Death by Disputation (A Francis Bacon Mystery Book 2)

by Anna Castle

  Marlowe shared a room in the northwest corner of the quadrangle with three other Parker scholars from Kent. Even with the windows partly open, it smelled like too many men in too small a space: wet boots, dirty linens, cheap coal damply smoking in the ash-choked hearth. The room was the same dimensions — about fifteen feet wide and thirty long — as Mr. Leeds’s study chamber, but it served for sleeping as well as work. Two beds with shabby curtains hanging from sagging testers took up the center of the room. Four desks hugged the corners. Here the partitions had been augmented by the scholars with bits of old wainscoting mounted on stands. Junior Fellows had no tutor overlooking their work; what they wanted was privacy from each other.

  “If you’re here for your lesson with Kit, he just nipped out to the jakes.” Simon Thorpe sat nearest the door where he could see everyone who came in. His desk faced the front window, looking into the gatehouse in the north range. “He’ll be back in two shakes.”

  Tom grinned. Not, perhaps, the best choice of words.

  Thorpe was like a pimply Cerberus guarding the entrance to Marlowe’s chambers, an ordeal to survive on the way to your Latin lesson. His slips of speech weren’t the worst of it. His face had a tendency to break out in angry rashes that were painful to look at, even as they drew your eyes. If he caught you noticing, he’d launch into a whine about the food in commons and his ticklish digestion until you edged away from him with a nervous laugh.

  He must know Marlowe fairly well though. A good intelligencer had to take his sources as he found them, fair or foul. Tom leaned against the door jamb. “Have you known Marlowe for a long time?”

  “Ho! Since we were boys!” Thorpe shook his head as if knowing Marlowe was a burden he’d carried for many long years. “We were together at King’s School in Canterbury. Then we were both lucky enough to be chosen as Parker scholars. We came up to university the same year in 1581. Well, Kit actually came up in December, but that was a mix-up. He wasn’t supposed to start until March. Typical of Kit not to follow the rules.” He sniffed and wiped his nose with the sleeve of his gown. Both sleeves were smeared with trails of dried snot.

  Tom smiled as if hearing a tale of fond childhood memories. “Were you good friends, then, as boys?”

  “Oh, yes. Well, no.” Thorpe shrugged. “My father is a rector. His is a shoemaker. We didn’t even meet until we got to King’s, and then there were all the other boys . . .”

  Tom understood. Marlowe was smart, agile, and good looking, if poor. Thorpe, of slightly higher social standing but also poor, was awkward and homely. You’d have to be desperate to make him your friend, especially in the competitive world of a boys’ school. Tom had gone to his parish grammar school from age six to twelve. His social standing had risen and fallen with his family’s finances, so he’d been on both ends of the pecking order. He knew more or less what Marlowe and Thorpe had endured.

  “So you came up to university together. Have you lived in this room ever since?”

  “Six whole years. We’re both commencing Master of Arts this year.” Thorpe shook his head in amazement. “Now that I think of it, it’s going to be strange not seeing him every day, first thing in the morning when I wake up and last thing at night before bed.” He blinked several times, his eyes a little watery.

  “Are you leaving after commencement?”

  “Not me! I’m going to stay and teach. I’ve petitioned for a fellowship.” His eyes darted away and back again. “The one Leeds had, if I’m lucky.” He crossed his fingers in his lap.

  Tom smiled through his teeth. Snivelly Simon Thorpe in his chambers? Poking his drippy nose into his affairs? Tom crossed his own fingers behind his back to wish it away. “Is Marlowe leaving, then?”

  Thorpe frowned and shrugged. “Who knows what he’ll do. He’ll disappear sometime soonish though, like he did last year and the year before. Watch and see. Then he’ll come prancing back with a new doublet, or some such finery, with not a word about where he’s been or what he’s been doing.” Thorpe’s eyes narrowed as he leaned toward Tom and whispered, “Someone gives him things, I think. I couldn’t tell you why.”

  Tom got the hint: Thorpe thought Marlowe received gifts from generous lovers. Maybe yes, maybe no. He filed the idea away for his next report. He couldn’t see Marlowe murdering Leeds in a fit of pique over an inadequate present, however. Easier to simply deny the man his affections and move on to someone more forthcoming.

