Black Death

by M. J. Trow

  Marlowe shrugged and looked at him levelly. ‘Nothing?’

  ‘He died. People die. I heard there was Pestilence in Dowgate.’

  ‘News travels fast.’ Marlowe was impressed.

  ‘News of the Pestilence travels fast. We just have to hope the news is ahead of the plague. I don’t know where I heard it …’ Johns tapped his temple to try to dislodge the memory. ‘It doesn’t matter. But could that not be the reason for his death? For his dreams, too? Because they have to be dreams, Kit. Everyone knows that demons don’t visit men like that.’ He crossed his fingers, for luck.

  ‘He didn’t die of the Pestilence.’

  ‘How do you know for sure? People lie, especially a landlady with a living to earn. Especially one with a large family.’

  Marlowe laughed, gently so as not to hurt his back and ribs. ‘The large family is something of a misnomer,’ he told Johns. ‘Mistress Isam has a house full of young ladies, but they are not family, if you catch my meaning.’

  Johns looked blank for a moment, then blushed. ‘Oh, I see. But surely, Dominus Greene would have known that.’

  ‘If what I hear about him is correct, he not only knew, but took advantage of the fact. He was rambling, I am sure, in his letter. But somewhere, there is a kernel of truth in it.’

  ‘And you thought Harvey could help?’

  ‘He was the nearest that Greene had to a friend once; although I believe they had had a falling out.’

  ‘With friends like Harvey, a man doesn’t need any enemies,’ Johns remarked.

  ‘I agree.’ Marlowe knew that only too well. ‘And yet, he had at least one. The man who poisoned him.’

  Johns looked at Marlowe with a steely gaze. He was not the boy who had come to Cambridge all those years ago, still wet behind the ears and with the voice of an angel. But then, Michael Johns had seen some things, heard some things that had made him less gullible too. ‘You’re very sure it was poison. You say Dr Dee says it was poison. But how do you know? Did you see him before he died?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Before he was buried?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then … when?’

  Marlowe shrugged and, for once, couldn’t meet his old friend’s eyes. There were people who he wouldn’t mind knowing that he had gone out at dead of night and dug up a man in a lonely churchyard. But Michael Johns was not one of them.

  ‘Kit … when?’

  Marlowe finally lifted his head. ‘Best you don’t know.’ He carefully got up out of the chair. ‘It’s time I moved about. I’m getting stiff. I heard the choir at King’s practising Morley’s Burial yesterday. Is it for anyone special, or just to keep in trim?’

  Johns knew a change of subject when he heard one and followed along obediently. ‘In himself, the poor boy wasn’t special, but he died in an accident on the river and so the college are giving him a funeral. He was also in the choir, as is his twin, who survived the accident. So, you can see, the circumstances are a little unusual. I shall be going. Every college is sending someone and I am the choice for Jesus.’

  Marlowe had lost a friend to the river and, although it was what seemed a lifetime ago, he felt the pain again. ‘May I attend?’

  ‘The chapel is large. I will be sitting in the choir, but of course you are welcome to come. I happen to know there is no family, so someone on that side of the nave will be welcome.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  Johns went to the window and craned out, to see the clock on the college tower. ‘If we leave now, we needn’t hurry. Are you sure you’ll be all right? The seats are not the most comfortable, as I am sure you remember.’

  ‘I’ll manage. If I need to, I can walk about. I’ll sit towards the back. In any case, I want to hear the Morley all the way through. They have a very promising treble in the choir.’

  ‘I forget your ear,’ Johns said. ‘They all sound the same to me.’ He shrugged on his gown. ‘It’s getting chilly, don’t you think?’

  Marlowe laughed. ‘I had almost forgotten the wind from Muscovy,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in the caverns of London lanes for too long, perhaps.’

  ‘You’ll never leave London,’ Johns laughed. ‘London suits you, as you suit it.’

  ‘When I am an old man,’ Marlowe said, softly, ‘I will retire to Kent, back to where my bones belong. I shall plant an orchard and sit in the evening and listen to my trees grow. And when I am gone, people will sit under my trees and remember me.’

  ‘You don’t need an orchard to be remembered,’ Johns said, with a catch in his throat. ‘Your mighty line will live beyond any tree.’ He cleared his throat. ‘We’re getting maudlin.’

