‘Hello, darlin’.’ A Bedford Levels man stood in Allys’s path. ‘Now, where are you goin’ in such a hurry?’ He grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her to him. Allys bit the man’s lip as it brushed her mouth and he pulled back, bleeding and swearing. In a second, he’d shaken his head and slapped her hard across the face, sending her reeling.
‘Don’t hurt my mummy!’ Kate screamed at him, pounding his leg with fists and feet. He scooped her up and held her on high, dangling her at arm’s length, laughing.
It was then that Fludd saw his daughter, being twirled like a puppet above the mob. He didn’t remember the next few seconds or how he crossed that field, but the next thing Allys Fludd knew was that the oaf was lying senseless alongside her and her husband was straddling her, holding their daughter to him and soothing her crying. He snatched Allys to her feet and held them both tight.
A body collided with the little group and Fludd turned, staff at the ready to crack more heads.
‘Good afternoon, Constable,’ the scholar said.
‘Master Marlowe,’ Fludd panted. ‘Enjoying the play?’
Marlowe smiled. ‘I don’t think much of the metre.’
Fludd was suddenly serious. ‘Marlowe, my wife and child. Get them to safety, for God’s sake.’
Marlowe looked at the Fludd women, one tiny, one heavy with child, both tear stained. ‘It will be my pleasure,’ he said and he shepherded them away.
‘Joe!’ Allys screamed, but Marlowe held her fast, with little Kate clinging to her skirts. They all saw the man disappear into the crowd again, pulling fighters apart and laying about him with his tipstaff.
‘Constabulary business,’ Marlowe said, smiling. ‘Calm yourself, Mistress Fludd. Your husband is very good at pursuing his enquiries.’
Gradually, the sounds of battle on Parker’s Piece died away and Marlowe and the Fludd family joined the throng drifting along Silver Street. Occasionally, as they hurried west, there were shouts and roars as some new outrage was committed around the wooden O that had started the whole thing. Then, they were hurrying down St Edward’s Passage and around the corner to the front gate of Corpus. It was locked. Marlowe drew his dagger for the first time that day and hammered on the gnarled old oak with its pommel. There was a grating sound and the grille slid back.
‘College is locked, Marlowe,’ Proctor Lomas grunted. ‘You’re on your own.’
‘I’ve a woman and child here, Lomas,’ Marlowe hissed. ‘If you won’t let me in, at least think of them. It’s murder out here, man.’
Lomas grinned. ‘Oh, you’ve got lots of ways to get in and out of Corpus, Dominus Marlowe. Why don’t you use one of them now?’
There was a metallic clink as Marlowe’s blade flashed upwards, catching the Proctor’s nose along with the grille. ‘Avert your gaze, Mistress Fludd,’ he said. ‘There are some things a constable’s wife shouldn’t see.’
Allys Fludd was made of sterner stuff. And after this afternoon, she’d seen enough for a lifetime, constable’s wife or not. Marlowe had gripped Lomas’ nose with one hand and held the glinting blade under his nostrils.
‘Now, Proctor Lomas,’ he said softly. ‘You will very slowly raise your right hand and unlock this gate. If you don’t, you won’t be picking your nose for a while because you won’t have a nose to pick.’ And the blade edged infinitesimally higher.
Behind the gate, Lomas was on tiptoe already and he couldn’t pull away for fear of the speed of Marlowe’s knife. Gingerly, very gingerly, he turned the heavy key to his right and the door creaked open. Marlowe kicked it so that it slammed back on the Proctor and he ushered the Fludd women inside before locking it again behind them.
Briefly, he bent over the man. ‘I promised you that there’d be a reckoning,’ he said.
Professor Johns strode past the Proctor’s Lodge at that moment and glanced at the scene that met him, Lomas lying groaning on the flagstones, holding his head.
‘Lying down on the job again, Lomas?’ he chirped. ‘Tut tut.’
