It took several attempts to get the tinderbox to flash, but once it did, Winterton applied the sparkling fuse to the touch hole and covered his ears.
‘You’re going to kill innocent people!’ Fludd came to his senses seeing where the cannon was pointing, straight into the melee around Lord Strange’s stage.
‘They’re expendable!’ Winterton told him.
All four men stood with their hands over their ears, looking expectantly at the saker. The fuse appeared to be going out.
‘Oh, bugger!’ Winterton dropped his arms and went over to it. Before Fludd could stop him, the gun bucked, roaring with a dull crash and jerking backwards, carrying Winterton with it. The old man went down with a searing pain in his shoulder and back, but nobody was watching. As if in a dream, Lord Strange’s stage blew up, flats collapsing in all directions and debris raining down on those nearest to it. Flames leapt skyward in the cannonball’s path, burning gunpowder peppering the tinder-dry timbers and even setting fire to the grass.
The fighting mob broke with a cacophony of screams and shouts, sheer panic driving them from the field. In minutes, the only people left standing on Parker’s Piece were five constables of the watch, bloodied but unbowed. There was an eerie silence for a moment, then the moans of the wounded rose here and there. Fludd patted the saker’s barrel and realized the thing had split along most of its length. It could have killed them all.
He knelt beside Edward Winterton, who was lying on the ground, still clutching his arm. ‘How did we do, Constable?’ shouted the coroner, in the over-loud tones of the deaf. He shook his head, as a puppy will who has snapped at a fly.
‘I think we did very well, Sir Edward,’ Fludd told him, wiping the blood from his face. He looked on as the rioters, numbed and exhausted, began to drift away from the edge of the field. He faced the man to give his words the extra emphasis Winterton needed while his ears still rang. ‘Very well.’
‘I’d swear that was a cannon,’ Roger Manwood said, strolling in the knot garden at Madingley.
‘It was,’ John Dee told him. ‘A saker by the sound.’
‘Some sort of celebration, Francis?’ Manwood half turned to his host walking with them.
‘What day is it?’ Hynde often needed to be reminded of that.
‘Saturday,’ Manwood said. ‘Sixteenth of July.’
‘Hmm,’ Hynde said, bending his memory to recall the saints’ days celebrated in his youth. ‘That would probably be . . . not St Athenogenes, surely. St Faustus . . . no, I can’t think of anything that would warrant a cannon.’ He sniffed the air. ‘And a bonfire as well, unless I miss my guess.’
Dee, who professed to know nothing of such matters, could nonetheless think of another half dozen saints who had once shared this day, but kept quiet, for the good of his reputation.
The men stayed silent for a minute, waiting for another explosion, but none came.
Hynde shrugged. ‘Can’t be much. Come on, gentlemen, let’s to billiards.’
It seemed like a good idea.
As the sun went down over Cambridge, Lord Strange’s property was still blazing into the night, sending sparks into the evening sky. The streets were strangely deserted. The churches were cluttered with bleeding people, comforting others. Stallholders in the square were trying to assess the damage. The Mayor and his corporation were making the brave decision to leave it until the morning before making an appearance. The colleges had battened down their hatches and bolted their gates. Any scholars still abroad were strictly on their own and the Proctors had orders to admit no one.
‘A woman and child, Michael?’ Dr Norgate sat in his study at Corpus surrounded by the books he loved. ‘This is very irregular.’
‘These are irregular times, Master,’ Professor Johns reminded the old man. ‘Marlowe brought them.’
‘I’m glad you raised the topic of Marlowe.’ Gabriel Harvey spoke from the shadows for the first time. He’d been watching the fire-glow over the rooftops and couldn’t think of a better time to consign a man he hated to Hell. ‘I have evidence of his involvement in the death of the King’s scholar, Whitingside.’
The other two stared at him.
‘What evidence?’ Johns asked.
‘The word of a gentleman,’ Harvey told him flatly. He closed on Norgate. ‘I hate to have to bring this to your attention, Master, but I fear it all has to do with the crime of Sodom.’
Johns, the quiet, the sensible, the unflappable, stepped forward. He knew that if Marlowe had been there, Gabriel Harvey would be dead by now. He stood toe to toe with Harvey, eyes burning, fists clenched.
‘This is a purely college matter,’ Norgate said. ‘And now is not the time to investigate, sir.’
Johns relaxed a little.
‘But there will come a time,’ Norgate said.
THIRTEEN
Ursula Hynde lay in her bed with the curtains drawn and the bedclothes up to her chin. Her linen cap was pulled down on to her forehead and tied tightly in place, to protect both her thinning curls and her modesty. It was her wedding day and she had been working tirelessly for weeks to make it perfect. Her dress was laid out in the next room, beaded and embroidered to such a depth that she could hardly move under its weight. Her bridesmaids had been gathered, chosen from the best families as befitted a Hynde, even if only by marriage. She even had three boys, kitted out in identical suits of clothes bought at huge expense, to help carry her train. They were lodged in a house in Cambridge; the proprieties were all-important to Ursula Hynde and she didn’t think it was right that three adolescent boys should be in rooms next to three adolescent girls, although her knowledge of what might ensue was hazy, having been brought up very strictly before being married to an older man. But still, it wasn’t right. So now, all she needed was a perfect summer’s day. She called to her maid, who slept in a truckle bed in the corner.
‘Dorcas?’
There was a sigh and a muttered word, which may have been ‘Anne!’ Then: ‘Yes, mistress?’
‘Draw back the curtains. What is the weather today?’
The maidservant whipped back the hangings of the bed. ‘I have had the window curtains back for hours, mistress. The day is fine.’
‘Why are you up and about so early?’ Mistress Steane-to-be struggled upright in her feather bed and straightened her cap.
‘I am packing up my bed, mistress. I must move my things up to the attic.’
‘Why must you move your bed?’ Ursula Hynde was confused. ‘What will happen if I need you in the night?’
The maid blushed. Surely, after all the rushing about, the stupid woman had not forgotten she was to be married today? She looked at her feet, stuck for an answer and yet her mistress seemed to be waiting for one. ‘Tonight . . . well, you will be married, mistress.’
‘Yes.’ The woman looked down her not-inconsiderable nose at the maid. ‘I know that. What I wanted to know was . . . ah, I see.’ She drew herself up and spent a moment tidying her bedclothes to hide her confusion. Memories of her previous nuptials spread over her face in a crimson tide. Then her head snapped up. ‘Get on with it then, girl. We don’t have all day.’
The maid let out the breath she had been holding for what felt like years. ‘I have done now, mistress. I thought you might like to break your fast in bed this morning.’ She tried a small smile. ‘As a treat. On your big day.’
Ursula Hynde allowed herself to smile back. The girl was right. It was a big day. She inclined her head. ‘That would be nice, Dorcas. Thank you. That was a kind thought.’ Then, to make sure the girl didn’t think that her mistress was going soft: ‘Run along, then. And make sure on the way that the bride’s maids and men are up and ready. Tell them to eat a good breakfast; they won’t be getting anything else once they have their wedding clothes on, I can assure them of that.’