  ‘It’s the funeral,’ Marlowe said, following Johns to the door. ‘A funeral will do that to a man.’

  The choir was perfect. The treble was sublime. The Burial had never sounded more wonderful. The dean gave a sermon which was moving in its simplicity, full of regret for a young and promising life cut short. Marlowe, who could write a pathetic line like no other, gave a small nod of recognition for another’s talent. The man’s poetry rang out in the chapel and could have made the angels weep.

  The boy sitting at the far end of Marlowe’s seat was weeping too. He didn’t sob and gulp and make much of it, as many scholars were doing in the foremost seats. A girl sitting alone at the front wiped her eyes from time to time and kept looking behind her. The boy, though, sat like stone, the tears running down his cheeks and dripping from his chin, unheeded.

  At the end of the service, Marlowe went over to him. ‘Can I help you?’ he said. ‘Can I take you for a drink somewhere, while you collect yourself? It was a very moving service.’ Half of Marlowe’s motivation was pity, the other was curiosity. Why was he not with the others and why was his grief so all-encompassing, not made for common show as it was with all the scholars at the front?

  The lad seemed to notice his tears for the first time and wiped them away with the sleeve of his fustian. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said. ‘I think I will just go back to my rooms. Roger’s … friends … will give him a good send-off.’

  ‘Are you not a friend?’ Marlowe asked, kindly. ‘You certainly seem upset.’

  The boy looked at him and searched his face to see if he could recognize him. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Christopher Marlowe. I am an alumnus of Corpus Christi, but …’

  ‘Christopher Marlowe the playwright?’ The boy’s eyes, the lashes clogged with tears, were wide.

  ‘Yes, but I—’

  ‘Roger would have so loved to meet you. We went to one of your plays, once, when we were in London visiting an aunt. Tamburlaine. It was wonderful. Isn’t Ned Alleyn a marvel?’ Even in his grief, the boy’s eyes shone at the memory.

  ‘Hmm.’ Even to be kind to the bereaved, Marlowe couldn’t agree that Alleyn was a marvel. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I thought you knew. I am Richard Williams. I am Roger’s brother. His twin, actually.’

  Marlowe was surprised. ‘Why are you sitting so far back?’

  The boy tossed his head towards the scholars, who were still crying noisily. ‘I didn’t want to sit with them. They are just here because … well, I don’t know if you know this, but my brother drowned. As did I, nearly. It made us quite famous for a day or so. The Inquest, and so on. They weren’t Roger’s friends. Any more than that trollop sitting over there was his paramour, on any level. But you know how it is, I suppose, being in the theatre. People just want to be part of the show.’

  Marlowe was impressed. Not many scholars his age would have the insight of this boy.

  ‘Where are my manners?’ The lad gave a final sniff. ‘I would be pleased to show you my rooms and perhaps we can share some wine, or ale or something. I … it’s a bit lonely, now. I don’t like going in by myself. I haven’t been by myself since I was born, until last week.’ The tears welled up again.

  ‘That would be very pleasant,’ Marlowe said. He thought about Johns, making his way out of the Cho
ir and decided he could always find him later. ‘Lead on.’

  Marlowe took note of the leather-bound tomes on the high shelf. Bale was there, along with Fortescue’s Foreste, Munster’s Cosmography and Ramus and Aristotle for good measure.

  ‘I’m impressed by your light reading, Master Williams.’

  ‘I know them off by heart, sir,’ Richard Williams said. He sat in his room with his brother’s empty bed beside him, hunched and pale as though it was the dead of winter.

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘But do you understand any of them?’

  The boy blinked. That thought hadn’t occurred to him.

  ‘No Ovid,’ Marlowe said, still scanning the shelves. ‘No Machiavelli.’

  ‘Those volumes are banned by the university, sir.’ Williams was clearly a lad who played things by the book.

  ‘Indeed they are,’ Marlowe remembered. Cambridge was no freer in its thought now than it had been in his day. ‘By the way, don’t call me “sir”. My name is Marlowe.’

  Williams tried a grin. It didn’t suit him.

