A single chair, carved, upright, lonely, stood in front of the coroner’s dais. A long way behind it, a large crowd had squeezed itself into the Hall – the Provost and Fellows of King’s, a handful of their servants and as many interested parties and ghouls as Harry VI’s great building could hold.
‘Inquisition indented,’ intoned the clerk of the court, ‘taken this day in the County of Cambridge on the second day of July in the year of Elizabeth by the grace of God of England, France and Ireland, Queen, defender of the faith etcetera twenty fifth, the year of our Lord 1583 . . .’
After the preliminaries were over, the fanfare blown and the coughing subsided, Winterton barked in his hoarse voice, ‘First witness. First Finder.’
Nobody stepped forward. People looked right and left, frowning, muttering and wondering what the delay was. In the corner, Dr Steane pushed Eliza Laurence forward, gently shooing her into that vast space around the witness chair.
‘Who is the First Finder of the body?’ Winterton roared.
‘I am,’ a clear voice called from the back.
Everybody turned and there was a babble of voices. Gabriel Harvey’s mouth fell open involuntarily as Kit Marlowe strode through the Hall and bowed to the court.
‘Who are you, sir?’ Winterton asked.
‘Christopher Marlowe, sir, Secundus Convictus of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge.’
Winterton waved him to the chair. Marlowe looked across at Eliza and smiled. She bobbed and doubled back, grateful to slide back into anonymity again, if only for a short while.
‘You found the body, Master Marlowe?’ Winterton asked. The clerks scratched away.
‘I did, sir,’ he said. Then, to the clerks: ‘Can you spell the name? Only, my own college seems to have difficulty with . . .’
‘Marlowe!’ Another voice ended his sentence. All eyes turned to the back of the Hall.
Winterton slammed the tip of his staff of office down on the floor by his feet to order silence. ‘Who are you, sir?’ he asked.
‘I am Dr Gabriel Harvey,’ the voice called, ‘formerly Fellow of Pembroke Hall, now of Corpus Christi. What was he doing there? How did an undergraduate come to have access to the rooms of a graduate – and from a different college?’
There was hubbub in the room, until Winterton’s staff of office thudded on the woodwork again. ‘Enough!’ he thundered. ‘In my courtroom, sir, I ask the questions.’ He waited until the murmurings had died down. ‘Well, Master Marlowe,’ he said, fixing the man with his terrible stare. ‘Explain yourself.’
‘If I may, my lord?’ Another voice, gentler than Harvey’s and in its gentleness compelling, came from the back and a slender, robed figure emerged from the crowd.
Winterton looked exasperated. If he’d known he was in for a day like this, he’d have rolled over in bed and given the job to his deputy. ‘And who might you be, sir?’ He did his best to keep his voice under control.
‘I am Professor Michael Johns, of Corpus Christi College. I hate to call what my learned colleague Dr Harvey has to say into question, but technically, according to college statute, Master Marlowe was, as of two days ago, Dominus Marlowe.’
‘There has been no ceremony!’ Harvey countered, stung by the man’s interference.
‘Indeed not,’ Johns said quickly, ‘namely because Dominus Marlowe elected to wait until such time as he was able to go through said ceremony with his fellow Parker scholars. The statutes are on his side, Dr Harvey.’
‘Are they?’ Harvey rasped. He was standing nose to nose with Johns now, his eyes burning and his jaw flexing.
‘Apparently so.’ Winterton was determined to end this wrangling then and there. ‘And I will have the law observed, sir!’
For a long moment, Harvey hovered. From the tension twanging through his body like a bowstring, he looked for all the world as if he were about to strike Johns down. Then he looked at Marlowe, sitting quietly with his back to them both. ‘You, sir,’ he snapped at him, ‘are a disgrace to Corpus Christi and to this university. Not even in your robes.’
‘Indeed not.’ Marlowe stood up, spinning on his heel to face Harvey. ‘Any more than I was when I found Ralph Whitingside’s body. I had no wish to dishonour the name of Corpus Christi then and I have no wish to dishonour it now.’ He smiled and that smile made Harvey spin away, striding for the door.
‘Make a note of that man’s name,’ Winterton instructed his clerks, still pointing at Harvey’s retreating figure. ‘Contempt of court. He shall be fined five shillings. Now -’ he cleared his throat as Johns bowed to him before resuming his seat and Marlowe took the witness chair again – ‘for the benefit of the court’ – he nodded to the jury – ‘some of you gentlemen are not of the University, so it behoves me to explain. As an undergraduate, this witness had no automatic right of entry to another scholar’s rooms. As a graduate, that is different . . .’ The coroner leaned forward in his seat. ‘Although I fail to see, Dominus Marlowe, why you didn’t just walk in through the front door . . .’
Marlowe smiled. ‘Old habits, my lord,’ he said, ‘and the front gates were locked.’
There was a ripple of laughter from the younger members of the crowd, which Winterton chose to let go for the moment.
‘You went to Ralph Whitingside’s rooms,’ the coroner established. ‘Why?’
‘Ralph Whitingside was an old friend of mine, my lord. We met regularly, for academic discussion and contemplation.’
Henry Bromerick, several rows back, nudged Tom Colwell, who in turn hushed him.
‘I had not seen Ralph for three days and had expected him to help my friends and me celebrate our graduation.’
‘I see,’ Winterton said. ‘And where was this celebration to take place?’
‘Oh, forgive me, sir.’ Marlowe opened his dark eyes wide. ‘I am much afraid I am unacquainted with the hostelries of the town.’
It was Tom Colwell’s turn to stifle a guffaw, stuffing part of his sleeve in his mouth.
‘Very well.’ Winterton was prepared to take this young man at face value for the moment. ‘What did you find, First Finder?’
Marlowe told it all. Or at least the all he wanted the court to know. What he could not do, or would not do, in that house of strangers, was to talk of the smell in the chamber, the dead eyes of his friend. Neither would he tell them of the reason for a reckoning in a small room because, as yet, he didn’t know it. And the letters and the curious little book. Eliza Laurence hadn’t seen him take them and there was no one else to know they had gone.
There were no other witnesses who had seen anything. Eliza was dragged back out to that lonely place to sit in that accursed chair. She took the oath with a trembling hand and a shaking voice and swore on the Bible that she acknowledged was her crutch and comfort; but she could not look Sir Edward Winterton in the face and in the end, the kindly Dr Steane spoke for her, annoying though the coroner found it.
‘Mistress Laurence is a simple soul, my lord,’ Steane said. ‘I have talked to her at some length and she is in awe of your honour’s greatness . . .’
Winterton rolled his eyes.
‘. . . she was told by Master Whitingside that he would be away and that she was to clean his room against his return on the day that she – and Master Marlowe – found him.’
‘Except that he had been nowhere?’ the coroner asked.
‘Who is to say, my lord?’ Steane replied. The question was rhetorical.
‘Quite so. The man who called himself Machiavel.’ Winterton threw one last question at her, bypassing Steane in the process. ‘Do you see him in this court?’