Greene closed to him. ‘The crime of Sodom,’ he said.
Harvey’s eyes widened and he positively swayed for a moment. There were over a hundred crimes for which a man could be hanged, but somehow, he knew the way Greene’s wind was blowing. He grabbed the man’s sleeve and pulled him around a corner, checking the lane north and south.
‘Marlowe?’ he muttered.
Greene nodded.
‘And who?’
It was Greene’s turn to check the street. ‘Ralph Whitingside, late, I understand, of King’s College.’
Harvey let go of the man’s sleeve and brushed the cheap velvet back into place. ‘I may have been hasty,’ he said. ‘What else do you understand, Dominus Greene?’
‘Marlowe and Whitingside were friends, back in Canterbury. Went to the King’s School. Played together at that tricky age when boys become men. I’m sure I don’t have to paint you a portrait, Dr Harvey.’
‘There has to be evidence,’ Harvey murmured, his mind racing. ‘Hard fact.’
‘Dig in the Potter’s Field,’ Greene shrugged.
Harvey frowned. ‘Why there?’
‘Isn’t that where they buried the late Whitingside?’
‘How would that help?’
Greene sighed. How could a man with Harvey’s academic credentials be so dim? ‘Marlowe put him there,’ he explained.
‘What? Killed him, you mean?’
Greene nodded. He barely knew Harvey at all, but he knew the man’s reputation. He wasn’t easily rattled, but the great man seemed speechless now.
‘Why?’ was all he could manage.
Greene became positively oily as he outlined the possibilities. ‘A lover’s tiff?’ he suggested. ‘A third party, as it were?’ It didn’t look as if Harvey was buying any of this so Greene tried harder. ‘I understand that Dominus Whitingside tied his points in both directions, if you get my drift.’
Harvey did. ‘Like Caesar,’ he remembered. ‘Every woman’s man and every man’s woman.’
Greene smiled. His work was done. But he hadn’t quite reeled Harvey in yet. ‘But Marlowe found him,’ the Fellow reasoned. ‘He was First Finder. At the inquest – I was there.’
Greene shook his head, chuckling. ‘The oldest ploy in the book, Dr Harvey,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he had a fit of conscience and the night terrors took him. Or there again, if he made enough song and dance about it, looked a bit hangdog, sobbed a bit – you know, manly stuff – who’d have suspected dear old Kit Marlowe?’
He whispered unnervingly in Harvey’s ear. ‘You and I, Doctor, if we wanted to see a friend in another college, would catch him in the street or write the necessary letter for admission at an appointed hour. We would not climb over walls and rooftops and sneak into a man’s bedroom in the dead of night. It screams guilt.’
‘Yes.’ Harvey clicked his fingers. ‘Put like that, it does. It does.’
Greene stepped back, his voice louder, confident. ‘May I leave it in your capable hands then, Doctor?’ he asked.
Harvey hesitated, then shook Greene’s hands. ‘Count on it,’ he said.
‘May I offer you gentlemen a drink?’
Such a line was music to the ears of the two Parker scholars slouching in a murky corner of the Brazen George that night. Proctors Lomas and Darryl had fallen yet again for the live-piglet-in-the-cloisters routine while Colwell and Parker had slipped out of the side gate and across the churchyard. God knew where Kit was. Like all of them, he had been hit hard by the death of Henry Bromerick, but intensity was Kit Marlowe’s middle name and he was probably off on some wild goose chase of his own.
‘Er . . . thank you,’ Parker said. ‘A pint of ale, please.’
The stranger looked at Colwell.
‘The same,’ said Tom.
Men like this didn’t drift into Cambridge inns every night of the week. He wore a doublet and colleyweston cloak of deep black and his gloves were of velvet with gold thread. He placed his plumed hat on the table. Even before he’d done this, half a dozen serving wenches as well as the landlord were at his side, grovelling, curtseying, offering to do his bidding. He placed his order, having the same ale for himself and smiled at the pretty girl still hovering at his elbow.