  ‘This was your brother’s cupboard?’ Marlowe held open the little wooden door. ‘May I?’

  The boy nodded.

  It was much as Marlowe expected. More books; nothing untoward. Another fustian robe with the roses of King’s embroidered on the sleeve, a pair of pattens and two shirts. Not so much as a dagger.

  ‘Where are you from, Richard?’ he asked.

  ‘York, sir … er … Master Marlowe. Or, at least, a village nearby. Poppleton.’

  ‘I didn’t see your parents at the service.’

  ‘They’re dead, Master Marlowe,’ the boy said. ‘The sweating sickness two years ago. We just have our aunt, in London. I mean …’ his face crumpled briefly, ‘I just have my aunt in London.’

  He checked the lad’s status. ‘And you are Convictus Secundus?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Church? As a career, I mean?’

  ‘The law. The Inns of Court. What do you know of them, Master Marlowe? Our father was a lawyer, but he never went to London.’

  ‘Begging your father’s pardon, Richard, I know well enough to avoid them. Men in my profession usually do.’

  Williams smiled bleakly. Laughter wasn’t something that came easily to him now. It would probably take a while. The boy was … what? Sixteen? Seventeen? Without a mother, father or brother, alone in the chill winds of Cambridge, his clothes rough and lacking a mother’s care, his hair cropped short to mark his status.

  Marlowe sat down next to him. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what happened to Roger.’

  Williams looked long and hard into those deep, dark eyes. ‘I told you,’ he said with a shrug. ‘He drowned.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Paradise,’ the lad told him.

  Marlowe knew it well, that stretch of the Cam that curved towards the Fens, with its innocent surface, its deadly current. Many was the hapless scholar and drunken shepherd who had missed his footing on those deceptive banks where the dog rose and honeysuckle bloomed in the summer sun.

  ‘You mistook the mood of the water,’ he nodded.

  ‘No.’ Williams was suddenly sure, his eye clear and his voice steady. ‘No. Roger and I were water-babies. We were swimming in the Ouse before we left our hanging sleeves. There was more to it.’

  ‘What?’ Marlowe waited.

  ‘I don’t remember.’ Suddenly, the boy who would be a lawyer was a child again, not looking Marlowe in the eye, squirming on the bed as though the mouth of Hell was opening up before him.

  ‘Try,’ Marlowe said softly. ‘You were on the banks of the Cam, you and Roger. When was this? A week ago?’

  Williams nodded. ‘Thursday. Our half-day. The Master gives us leave.’

  ‘And you went swimming?’

  ‘Yes. It will be too cold, soon, so we thought …’ the lad looked down and knotted his hands together, ‘we thought it would be the last one for a while.’ The enormity of it all was sweeping over him yet again and his voice faltered and stopped.

  Marlowe knew at this point it was important to be workmanlike, though he could feel the boy’s pain. ‘Just the two of you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. You’re on the bank at Paradise. Was anyone else there?’

  Williams looked up, remembering. ‘No … yes.’

  Marlowe waited, but there was no more detail to come. ‘Yes or no, Master Williams?’

  ‘I … I didn’t tell them at the Inquest,’ the boy muttered, the weight of the thing heavy on his heart.

  ‘What? What didn’t you tell them?’ Marlowe was like a dog with a bone. But the last thing he wanted to do was to frighten the lad still further. He sensed that with one slip, one step in the wrong direction, he could lose him.

  Richard Williams frowned, trying to concentrate, trying to remember. ‘Roger went in first,’ he said. ‘I was … this sounds ridiculous … I was having trouble with my pattens. Couldn’t get them off. Roger called out it was cold … something like that … then he swam a little way …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I heard a splash. Well, a series of splashes. There are tall reeds where we were and I couldn’t see Roger. He was splashing around, I suppose. It had to be him. That’s when I saw him.’

  Marlowe tensed. ‘Saw who?’ he asked. ‘Roger?’

  ‘No. No. Someone else. Tall – no, not tall, but he loomed over me as I bent over. Dark. He had the sun at his back, shining directly into my eyes. He grabbed me, by the arms. I struggled. Then, I was under the water.’ The boy began to shudder, his mouth hanging open. He fell forward against Marlowe who caught him and held him tight. ‘Oh, Lord,’ Williams went on in a croaked whisper, ‘I felt the pain of drowning, Master Marlowe. Such a noise in my ears. Such a pain in my chest. I went down, twice, three times. I don’t know. Each time I went under, it all began again. Blackness. Deep, impenetrable blackness. I wanted to die, God help me.’

