Scorpion's Nest (2012)

by Trow, M J

  Without a word, Johns picked up the portrait of Kit Marlowe and tucked it under one arm. He didn’t look at the dark eyes flashing in oils, the forehead broad and bold, the hair flying, the velvet-and-silk doublet the university didn’t allow any of its scholars to wear. And he didn’t need to read the words on it again. He knew them by heart. Quod me nutrit me destruit. That which feeds me, destroys me. And Johns in one mood might have added ‘Amen’. Then he slowly and deliberately upended the inkwell so that a thin stream of black poured onto the desk, the papers and Harvey’s left hand.

  The Master looked down at the wriggle of ink. ‘Abdico,’ he read. ‘παραιτομαι. Rwy’n ymddiswyddo.’

  Johns gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘From your varied accents, I feel I perhaps must translate for you,’ he said. ‘I resign. I resign. I resign. Have it in any language you will.’ He turned to leave and then stopped and spoke over his shoulder. ‘Would you like me to tell your servant to bring some soap and hot water with him when he comes back in?’

  He closed the door behind him sharply. As it closed, so Harvey’s inkwell spun across the room, trailing the last of its contents, to crash against the wood. He had seen the devil in his chamber for one last time.

  The river Vesle murmured in its banks as he crossed the little bridge. This was Rheims, the place of coronation of so many kings of France and the black bulk of the great Gothic cathedral loomed over the city now that night was falling. As the candles were lit in the high houses and the squatters’ tents, knots of ragged children crowded around him, their hands outstretched for money or food, their trill voices babbling in the curious dialect of the Marne. One or two of them tried to touch his sword, his Colleyweston cloak, but a tap from his gloved hand or a flash from his dark eyes made them think again, to recoil until they felt a little braver.

  He climbed the cobbled hill that wound below the old city wall and saw in the flickering half-light the name he was looking for – the Rue de Venise. Instinctively he checked behind him and hauled his knapsack higher on his shoulder, releasing his sword arm as he vanished into the blackness, the dark that is never really dark. A cat scurried away from him, belly to the cobbles, tail trailing and a couple of drunks collided with him as he looked for the door he had come so far to find. They smelt of the cheap cider of Normandy and they bounced away from him with a mutter of oaths.

  ‘I wouldn’t go in there,’ a soft voice said from the shadows. The dialect was heavy, but his French was up to it and he half turned at the wicket gate.

  ‘Why ever not?’ he asked.

  A harlot stepped out into the half-light. It was difficult to tell her age under the hood she wore but there was no mistaking her calling. A thin chemise was tied at her breasts with a single bow, a bow that could be undone by a client in a second. She closed to him, taking in the long hair, the sensitive mouth, the smouldering eyes. ‘Men die in there,’ she told him.

  He removed her fingers from the points of his doublet. ‘Men die everywhere,’ he told her with a smile. ‘And that’s not why I’m here.’

  She looked at him, pouting, trying to weigh up the measure of this newcomer, the one who spoke awkward French with an accent she hadn’t heard before. ‘Know why I’m here?’ she challenged him.

  He smiled again. ‘Of course,’ he said, not taking his eyes off her as he rapped with his gloved fist on the studded door at his back. He cocked his head to listen to the bells clanging beyond the building’s facade. ‘That’s Vespers,’ he said. ‘You’re a lay sister come to pay your devotions.’

  For a moment she just stared at him, then she threw back her head and shrieked with laughter. She rested her hands on her hips and let him see her breasts wobble. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m a lay sister, all right. And talking of paying . . .’

  The wicket in the great door squealed open and a little priest stood there, a skullcap on his head and a lantern in his hand. He took one look at the girl and scowled. ‘Be off with you, Jezebel!’ he snapped. ‘Why don’t you leave clean-living men alone?’ She flicked her thumb off her front teeth at him, turned smartly and threw her cloak up to wave her naked backside at him. The little priest crossed himself and ushered the newcomer inside, slamming and bolting the wicket as they heard a string of blasphemies echoing along the Rue de Venise.

  In the quiet of the courtyard where torches were already flickering against ancient stones, the priest looked up at the stranger. ‘You are a clean-living man?’ he checked.

  ‘They don’t come any cleaner,’ the newcomer said. ‘This is the English College?’

