He motioned the landlord over for a second round. ‘Now, gentlemen.’ He smiled broadly. ‘Have either of you heard of a scholar called Christopher Marlowe?’
TEN
The evening was darkling into night as Marlowe bounced up his stair to the Parker scholars’ rooms. The Discourses had gone well, he had enjoyed his dinner in College, and he now looked forward to a few hours of quiet reflection on his own, as he had just seen Parker and Colwell release a piglet in preparation for an evening at the Brazen George.
He wriggled the key into the reluctant lock and was just beginning to lose his temper with it when he realized it was already open. He would have some words to say to Colwell and Parker when he saw them next; no doubt, having taken delivery of the piglet, all other thoughts left their heads. He just hoped the piglet hadn’t been in the room too long. He pushed the door open and went in, throwing his cap in the general direction of the settle in the dark and shrugging off his gown. He threw himself on to his bed and laced his fingers behind his head. He loved people and people watching. A sonnet was forming in his head as he lay there, based on the turn of a pretty neck he had been admiring over dinner. He tried a few lines, declaimed to the dark.
‘Come live with me and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove . . .’
‘Nice, Dominus Marlowe. Very nicely put, although I think perhaps that second line needs work – it is an eye rhyme, after all. Ovid wouldn’t approve.’
The voice, quietly coming from a dark corner of the room, brought Marlowe to his feet in a second and over to the window in two more, as he tugged the curtain aside to bring the twilight’s faint glow into the room. There was a candle stub on the window sill and with trembling fingers he manipulated the tinderbox to give more light.
The owner of the voice sat in silence while he did this; there was no movement, no threat of violence, no hiss of steel being drawn from a sheath. Marlowe’s recent brush with John Dee had left him understandably a little more nervous than was his usual nature, but even so his hand only trembled a little as he turned to see who had spoken.
‘Professor Johns?’ He was amazed to see his tutor sitting there. But more amazing still was the state of the room. Clothes were strewn everywhere, papers lay in drifts over the scholars’ beds. The ashes of the last fire of spring had been raked from the grate and had mixed with the rushes on the floor to give, with the careless addition of some stale small beer, an unlovely mat of grey slurry in front of the fire.
‘Hello, Dominus Marlowe. I see you are surprised to see me,’ the Fellow said, smiling. ‘I, on the other hand, am surprised to see how you live.’ His fastidious fingers picked up a pad of soggy paper and let it drop with a small thunk.
‘I am also surprised, Michael,’ Marlowe said. ‘I would never say we were tidy, in fact the bedders have complained often, especially about poor Bromerick’s personal habits, but we don’t live like this.’ He looked around, helplessly. ‘I don’t know where to start.’ He picked up some papers and tidied them into a pile, but then had nowhere to put them, as the table was smeared with the same grey goo that lay in front of the grate.
Johns took pity on him. ‘I admit, Dominus,’ he said, ‘that I had come to speak to you about your lamentable attendance at my lectures lately, as well as those of my colleagues. I felt guilty enough about letting myself in and when I saw the state of the room I concluded that you probably have enough troubles as it is.’
Marlowe looked around, still disbelieving. ‘Who could have done this?’ he asked. ‘We hadn’t even packed poor Henry’s things away to give to his parents when they get here, if they come. What will they think when they see his clothes covered in ashes and beer like this?’ He picked over a pile of stockings and shirts. ‘I can’t even tell which are his. To make things worse, some of these things are Ralph’s.’
‘Ralph’s?’ Johns asked, with a raised eyebrow.
‘Yes. Dr Steane brought some of his things round the other day. He didn’t know who else would have them, with Ralph an orphan. Sir Roger Manwood, who was his guardian, won’t want them, I don’t expect. And now, we’ll have to sort them out from this mess.’ No one knew if Kit Marlowe was prone to depression or sorrow; his enigmatic face hid most of his feelings, unless he wanted them on show. But Johns could see that he was now at a loss. He stood up and started to pick up the clothes on the floor and pile them in one place.
‘Michael, you are covered in ash,’ Marlowe said. ‘Your sleeves, look, and your hands are all grey with it.’
Johns looked down. ‘It’s hardly surprising, Kit, is it?’ he said, rather crossly. ‘Are you accusing me of making this mess?’
Marlowe dropped his shoulders and sighed. ‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said, ‘but, no, of course I don’t think you did this. I think someone has been here, looking for something, something connected with the murders of Ralph and Henry.’ He looked at the professor. ‘Somebody who can pick a lock, it would seem.’
Johns crossed the room, kicking aside tumbled bedding and put his hand on the scholar’s arm. ‘Murders?’ he said. ‘The inquests said . . .’
‘I know what the inquests said,’ Marlowe said. ‘The inquests are wrong. I know what the bastard who did this was looking for, too.’
‘You do?’ Johns said, not moving away. ‘What was that, do you think? And has he found it?’
Marlowe smiled. ‘Ah, Professor Johns. No one can catch me that easily. I will keep my counsel on those questions if I may.’
‘As you wish,’ the Fellow said and went back to gathering up the ash-soaked clothes. ‘This will cost a pretty penny to launder,’ he said, changing the subject ostentatiously. ‘This bedding was only changed last quarter, I’m thinking.’
Marlowe looked around at the devastation and nodded. ‘I’ll have to try and sweet talk the laundresses,’ he said. ‘It’s not as though I haven’t had to curry favour with them before.’
Johns scooped up a parcel he had made by wrapping the clothes in a sheet. ‘I’ll speak to Dr Norgate,’ he said. ‘I’m sure there must be some fund or another to meet this contingency.’
Marlowe allowed himself a quiet laugh. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘The Maud Ashenden Bequest for the Laundering of Scholars’ Clothing Besmirched with Ash in the Commission of a Burglary.’
‘The very one,’ Johns said, smiling. ‘Now, if you will gather up the rest, we’ll go down to the laundry and start the sweet talking, before we have to see how much money will have to change hands.’
Marlowe did as he was told and together the two struggled down the narrow stair and across The Court to the laundry at the back of the kitchens.
From a dark corner on the lower landing, a dark figure watched them go. The wet ash had dried to powder on his hands and in his pocket a small book made a bulge, which he would soon be swapping, he hoped, for a purse of equal volume. Sadly, as he would soon discover, his employer would not be amused to be offered a small Latin psaltery, annotated by a boy chorister in the Cathedral at Canterbury. Thus, they would both learn a lesson. The burglar would learn, as he was removed from the town for indigence, whipped at the cart’s tail, that it was unwise to annoy a powerful man. The powerful man would learn that it was unwise to send a burglar who couldn’t read Latin to steal a book.
Joseph Fludd was miles away. His carpentry business had suffered in the last few days in favour of his constabulary duties and he had a job he had to finish in a hurry, being a new chair for the rooms of Professor Wilkes, of Jesus College. Fludd’s purse had reason to be grateful to Wilkes’s unparalleled gluttony, as he got through chairs at a rate of around three a year, each needing to be more reinforced than the last. Fludd loved his work, the sound of the lathe spinning sweetly on its spindle, the smell of the newly turned oak as the shavings flew like ribbons from the blade. Professor Wilkes needed oak these days; the softer woods buckled almost at once under his weight. Fludd hummed under his breath as the chair leg took shape under his hand. He raised the blade and stopped pedalling and the lathe slowed and stopped.