Dark Entry (15 page)

Henry Bromerick lay pale and ghastly on the bier in the little room in St Bene’t’s, the temporary resting place of Corpus scholars before they were carried with cap and bells to the little graveyard that nestled next to The Court. Sometimes families claimed their dead and took them away to their homes, to bury them in their own churchyards with the yews and the mouldering stones for company.

No one was thinking that far ahead in the case of Henry Bromerick, certainly not Dr Norgate who stood bareheaded by the boy’s corpse. And certainly not Professor Johns who stood with him.

There was an unceremonious crash as the little door that linked the church to the college swung back and the sound of boots clattered on the stone outside. Kit Marlowe stood in the doorway, his cloak and hat gone, his doublet unlaced. He barely noticed Norgate and Johns and acknowledged neither of them, striding across the room and taking Bromerick’s cold hand. The boy’s thatch of brown hair was swept back from his face where the woman-who-does had brushed it for him. The face itself had been washed and the eyelids closed. Only the stains on the Corpus robe remained, a darkness spread over the pelican and lilies.

Bromerick’s jaw was set fast, the mouth slightly open, the scar of Lomas’ whip darker than the skin around it. His fingers felt like iron in Marlowe’s grasp.

‘Kit,’ Johns said softly, touching his arm. ‘We are so sorry.’

‘Yes.’ Norgate nodded, having forgotten his manners in the events of the last couple of hours. ‘Yes, Dominus Morley. Please accept our condolences.’

Marlowe looked up at them both, the soft kindliness of Michael Johns, the aloof, studied sophistication of Norgate. ‘I’d like someone else to see this,’ he said.

‘Someone . . . ?’

But before Norgate had finished his question, Marlowe had dashed back to the door and ushered in the man with whom he had tried to raise the dead. Dee nodded, but no more to the men in the room, Bromerick among them. Then he took the dead man’s hand, as Marlowe had done, and checked his finger nails. He placed his palm on Bromerick’s forehead and lifted an eyelid.

‘Sir . . .’ Norgate was outraged but Marlowe lifted a finger to stop him and it worked.

Dee frowned when he saw the stained robe front. ‘This man has been dead for some hours,’ he said in the treacly voice that fascinated Marlowe. ‘See, the stiffness of death is in his fingers, his jaw.’ He looked up to the little oriel window where the first light of dawn was creeping through the shadows. ‘He will be stiff as a board by breakfast time. By tonight he will be soft again, malleable – and we’ll know more. If I may have the body then?’ he asked the assembly. ‘On my own.’

‘Have the body?’ Norgate finally exploded. ‘Sir, this is Corpus Christi College . . .’

‘We must ask who you are, sir.’ Johns felt the need to support the Master.

‘This is Dr John Dee of Mortlake,’ Marlowe answered. ‘Doctor Norgate, Master of Corpus Christi and Professor Johns.’

‘The Queen’s Magus?’ Johns whispered in awe.

Norgate was less impressed. ‘Her Majesty may confide in you, sir. I do not. And I am the law here in Corpus Christi and I’ll have no truck with fairground charlatans. You will kindly leave the college precincts or I will have you removed.’

‘Master . . .’ Johns began, but Marlowe cut him short.

‘Two friends of mine have died in the last twelve days, Dr Norgate,’ he said, levelly. ‘You’ll forgive me if I find this fact seriously disturbing and not a little odd. If you defy Dr Dee, sir, you’re treading on dangerous ground.’

‘Dangerous . . .’ Norgate was speechless.

‘Master Marlowe.’ Dee smiled. He had been in these situations before. ‘We must not presume on the good Doctor’s time. I remember my days at Trinity. The Master is God, even on this hallowed ground. Is there somewhere you could buy me breakfast? I always think better on a full stomach.’

Dee tucked into his new milk, hot bread and frumenty like there was no tomorrow – as of course for Harry Bromerick there wasn’t.

Joseph Fludd was no slouch either, waving at the serving wench in the Kettle to top up his milk. Only Marlowe didn’t eat. He sat nursing a pitcher of water and left it undrunk.

‘Tell me again,’ Marlowe said to the Constable, even though he had heard it twice over as the pair had jogged back along the darkened Cambridge streets, Dee stumbling behind them as best he could. Even leading the horses, Fludd and Marlowe easily outpaced the man and had reached St Bene’t’s ahead of him.

‘Master Bromerick was found here.’ Fludd placed a fruit bowl in the centre of the table. ‘This is Lion Yard.’ He looked up at Dee, as though explaining to a savage from the Frozen Sea. ‘Off Petty Cury.’

