‘Backwards -’ Marlowe tilted the mirror – ‘and slightly at an angle, with the letters jumbled for extra effect.’
‘A cypher.’ Colwell’s eyes shone as brightly as Parker’s. He straightened, adopting Gabriel Harvey’s stance and tone. ‘Well, come along, Parker. Out with it. For a grandson of the Archbishop of Canterbury, this should be a piece of piss.’
All three howled with laughter.
‘
,’ Parker said. ‘Wait a minute . . . apenanti skoteinos eisodos.’ Then he frowned. ‘Opposite of the dark entry. What does that mean?’
‘Think!’ said Colwell, tapping himself on the forehead with his knuckles. ‘What’s opposite the Dark Entry? Umm . . . the Cloisters. Er . . . tomb of Prior Chillenden.’
‘No, Prior Markham.’
‘Ah.’ Colwell’s mind was racing ahead. ‘But which side are we talking about? What if he means the school side? That’d be the Almoner’s Chapel.’
‘No, you clod.’ Parker hit him with his apple core. ‘Strangers’ Hall is immediately opposite . . .’
Marlowe held up a hand. ‘Shut up, both of you!’
They looked at him.
‘What if “anti” doesn’t mean literally opposite? Tom, your memories of Dark Entry haunt you still, am I right?’
Colwell nodded.
‘Matt, what about you?’
‘I was brought up in those buildings,’ he said, whatever childhood fears he’d once had banished now. ‘From the time I was still in hanging sleeves, I used to totter that way. I remember splashing in the puddles.’
‘I remember something else.’ Marlowe was suddenly far away. ‘It was a night in July . . .’ he looked out of the window where the moon was gleaming silver on the rooftops of Corpus Christi. ‘Ralph was with me.’
‘You were there at night?’ Parker asked. ‘You never boarded, Kit, did you?’
‘No. Dr Rose had kept us behind one night. Ralphie was always getting us both into trouble. He’d smashed a window in Strangers’ Hall and when Rose caught us, denied all knowledge. Since I was with him as well, Rose decided to flog us both.’
‘That sounds like him,’ Parker muttered.
‘We were going home.’ Marlowe recalled it as if it were yesterday. ‘Rather more quietly than usual, perhaps. We saw two figures in the Dark Entry. A man and a woman. We thought they were fighting. Ralph ran off and fetched one of the servants from the school to help the woman. He left me there alone and I was sure the man was going to kill her. She was screaming and I didn’t know what to do. Well, I was only ten. But when the servant came back with Ralph, he laughed at us and sent us round the long way out of school. Ralph and I talked about it a lot for ages, wondering if the man had been arrested, whether the woman was all right.’ Marlowe laughed, at the children he and Whitingside once were.
There was a silence.
‘But what were they fighting about?’ Parker asked.
Marlowe looked at him in astonishment. ‘Er . . .’
‘Oh, I see!’ Parker realized his stupidity and Colwell pelted him with cushions.
‘You can tell he’s the grandson of the Archbishop of Canterbury, can’t you?’ Colwell laughed.
When they had control of themselves again, Colwell wiping his eyes on the hem of his gown, Parker was still confused. ‘So . . . what does Ralph mean, then? Apenanti skoteinos eisodos. They weren’t doing it? And who are they? And why Canterbury? God, Kit, we’re no further forward, are we?’
Marlowe looked at him, the worried scholar under the thatch of hair. ‘I don’t know, Matty,’ he said. ‘But Ralph’s trying to tell us something.’
A silence filled the Corpus night. Marlowe flipped the journal backwards and forwards, worrying the problem in his mind. Then he clicked his fingers at Colwell. ‘Ralph’s letters,’ he said. ‘Remind me what we’ve got, Tom.’
Colwell riffled through them. ‘Er . . . tailor’s bill. One from his cousin. Various estate matters for the bailiff. Woodland . . . drainage . . . something about enclosure of land.’
