Marlowe ignored him. ‘So when did you see your master last?’
‘Three days ago. I felt a bit of a shit, really. He gave me an angel and wished me every condolence. Nice man. Nice man.’ Latimer seemed lost in contemplation of the dregs of his drink, then suddenly looked up. ‘But he’d have been at evensong tonight, Master Marlowe. You could have caught him then.’
‘I could have,’ Marlowe agreed. ‘But I didn’t. He wasn’t there.’
Latimer frowned. ‘Now that is peculiar,’ he said. ‘Likes a good sing song, does the Master.’
Marlowe stood up, taking in Latimer’s fellow card players. They wore rough linen and leather – stallholders, grooms. They were Town, not Gown. Even so, he crouched close to Latimer as he said, ‘How do I reach Ralph’s rooms?’
Latimer hesitated, his little piggy eyes swivelling around the room, just in case. ‘Fourth staircase to the west,’ he hissed. ‘Your best bet is the Tit Lane entrance. And you didn’t hear it from me.’ He patted the side of his nose.
Marlowe nodded and turned to the door. At the steps he paused as Latimer resumed his game. ‘I wouldn’t play that king, Will,’ he said. ‘Not with your luck.’ He winked and had gone before Latimer hurled down his hand among a cacophony of laughter and the servant gave vent to a string of profanities that would make a cardinal blush.
Trinity Lane was deserted at that time of night. This was not the best way into King’s for roisterers. There were too many angles and sharp drops for a man who’d downed a few. Better to take your chances via the shrubbery and the Proctors; on the balance of things, a striped back was preferable to a broken neck.
Marlowe knew that Ralph Whitingside had changed his quarters recently. Whitingside was no man’s ward now, but a gentleman pensioner in his own right, and that gave him a new status with which the Fellows of King’s and the Provost had to live. The man’s old rooms were in the farthest corner from the Chapel, but now, in the new scheme of things, the fourth staircase was behind the great Gothic masterpiece of Harry VI, quieter and more secluded. All to Marlowe’s good.
He’d toyed briefly with doubling back to Corpus to collect his robe and see if the lads had had any luck, but that would have brought him into the lair of Lomas and Darryl again and he knew they’d be doubly watchful after the events of the night before – still out to catch the man the other scholars called Machiavel, before the ceremony of the degree put him out of their reach forever. Besides, the lads knew where Marlowe would be and if they’d found Whitingside, they’d have brought him word by now.
So, he’d gone, capless and doubletted, rising on his toes and trying not to clatter on the cobbles in the lane. The black angles of King’s reared up above him, but he’d stayed sober all night and he’d done this before. He grabbed the ledge above his head and hauled himself upwards. There was no moon tonight, no Heavenly lantern to shine God’s eye on the ungodly. And anyway, for once, all Christopher Marlowe was doing was trying to find a friend. It was the rank stupidity of the university that you couldn’t just walk in and say ‘hello’. A formal visit would mean paperwork, questions asked and answered, snooping. And there were too many men in Cambridge recently who had stood up to be counted, filled in the paperwork, answered questions. Some of them were dead now, screaming hymns of hopelessness as the flames seared the skin from their writhing bodies.
He caught the next parapet, slipping once as a piece of masonry chipped off under his boot-sole. Hand over hand he crossed the wall’s face, checking each window to make sure the shutters were closed.
The sizars, poor miserable sods, would be asleep now, huddled together for warmth in the Great Hall, dreading the clang and scrape of the Chapel bell. But these rooms, whose walls he clung to now were the gentlemen pensioners’ quarters, large and well-appointed. He hoped none of them had dogs that would catch his shadow and bay the lack of moon.
In the angle of the roof, he hauled himself upright and lay for a moment on the damp coldness of the tiles. Some June this, with autumn already coating the stonework in the small hours. Dominus or not, could he really stand another winter in Cambridge before his own warm south beckoned him? He crawled along the eaves, feeling the bird droppings, hard and crusty under his fingers. A sleeping pigeon woke, startled and flapped frantically to the sky.
Now, Marlowe was on the leads, the little attic windows of the servants’ quarters standing sentinel over the sleeping town. A small studded door crouched to his left, half-hidden by the ivy that grew there. He tried it gently with his shoulder and it creaked open. Good old Latimer; Marlowe felt vaguely guilty now about exposing the man’s hand at the Devil.
He ducked inside and crept along a corridor, wincing as his groin collided with a table. One door, two, and then in the dim half-light from the nearest window he found the staircase. The banister was like polished glass under his hand, the ancient oak worn smooth by generations of scholars. On the first floor, he stopped. He couldn’t risk lighting a candle, although they stood unlit at intervals on the furniture in the hall. He peered at the name beside the door, but it was too dark to see. He felt with his fingers. An ‘F’, definitely. A tall letter in the middle . . . Firebrace. Damn. He padded on, checking left and right. The next was easy. Hartland. Where was the man’s room?
It was the light that stopped him. The growing glimmer of a candle from the floor below, illuminating the plaster ceiling, pargeted with its knots and heraldry. Then, the sound. A rattle of keys, a low, almost tuneless humming. Not a King’s scholar, certainly. Not with a voice like that.
Marlowe flattened himself against the wall. He just had time to catch the name by the door as the candle’s glow lit it – Whitingside – before he slid round the corner, not daring to breathe. He had not graduated yet. And breaking into another college would mean he never would. Not even the kindly Dr Norgate could save him and those bastards Harvey, Lomas and Darryl would have a field day.
He heard the whisper of skirts along the passageway, the rattle of a key and the squeak of a door being opened. He popped his head round at an awkward angle to see the bedder disappearing into Ralph’s rooms.
Eliza Laurence had been a bedder since before Christopher Marlowe was born. She’d come all the way from Royston as a girl, walking barefoot with her father who got an ostler’s job, courtesy of the university. She knew these stairs like the back of her hand, every twist and turn. She bobbed before all the scholars, whatever their rank and had never spoken to the Master or the Fellows in her life. But then, she’d never drunk a pint of beer, or missed the Sabbath or seen the sea. And she’d never seen anything like what she saw lying in the guttering candle flame on the bed in Ralph Whitingside’s room. She would have screamed, but couldn’t.
And that was because Christopher Marlowe had placed his hand tightly over her mouth.
THREE
Marlowe closed the door with the hand that wasn’t steadying Eliza Laurence. He led her, weeping, into the next chamber and sat her down.
‘I am a friend,’ he said quietly. ‘I mean you no harm.’
She blinked up at him through her tears. ‘Oh, sir, what can have happened? Is it the plague?’
He shook his head.
‘The sweating sickness?’ she suggested, trying to make sense of what she’d seen in the next room. ‘My old mother went of that years ago. It strikes you down like God’s own hand.’
A hand had struck down Ralph Whitingside, certainly, but Marlowe wasn’t sure God had much to do with it. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked her.
‘Eliza, sir.’