by M. J. Trow
‘I told you, I have witnesses to the whole thing, you leaving Madingley, me following. There is Dee, Manwood, the stable lad. There were probably a few drunks sitting outside the inn who would testify to our chase. Are you going to poison and drown the whole world, Doctor Steane?’
‘Damn you, Marlowe,’ Steane snarled, jumping from his horse on to Marlowe, his weight, not skill, carrying them both to the ground. The startled animals jolted away as the pair rolled in the grass. Steane’s knife flew into the darkness and his hands struggled in the excess material of his wedding clothes to find Marlowe’s throat.
‘You’re very strong, Dr Steane,’ Marlowe hissed. ‘But you are rather older than me and I think in a straight fight, I will surely win.’
‘But this isn’t a straight fight, Master Marlowe, is it?’ Steane gasped. He was straddling the scholar, his arm pressing down on his windpipe. He weighed almost half as much again as Marlowe and had taken him off his horse with Marlowe underneath him. And he knew from experience how to choke the life out of another human being. Marlowe wriggled and twisted like a fish on a line, scrabbling with his hands in the dirt to find anything he could use as a weapon. The field had not been ploughed that year and had been left to meadow, so not even a sod was hard enough to do any damage. But the soft soil could be his weapon even so. Gathering up as big a handful as he could, Marlowe raised his hand and rubbed the dirt, with the broken flints and shards of old corn stems, into Steane’s eyes. It wouldn’t blind him, but if it just made him raise his arm for a second, Marlowe’s youth and agility would do the rest.
The Fellow howled as a broken snail-shell scraped the cornea of his left eye and he let go with an oath. As quick as a flash, Marlowe had wriggled free, unsheathing his dagger as he did so.
‘Now, Dr Steane,’ he said, moving closer, the weaving blade catching the light as he twisted it in his hand, ever closer to the man’s throat. ‘It will be a long walk still into town, so I think we should start now.’ He reached down to haul the man to his feet.
‘I don’t think I want to go to town with you, Marlowe,’ Steane grated, still rubbing his eye. ‘I want you dead.’ He grabbed the scholar’s proffered hand and yanked down hard. Marlowe’s dagger pricked the older man’s sleeve and blood spurted, black under the moon. ‘Oh, oh, see what the wicked Machiavel has done to me?’ he shouted to the stars. Then he turned his face back to Marlowe and his eyes shone. ‘I think that the coroner’s jury at your inquest will be very sympathetic to see me, a Bishop-elect, sitting in the court, cradling my injuries. All I had done was to go for a ride to calm away the stresses of the day, when suddenly, I was set upon by a known roisterer, drunkard, pederast and liar.’ Suddenly, there was a second dagger glinting in his hand; in another second the point was at Marlowe’s throat. ‘Drop the knife,’ he growled.
‘Not very bishoply behaviour, some might say,’ Marlowe said tightly, trying not to move his throat too much. He let the dagger slip from his grasp.
‘Hmm, perhaps not. We’ll see when this night ends who has the sympathy, Marlowe,’ Steane said. ‘Now –’ he whacked each horse on the rump and they wheeled towards the road, one heading for Madingley, the other for the town where its owner waited patiently – ‘as I think I have already explained, we will go to those woods over there, where you will be so good as to hang yourself.’
‘I know when I’m beaten,’ Marlowe said dully and, turning, started to make his way to the woods.
‘And I know that means you’re not,’ Steane said. ‘Even so, I will not tie you up. You have been a challenge, Master Marlowe, and so for that reason we will walk along like old friends, talking as we walk. I shall enjoy that because the life I have been living and, I fear, the life I have yet to live, is a lonely one.’ He made an expansive movement that pricked Marlowe’s throat painfully and made a small trickle of blood run into his soiled ruff. ‘I will tell you the story of my life, shall I?’
‘I would prefer you not to,’ Marlowe said. ‘As a playwright, I might feel the need to use it some day and then where would that leave us all?’
‘I would enjoy watching that, Master Marlowe; what a pity you won’t live to write it. Let me tell you a story then, as though it is some other man’s life. Then tell me if you think it would make a good play. But keep walking. We are nowhere near the trees yet.’