‘I know where it is, Master Constable.’ Dee raised a deadly eyebrow. ‘I was a Fellow of Trinity at its foundation. There are not many holes-in-corners of this town of yours I don’t know. Tell me, do the roisterers still warm their arses on the stools of Little Germany, or is the Cardinal’s Cap the place to be? Or perhaps –’ he nudged Kit – ‘I should ask Master Marlowe that.’

Marlowe smiled despite himself. ‘I understand from the more idle of my fellows that it’s the Blue Boar these days,’ he said.

Dee closed to Fludd. ‘There was a nest of Papists in Kettles Yard,’ he said, ‘and another on the Lammas Land south of the Causeway. You’ve wiped them out, I suppose?’

Fludd was uncomfortable. ‘I believe the university has, sir. Church matters. I only deal with the town, what happens in the street.’

‘And what happened in the street,’ Marlowe said, bringing the conversation back, ‘was Henry Bromerick.’

‘Yes.’ The Constable nodded grimly. ‘This was yesterday, a little after six of the clock. Witnesses told me he was took funny, went rigid sudden like and fell over. Hit his head against a handcart on the way down. There was some blood.’

‘What about the front of his robes, man?’ Dee asked. ‘You saw the body, I presume, where it lay?’

‘I did, sir. He’d been sick. Thrown up all down himself. Not a nice thing to see. A woman fainted dead away, apparently. By the time I got there, they’d picked her up.’

‘And moved the body?’ Dee checked.

‘I should imagine so, sir. They’d put him on a cart, in Gonville Alley, away from the crowds, as it were. It’s not every day a man drops dead in Cambridge. What was it, sir? Ague? Sweating sickness?’

‘Murder,’ said Dee, munching into a newly baked loaf he had liberally spread with honey.

‘Two in twelve days,’ Marlowe said. ‘And both friends of mine.’

Fludd sat upright with hands raised, not a little bewildered. ‘Sirs,’ he said. ‘I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’

‘Ralph Whitingside,’ Marlowe said, swilling his water listlessly in the pewter pitcher. ‘King’s man. I found him dead in his college bed two weeks ago come Friday. He had stains on his shirt, over his bedclothes.’

‘And now,’ Dee said, taking up the tale, ‘Henry Bromerick, Corpus Christi man. You, Constable, found him dead, yesterday. He had stains on his robes. A mirror of the soul, Master Fludd, two men dead in the same manner.’

Fludd nodded. ‘It’s the sweating sickness. Can’t be anything else.’

‘It can be
anything
else,’ Dee assured him, ‘but it’s not. How long would you say, Constable, Master Bromerick had been dead?’

‘Er . . . I was up at the Castle when they called me, sir,’ he said. ‘I came straight away, so perhaps twenty minutes, half an hour.’

‘And Ralph Whitingside, Master Marlowe?’ Dee turned to him.

‘Hours? A day? Who knows.’

‘If that hedge priest had not come to drive off his demons, we might all know,’ Dee said ruefully. Fludd, even more confused, looked from one to the other, but no details were forthcoming. ‘What colour, Fludd, was the staining on the dead man’s robes?’

‘Green, sir. Bright green.’

‘Remind me, Master Marlowe, for Master Fludd’s information. How was it with Whitingside?’

Marlowe shrugged. ‘Green. As far as I could tell in the dark.’

Dee nodded. ‘It would have darkened with exposure to air and light anyway.’ He took a deep draught of milk and wiped his moustache free of it before he went on. ‘If I remember rightly, Master Marlowe, you told me Whitingside’s room was overturned as if there had been a fight.’

‘Yes.’ Marlowe nodded, frowning to recapture the scene. ‘A chair overturned, papers strewn, rugs kicked on the floor.’

‘And Henry Bromerick, Master Fludd, was “took funny”, you said.’

‘That’s right, sir,’ the Constable agreed, seeing a sort of pattern in the magus’s reasoning. ‘If there’d been any furniture to hand, he’d have kicked it over, I’m sure of that. He hit a cart as it was.’

‘And I am sure too, gentlemen,’ Dee said, untucking the kerchief from his collar and folding it neatly on the trestle, ‘Ralph Whitingside and Henry Bromerick were both poisoned with, unless I miss my guess, the common foxglove. The plant is frequently found near rabbit warrens, but you’ve none growing wild in Cambridge, gentlemen.’ He stood up. ‘I wish you luck in your searches.’

