Dark Entry (24 page)

‘Uh-oh,’ Marlowe muttered and half-turned to be ready for what was to follow.

‘They’re St John’s men,’ Parker said as the hubbub grew. One of them was up on stage, while others at the front were tussling with the groundlings who were draped on its edge.

‘If you will tear and blaspheme Heaven and Earth,’ the Scholar shouted. ‘If you will learn to become a bawd . . .’

Roars of approval rose from the crowd.

‘. . . if you will learn to devirginate maids . . .’

‘I already know how to do that, sonny!’ a Bedford Levels man shouted back to the delight of the men around him.

‘If you will commit lewd and ungodly filthiness . . .’

‘Well, there have to be some perks,’ somebody else shouted.

The Scholar grabbed the Fair Maid of Kent and proceeded to haul up the lad’s skirts. ‘Sodomites!’ he roared. ‘All of them!’

Thomas pushed him away and tried to regain some composure. ‘Do you mind?’ he said in his own voice. ‘There’s nothing funny about Lord Strange’s Men,’ he insisted.

But the Scholar wasn’t listening. ‘Are we going to allow this filth in our town?’ he screamed. ‘Within the precincts of our University? On this very piece of land bequeathed to us by Archbishop Parker of blessed memory?’

‘Oh, yes, wonderful,’ Matt Parker muttered in the increasingly mutinous crowd. ‘Let’s bring granddad into this again, by all means.’

A fight had broken out below the stage where a Dry Drayton man was kicking a John’s scholar for all he was worth. The muscular Christians of the college leapt to his defence and Fludd’s under-constables darted through the swaying mob to prevent a murder.

‘Ned?’ the Fair Maid of Kent looked at his master for approval.

‘All right,’ Sledd sighed, pulling off his grey beard. ‘The whole bloody thing’s ruined now anyway.’

And Thomas lowered his head and butted the John’s man in the stomach, grappling with him until they both fell off the stage. Edward Winterton’s sword was in his hand and at last the Mayor was galvanized into movement. He clapped his hands and attempted a calming speech, but nobody was listening. All over the crowd, fights were breaking out here and there. Dry Drayton men against the scholars; Bedford Levels boys against the scholars. Everybody against the Puritans.

‘It’s a little late for that now, Mayor,’ Winterton yelled in his ear, trying to be heard over the din.

‘Edward!’ the Coroner’s wife was bewildered. Doling out domestic violence was her meat and drink, but this was getting out of hand.

‘Not now, dearest,’ Winterton snapped. ‘Mayor, get the ladies out of here, will you?’ And the Mayor was only too happy to oblige.

On the edge of the field, Nicholas Drew, the ferryman, was trading punches with a couple of Jesus men. He really wanted to get across to the Corpus lads to give them a smacking for pinching
his
church. His wife stood behind him, fists clenched, ducking and diving for her husband. Then it was cudgels out and the clack of quarterstaff on quarterstaff, among the screams and cries.

‘How are we doing?’ The Fair Maid of Kent popped his head above the stage parapet. His nose was bleeding, but his stomacher and farthingale were holding up quite well.

‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Thomas.’ Ned Sledd was kneeling on one knee above him, his temple dripping blood from a carelessly-lobbed stone. ‘But Lord Strange’s Men appear to be outnumbered about twenty to one.’ He had a commanding view of the battlefield that was Parker’s Piece from where he crouched and his troupe were in danger of being engulfed by sheer numbers.

‘Rally with the boys on the right,’ Sledd ordered, as much a general as a player-king if the need arose. ‘I’ll take the lot on the left. Push them all back from the stage area. I don’t want to face his Lordship if they get their hands on our flats.’

Thomas complied, hauling up his skirts and shouldering struggling scholars out of the way.

‘Not easy, is it, sonny?’ a village woman snarled at him. ‘Fighting in a skirt.’ And she smacked a shovel down on the head of the Fair Maid of Kent. It was the last thing he saw for quite a while.

‘We can’t hold them on the left, Joe!’ an exhausted under-constable stumbled alongside Fludd. ‘We need the militia.’

Fludd looked at him. The man must have taken too many knocks to the head. ‘Well, I’ll just write a letter to the Lord Lieutenant, shall I?’ he asked. ‘Send a messenger to London for him? Wait for him to issue a commission of array? That’ll be perfect. They’ll be here in a month or so. Oh, and by the way,’ he said, pointing to the melee, where men were knocking lumps out of each other, ‘most of the Cambridge militia are already here!’

The constables knew only too well that fists, boots and cudgels would soon be replaced by knives and then things would get really nasty. Fludd sent his man back into the fray and clouted a man over the head with his staff. In the centre, Harry Rushe, his broken arm strapped into his jerkin, was kicking a Puritan in the groin. Meg Hawley, alongside him, was doing her best to drag her man away. Part of her felt sorry for him – he was at a serious disadvantage, after all, with only one arm. But part of her hated him for the lout he was, gouging the eyes of another scholar with his good hand.

One woman who wasn’t helping her man was Allys Fludd. In fact, she’d only seen him once, before the trouble began and had done her best to shrink down in the crowd, hoping that little Kate wouldn’t see her daddy and call out to him. But the excitement of earlier in the day had given way to terror and knots of people, some bleeding and hurt, were staggering away from the chaos on Parker’s Piece. Allys was with them. She’d lost her bundle back in the terrifying, swaying mob and had held Kate to her, the little girl screaming and crying. If this was what a play was like, she never wanted to see one again.