  Marlowe felt the boy’s tears soaking into his doublet and he patted his shoulder and stroked his hair until the lad felt well enough to sit up again. Williams wiped his eyes with his sleeve and went on, ‘How long I was in the water, I don’t know. When I woke up, I was on the bank again, with shepherds fussing round me. They may have saved my life. But Roger … Roger was gone. They found his body later that day, floating downstream.’

  ‘Roger, the strong swimmer?’ Marlowe had to check.

  ‘Yes,’ Williams said, sniffing back the tears. ‘A better one than I, that’s for sure.’

  ‘This man,’ Marlowe said, ‘the dark one, who loomed over you with the sun behind him. Was there anything else about him that you remember? Did he speak?’

  Williams blinked, trying to focus his tortured mind. ‘Yes,’ he said as the memory came back to him in a flash. Yes. He said … he said, not once, but twice, more than that even, over and over. “Have you seen him yet?” he said. “Have you seen him?”’

  Marlowe frowned. ‘Do you know what he meant?’ he asked.

  Williams shook his head. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ he said.

  ‘Is this wise, Kit?’ Johns knew his man. There was a wildness about Marlowe. He would walk through the fire just to prove he could and cut cards with the Devil at the end of it.

  Marlowe looked at his old tutor and smiled. ‘Is what wise, Professor?’ he asked.

  ‘What you’re planning to do,’ Johns said. ‘You may have a broken rib for all you know, not to mention the blow to your head.’

  ‘I’ve had worse,’ Marlowe said, ‘but there are some things that have to be answered.’

  ‘You couldn’t take it to law, I suppose? Find a constable? A magistrate?’

  Marlowe laughed and shook his head. ‘Don’t find me again, Michael,’ he said, clapping a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Whatever happens. You’ve already chanced your arm by doing what you’ve done. Keep out of it now.’

  Johns opened his mouth to say something but he couldn’t find the
words. The path that Marlowe had taken since the days of Corpus Christi was dark and winding. Probably, the poet-playwright was right; better he should travel it alone.

  SIX

  Kit Marlowe was no student of tactics, but he had an instinct about these things. He also understood the nature of trees and walls. He hauled himself up both, despite the pain in his side and the throb in his head, ducking under the branches with their dying leaves and dropping silently onto the stones of the court. It was broad daylight and scholars making their way to lectures looked at him with astonishment. True, it was the way some of them got into the college after dark, dodging the lanterns of the proctors, unsteady with ale and with their hearts in their mouths. But here was a gentleman, a roisterer by his doublet and Collyweston cloak, doing the same thing in the middle of the day. Why didn’t he just walk through the gate? As they watched, spellbound, all became clear.

  The proctor with the bull neck was lounging against the medieval stone. He would nip indoors in a minute to light his pipe and put his feet up, but there were drovers prodding their cattle along Trumpington Street and the proctor wanted to keep an eye on them. Riff-raff from the town he knew all about; nomads from God-knew-where took some watching.

  Marlowe tapped him lightly on the shoulder and the man spun round. Nobody, not even the Master, laid a hand on a proctor of Pembroke Hall.

  ‘How … how did you get in?’ he blurted out.

  ‘Back wall,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Third tree on the right.’

  Before the proctor could say anything else or even move, Marlowe smashed his face with the pommel of his dagger and the man went down, moaning, with blood pouring from his nose. There was a roar of appreciation from the scholars and, from nowhere, a little crowd had gathered, clapping and laughing. Marlowe could have done with them at the Rose. He crouched and ripped the embroidered college badge from the man’s sleeve. Then he stood up and aimed a careful kick into the man’s ribs.

  The proctor lay there, curled up and half insensible and Marlowe leaned back against the inner doorframe. Sure enough, within seconds, the second proctor emerged. He saw the crowd first and bellowed at them, ‘What’s going on?’ Then he saw his brother proctor lying by the gateway.