say? Impatient with himself, he turned his back on the mirror and faced into the small space of his workroom. The floor was ankle deep in wood shavings, laced with the odd crust and lost playbill, the walls gone forever behind leaning flats from plays from long ago. He wondered how much he would be able to take with him; Marlowe's message had been typically Marlovian but he got the gist. 'Tell Henslowe you're burying your grandame. We're off on a Progress; masques, people falling over, a bit with a dog.' No dates. No details. Just endless possibilities.

He bowed low, doffing an imaginary hat and sweeping an imaginary cloak out behind him, taking care that it didn't get entangled in his imaginary rapier glinting at his hip. Pitching his voice just a tad higher than his normal register and putting a plum firmly in his mouth, he announced, 'Arise, Sir Thomas, Baron Sledd of Sleddshire.'

'Ma'am,' he muttered in his normal voice, 'Thou art too kind.'

He had swept so low in his bow that his head was touching the knee of his extravagantly extended left leg. He saw a movement behind him out of the corner of his eye and focused slowly on what might be causing it. Had his cloak been anything but imaginary, it could have been that. Had his rapier been actual steel instead of light and air, it could have been that. But no. It was neither.

'Something to tell me, Master Sledd?' asked Philip Henslowe.

Since Robert Cecil wasn't paying for men, the least he could do was to lay on horseflesh. Marlowe's chestnut had Flanders blood, gentle eyes and two white stockings. It could outpace Sledd's roan but that was intentional. Robert Cecil had grown up surrounded by power, at Hatfield, at Theobalds, now in Whitehall. Men like him understood the need for hierarchy. Rich men lived in castles, or at least moated manor houses. Poor men didn't have a pot to piss in. It was the natural order of things. Whoever this Tom Sledd was, he was Marlowe's man; give him a nag and let him think himself lucky he wasn't walking.

Behind the pair as they trotted through the Surrey sunshine, leaving the smoke and stench of London behind, Sledd hauled the rein of a packhorse, laden with struts of wood, coils of rope and a yardstick. A swatch of velvets dangled from the saddlebow, worth more than horse and saddle put together.