by M. J. Trow
‘Your loss,’ Dee said with a shrug. ‘Now, to cases, Marlowe. You knew this Whitingside well, of course.’
‘He was my ward,’ Manwood said. ‘But I’d be lying if I said he was like a son to me.’
Dee knew that. Roger Manwood was one of those people who made the bringing up of wards a business proposition. That was why they had a court for such things in London.
‘But he lived in my house for . . . ooh, let’s see . . .’ He let his head rest back against the tree trunk. ‘It must have been four years. He was one of several wards at the time. I’ve given it all up now of course. At my age I’m getting tired of young people. They’re too damned earnest and holier-than-you for my liking.’ He glanced sideways at his old friend; almost everyone was holier than John Dee. ‘I’ve just got the one now, Joyce. A couple of London merchants have expressed an interest, but I’m holding out for Lord Scrope; he’s in the market for wifey number three, you know, turning heads at Court, that sort of thing. Such a vain bastard.’
‘Whitingside,’ Dee reminded him. How this man was able to focus on the job in hand on the Bench was beyond him. Scourge of the night prowlers indeed!
‘I know what you’re after, John,’ Manwood said, sitting upright again. ‘You want a nice little motive on a pewter platter, all parcelled up with ribbon. Well, I’m afraid the sordid world of murder doesn’t work like that. Oh, you’ve got the easy job. Anybody can tell how a man was killed . . . well, almost anybody. No, the problem is why. The Ralph Whitingside I knew was typical minor gentry. Same class as you and me. He was a bit wild, you know. He and young Marlowe sowed a few wild oats, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘But Marlowe’s younger, surely?’ Dee checked.
‘By two years, yes. Whitingside saved him from drowning once.’
‘So Marlowe feels he owes his soul something.’ Dee was gazing into the middle distance, beyond the warm stone that was Madingley with its green cupolas and the stable wing beyond, trying to establish events in his mind.
Manwood always became uneasy when John Dee started talking about souls. If the Queen died tomorrow, the Privy Council might have the magus burnt. The scourge of the night prowlers liked to keep a back door open in this relationship, just in case. He didn’t press the point further. ‘There was talk of a girl,’ the Justice suddenly remembered. ‘Some bad feeling between Whitingside and Marlowe. What was her name?’
‘Marlowe and a girl?’ Dee frowned.
Manwood raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
‘And of course you knew the other one – Broderick – didn’t you?’
‘I did. Nice enough lad, I suppose, but there was always something . . . bovine about him. He didn’t sparkle like the other King’s School lads.’
‘Marlowe most of all.’ Dee puffed his pipe.
‘Ah,’ Manwood chuckled. ‘There’s no one like Kit Marlowe. Mark my words, John, that man has greatness in him.’
‘Or a short end,’ Dee said.
‘You spoke to this local Constable, didn’t you?’ Manwood asked. ‘About Bromerick, I mean?’
‘I did,’ Dee confirmed.
‘Any good?’ Manwood asked.
‘For a provincial Constable, very,’ Dee said. ‘But he’s got his hands full with some woman found in the river.’
‘Any connection?’ Manwood wanted to know.
Dee puffed deep on the pipe, much to his friend’s disgust. ‘I can’t see how. Constable Fludd has found her relatives – they came from Royston, I believe. There’s no evidence she knew Whitingside or Bromerick or any of them. It is, as the Papists used to have it in connection with the Eucharist, a mystery.’
Manwood leaned forward. ‘I told Marlowe he was on his own,’ he said.
‘So did I,’ agreed Dee.
‘And yet, here we are, on a summer’s day, nonny-nonny, trolly-lolly, fretting about him.’
‘Oh, I’m not fretting about Marlowe,’ Dee said, blowing smoke again. ‘But I’m a man who likes answers to riddles, Roger. I can’t let things go.’
‘Riddles, eh?’ Suddenly Francis Hynde was there, still clutching his bottle, joining them where they lolled in the sun in his best hiding place. ‘I love a good riddle.’ He smiled beatifically at them. ‘I have a good one. Wait a minute . . . it’s about . . . no, it’s gone.’ He tipped the bottle up, a proof of hope over experience as it had been empty for some time. He frowned at the men, seeming to register them for the first time. ‘You shouldn’t be here, you know,’ he announced. ‘It’s very dangerous. This tree’s on fire.’ And with that, he passed out neatly across their legs and began to snore.
Dee glanced down at his host, then pointed to the edge of the Physick Garden where dear Ursie was still marshalling her troops. ‘And talking of riddles,’ he said, ‘what are the odds of foxgloves growing at Madingley, when they shouldn’t be here at all?’