  “Doesn’t he have to stay and teach? What happens if he doesn’t?”

  “I don’t know.” Thorpe shrugged. “Nothing, probably. He’ll land on his feet. He always does.”

  Kit Marlowe did have many catlike qualities, quickness and cruelty among them. Also gracefulness and a taste for play. Without the support of the college, what kind of a post could he expect to find? Recommendations were everything. Then again, Tom couldn’t see Marlowe as a teaching master, living with a clutch of undergraduates, writing notes to their parents, and keeping track of their fees. He couldn’t imagine any parent keeping their son with such a man for more than a few months.

  So Marlowe would be leaving soon. If he was the murderer, Tom would have to work fast to bring him to justice.

  “I guess I’d better get ready for my lesson.” He left Thorpe to his sniffles.

  Marlowe’s desk stood in the farthest corner from the door. He had placed three rickety screens strategically so you could only approach him through a narrow gap. Tom picked up a stool on his way back and sat in his customary spot outside the gap. He scrutinized the handmade cubicle with fresh interest, searching for clues to the man’s character.

  The rest of the chamber might be a chaos of books, clothes, and dirty crockery, but Marlowe kept his private space in order. He sorted his papers into neat leather cases of varying sizes: some flat, some cylindrical, all well oiled and snugly tied with leather cords. Cases for rolled documents hung from hooks attached to the partitions. Tom leaned forward to examine the knots. Were they some sort of special shoemaker’s knots? Nothing about them rang a bell.

  The largest case was like a portable leather desk, with a tightly fitted lid stiff enough to use as a writing surface. It had a long strap for traveling and was worn at the corners, as though it had seen many miles under many weathers. A small case with a stamped edging held his quills and inkhorn. The large case sat squared to the upper edge of the desk, with the two cases holding documents in current use on the right and a stack of books, also perfectly aligned, on the left.

  Tom recognized some of them as library books. Only senior Fellows were allowed to remove volumes from the college library. He wondered if Leeds had taken them out for him. He suddenly felt sad to think of Leeds’s name entered into the library register, waiting vainly to be ticked off. He wondered if Marlowe was honest enough to return the books of his own volition.

  The desk was as neat as two pins. All it told him was that Marlowe either had a very strict father, or he wanted to be certain no one could pry into his belongings without leaving some sign. Tom suspected secrecy rather than upbringing.

  The screens, by way of contrast, were covered with a mad collection of oddments: bills from college plays, woodcuts from penny ballads, bits of ribbon, notes in Marlowe’s hand, snatches of poetry in other scripts. One especially beautiful copper oak leaf was pinned in the middle. A pair of hooks at the top of one screen held a well-worn cloak and a brave new hat of black mockado with a red band. A portrait leaned against the same screen, about two feet tall, of Marlowe himself. He had posed in a slashed doublet with rows of brass buttons that must have cost more than all the rest of his possessions combined. One of the gifts from an admirer, presumably. Scholarships like the one Marlowe lived on were adequate in terms of food, shelter, and academic garb, but they didn’t run to stylish doublets. Nor to portraits.

  The artist had perfectly captured Marlowe’s habitual expression of watchful arrogance. The motto fit him, too: Quod me nutrit me destruit, “What nourishes me destroys me.” The mot
to of a man of extreme passions. Tom memorized it for his next report to Bacon.

  A battered chest stood against the rear wall under the window, forming a U with the desk. Tom had once come early and found Marlowe in the midst of a circle of pages laid all around him, on the desk, the chest, even on the floor. He switched two pages, then he snatched up another one to scribble furiously on it. Tom had watched him for a full minute before being noticed. Marlowe had goggled at him wide-eyed, as if seeing a smoke-furled apparition with purple tentacles sprouting from its head. Then he blinked and whisked all the pages into a stack, sliding it quickly into a leather case. He wound the cord around it, tied a smart bow, and replaced it on his desk before uttering a single word.

  Tom was on the brink of getting up to open one of those neatly tied cases when he heard Thorpe say, “Your pupil’s here, Kit. Thomas Clarady. I told him he could go on back.”

  “I hope he tipped you handsomely, Simon. Did you take his cloak? Offer him a drink?”