‘Wait, Dr Dee.’ Marlowe was on his feet too, gripping the great man’s sleeve. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To Madingley,’ he said. ‘To see my old friend Roger Manwood. I can’t stand Francis Hynde, but into every life a little rain must pour.’ He closed confidentially to Marlowe. ‘You’ll think me an appalling snob,’ he murmured, ‘but Hynde’s father was an apprentice bookbinder. Now, his lad’s lord of the bloody manor. It’s a mad world, my masters.’

‘But . . .’

Dee held up his hand. ‘Master Marlowe. You have a road to walk, sir, and you must walk it alone. These men were friends of yours. You owe them your keenest wit, your sharpest dagger. Someone killed them.’ He looked at Fludd and sighed. ‘Only you, Master Marlowe can solve this conundrum.’

He tossed a gold coin on to the table and strode for the door where a boy held his horse.

‘What about the showstone?’ Marlowe called to him. ‘Can you look into it for me?’

Dee could look into the showstone. Had looked into it on numerous occasions, the polished crystal of smoky quartz that foretold the future. But each time Dee used it, he felt afraid. And each time, he felt a little piece of himself vanish into it. He beckoned Marlowe over, clamped a hand on his shoulder and spread his other arm wide. Before him ran the turreted outer wall of St Catherine’s and beyond that the Gothic splendour of King’s. ‘Here’s your showstone, Kit,’ he whispered, ‘and you must look into it for yourself.’

Tom Colwell didn’t get much out of the Discourses that afternoon. Neither did Matthew Parker. It was a hot, sticky day, the sun burning on the thick panes of Corpus Christi and beyond them the hoi polloi of Cambridge went about their business. It was market day and the roads in and out of the square were jammed with sheep, cattle and geese, the whole town like some mad Babel with its cacophony of street cries.

Neither man had slept. And both men were turning things over in their minds when they should have been concentrating on their lessons. A sizar had brought them the news a little after seven as the pair sprawled on their hard beds, wondering where Henry Bromerick was and when Kit Marlowe would be back. The sizar had been hysterical, white and shaking and Tom Colwell had sat him down and had held his shoulders, telling him to breathe deeply and to focus. By the time the lad had finished his tale, it had been Colwell who was shaking. He couldn’t look at Parker, not at first. Then they’d both run the gauntlet of the Proctors and clattered round to Bene’t’s Lane, cutting through St Edward’s Passage and on into Lion Yard. A knot of ghoulish bystanders had clustered at the entrance to Gonville Alley. The Parker scholars had hauled them away and stood looking at the remains of their friend. The Constable had been there too, peering at the dead man’s face.

‘Leave him alone!’ Matt Parker had shouted, suddenly overwhelmed by it all. He couldn’t stand the thought of some stranger handling Henry like a side of mutton in the market. He’d known this man since he was a boy, since they were babies together in fact. As long as he could remember, Henry Bromerick had been there, wrestling in the long grass, throwing stones at the weavers’ houses along the river Stour, rivalling each other in the choir stalls of the cathedral and daring each other to walk the whole frightening length of the Dark Entry.

Now, all that was gone. All that life, all that youth, all that hope. There was no one in Cambridge now who knew him like Bromerick had. He felt the space at his back, the lack of his friend in a way that he had never felt his presence.

The Constable had asked them their names, their business there and how they knew the dead man. One of them, and it may have been Parker, had mentioned Kit Marlowe to the Constable. And the Constable had stood upright on hearing the name and, telling them to take the corpse to the college, he had gone, shooing away the crowd at the alley’s end.

Men along the road had doffed their caps, women had bowed their heads. Here and there people had furtively crossed themselves as the sorry load creaked past them. Colwell with an iron lump in his throat, Parker convulsed with crying. Their dead friend on the bier between them.

At the end of the interminable Discourses, with the sun still high and the market only now winding down, the lads packed up their books and made for the buttery. A welcome sight met them in the entrance – Kit Marlowe. The three hugged each other silently, Parker weeping all over Marlowe’s doublet.

‘Kit . . .’ he began.

‘I know,’ the older scholar said. ‘We need to talk.’ He caught the eye of Gabriel Harvey sweeping the hall in gown and cap. ‘But not here.’

Benjamin Steane was annoyed. Very annoyed, in fact. His main aim in life was to ensure that everything ran on oiled wheels, that everything that happened happened both
when
and
how
he planned it. But, Goad, the old fool, had inadvertently pushed him down a path too soon. He had been forced to tell him of his impending elevation to a See of his own and then, the next day, of his marriage. He had taken the coward’s road in sharing his second secret and had sent a note. He had instructed his Mercury, an unfortunate sizar too slow to get away, to wait for a reply, but there was none. He wasn’t sure when he wrote his note, and now never would be, but he thought that of the two, his marriage plans would have shocked the Provost most.