M. J. Trow
Dark Entry
ONE
It was pitch black in that alleyway. What moon there was blinked between the clouds of that summer, leaving its ghost behind with a slight stain of silver on the sky. And all cats were equally grey.
He checked the street one last time. He heard their feet clattering on the cobbles of Bene’t Street behind him; one set of footsteps slithering and sliding, the hobnails on the soles scoring the stones, the other set firm, even and determined, eating up the yards until they reached the wall. He heard the stifled laughter of old, that stupid bray that Henry had when he was in his cups. He didn’t have to see them to know what was going on. Henry would have to be quiet and that was Tom’s job; dear old, dependable Tom. Matt? Well, Matt would probably be balancing on the college wall by now, tiptoeing through the daisies. And why not? It isn’t everyday a man becomes a Bachelor of Arts in the greatest university in the world.
‘Kit!’
Shit! Tom hadn’t been quick enough. That was Henry’s voice, booming and giggling at the same time, bouncing off the walls of The Court, echoing in the traceries of King’s and Catherine’s across the road. No time to lose now. The Proctors had ears like bats. He felt rather than saw the gnarled old branch, worn smooth by the scrabbling hands of generations of roisterers. He hauled himself up, feeling his hair tangle in the twigs and he’d just hooked one booted leg over the parapet when he saw them. He tucked the trailing foot beneath him and immediately regretted it, as he felt the blood-flow slow and cease. Within minutes he would be in the grip of pins and needles. One minute more and his leg would be in that strange limbo of complete anaesthesia and pain.
Beams of light danced from their lanterns, flashing on the thick window panes of The Court. He froze, willing the leaves to stop moving. In his three years at this place, out on the town at the Eagle, the Boar, the Cap, he’d never been caught. And now, on the eve of his greatness, was not the time to try his luck.
He recognized their footfalls – Lomas of the heavy tread; Darryl, the scamperer. And he knew their voices too.
‘Where are they?’ he heard Darryl hiss in the darkness near the Master’s Lodge.
The footsteps stopped. ‘They’ll be cutting across the churchyard.’ This was Lomas, crafty, everywhere, never wrong.
He knew the Proctor had got it right again. Tom would have realized they were making too much noise, rolling home under the fleeting moon and he would have pushed Matt and Henry through the gateway and across the graves of St Bene’t’s churchyard, so that their drunken feet padded on grass and saved them all from a beating.
The lantern beams switched direction, away from his corner, moving eerily north as the Proctors laid their ambush. He couldn’t move, couldn’t change position despite the sudden agony of cramp in his calf. His teeth flashed gritted in a single sweep of the moon over the faintly gleaming grey stone of The Court. Looking up through the tangle of branches, he saw the clouds had gone.
‘Shhh!’
That was Henry again, the only man in Cambridge whose sibilance was louder than thunder. He’d have no chance to save them now. And if he wanted to save himself, he’d have to shift fast. He knew what they’d do, the Proctors. Darryl would nip behind a buttress, crouch there like the malevolent toad he was. Lomas would be inside, waiting on the stairs like the mouth of Hell itself, ready to swallow scholars whole.
That ploy gave him a minute, perhaps two, to get across the lawn and on to the staircase. And that lawn was suddenly bright under the moon, all cover blown, all hope extinguished. In a desperate moment, he snatched the dagger from the sheath at his back and threw it at the far wall. It clattered on the stonework and landed on the flagstones below.
The lantern beams merged, having crossed and crossed again and he saw the black shapes converge. Their robed shadows danced, huge and macabre, over the lawn. He hauled himself free of the clawing branches, willing his sleeping leg to work, and he ran.
Behind him, even as he hit the ground, he heard the ruckus. Running feet that were not his own scraped and thumped among the shouts and curses. He was under the archway and bounding up the twisted stairs three at a time, wincing at each thud when his numb foot came down. He crashed in through the door, hauling off the flash doublet as he went, tearing at the laces that fastened his shirt. He floundered in the cluttered darkness of the room, looking in vain for his nightshirt, finding only Matt’s. He dragged it over his head, scattering leaves and twigs and he pulled on his nightcap. Now . . . the performance.
‘Lomas? Darryl?’ an enraged but still sleepy head poked out from an upstairs casement. ‘What’s going on?’
The scuffling stopped and five faces looked up at him, eerily lit by the still dancing lantern beams.
‘You tell us, Master Marlowe,’ Lomas sneered. Henry Bromerick had just kicked him in the shins and anyway, the Proctor was never at his best in the early hours.
‘Have you no idea of the time, man?’ Marlowe said with an outrage in his voice born of long years of playing the innocent whilst being thoroughly guilty. ‘I have lectures with Professor Johns after breakfast. He won’t take kindly to me yawning all through the morning; he’s a sensitive soul.’ Marlowe leaned further over the sill, shielding his eyes in the lantern-light. ‘Matthew Parker, is that you?’
‘Yes, Kit,’ Parker replied obediently, still struggling half-heartedly in the grip of Proctor Darryl and staring a bleak future in the face.
‘Tut tut.’ Marlowe shook his head and withdrew a little into the shadow of his dark room, to hide his smile. ‘Roistering again, eh? And your grandfather Archbishop of Canterbury! Whatever next? Please go about your business more quietly, gentlemen. This is Corpus Christi, don’t forget. We have a reputation to uphold.’ And he leaned forward again, to pull the window closed.
‘Master Marlowe.’ Lomas stopped him. ‘Is this yours?’ He was holding something up in the half-moonlight.
‘What is it?’ Marlowe peered down, squinting his eyes so as to see whatever it was more clearly.
‘It’s a dagger, Master Marlowe.’ Lomas was patience itself.
‘A dagger?’ Marlowe frowned and shook his head, causing a small twig to dislodge and skitter off the sill towards the upturned faces below. ‘Now, what would I want with a dagger?’
They stood in a sheepish line in the Master’s Lodge, caught out, embarrassed, humiliated, expecting the worst. A lazy golden dawn had crept over Corpus Christi College an hour earlier as the Constable of the Watch had called it a night and gone home. And here they were, the three who were to have graduated today, standing silent and motionless in their grey fustian college robes, with the badge of the pelican and lilies.
Dr Norgate might have been a hundred as far as these three were concerned. They were eighteen; he was . . . a hundred. He peered at them over the rim of his spectacles and leaned back in his chair, looking for all the world as if he’d been frozen in time and festooned with cobwebs. Behind him on oak shelves stood the serried ranks of the works of the scholars of antiquity – Herodotus, Aristotle, Euclid, Plinys elder and younger, Plato and a hundred others. There were no cobwebs on those volumes, no dust on the leather. Rumour had it that Dr Norgate read them all every day, could recite them for hours – and knew where the printers’ errors were.
The great man cleared his throat. ‘Henry Bromerick,’ he said softly.
‘Sir.’
Bromerick was having difficulty focusing. How many had he sunk at the George? How many more at the Eagle? It was a great night . . . probably. He couldn’t quite remember. There’d been a party at the Blue Boar, of that he was certain. Quite certain. He mentally shook himself and tried to concentrate on the Master, tried to make the two dim images of the man merge into one and stay there.