Thirling, who had lost the gist of the conversation several twists before, shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I cannot provide a choir, Dr Steane.’ Suddenly, he gave a cry and fell over, clutching his leg. Falconer had kicked him sharply on the ankle and it had undone his delicate equilibrium. While he scrambled back to his feet, Falconer answered for him.
‘A choir is possible, Dr Steane,’ he said. ‘But we are short on men. Some are away from Cambridge – I am thinking particularly of the two who have been rusticated for . . . unusual practices.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Steane said, nodding. ‘There was nothing proved, of course. Had there been . . .’
‘The Consistory Court?’ Falconer asked.
Steane frowned at him, astonished at the man’s naivety. ‘The rope, Master organist,’ he growled. It was no more than the truth.
‘Then, of course,’ Falconer went on, listing his losses in the choir stalls, ‘there is poor Ralph Whitingside.’
‘Is that a problem?’ Steane enjoyed the services at King’s and, perhaps unusually among his colleagues, derived a deep satisfaction from the liturgy. But his ear for music was average at best and he didn’t really see what the loss of a few voices mattered, in the scheme of things.
The two musicians were aghast. As usual, the organist was the first to recover. ‘It is a very great problem, Dr Steane. The lack of men means we will be very limited in what we can sing.’
‘There must be a way round it,’ Steane said. His beloved could be very testy when crossed. ‘Could someone from another college step in? Haven’t I seen Master Marlowe singing here, for example?’
The other two faced each other, lips pursed, then Thirling nodded. ‘Marlowe would do very well. And what about a couple of the other Parker boys, to take the place of . . . well, of you know who?’
‘That would do very well, if it could be arranged,’ Steane said. ‘It doesn’t matter who you get, but get someone. Let me know what pieces you intend to sing and I will tell Mistress Hynde, to make sure they are something she would like.’
‘With deputized parts, we may not have much choice,’ Thirling said, the whip firmly back in his hand. ‘But I am sure Mistress Hynde will not be disappointed.’
Steane nodded to the men and whirled on his heel and strode out of the room. The door slammed behind him and, with his acute musician’s hearing, Thirling waited until his footsteps had died away before adding, ‘Not by the music, at any rate.’
And giggling like schoolboys, they joined the real ones waiting in the School beyond the wooden door.
NINE
That night the Parker scholars got drunk for a different reason. They sat in a tight circle in a corner of the Swan as the sun went down over Cambridge and the under-constables of Fludd’s watch patrolled the darkling streets with their lanterns and nightsticks, crying the hour across the Fenlands.
Marlowe noticed that Meg Hawley kept her distance, always swaying away to serve other tables. Jack Wheeler himself brought their drinks and waited for payment each time. Tom Colwell did the honours; it was his turn.
‘So, let’s go through it again,’ Marlowe said. ‘When did you see Henry last?’
‘Monday morning,’ Parker told him, trying to clear his head to focus on the time and the place. ‘Dr Lyler’s class.’
‘How did he seem?’
‘Fine. He’d seemed fine throughout the weekend, if preoccupied.’
‘Preoccupied?’ Marlowe frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound like Henry.’ The most that had usually taxed Bromerick was which end of a pasty to start on.
‘Er . . . perhaps I can help there.’ Colwell looked a little sheepish.
The others looked at him.
‘He was working on a section of Ralph’s journal, or whatever those cryptic ramblings are.’
Marlowe sat upright. ‘I thought you were doing that, Tom,’ he said.
‘Well, yes, I was. Am. But . . . well, you weren’t here, Kit, and Henry kept pestering me to go for a drink with him. You know what he’s . . . what he was like.’
Marlowe nodded, but the loss of Bromerick was too new, the wound too raw yet to indulge in fond reminiscences. That would come later, when they were all old men nodding by the kitchen fire and someone brought them their syllabub and spiced ale, kind to their toothless mouths.
‘He got on my nerves!’ Colwell snapped, slapping an open hand down on the table. ‘There, I’ve said it. He got on my nerves and I said “If you’ve nothing better to do, help me with this, for Christ’s sake”.’
‘And he took it with him?’ Marlowe asked.
‘No. No, I was very careful about that. I got him to copy out a few lines. He couldn’t make any more sense of it than I could. He was thinking of seeing Johns to see if he could help. Oh, he wouldn’t have broken any confidences, of course.’
‘And did he?’ Marlowe asked.
Colwell shrugged. ‘Both of us had spent days in your granddad’s library, Matt, consulting every damned oracle we could find. Nothing. I know where the pillars of Hercules are now and what an elephant looks like. I even have a vague grasp of some of Euclid’s nonsense, but that stuff . . . I haven’t a clue. Was he particularly bright, Kit? Ralph, I mean; you knew him better than we did.’
‘He was bright, yes,’ Marlowe said. ‘Bright but devious. Brighter than you, Tom? I don’t know.’
‘How did you get on with Dee?’ Parker asked Marlowe. ‘You haven’t told us.’
Nor would he. As long as he lived, Kit Marlowe would not tell anyone what happened in that churchyard.
‘He thinks Henry was poisoned,’ he said. ‘He knows he was. As was Ralph.’
The boys looked at him. It was Colwell who found his voice first. ‘What’s going on, Kit?’ he asked.
Marlowe leant his head towards them. ‘Somebody’s killing us, lads. The other Parker scholars have moved on, left the university. And the new batch hasn’t arrived yet. Now Henry’s gone, it’s just us three.’
‘But Ralph,’ Parker protested. ‘Ralph wasn’t a Parker scholar. He just happened to come from Canterbury.’
‘To be precise, Matt,’ Marlowe reminded him, ‘he came from Chartham. We’re not talking about the Parker scholarships here. We’re not even talking about Canterbury.’
Matt and Tom exchanged glances. ‘What, then?’ Tom asked.
‘The King’s School,’ Marlowe said. ‘That’s the common link. Whatever is going on, King’s is at the heart of it.’
‘God’s teeth!’ Marlowe slammed into the little room in The Court at Corpus a little after noon. The midday bell had not rung and only a few starving sizars wandered the grounds, looking longingly at the Great Hall where the cauldrons of stew were bubbling in the buttery next door.
‘Kit, I should really give you this,’ Parker said, almost apologizing. He passed his room-mate a note.
‘What is it?’ Marlowe snapped.
‘A letter from Professor Johns. He says if you miss one more lecture . . .’
‘I’ll be damned to all eternity; yes, I know,’ he said, and he threw the paper out of the window.
‘I told him you were at Henry’s inquest,’ Colwell explained. ‘It’s not like Johns to get shitty.’
‘He’s got his job to do, I suppose,’ Parker mumbled. When all was said and done, his grandfather had been Archbishop of Canterbury; you didn’t get more jobsworth than that, and Matt was part-establishment already.
‘Do you bastards want to hear this or not?’ Marlowe hissed. He looked at them both. Were these the Parker scholars? The lads he’d gone to school with? Spent three years in lectures with? Caroused away the night? And here they were, with one of their number dead in the charnel house and they were sympathizing with the dilemma of the domini. It defied belief.
‘Sorry, Kit,’ Colwell muttered. ‘Of course. Murder by person or persons unknown?’
Marlowe looked at him.
‘Surely not death by his own hand?’ Parker blurted out.
Marlowe cocked his head to one side. ‘Act of God,’ he said.
The lads looked at each other. ‘Natural causes.’ Colwell couldn’t believe his own voice even as he said it.