Marlowe trudged on, his mind whirring. It must be possible to get away from the older, heavier man, but it would perhaps be wise to hear his story first. He would need the details to prove his case, when this was all over and done.
‘Once upon a time – you must correct me, playwright, if I use the wrong words – once upon a time there was a very young priest. He had known that he would be a priest almost from when he could talk. All second sons in his family became priests. It was just the way of things. If there were two daughters, the second would become a nun. So, one son to breed, one daughter to look after the parents when they were old, one son to be a priest and make his mother proud, one daughter never to be seen again. Any other children were extra, but in my family there were only two sons.’
‘This story is very slow,’ Marlowe said, carefully. ‘The audience would have thrown some rotten fruit by now.’
‘Patience, playwright, patience. Then, in this family, a terrible thing happened. The eldest son died, leaving just the priest to do all those things; to breed, to care and to make his mother proud. But before he had to decide whether to renounce the priesthood, a marvellous thing happened which solved everyone’s dilemmas. The boy-king Edward came to the throne and priests could marry. It was a wonderful solution, especially since a beautiful girl lived just over the hill and the young priest had loved her and she had loved him since they were children.’
‘So they married,’ Marlowe added. ‘And they all lived happily ever after. That play’s too short. No jester? No lover dying from a broken heart? You would need another one to fill the time, or the audience would want their money back.’
‘Ah, but wait. This is real life, so the story is not over. The priest and his lovely bride were married, but no sooner had they done so than the king died and his sister Mary came to the throne. The fires were stoked again, men were burned as heretics, priests must be celibate. There were many ways of managing this situation, many left the priesthood or just carried on as before, with wives become housekeepers and no one any the wiser. But this young priest and his bride were very devout. They saw the world in black and white whereas you and I, Master Machiavel, we know that it is all grey, don’t we, like cats in the night?’
Marlowe couldn’t nod, but gurgled assent in the back of his throat.
‘The priest left his wife back at her parents’ house and ran far away, to a town where no one knew his name or what he had done and he did well. Mary died and Elizabeth came to the throne and many priests married, but he had almost forgotten he had ever had a wife. She had probably remarried, he told himself. It would be best not to meddle with her life any more. He was clever and learned quickly and soon he rose in the church. Then, one day, when he was within an inch of what he had always wanted, a bishopric, with a rich wife in the offing, he was walking along the riverbank when a woman called his name.’
‘His wife?’ Marlowe asked. They were nearly in the trees and he needed to move this narrative along.
‘Indeed, his wife. She had entered a nunnery in France as a lay sister, but was back now to care for her old father. She didn’t want anything from me. Her life of contemplation had made her happy with her lot and she would not have said a thing. But . . . I am not a trusting man, Master Machiavel, I didn’t trust her then and so I killed her. I twisted her Popish rosary around her neck until she stopped breathing and I pushed her body into the river.’
‘You say that very easily,’ Marlowe said. ‘And I notice that the young priest has become a character much closer to home.’
The knife point pricked again. ‘Don’t play with me!’ the man snarled. ‘Now –’ he glanced up briefly to
the towering elms – ‘do you want to die in the middle of this wood, or on the edge?’
‘On the edge.’ Marlowe could just make out the black tower of St Stephen’s and the turreted colleges beyond. ‘But the edge facing the church. It’s where my friend is buried, after all. I would like to be near him, at a time like this.’
‘The church, Master Marlowe?’ Steane sneered. ‘Don’t tell me that you have decided to embrace religion in your last moments.’
‘God is forgiving, or so I’m told.’
The Fellow sighed. ‘I believe he is,’ he said. ‘I hope he is . . . As you wish, Master Marlowe. Walk on a little, then and I will tell the rest of the story. What I didn’t realize was that Ralph Whitingside had seen what I had done. He knew that it was me, under the darkness of that archway and he came to tell me so. He would, he said, have to speak to Goad. I brazened it out and he went off, to see that jade of his from the Swan, I expect. While he was gone, I went to his rooms and put poison in the brandy he keeps there.’