She curtseyed, smiling. ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ she asked.
‘Lettice!’ the landlord cut in, cuffing the girl around the ear. ‘Don’t be bothering the gentleman with all that. He’s not interested in the likes of you.’
‘On the contrary,’ the gentleman said. ‘Lettice, is it?’ He beckoned her forward and motioned the landlord away. She stuck her tongue out at the man as he scuttled around the corner, roaring orders to his minions. ‘What do you make,’ the stranger asked, ‘entertaining a gentleman?’
Lettice blushed. For all she did entertain gentlemen, she wasn’t usually asked outright so early in the evening and in the hearing of scholars. ‘Two pennies, sir,’ she said. ‘That’s for the beast with two backs. One penny for anything less.’
The stranger smiled, reaching for his purse. ‘There,’ he said. ‘There’s a month’s wages so that you don’t have to do anything with beasts.’ Her eyes widened as she saw and felt the gold in her hand.
‘Thank you, sir.’ Her voice was barely audible and she dashed around the corner before biting the coin, just to be sure. She’d hate to offend such a kind gentleman.
The kind gentleman sipped the ale. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Not bad. And in a way why I’m here.’ He held out a hand. ‘Francis Hall,’ he said.
‘Tom Colwell,’ Colwell said. ‘This is Matthew Parker.’
‘Matthew Parker,’ Hall said, lingering in his handshake for a moment. ‘That name’s familiar.’
‘My grandfather, sir,’ Parker said. ‘Archbishop of Canterbury, not so long ago.’ It was the lad’s fate to go through this ritual. He’d probably have to do it for the rest of his life.
‘Of course, of course. A fine man. Endowed your college richly, I believe.’
‘Our . . . ?’ Colwell did his best to look inscrutable.
Hall smiled. ‘Come, gentlemen. Hide it though you might, I know the badge of the pelican and lilies. Corpus Christi College. Unique among the halls of the university, it was founded in 1350 by the Guild of Corpus Christi in response to the devastation of the Great Pestilence . . .’
‘You seem very well informed,’ Colwell said, drawing back. ‘Do you mind telling us what brings you to Cambridge?’
The stranger closed to the scholars. ‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘On one condition – that you tell me how you got out of college tonight.’
The Parker scholars looked at each other. What was this? Some new ploy by Norgate? A ruse by that bastard Harvey?
‘Was it the fire-in-the-library ploy?’ Hall asked, wide-eyed.
Nothing.
‘The hue-and-cry routine?’
Nothing.
‘Not the leper-at-the-gate stuff?’
Parker and Colwell looked at each other again and then burst out laughing. ‘It was the piglet-in-the-cloister,’ Parker confessed. And all three of them roared.
‘They never learn, do they?’ Hall chuckled. ‘Let me explain, gentlemen. More years ago than I care to remember, I was sitting more or less where you are.’ He looked around him. ‘The place was smaller then. Young Lettice over there wasn’t even a gleam in her father’s eye. I was at King’s.’
‘Oh, bad luck,’ Parker blurted out. And all three roared again.
‘Now it’s your turn,’ Colwell said, suddenly serious. ‘Your reason for being in Cambridge. Not to walk down memory lane, surely?’
‘Ah, no,’ Hall said with a smile. ‘And yet the memories do come flooding back. I remember one bitterly cold winter . . .’ He saw the steel in Colwell’s eye and changed tack. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Do you know the name Walter Ralegh?’
The scholars didn’t.
‘Well, he is a West Country gentleman, highly thought of at Court. He’s Her Majesty’s Controller of Wines and he’s passing through Cambridge on Friday as part of a royal commission.’ He leaned forward, tapping his tankard. ‘Hence my sampling of the local brew. I’ve been sent on ahead to plough the furrow, as it were.’ He sat back upright. ‘And it’s not at all bad. Walter will be pleased.’