‘Oh, really!’ Sledd laughed, shaking his head. Then, he was serious and closed to his man. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘You’re the Mayor’s man, I assume. His factotum?’
‘I am Constable of the Watch.’ Fludd was on his dignity. He hadn’t warmed to Sledd at all.
‘Of course you are,’ Sledd patronized. ‘How many taverns do you have? Fifteen? Twenty?’
‘Enough,’ Fludd told him.
‘Good, good. What about trugging houses?’
‘Sir?’ The player king had lost him.
‘Stews, man.’
Still nothing.
‘Brothels!’ Sledd whispered in the Constable’s ear.
‘None,’ Fludd told him flatly.
‘None?’ Sledd mouthed, but no voice came out.
‘This is a respectable town, sir. You’re lucky we’re letting you in.’
‘No, no,’ Sledd said, laughing. He’d heard this before, more or less at every town they visited. ‘It’s you who are lucky. Have you any idea of the skills my troupe possess? Dancing, singing, agility of body, memory, skill of weapon, pregnancy of wit. They are like springs of pure water -’ he was getting carried away with his own rhetoric and flung his arm wide – ‘which grows sweeter the more they are drawn from.’ He let out a breath, dropped his arm and turned to Fludd. ‘And we are bringing all this to you Cantabrigensians for the most trifling sum.’ He moved closer to Fludd. ‘What’s the Mayor’s cut? Ten per cent of the gate?’
‘I believe so, sir,’ the Constable told him.
‘And yours?’ Sledd thought it best to check in advance.
‘I don’t take bribes, sir,’ Fludd said, looking him in the eye.
The eye widened in disbelief and Sledd spread his arms wide.
‘Come on, Ned,’ a squawky lad called to him from the first wagon. ‘My arse is killing me on this thing.’
‘Keep your wig on, Thomas. I am in the presence of that rare beast, an honest Englishman.’ He put his plumed hat back on with a suitably theatrical flourish. ‘You’ll have to excuse him,’ he said, nodding towards the boy. ‘He’s playing the lead tomorrow. It’s gone to his head rather.’
‘You mean . . . he’s playing the Fair Maid of Kent?’
Sledd frowned. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You don’t think we’d be so perverse as to put females on the stage, do you? What do you take us for, man? There are laws in this great country of ours.’
Sledd moved away to mount the wagon, then turned back to Fludd. ‘Are you sure there aren’t any trugging houses?’
The camp fires of Lord Strange’s Men flickered in the cooling night air on the level open space that was Parker’s Piece, on the edge of the town. In the circle of carts and wagons, their carpenters had been hammering and sawing all day, adjusting the travelling stage they’d brought with them for the Fair Maid of Kent. Striped awnings flapped slightly in the breeze and rattled the painted flats that had been lashed to the wooden O.
All day the children and men of Cambridge had found reason to go there, snooping, prying, staring at the actors as they went through their paces, making passes with their swords and dancing to drum and fife. The women went nowhere near, not during daylight, for fear of what their neighbours would think. They just quizzed their menfolk on their return. What was the play the company was putting on? Was Lord Strange there himself? How handsome were the leading men? And would there be fireworks?
Kit Marlowe left it until nightfall to make his own visit. For most of the day he’d been closeted in King’s Chapel, more for Ralph Whitingside’s than Benjamin Steane’s benefit, although it would do the dear, dead man little good now. It was good to stretch his legs, striding past the flaming torches that marked the edge of the ground. Laughing girls passed him, nudging each other at the handsome roisterer in his doublet and colleyweston cloak. But they were otherwise engaged already with the lads of Lord Strange, even if one of them was wearing a dress.
He suddenly felt a bit of a fool. In his satchel he carried a manuscript on parchment – A True History of Dido, Queen of Carthage. He’d been scratching away at this for nearly a year, when he should have been learning his Horace and his Aristotle. Yet he was drawn to the theatre like a moth to a flame. And now the theatre had come to him, with all its magick and its fire, right here on Parker’s Piece.