In another part of the field, a wheezing Sir Edward Winteron found a bleeding Joseph Fludd.
‘Sir Edward,’ the Constable shouted in his ear as all Hell raged around them, ‘you shouldn’t be here. Go home, sir.’
‘When you do, Constable,’ the coroner shouted back. ‘Tell me, is there still a cannon in Great St Mary’s?’
‘Yes, sir, a saker. It’s in one of the outbuildings.’
‘How many men to get it here?’ Winterton wanted to know.
Checking the parish gun was part of the Constable’s duties. The thing was eight feet long and weighed 1500 pounds. ‘Four,’ Fludd said, optimistically. ‘Three at a pinch.’
‘Three it is, then. Take two of your men and get it here. There’ll be powder and shot with it.’
‘Er . . . I should point out, Sir Edward -’ Fludd knew his local legislation – ‘that that gun was placed there on the orders of King Harry. In case the French should invade.’
‘Yes, laddie,’ Winterton humoured him. ‘I’m impressed by your grasp of history.’ He looked at the man closely under the mask of blood. ‘You weren’t even born then, surely? I remember it as though it were yesterday.’
‘That’s my point, sir,’ Fludd shouted. ‘Nobody’s fired the gun in forty years. As for the powder . . .’
‘Bring it!’ roared Winterton. ‘It may be that just the sight of the damn thing will bring those rioting idiots to their senses. It won’t be long before they start on the shops and God help us then.’
Fludd hauled two of his lads out of the fight and they ran across the field in the direction of the church of Great St Mary.
‘Yes, that’s it!’ Harry Rushe and his fenland men saw them go. ‘Run away, you tipstaff bastards!’ And he swung back to the punching again.
Winterton had been right about the event, but wrong about the time. Even as Fludd and his men dragged the heavy saker across the market square and into Petty Cury, people were smashing windows and ripping down the market awnings, stuffing whatever they could into jerkin-fronts and aprons. Here and there, running battles broke out as shopkeepers fought with looters to the crash of glass and the clash of steel. Stallholders struggled to keep their frames upright and all the shutters came down in a rattle of bolts.
Fludd himself carried the powder and shot, a six pound iron ball that bounced painfully in the canvas bag at his hip as the constables negotiated the tight corner by Pembroke Hall at a jog. Even the wounded and the just plain scared who were hurrying or straggling homeward in the evening sun stopped short at the sight of the saker. No one had seen a cannon on Cambridge streets for years; some of the younger ones didn’t quite know what it was. Fludd grabbed a couple of the more intrigued and dragooned them to putting their shoulders to the wheel.
Parker’s Piece looked like a battlefield, with hats, clothes and rubbish lying everywhere. Winterton had been defending himself with his sword while keeping an eye out for the gun. Now he launched himself in a tired run and helped Fludd and his lads to haul it into position. Those nearest broke off the fighting to stare at the thing, with its bronze barrel and studded wheels. But if Winterton had hoped its appearance would shock the mob into civil obedience, he was wrong.
He tossed his sword to a Constable and began tearing at Fludd’s powder supply.
‘Do you know how to fire this thing, Sir Edward?’ Fludd asked him, now thoroughly alarmed at the proposition.
Winterton pulled himself up to his full height. ‘Sir,’ he said calmly, ‘I fought at Pinkie. You never forget.’ And he stuffed handfuls of the black powder into the muzzle. There were still cobwebs on the carriage and the nuts were rusted. Fludd didn’t have a good feeling about this.
‘Ball, ball!’ Winterton shouted and Fludd rolled the shot down the hole.
‘Ram!’ Winterton ordered. ‘Ram?’ he asked, arms outstretched, looking wildly at the Constable. ‘Where’s the ram?’
‘There wasn’t one,’ Fludd realized, all too late. He dashed across the field, disarmed a fenman of his quarterstaff and kicked the man in the groin. He threw the pole to the coroner who, improvising wildly, rammed the ball in place before Fludd packed in more powder.