  ‘It is.’ The old man lapsed into English, clearly not his native tongue, but he sensed the traveller would welcome it. ‘I am Brother Tobias. You are . . .?’

  ‘Robert Greene,’ the young man told him. ‘From Cambridge. And I have need of a priest.’

  Brother Tobias squinted in the lantern light. There was something about this man that unnerved him. He was armed to the teeth for one thing, with sword and dagger and dressed like the roisterers of the town Tobias would usually cross the street to avoid. There was a coldness about him, a chill that was beyond the gentle breeze of the Michaelmas night. If this man needed a priest, he would rather not be the priest in question. There were bigger fish in the collegiate pond and he led Greene across the moonlit quadrangle in search of one.

  The chapel they entered was glittering with the candles of the Mass. At every pew, in every niche, monks and lay brethren knelt in silent prayer, shoulder to shoulder with scholars. One or two of the sleeve badges the Englishman recognized. Here was a Flanders guildsman, there a Dutch apothecary and, facing their kneeling forms and surveying them all with a stern eye, sat a man whose face he knew, a man he had travelled long to see.

  He waited with Father Tobias until the Vespers prayers were over, then lolled against a wall rich with tapestries until the Master of the College came his way.

  ‘Master,’ Tobias whispered to him. ‘This is Robert Greene, of the University of Cambridge.’ He spoke Latin, but the scholar followed every word.

  ‘Dominus Greene.’ The Master nodded. ‘We are honoured. I am . . .’

  ‘I know who you are,’ the newcomer interrupted. ‘You are Dr William Allen, Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Douai and Master of the English College.’

  ‘What brings you from Cambridge, Dominus Greene?’ Allen asked him. ‘Is it such a Godless place now?’

  The Cambridge man risked a short, sharp laugh in that hallowed hall and instantly regretted it as several disapproving heads bobbed up from their devotions and stared at him.

  ‘Will you hear my confession, Master?’ he asked.

  ‘Volo,’ Allen answered and led the way to the little oak cubicles beyond a rich velvet curtain.

  ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,’ the Englishman intoned, adjusting his rapier as he sat.

  ‘When did you last confess your sins, my son?’ Allen asked, kissing the crucifix that dangled from his neck. Both men were whispering in English now.

  ‘Some time ago, Father,’ he told him. ‘Before I left London.’

  ‘Go on.’

  There was a pause and Allen glanced sideways through the lattice as he saw the newcomer struggle for his words.

  ‘I killed a man.’

  Allen crossed himself. There was always a darkness hovering over the English College but these days it seemed likely to engulf them all. ‘Tell me,’ he said softly.

  The newcomer leaned forwards and sideways so that only Allen – and God – could catch his words. ‘His name was Christopher Marlowe,’ he muttered. ‘A playwright of sorts and scribbler of obscene poetry.’

  ‘Is that why you killed him?’ Allen asked.

  ‘No,’ Greene said. ‘I killed him because he was an atheist.’

  Allen’s eyes widened and he crossed himself again, clutching convulsively at the crucifix. ‘Mother of God,’ he whispered.

  ‘Amen to that,’ Greene mumbled.

  ‘This . .
. Marlowe . . .’ Allen had to know more, ‘was a member of Cambridge University?’

  ‘A graduate of Corpus Christi,’ Greene told him, ‘destined, like all of us, for the church.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Allen, well aware of the critical state of things in England, ‘but which church?’

  ‘I had assumed,’ the Englishman answered, ‘Mother church, the only true church. As it turns out, he was not even a Protestant.’

  ‘I hear there is a new college in Cambridge now –’ Allen was testing the waters – ‘bound to the Puritan persuasion. Magdalene?’

  ‘Emmanuel,’ Greene corrected him, shaking his head.

  Allen smiled. ‘Founded by Dr Willoughby, I understand.’

  ‘Sir Walter Mildmay,’ the stranger said, putting him right again.

  Allen’s dark eyes flashed and his furrowed face was serious again. ‘What evidence did you have of this man’s atheism?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Dominus Greene?’ Allen prompted him.

  ‘He was in his cups one night,’ the scholar told him. ‘At the aptly named Devil, an inn he frequented. I hope you will believe me, Master, when I say I hardly ever go to such places . . .’