  Tom watched him strut past Thorpe. Marlowe carried himself like an earl, chin up and shoulders back, with a loose, limber stride. But the hem of his gown was ragged, the fabric nearly threadbare at the elbows, and his cuffs were made of the cheapest lockram. Pride and poverty, passion and secrecy: this was what he knew about Christopher Marlowe.

  “Tomkin.” Marlowe patted him on the head as if he were a child. He rounded the partition and sat on his three-legged backstool. His eyes scanned the surface of his desk, making sure nothing had been altered. Then he turned to Tom and painted an expression of concern on his face. “Tell me, Tom. Have you been troubled by nightmares? Reliving the terrible deeds you performed on Monday?”

  The question caught Tom completely off guard. “My deeds!” He struggled to regain his composure. “You were there while it happened. How are your dreams?”

  “Far too glorious for you to understand. But why do you persist in that absurd lie? How could I have been there? Do you think I could sit idly by while Barty hanged himself?”

  “No,” Tom said. “I don’t think you were idle.”

  Marlowe’s eyes narrowed. “I would never harm Bartholomew Leeds.” He turned his face toward the window. “There was something in that wine,” he murmured. “I don’t remember anything.” Turning back, he jabbed his finger at Tom. “Until I saw you, standing under Barty’s body, studying your handiwork.”

  “Not mine.” They held each other’s eyes for a long moment, neither believing the other, but not entirely disbelieving either. Maybe the drugged wine had fogged Marlowe’s memory. Maybe he really had slept through Leeds’s murder. But maybe he had seen or heard something — a voice, a moving figure — that could help Tom identify the killer.

  “I know you were there.” Tom pulled the pink silk garter from his sleeve. “This is yours, I believe.”

  Marlowe snatched it from him and tossed it onto the desk. “So you know. I don’t care if you do.”

  “How you and Mr. Leeds spent your mornings is none of my concern.”

  “Are you sure?” Marlowe batted his dark lashes at him. “I could tell you, in detail. I could show you.” He leaned forward and slid his hand up Tom’s leg. “I know you’re curious; that’s why you keep harping on me and that bed.”

  Tom glanced down at the hand briefly, then met Marlowe’s eyes. “If I find that hand or its mate on any part of my anatomy again, I’ll saw it off your arm with my knife and make you eat it.”

  Marlowe puffed him a kiss but withdrew the offending member. He sat back and crossed his arms. “A pity. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “I’m content to live with my ignorance.”

  “And Mrs. Eggerley’s biweekly attentions.”

  “How did you —”

  “Corpus Christi is a small college. Everyone knows everything about everyone.” He laughed at Tom’s expression of alarm. “Don’t worry. Old Eggy is too busy promoting himself in London to pay much attention to his wife.”

  Tom was taken aback. He’d thought they’d been scrupulously discreet, what with the signal of the scarf and all. And he didn’t like the idea of Margaret being a laughingstock. “She’s a very lonely woman —”

  Marlowe howled with laughter, slapping the desktop. “Trust me, Tom. That woman is never lonely. She picks a new man every year. She even tried it on me once, to our mutual displeasure. You’re the first undergraduate, as far as I know, but then, you are a special case.” He drew in a whistling breath, eyeing Tom from head to toe. “That dimple. Those legs that go on forever. And those golden curls.” He clucked his tongue. “Who could blame her?”

  Tom rolled his eyes, surrendering. “I never imagined she was a virgin.”

  Marlowe suddenly leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs. “Why are you here, Tom?”

  Here, where? “You know why. Mr. Leeds thought my Latin wasn’t —”

  “Not that. I mean, why are you here at Corpus Christi? Why this college? Why now?”

  “What’s wrong with Corpus Christi?”

  Marlowe snorted. “Nothing, except it’s a lot smaller and poorer than the one you left. I have a friend at your old college, St. John’s. He remembers you.”

  “Oh? What’s his name? Maybe I know him.” Maybe he could look him up and get another view of Marlowe.

  “You wouldn’t remember him. Thomas Nashe is a nobody, a parson’s son. A poet, like me. You were running with a pack of lordlings back then, weren’t you? Some sort of retainer to that nitwitted whelp of the Earl of Dorchester.”