He looked across to the stage, silent and deserted now under the moon, waiting for the trumpet blast that would open the theatre and release the crowds. Instinctively, he crossed to it and stood looking up at the flats, with their palace stairs and turrets and the silver birches of his own home county.
A movement caught his eye and he turned fast, making sure his back was to the woodwork. He saw the swirl of a short cloak and the flash of an earring in the half darkness. But this was no player-king, no lord of the boards. For a brief moment, he looked at a pale reflection of himself – another roisterer in doublet and cloak and carrying a satchel just like his.
‘I hope you’ve made your peace with God,’ he said in a steady, level voice.
An answer rang back. ‘Kit? Kit Marlowe – is that you?’
‘You know perfectly well, it is, Robert Greene,’ Marlowe answered. ‘But you can call me Machiavel. Or avenging angel, as you prefer.’
‘Kit!’ Greene emerged into the full glare of a brazier’s light. ‘It’s been . . . what?’ He held out a hand.
‘Nothing like long enough,’ Marlowe said, ignoring the offer of friendship. ‘But I must admit, I admire your nerve.’
‘Er . . . do you?’
Marlowe looked at the frozen smile on the man’s face. ‘You can’t have forgotten our last conversation,’ he said. ‘The one where I told you I’d cut your pocky off if I saw you again.’
‘Ah, now, Kit,’ Greene trilled, a little more falsetto than he’d hoped. ‘That was so . . . two years ago. All’s forgiven, surely? Old friends like us . . .’ He dropped his hand at last.
‘You haven’t got any friends, Robyn,’ Marlowe said. ‘What you do have is the brass neck to steal my poetry, pass it off as your own and then pretend that nothing has happened.’
‘No, no,’ Greene protested. ‘There’s been some mistake. A misunderstanding.’
‘What’s in the bag?’ Marlowe asked.
‘The . . . er . . .’ Greene seemed to have forgotten he was holding it. ‘Oh, nothing, just some college notes. I’m reading for my Master’s degree now, at St John’s.’
‘Kicked you out of Italy, did they?’ the Corpus man checked.
‘Kit . . .’
Marlowe suddenly lunged, snatching the satchel from Greene’s grasp and hauling it open.
‘You’ve got no right, you murdering bastard!’ Greene yelled and in an instant there was a dagger in his hand and he was running at Marlowe. The Corpus man feinted with his cloak and wrapped it over Greene’s head before kicking him in the backside so hard that he sprawled on the ground. Marlowe tugged the papers from Greene’s satchel and read the first page by the firelight. ‘Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay,’ he said. ‘More arrant tosh, Robyn?’
Greene was scrambling upwards, looking frantically at the same time for his dagger. Nobody turned their back on Kit Marlowe when his blood was up. Marlowe was quietly turning over the pages, reading the odd line here and there. ‘At least,’ he said, ‘it seems to be your tosh. There’d be no point in pinching anything as bad as this.’
He stepped back. Simultaneously, he and Greene saw the dagger at Marlowe’s feet. Marlowe kicked it up and the Johnian caught it, unsure what would happen next.
‘Tell me,’ Marlowe said. ‘Did you bring this bit of nonsense to sell to Lord Strange’s Men? See if you could make a name for yourself? Oh, Robyn, really!’ and he shook his head, tutting.
‘Well,’ Greene said, petulantly. ‘What are you doing here? What’s in your satchel?’
‘This?’ Marlowe held it up as Greene’s pages began fluttering away on the breeze. ‘Oh, just some college notes,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m reading for my Master’s degree now, at Corpus Christi. I’m finding the law particularly fascinating. Shame there isn’t one about pinching other people’s poetry.’ His smile vanished and he stepped closer to Greene, who licked his lips and held his dagger-point higher. ‘What did you mean, Robyn, a moment ago, when you were silly enough to lunge at me. I don’t object to the use of the word “bastard” in the right context, although I suspect my father would. No, the word that threw me was the adjective, “murdering”. Just who am I supposed to have murdered?’