  Allen waived this particular confession aside.

  ‘Marlowe was roaring drunk, spouting rubbish about Moses being nothing but a conjuror and . . . Father, forgive me, but . . . he said that Christ and John the Baptist were bedfellows. Sodomites together.’

  Through the grille, Allen’s sharp intake of breath echoed round the little box and he went even greyer, his eyes dead, his skin like parchment.

  ‘I couldn’t just stand by and listen to such filth,’ the scholar went on. ‘I challenged Marlowe and he insisted we go outside.’

  ‘To continue your debate?’ Allen asked.

  The curls shook in the dimness. ‘To kill me,’ he said. ‘The man was as devious with his dagger as with his tongue. He went for me in the dark and I had no choice.’

  ‘Did he die on the spot?’ Allen asked.

  ‘Screaming foul oaths as the breath left his body,’ his murderer remembered.

  ‘There was no time for Absolution? The last rites?’

  A dry sob shook the man beyond the grille. ‘I tried. But he was gone.’ He sat bolt upright as the door of his cell was wrenched open and Dr Allen stood there, grim-faced and trembling. ‘Bless me, Father . . .’ the stranger began, astonished. The confession was unfinished.

  Allen made the sign of the cross over him. ‘No need, my boy,’ he said. ‘You have done God’s work.’ He laid a fatherly hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘You are surely one of the mysterious ways in which He moves. What will you do now?’

  ‘Dance at the rope’s end if I ever set foot in England again,’ he said with a chuckle.

  Slowly, Allen smiled. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘you must stay here as long as you like. We have need of such men. And –’ he half turned on the cold stone of the chancel floor – ‘welcome to the English College, Dominus Greene.’

  Francis Walsingham looked from the portrait to the glass and slowly shook his head. Was it only two years ago he had sat for that fussy, fastidious Dutchman? Surely, his nose had never been quite that bulbous? And what was with that huge ruff? He’d never worn one that big in his life. The sallowness was right, though, and getting worse, the looking glass told him. He bridled every time the Queen patted his cheek and called him her Moor. And she did it every time. It was just her way, he knew that; she would have no master. Even so, it was irritating. No man would dare do that. He was Sir Francis Walsingham, for God’s sake, the Queen’s Secretary and if there was peace in the realm and the Queen slept easy in her bed, that was because of him.

  ‘Master Faunt, sir,’ came his manservant’s voice from behind him, and he let the velvet curtain fall over the painting. He saw the blur that was his reflection glide like a ghost from the glass and Nicholas Faunt was surprised that he had a reflection at all.

  ‘Nicholas.’ The spymaster nodded to his projectioner. ‘What news?’

  ‘On the Rialto, Sir Francis, or elsewhere?’

  Walsingham looked at him stony-faced. ‘I have a man on the Rialto,’ he reminded him, ‘and it isn’t you. Marlowe.’

  ‘Should –’ Faunt looked out of Walsingham’s window to catch the position of the sun – ‘by now be well on his way down the Rue de Venise.’

  ‘Lost your timepiece, Nicholas?’ Walsingham asked archly. Everybody knew about Faunt’s timepiece because he mentioned it whenever he felt the need to upstage anybody.

  ‘Oh, I never carry it in the London streets, sir.’ Faunt smiled. ‘Too many foins around. I’m fast, but some of those people have fingers like butterflies’ wings. I wouldn’t feel it go.’

  Walsingham crossed to his sideboard and poured a goblet of Rhennish for each of them. He sipped from one then handed it to Faunt. The man had been too long on the road. He trusted no one, not even the Queen’s spymaster. Was this what the world of Gloriana did to men like Faunt, that they feared their shadows?

  ‘I’ve heard from Aldred,’ Walsingham said, taking up the other goblet.

  ‘Oh?’ There was a name Faunt hadn’t heard in a while.

  ‘He thinks there’s evil afoot in the English College.’

  ‘Long may it flourish.’ Faunt raised his goblet in salutation.

  ‘Evil that may rebound on us,’ Walsingham told him. ‘He thinks we need a code-breaker.’

  Faunt frowned, closing to his man. ‘In the field? A code-breaker? Is that wise?’