  “Lord Steven Delabere.” Tom did remember Nashe: a short, skinny, gag-toothed boy whose clothes were as threadbare as Marlowe’s. He had a lightning wit and a razor-sharp tongue though; you mocked him at your peril. He wouldn’t be any use as an informant.

  “Your father is a privateer, my friend remembers. A successful one, by all appearances.” Marlowe’s eyes flicked over Tom’s broadcloth gown and kidskin boots. His gaze lingered on the embroidered cuffs of the cambric shirt. He smiled admiringly. “There are either a lot of women in your household, or one with an abundance of leisure.”

  “Both, actually.” All Tom’s linens were beautifully decorated, thanks to his mother, his sisters, and his aunts. And Uncle Luke, the one-legged b’osun who had lived with the family since Tom was a baby and was quite the dab hand with a needle. Their handiwork had kept soup in the kettle during the lean years when his father spent more to keep his ship afloat than he won from the Spanish. “Why shouldn’t my father prosper in his trade? He does his part for queen and country.”

  “Admirable.” Marlowe nodded, his expression pious. “Laudable. We must all strive to do the same, each in our own little way. Did he experience his famous religious conversion whilst asea, if I might ask?”

  “Yes.” Tom relaxed a trifle. He had told the story of his father’s supposed fictional conversion experience many times to explain his return to university to finish his degree. “There was the most fearful storm, you see —”

  “That must have been terrifying. A risky business, traveling abroad, whatever the season. Then he wrote immediately to you at Gray’s Inn, did he?”

  “Well, not immediately.” Tom hadn’t prepared this part. No one else had ever asked for details. “First he had to find a ship returning to England to carry the letter.”

  “Of course, of course. So several months later —”

  “About a month,” Tom said, calculating quickly in his head, hoping there was time enough for plausibility.

  “A month. That’s quite fast, isn’t it? For a ship to sail from the Spanish Main?”

  “He wasn’t on the Spanish Main.”

  “The coast of Africa, perhaps?” Marlowe gave him a twisted smile, showing his disbelief. “Or the Canaries? Or might he have gone east instead of west? Venice? India? The golden shores of Arabia?”

  Tom thought fast, mentally scanning a map of the Atlantic Ocean, trying to think of a place where his father could have been grounded by a storm but able to send a
letter home inside a month. “He had only just left, actually. He was pushed back into Cornwall. It was late in the year, you see. The winds blowing from the southwest can be horrific.”

  “So I’ve heard. But I believe Cornwall is part of England.” This time the smile was friendly, as if he were pointing out a common error in a translation exercise. Tom wasn’t fooled. Marlowe’s smiles were as variable as the March weather and scarcely more significant.

  He chuckled, hoping to retrieve some part of his tangled tale. “Some people say that Cornwall is like another country. Did you know that they —”

  “That must have been quite the storm for its cessation to cause a man to remove his only son and heir from the illustrious Gray’s Inn. Especially when it must have taken some doing to get him admitted in the first place. Isn’t Lord Burghley himself a member? They say it’s the surest route up the social ladder for the likes of us. Pass the bar, embark upon a lucrative practice as a barrister, possibly even a judgeship and a coat of arms down the road. What kind of father would trade that for some rude country parsonage?”

  Tom wondered if Marlowe had snuck a peek into his commonplace book. He sometimes whiled away divinity lectures by drawing sketches for his future coat of arms, imagining ways he could get himself knighted. Rescuing the queen from a rampaging boar while Sir Walter Ralegh watched in helpless awe was a favorite fantasy.

  “God’s light outshines any coat of arms,” Tom said, curving his lips into an imitation of Steadfast Wingfield’s smug smile.

  Marlowe laughed, a genuine laugh of mirth that made him look like a schoolboy. “You’re a terrible actor, Tom. I’ve rarely met a man less suited to the clergy. Your stockings alone — which I’ll confess I covet — speak eloquently of worldly tastes and aspirations. And do you think Steadfast would stoop to frolicking with the wife of his headmaster?”

  He couldn’t be that bad an actor if Marlowe had recognized his impersonation. He curled his lip, ready to deliver a satisfying retort, just as soon as he could think of one.