‘Poisoned?’ Fludd repeated. This was really beyond his experience, but he wasn’t going to let Marlowe know that. ‘No. Why? Should there be?’
‘No reason.’ Marlowe shrugged. ‘It’s just that sudden deaths seem to be in vogue in this fair town of ours these days.’
‘Fair!’ Fludd clicked his fingers. ‘See yourself out, Master Marlowe. I have to get back,’ he said, and he dashed past, out into the dark corridor, making for the sunlight.
Marlowe clicked the heavy door to behind him and stood facing the harlot with a quizzical expression on his face. She grinned and tugged down her kirtle again, letting her ample breasts bounce free once more. Marlowe peered closer, first at one, then the other. He pulled a face. ‘No thanks,’ he said and strode away with her ‘Bastard!’ still ringing in his ears.
‘Ah, Michael.’ Dr Norgate was sipping the mulled wine he liked to take after supper in Hall, when the shadows lengthened across the Lodge in The Court. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘Marlowe,’ Johns said.
‘I fear so. Do you have a moment?’
‘Of course, Master.’ The professor took the proffered chair and unlaced his cap, helping himself as of old to Norgate’s claret. ‘Some trouble at the fair, I understand?’
Norgate nodded. ‘I had a note from the Constable not an hour ago. Pleasant fellow. Rather more conscientious than they normally are. It seems Marley broke a man’s arm.’
Johns was appalled. ‘On what cause?’ he asked. If it was Marlowe, there had to be a cause.
‘You know what these village oafs are like, Michael.’ Norgate sighed, resting his head against the soft leather of his chair, worn to the shape of his cranium from years of pondering the Gospels. ‘It would have been a look, a word . . . a girl, even.’
Johns frowned. No, it wouldn’t have been a girl.
‘The Constable seems to think it is a Gown matter. He has passed it to me.’
‘And what do you intend to do about it?’
‘The man hasn’t actually taken his degree yet, Michael. He’s a chancer, this Marley. An over-reacher, if ever I saw one.’
‘He has a fine brain, Master.’ The loyal Johns always backed his scholars if he could. ‘One of the finest I’ve come across.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Norgate said, nodding. ‘No doubt, no doubt. But there’s something . . . some madness about him. I can’t define it.’
Johns chuckled. ‘No one can. I gave up trying to do that three years ago.’
Norgate’s indulgent smile vanished. ‘If you hope one day to sit in this chair, Michael,’ he said coldly, ‘you’ll have to develop more of an inner steel. Doesn’t do to get too close to the boys.’
Johns looked suitably chastened.
‘There will be a financial implication in all this. If Constable Fludd has passed the matter to us, we must act as Justice of the Peace. Marlowe’s behaviour has brought the college into disrepute. And for the second time this week.’ He peered at Johns over his spectacle rims. ‘You know, I’m not sure you should have spoken for him at that poor chap’s inquest. Gabriel told me all about it and he’s furious. It’s as well Fellows of colleges don’t duel.’
There was a silence. Michael Johns had worked at the great man’s side for years now. He knew when silence spoke volumes. ‘I’ll have to put it to the Society,’ Norgate said. ‘You’ll be Marlowe’s advocate again, I assume.’
‘If I feel it necessary, Master,’ Johns told him.
‘Oh, it will be,’ Norgate said. ‘When do we meet next?’
‘Friday, Master. After supper.’
‘Good. Oh, and get me the buttery accounts, will you? I want to see if Dominus Marley can afford the fine the Society will have to impose on him.’
A few hundred yards away from the Master’s Lodge, as the sun sank over the tracery of the colleges and a quiet darkness settled over Corpus Christi, two scholars sat in their shared room with sheaves of paper spread out on the table in front of them.
‘So there’s nothing in the letters, then, Kit?’ Tom Colwell wanted to know, lighting some candles as the daylight began to fade.
Marlowe sighed and threw the last sheet down. In the last few days, he’d gone over these again and again, hoping for some clue from the letters to a dead man.
‘This one -’ he waved the letter in the air with one hand, while reaching across for more wine – ‘is from his bailiff at Blean, whingeing about the woodland.’ He dropped the letter and rummaged for another, peering sideways over the rim of the cup, as he slurped some of Colwell’s tokay. ‘This one . . . is a final demand from his tailor, Tate of Canterbury. The others -’ and he flicked some randomly into the air, sitting back in his chair as they settled back on to Colwell’s ink-stained table top – ‘routine stuff, mostly months old. What about that?’
He was pointing to the document in front of Colwell. The scholar slumped across the strewn papers. ‘Kit,’ he said, ‘if truth be told, I’m not getting very far. It’s a sort of journal, I think. Not very flattering about any of the King’s people. Listen to this – it’s all in Latin, of course, as you’d expect from dear old Ralphie. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but did you ever meet a bigger snob?’
Marlowe laughed. Already Ralph Whitingside was levelling. The plaster saint whose life had been suddenly snatched from him was acquiring the reputation of an ordinary man, with foibles of his own.
‘He says,’ Colwell went on, ‘if I’ve got this right, “Goad is older than God”.’ They both guffawed. ‘And what about this – “Falconer doesn’t know his contra fagotto from his posaune.” And it’s not just King’s men, either. This is quite recent, I think. It’s nearly the last thing he wrote, judging by its position in the book. “Saw that harslet Greene the other day. Sporting an earring. Has he gone over to the other side?” What do you make of that?’
‘Greene?’ Marlowe frowned. ‘Not Robyn Greene? St John’s?’
Colwell shrugged. ‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘Who’s he?’
‘Can’t be the one I’m thinking of,’ Marlowe said. ‘Harslet’s too mild a word. Insufferable little shit would be nearer the mark, but I’m well known for my charity. But, no, it can’t be. He went on his travels when he graduated on account of me telling him if I saw him in Cambridge again, I’d rearrange his face.’
‘Charity indeed!’ Colwell chuckled. ‘The rest of it is pretty cryptic Latin, some Greek, even a little Hebrew, but it’s odd. Upside down? I can’t make it out.’ He threw the book down. ‘Fancy an ale at the Cap, Kit? I’m parched.’
‘Not tonight, Tom,’ Marlowe said, reaching across for the diary. ‘I’m going to curl up with a not-very-good book. How are your stripes now, by the way?’
‘Mending.’ Colwell winced as he stood up. ‘You shouldn’t have reminded me.’
‘If you see that tow-rag Bromerick on your travels -’ Marlowe threw himself back on his bed, arranging the candle so he could read – ‘you might remind him he owes me last week’s buttery bill. And as for Parker . . .’ He was suddenly serious. ‘Well, watch out for Matty Parker, Tom. You know his ways.’
‘I do!’ Colwell nodded and made for the passageway and another near nightly game of cat and mouse with Lomas and Darryl. When would these bloody stripes heal? Once they had, everybody would take a quaff from the college silver, thank the Master, the Chancellor, the college cat and actually get a degree. After that . . . well, what Tom Colwell assumed Lomas and Darryl could do was certainly illegal and probably anatomically impossible.
SIX
The next morning Kit Marlowe woke with the superior feeling of being the only person in the room who had not drunk too much cheap ale. The other Parker scholars were whimpering in their cubicles as the reality of morning began to bite. The dawn chorus which had awoken Marlowe had not been the light twittering of the swallows returning to the eaves above his window; it had been the internal rumblings and crashings of his room-mates’ bowels and he had the choice of getting out into God’s fresh air, or stifling in second-hand alcohol and the shrimp pie sold by an unscrupulous pieman on the corner of Slaughter Yard.