‘What are you thinking, Kit?’ Parker asked.
‘Who’s the tailor?’
Colwell checked. ‘Tate of Mercery Lane,’ he said.
‘Does a good ruff,’ Parker remembered.
‘And the cousin?’
‘Jeremy Whitingside.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘Hawe – isn’t that Manwood’s village?’
Marlowe nodded.
‘Of course!’ Colwell blurted out. ‘Kit, you’ve got it! Ralph owed the tailor, didn’t he? Unpaid for doublet and hose or something.’
‘That’s right.’ Parker took up the theme with enthusiasm. ‘And cousin Jeremy – if he’s Ralph’s only relative, he stands to inherit on Ralph’s death. It’s a conspiracy. Tate and Jeremy worked together. Ralph wasn’t paying his tailor’s bill, but that wouldn’t matter once Jeremy got his hands on Ralph’s lands. Brilliant!’
‘And no doubt,’ sighed Marlowe, ‘Ralph’s bailiff was in on it, hoping for a better master and he could supply the foxglove tincture.’
The others looked at him.
‘Lads, lads,’ he said patiently. ‘Have you learned nothing from Johns over the last three years? Cousin Jeremy has sizeable estates at Hawe. After Manwood and the church he’s the leading landowner. He wouldn’t cross the road for Ralph’s few acres, let alone kill him, especially as they’re miles away from his own. And Master Tate may be a chiseller, but I don’t have him down for a cold-blooded killer. Neither of them had easy access to Ralph here in Cambridge, so short of hiring a sworder . . .’
Silence again. Professional killers were beyond the experience of any of them.
‘And what about Henry?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Throw him into the equation and all ideas float out of the window.’
‘So, what are you saying?’ Colwell asked.
‘The cypher.’ Marlowe turned to the journal again. ‘What else does it tell us?’
‘Dark Entry,’ Parker muttered. ‘Tombs. Five arches. Ow, Kit, that hurts.’ Marlowe had grabbed his arm and his fingers were digging in to the muscle above the elbow.
‘Five,’ he hissed. ‘Five.’ He looked at the lads, their faces glowing in the candlelight. And he held up an index finger. ‘Ralph Whitingside,’ he said. A second finger joined the first. ‘Henry Bromerick.’ His ring finger jerked upright. ‘Thomas Colwell,’ he said.
Colwell blinked.
Marlowe raised his little finger. ‘Matthew Parker.’
The boy licked his lips as Marlowe’s thumb came to the upright.
‘Christopher Marlowe.’
‘Five,’ Colwell mouthed.
‘Four Parker scholars and an odd one,’ Marlowe said with a nod. ‘Whatever this is about, gentlemen, it’s to do with Canterbury. And none of us is safe. Tom, are you carrying a dagger?’
‘I can be,’ Colwell said.
‘Matt?’
‘Kit,’ the boy said, ‘you know I never . . .’
Marlowe leaned forward. ‘These are not normal times, lads. We must all watch our backs.’
They all jumped as the sounds of a scuffle outside in The Court told them that the night-ride of a couple of Corpus sizars had come to a sticky end.
The Parker scholars were all agreed – if they had to be inside on a sparkling midsummer’s morning, there were many worse places to be than the soaring beauty of King’s College Chapel. Marlowe was very familiar with its vaulted ceiling and oak-lined calm, Colwell and Parker less so, but even so, he couldn’t help but sit, head back, eyes half closed, letting his mind soar amongst the carvings so high above that they were always hidden in a dim fog of twilight and the smoke of dying candles.
Dr Falconer, halfway between Marlowe’s spinning imagination and the soaring height, ensconced in his organ loft, was letting his mind and fingers run free, with trills and arpeggios and variations on a theme by Thomas Tallis, an overrated composer to his mind, but nonetheless worth plagiarizing if there was any chance of getting away with it. His music wound itself into Marlowe’s imaginings and added depth and breadth to the pictures unrolling in his head.