  Walsingham chuckled. ‘If you and I dealt in wisdom, Nicholas, Her Majesty would be rotting in her grave by now, her throat slit and her heart sent as a present to Philip of Spain. There are times –’ and he turned away – ‘when wisdom flies out of the window.’ He turned back to his projectioner. ‘Times when we have to send Thomas Phelippes.’

  Faunt’s jaw dropped despite himself. ‘Sir Francis, you can’t be serious. Phelippes at the English College? They’ll eat him alive.’

  ‘No.’ Walsingham was firm. ‘There is no need for him to set foot inside the English College. He has Aldred and he has Marlowe to watch his back. He can stay in the town; give him some money so he can pass as a gentleman. Not too much –’ he raised a finger – ‘but enough.’ He put the goblet down. ‘See to it, will you, Nicholas?’ He eased the ruff away from his swollen, purple-skinned neck where the boil had burst yet again. ‘I’m not up to the whining of friend Phelippes today.’

  Michael Johns was not in his element. Cloistered Cambridge had been his world for so long that he had almost forgotten what it was like to be elsewhere. When other professors went home to their families in the holidays that were no longer holy, he stayed in his rooms, reading esoteric documents, sometimes happily puzzling over a single word or phrase for hours at a time. On market days, when the clucking of chickens and the hissing of geese rose from Petty Cury, he stayed indoors, avoiding the crowds. And now here he was, struggling against a mass of people which seemed to fill the street from edge to edge, from end to end. A Londoner would say that it was a fairly quiet day on Cheapside but Johns was definitely beginning to regret his decision to follow Kit Marlowe to the capital. A huge woman with shoulders like a dray horse threw a loaf at him. He thought he had caught it, but it landed on the greasy cobbles anyway and he bent to pick it up.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, mate,’ a Cockney voice croaked in his ear. ‘Not round ’ere. Your purse is the least you’ll lose. Know what I mean?’

  The professor straightened, passed the loaf to the large woman who shrugged, gave it a cursory wipe on her apron and put it back on her stall, well to the front to make sure it sold before the greasy sludge from the street soaked in and made it soggy.

  Johns walked on, smiling wryly to think that he had not planned anything beyond his arrival. Somehow he had just imagined that he would stable his horse, turn a corner and bump straight into Marlowe, walking with that confident stride, hair flowing, eyes bright with w
atching the world go by. As he had seen him a hundred times along the High Yard and over Magdalene Bridge.

  But it had taken him half a day just to find a stable that would take his mount and the cost of a week’s livery had made him swallow hard. He hadn’t allowed for the cost of living in London, either. All around him the street sellers of Cheapside bawled their wares. Cheese was how much? Milk? They had to be joking. Honey? Forget it. He hoped the streets around the corner were paved with gold; there would be no future for him here unless he could prise up a flagstone to use as currency. But his main concern was that he didn’t know a soul and that he would die, unknown. Everywhere were faces, hard and greedy, cold eyes and cold hearts. His imagination began to take wing, as it does when people are alone and more than a little scared. He would contract some hideous disease from one of these filthy, stinking city dwellers. He would crawl off to a garret alive with fleas and lice and bugs. He would die unshriven. His body would lie unburied, food for vermin. He . . .

  ‘Michael Johns, by all that’s Holy! What are you doing here?’

  Johns shook his head. He was hearing things now. The hideous disease could not be far away.

  Thomas Phelippes stepped out of the press of people and grabbed his old friend by the arm. ‘Michael. Michael Johns. What are you doing in London? Have I been away from university so long that I have forgotten when the terms begin and end?’

  This seemed a little precise for a hallucination. Johns looked up and his face split in a smile. ‘Thomas! You haven’t changed a bit. I am so glad to see you.’ He grabbed his old friend and hugged him to him. He had never been known to be demonstrative and Phelippes, though not famed for being much of a people person, saw that Johns was definitely a man on the edge.

  ‘My house is quite nearby in Leadenhall Street. It’s just around the corner, really. Shall we go there and talk about old times? I’ve got a jug of claret with your name on it. Where are you staying?’

  Johns shrugged. ‘Nowhere. I’m not even sure I could find my way back to where I left my horse. London is so . . .’ he searched for a word, looking at the rickety houses pointing to the sky and settled on ‘big.’