The edge of the wood was showing brighter against the dark. ‘And Henry?’
‘Ah, yes, Bromerick and that bloody journal. I was afraid that Whitingside would have written down something incriminating and Bromerick was idiot enough to show it to Michael Johns, who told me about it, hoping I could help. It was all so perfect. I arranged to meet Bromerick to discuss it. Foxglove in the ale. That was it.’
‘That was it?’ Marlowe spun round with no care for his safety. ‘That was it? That was my friend, not just a problem for you to do away with.’
Steane pressed him up against a tree, the knife to his throat, pressing under the angle of his jaw. ‘Do you think that the rope will hide the pricks of the knife? I hardly care if it does or not, Master Marlowe. I just want you dead!’ The last word echoed round and round the trees like a banshee’s wail.
‘Thirling?’ Marlowe ground out. The pain in his leg and his throat was washing over him and the loss of blood as it still ran down his leg into his boot was making everything seem faint and dreamlike. But he had to know.
‘Thirling also saw me with Eleanor. Like Whitingside, he didn’t know quite what he had seen, until that stupid village girl pinned that weed on my shoulder this morning.’ Both men paused. Could it really have only been that morning? ‘It made him realize what had been going on, but not that I had killed her. He accused me of “dalliance”. Me, a Bishop-elect. He had to die.’
Marlowe sagged suddenly at the knees and took Steane by surprise. It was enough and the younger man turned to run clear of the trees, hobbling across the uneven ground below the church wall. As he stumbled and tried to find his footing, he heard a scream behind him which turned his blood to ice. Rolling over, his arm up to defend himself, he saw Steane staggering away to his left, eyes wide with horror, arms up with palms outwards, to fend off some dreadful thing. Twisting back to see what Steane was seeing, all the scholar could make out was an indistinct white shape, moving along the churchyard wall, on a path which must meet with Steane.
Marlowe scrambled to his feet and ran round behind the man and off at an angle, to head him off at the end of the churchyard wall, but put his foot in a hole and fell heavily, a searing pain screaming up his leg to his groin. Gingerly, he eased his foot out of the hole and gently massaged his ankle. It wasn’t broken, but wouldn’t be taking him anywhere fast tonight. As he sat on the dampening grass, rubbing his leg, he realized that he had stepped in a collapsing grave, that a mouldering hand was just below the surface. Even the dead seemed to be on the murderer’s side tonight.
Steane and the white shape had disappeared. Marlowe knew the story now, but he still had to prove it. Steane’s flight would make it hard for him to carry on with his life as he had planned it, but Marlowe didn’t want him to still be drawing breath when the dawn came up. He had no time for trials and inquests; he knew how wrong they could be. He wanted to take a life for those of his friends; not an equal count, but as equal as he could make it.
Slowly and in enormous pain, he hobbled across the seemingly endless distance of the Potter’s Field and rounded the corner of the wall. Using the gravestones to support him, he limped around the uneven path, gasping as his foot accommodated the pebbles on the ground. He was almost at the eastern end of the church when he heard a drawn out whistling noise above him and he looked up to see the bulk of the flint-spattered tower looming against the stars. A strange shape was approaching, pale and getting bigger against the dark wall. Then, suddenly, with a sickening crunch which shook every synapse in his body, it landed at his feet, with a warm spatter of something which he knew could only be blood. Some self-preservation deep in his soul kept his eyes heavenward for another minute of sanity. They met the eyes of Meg Hawley, wide with terror and far away at the top of the tower. Reluctantly, he looked down and saw, spread over far too wide an area, all that remained of Benjamin Steane.
SIXTEEN
The summer sun was beating down on the oak door of the Great Hall of King’s College that Wednesday afternoon and the whole town seemed to hold its breath. There was just the faintest breeze to carry the murmur of voices drifting out through the single open window high up in the transom. There was the distant tap of a gavel, and then the doors were flung open and a mixed gaggle of people spilled out into the hot air.
‘Well, Master Machiavel.’ Sir Edward Winterton, still wearing his sling, turned to Marlowe. ‘As First Finder, what did you think of my . . . the jury’s verdict?’
