Eliza Laurence shrank back in the chair, tucking her chin as far into her coif as it would go. Her hands were knotted in her lap but somehow she wrenched her sweating fingers apart and pointed to the far wall where Marlowe lolled with his arms folded. Murmurs filled the court.
The rest was mere formality, demanded by Sir Edward Winterton who was a stickler for such things. Dr Goad, the Provost, confirmed that Ralph Whitingside had presented himself at the college shortly after Christmas Day in the year of our Lord 1578. He offered to show the Court the ledgers if it so wished. Whitingside had matriculated Bachelor of Arts three years later and was now studying for his Masters degree. It was generally assumed that he would enter the church, but on receiving his inheritance some two years ago, that seemed less likely. His interests? Hebrew, obviously; Rhetoric; the Discourses. The old man had frowned as he recited this – what a curious question for the coroner to ask. Had the man no academic leanings at all?
‘He sang fairly,’ Goad suddenly remembered, ‘had a fine tenor voice when he joined us, from the King’s School, Canterbury. Er . . . you’d have to ask Richard Thirling, my choirmaster, for more.’
Winterton pursed his lips. He’d never heard of a man killed for his voice before. This whole thing was an irrelevance. It was mid-afternoon before the procedure came to an end. The coroner outlined the evidence for the benefit of the jury and asked them if they needed to retire. They didn’t.
‘Your task,’ Winterton told them in time-honoured fashion, ‘is to decide how, when, where and by what means the deceased came to his death.’ He paused, secretly enjoying, as he always did, his moment in God’s light. ‘But if you’ll take my advice, you will find that, in a moment of madness, Ralph Whitingside took his own life.’
The murmurs in the hall grew to a mutinous rumble. There was nothing in anything anyone had heard to lead to such a conclusion. The Parker scholars looked at Winterton, at each other. They hadn’t known Whitingside like Marlowe had, such was the age gap among former schoolboys. But Kit didn’t believe it. And if Kit didn’t believe it, it wasn’t so. There was so much shouting that the jury’s foreman could barely agree with the coroner that that was, indeed, the verdict of them all.
Winterton rammed his staff down for silence and the usher proclaimed, with all solemnity, that the business of the court was over. He commended Ralph Whitingside’s lost soul to God and called for three cheers for Her Majesty. Everybody responded lustily. Everybody except Christopher Marlowe.
‘Machiavel,’ Winterton called to him as the crowd shuffled out into the sunlight of King’s quadrangle.
Marlowe turned to him. ‘Sir?’
The coroner stepped down from the dais, slowly passing his staff and chain of office to his clerks. Now, he was stripped of his role and stood toe to toe with Marlowe, man to man.
‘You don’t approve of the Court’s findings?’ he asked.
‘You were wrong,’ Marlowe told him.
‘The Court was wrong,’ Winterton said.
Marlowe half turned, as if to leave. ‘You are Sir Edward Winterton,’ he said softly. ‘A Queen’s Coroner, knight of the shire. You own half of Cambridgeshire -’ he pointed to where the jury had sat – ‘and half those men, too, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Winterton started. ‘You insolent young puppy,’ he snarled. ‘Do you accuse me of jury tampering?’
Marlowe looked at him. ‘They are serving men, tapsters, petty bookkeepers and Bible readers. If you told them the moon was made of cheese, they’d believe it. They’d walk into the fire for people like you. It’s the way of it and it always has been. But it still doesn’t make it right.’
‘And what of you, Master Machiavel?’ Winterton asked, calmer now. ‘Who will you walk into the fire for?’
Marlowe smiled. ‘When I know that, Master Coroner,’ he said, tapping the man lightly on his fur-edged robe, ‘I shall be sure to let you know.’
FOUR
There is no good time to bury a man of just twenty-two summers, but that night, in its moonless dark, was as good as any other. The lingering warmth of the summer day had gone, but the dew had not yet come as the flickering lights of the dark lanterns began to gather in the lee of the wrong side of the churchyard wall. Whispered voices greeted each other as Ralph Whitingside’s friends came together to say goodbye.
The gravedigger’s cleared throat sounded as loud as a trumpet blast in the sibilant near silence. Then, he spoke, in the normal voice of one to whom death and decay is a normal stock in trade. ‘I’ll just leave you gentlemen to your business, then.’
‘Thank you, my man.’ Dr Steane, also no stranger to gravesides, was dismissive.
‘I’ll have my payment before I go,’ the man said, not unkindly, but merely speaking as someone who had often had trouble, after his necessary deed was done, in extracting the coins from the suddenly parsimonious bereaved. There was too much work in digging the body back up, and what other recourse did a man in his line of work who had not been paid have?
Marlowe’s voice sounded, low and respectful to Whitingside, a reminder to the others. ‘Thank you for your work, Master Harkness. Here is your fee, and a little for a drink to warm you tonight.’
The man mumbled his thanks. It wasn’t many men who would bother to find out his name, to treat him like a human being. His was not a trade that brought him many friends; in a crowded churchyard, he was often digging among the bones of the not long dead, and this grave had been no different. In the unconsecrated ground on the wrong side of the churchyard wall, reserved for suicides and babies who died unbaptised or perhaps even before they breathed, space was short and the graves unmarked. Only the unevenness of the ground bore silent testimony to their number, the Granta dead. The gravedigger was glad of the dark. That way, the mourners wouldn’t see the little flecks of bone in the mound of earth off to one side. He’d found a skull once, whole and grinning; even he had needed his extra drink that night. He touched his cap to Marlowe and melted away. By morning, the grave would be level again and after a few weeks of summer growing, the weeds would have masked the place where Ralph Whitingside lay, one among many.
Steane looked around at the knot of mourners, each face lit dimly from below by their lanterns. No one had come from King’s apart from him, no friends, no Fellows, no Provost. Pitching his voice low now that the gravedigger had gone, he said, ‘Thank you for coming, gentlemen. I am only sorry that this service has to take place in these circumstances.’
Marlowe spoke for them all. ‘Thank you for offering to conduct it for us, Dr Steane. It’s not every churchman . . .’
Steane held up a hand. ‘Think nothing of it, Dominus Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Ralph Whitingside was a devout member of the choir of King’s College and I think I owe him this much.’
‘Or any man who is not a suicide,’ said Henry Bromerick bitterly. ‘This should be happening in the light of day, with a proper ceremony.’ He stifled a sob.
‘This should not be happening at all,’ Marlowe corrected him. ‘But as it is, shall we continue, Dr Steane?’ He glanced over his shoulder into the dark under the trees. ‘Some of us need to get to our beds. It will get chilly soon, towards dawn.’
Steane nodded and bowed his head, waiting a while as the others adopted their chosen attitude of prayer. By an unspoken common consent, they had all put out their lanterns and so Steane’s voice spoke from total darkness. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.’ The familiar words rolled out and brought some comfort to the friends gathered around the grave. ‘The Lord be with you.’