ELEVEN
No one went out that night. At least, not the Parker scholars. A couple of sizars from ‘F’ staircase had sneaked out behind the night soil men and Marlowe had watched them go, holding their noses at the same time as keeping their eyes open for the prowling Proctors. He had tutted and shaken his head. Each generation had to learn their own lesson; it was no use telling them. Not only would Lomas and Darryl be waiting for their return, the smell of them would make the hunting easy.
‘And you say he asked for me by name?’ he said, turning from the window where his reflection flickered for an instant, four times in the thick, uneven panes.
‘He did.’ Parker was munching an apple. ‘When we asked him why he wanted to know, he said he’d heard the name somewhere, from someone in London and he couldn’t remember who.’
‘Who do you know in London, Kit?’ Colwell asked, plucking idly at his lute.
Marlowe shrugged. ‘Nobody,’ he said. ‘What did you pair of innocents abroad tell him about me?’
‘Nothing,’ Parker said, perhaps a shade too quickly.
‘Liar,’ Marlowe muttered.
‘Well . . .’ Colwell was working out his defence, long learned in the School of Logic. ‘He seemed such an honest fellow. Ex Granta man. One of us.’
‘One of us is dead, Tom,’ Marlowe said softly. Any further conversation seemed pointless after that. Colwell twanged the lute strings once, twice more, then put the thing down. They all heard a dog barking in the distance, out along the High Ward in the July darkness and the rattle of a cart creaking its way home.
Marlowe fished idly in the bag that Dr Steane had brought them, handling Ralph Whitingside’s handkerchiefs and gloves. He hadn’t really noticed the mirror before. None of the Parker scholars had one and the teaching of the churches now was that such things smacked of vanity and vanity was fast becoming a sin above all others, even though Marlowe was constantly telling the boys that the only real sin was ignorance. Marlowe found himself smiling, not at his own crooked reflection in the mirror but that Ralphie would have checked his own very carefully before slipping over the wall for a night on the town, combing the elegant moustache, curling the well-placed ringlet. What a waste it all was. Marlowe tossed the thing casually among the papers on his desk.
Suddenly, he stiffened, catching his breath despite himself.
‘Kit?’ Colwell caught the movement.
Marlowe grabbed the mirror again, angling it against the parchment. Then, he brushed it all aside – his scribbled poetry, his jottings on the Queen of Carthage, even some university lecture notes that he was supposed to be working on. And he hauled out Whitingside’s journal. He nodded to himself, smiling grimly.
‘Kit!’ Colwell shouted. ‘What the Devil . . . ?’
‘Tell me about the Dark Entry,’ Marlowe said.
‘What?’ Parker had stopped munching and waited, not noticing the trickle of juice working its way down his chin.
‘Come on, Kit,’ Colwell said. ‘You know as well as we do. This is not the time for schoolboy reminiscences.’
‘Oh, but it is, dear boy. Matt? The Dark En
try?’
Parker sat upright on his bed. He put down his apple core and wiped his chin. He was as game for riddles as the next man. ‘It’s the name we all had, all us King’s scholars, for the entry to the school from the cathedral cloisters, through Prior Sellingegate.’
Marlowe nodded. ‘What do you remember of it, Tom?’ he asked.
Colwell hadn’t moved.
‘Come on, man!’ Marlowe was shouting now. ‘You walked through those arches every day of your life for five years. Think!’
‘There were five arches,’ Colwell said, quietly, sending his mind back in time, ‘from Prior Sellingegate. It was very dark in winter. In the freezing mornings. I used to run.’
‘Why?’ Marlowe asked.
Colwell looked at him, then at Parker, then away, looking at no one, confronting his own past. ‘I didn’t like it,’ he said. ‘When you’re eight, silly things frighten you.’
‘Henry knew that,’ Marlowe said. ‘He’d tease you, wouldn’t he? Play jokes. Jump out at you in the darkest recess?’
Colwell nodded and shuddered, as though someone had walked over his grave. ‘I’d forgotten all about it,’ he said, ‘until now.’
‘What’s all this about, Kit?’ Parker wanted to know.
‘Come here,’ Marlowe said and the boys clustered round him. He held up the mirror against the page. ‘Who was working on this bit?’ he asked.
Colwell looked shamefaced. ‘I should have been,’ he muttered. ‘But . . . Henry was. This was the bit he gave to Johns who said he’d pass it on to a colleague.’
‘Well, Professor Johns should be ashamed of himself.’ Marlowe tapped his arm affectionately. ‘Matthew Parker, how is your Greek?’
‘It’s backwards!’ Parker roared as if he’d discovered the origins of the universe and the elixir of life in one rapturous moment. ‘Ralphie wrote this bit backwards. That’s why we couldn’t make sense of it!’
‘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 di
gging 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.