Marlowe squinted up at the sun, then turned to the coroner. ‘Suicide sounded a very fair judgement to me, Sir Edward. His widow won’t like it, of course, but she would have liked it less if he had lived to stand trial.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Winterton said. ‘I try to be merciful.’ He paused and looked at a distant rooftop, pursing his lips. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Master Marlowe . . .’
‘No. I don’t think you do, Sir Edward. I think that . . . bearing in mind what I saw, and what you chose to ask me not to repeat in court, I think your verdict . . . I mean, the verdict of your jury, was very merciful indeed. And if the guilty have not been brought to justice by a human court, I should think that as a Bishop-elect he would be expecting to be judged by a higher one.’
‘Guilty of felo de se, you mean, of course,’ Winterton said, still keeping his eyes elsewhere.
There was a silence, then Marlowe said quietly, ‘As you wish, Sir Edward. Amongst other things, but I think as we understand each other, we can leave it there.’ He extended his right hand, then pulled back, remembering Winterton’s injury. He laid his palm gently on the man’s shoulder instead, a breach of protocol which Winterton acknowledged with a smile.
‘Take care, Master Machiavel,’ he said. ‘God go with you, if you would like him to.’
Marlowe turned to find Dee hovering behind him.
‘A reasonable verdict, taken all round, do you not agree, Master Marlowe?’ Dee said. ‘Old Gerard was right, then, in a way – foxglove is good for those who fall from high places.’
Marlowe looked closely into the man’s eyes and saw the message beneath the words: that this was the best we could expect; that Winterton had done his best to atone for the wrong verdicts on Ralph Whitingside, Eleanor Peacock and Henry Bromerick; that he and Marlowe knew more than could ever be told, out loud and in the light of day. Accordingly, Marlowe’s reply was simple. ‘Yes, Dr Dee. A reasonable verdict.’ Then he looked closer, not into the eyes but at the face. ‘But . . . you don’t look well. Have you had a shock? Are you ill?’
Dee put a hand on Marlowe’s arm and the scholar could feel it shaking. ‘Are you sure you are not a magus, Kit?’ he said, with a hollow laugh. ‘I have had a shock, yes. My manservant was waiting for me this morning when I got up. He had ridden through the night to tell me . . . well, to make the story short, Master Marlowe, my house has burned down. To its very cellars.’
Marlowe was appalled. The house, although he had been often disoriented in its labyrint
hine corridors, had been a marvellous world of exotic things, sights and smells that he knew he would now never experience again. ‘How did it happen?’
Dee drew him to one side. ‘Do you know a quiet inn?’ he asked.
‘We could go to the Swan,’ Marlowe offered. ‘I need to speak to Meg if I can. She will find us a quiet corner, if there is one to be had.’
Dee nodded and the two walked through the afternoon streets, through market stalls, miraculously restored, through geese and sheep being herded by their new owners to their fate. It seemed nobody had hanged the Mayor after all. Neither man spoke, each being busy with his own thoughts, until they were ensconced with an ale each in a quiet corner of the inn, with the back of their settle turned out into the room, for added privacy.
‘How did it happen?’ Marlowe repeated. ‘Is everyone well? Helene . . . your servants?’
‘Everyone got out. They are staying at one of my other properties in London, just a small house, but all of my papers, my potions . . . everything has gone. Many of the things I work with are rather easily ignited; the place went up like a torch, or so I’m told.’ The magus slumped on his seat.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Marlowe said. ‘But, you haven’t told me; how did it happen?’
Dee closed to him. ‘That’s the thing,’ he said. ‘I have started the rumour, which will be all over England before the summer is done, that an angry mob overpowered my grooms and put torches to the house.’ He looked up briefly. ‘I have a reputation to keep up; people must be afraid of me, if only slightly, otherwise I am just a magician, doing tricks for a meal and a bed.’
Marlowe smiled. As a conjuror of a different sort, playing people and words off against one another to keep ahead of the game of life, he understood. But he still didn’t know what had happened. He opened his mouth to ask again, but Dee raised a hand to forestall him.
‘You must promise not to tell a soul.’