‘Hello, darlin’.’ A Bedford Levels man stood in Allys’s path. ‘Now, where are you goin’ in such a hurry?’ He grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her to him. Allys bit the man’s lip as it brushed her mouth and he pulled back, bleeding and swearing. In a second, he’d shaken his head and slapped her hard across the face, sending her reeling.

‘Don’t hurt my mummy!’ Kate screamed at him, pounding his leg with fists and feet. He scooped her up and held her on high, dangling her at arm’s length, laughing.

It was then that Fludd saw his daughter, being twirled like a puppet above the mob. He didn’t remember the next few seconds or how he crossed that field, but the next thing Allys Fludd knew was that the oaf was lying senseless alongside her and her husband was straddling her, holding their daughter to him and soothing her crying. He snatched Allys to her feet and held them both tight.

A body collided with the little group and Fludd turned, staff at the ready to crack more heads.

‘Good afternoon, Constable,’ the scholar said.

‘Master Marlowe,’ Fludd panted. ‘Enjoying the play?’

Marlowe smiled. ‘I don’t think much of the metre.’

Fludd was suddenly serious. ‘Marlowe, my wife and child. Get them to safety, for God’s sake.’

Marlowe looked at the Fludd women, one tiny, one heavy with child, both tear stained. ‘It will be my pleasure,’ he said and he shepherded them away.

‘Joe!’ Allys screamed, but Marlowe held her fast, with little Kate clinging to her skirts. They all saw the man disappear into the crowd again, pulling fighters apart and laying about him with his tipstaff.

‘Constabulary business,’ Marlowe said, smiling. ‘Calm yourself, Mistress Fludd. Your husband is very good at pursuing his enquiries.’

Gradually, the sounds of battle on Parker’s Piece died away and Marlowe and the Fludd family joined the throng drifting along Silver Street. Occasionally, as they hurried west, there were shouts and roars as some new outrage was committed around the wooden O that had started the whole thing. Then, they were hurrying down St Edward’s Passage and around the corner to the front gate of Corpus. It was locked. Marlowe drew his dagger for the first time that day and hammered on the gnarled old oak with its pommel. There was a grating sound and the grille slid back.

‘College is locked, Marlowe,’ Proctor Lomas grunted. ‘You’re on your own.’

‘I’ve a woman and child here, Lomas,’ Marlowe hissed. ‘If you won’t let me in, at least think of them. It’s murder out here, man.’

Lomas grinned. ‘Oh, you’ve got lots of ways to get in and out of Corpus,
Dominus
Marlowe. Why don’t you use one of them now?’

There was a metallic clink as Marlowe’s blade flashed upwards, catching the Proctor’s nose along with the grille. ‘Avert your gaze, Mistress Fludd,’ he said. ‘There are some things a constable’s wife shouldn’t see.’

Allys Fludd was made of sterner stuff. And after this afternoon, she’d seen enough for a lifetime, constable’s wife or not. Marlowe had gripped Lomas’ nose with one hand and held the glinting blade under his nostrils.

‘Now, Proctor Lomas,’ he said softly. ‘You will very slowly raise your right hand and unlock this gate. If you don’t, you won’t be picking your nose for a while because you won’t have a nose to pick.’ And the blade edged infinitesimally higher.

Behind the gate, Lomas was on tiptoe already and he couldn’t pull away for fear of the speed of Marlowe’s knife. Gingerly, very gingerly, he turned the heavy key to his right and the door creaked open. Marlowe kicked it so that it slammed back on the Proctor and he ushered the Fludd women inside before locking it again behind them.

Briefly, he bent over the man. ‘I promised you that there’d be a reckoning,’ he said.

Professor Johns strode past the Proctor’s Lodge at that moment and glanced at the scene that met him, Lomas lying groaning on the flagstones, holding his head.

‘Lying down on the job again, Lomas?’ he chirped. ‘Tut tut.’

In another part of the field, a wheezing Sir Edward Winteron found a bleeding Joseph Fludd.

‘Sir Edward,’ the Constable shouted in his ear as all Hell raged around them, ‘you shouldn’t be here. Go home, sir.’

‘When you do, Constable,’ the coroner shouted back. ‘Tell me, is there still a cannon in Great St Mary’s?’

‘Yes, sir, a saker. It’s in one of the outbuildings.’

‘How many men to get it here?’ Winterton wanted to know.

Checking the parish gun was part of the Constable’s duties. The thing was eight feet long and weighed 1500 pounds. ‘Four,’ Fludd said, optimistically. ‘Three at a pinch.’

‘Three it is, then. Take two of your men and get it here. There’ll be powder and shot with it.’

‘Er . . . I should point out, Sir Edward –’ Fludd knew his local legislation – ‘that that gun was placed there on the orders of King Harry. In case the French should invade.’

‘Yes, laddie,’ Winterton humoured him. ‘I’m impressed by your grasp of history.’ He looked at the man closely under the mask of blood. ‘You weren’t even born then, surely? I remember it as though it were yesterday.’

‘That’s my point, sir,’ Fludd shouted. ‘Nobody’s fired the gun in forty years. As for the powder . . .’

‘Bring it!’ roared Winterton. ‘It may be that just the sight of the damn thing will bring those rioting idiots to their senses. It won’t be long before they start on the shops and God help us then.’

Fludd hauled two of his lads out of the fight and they ran across the field in the direction of the church of Great St Mary.

‘Yes, that’s it!’ Harry Rushe and his fenland men saw them go. ‘Run away, you tipstaff bastards!’ And he swung back to the punching again.

Winterton had been right about the event, but wrong about the time. Even as Fludd and his men dragged the heavy saker across the market square and into Petty Cury, people were smashing windows and ripping down the market awnings, stuffing whatever they could into jerkin-fronts and aprons. Here and there, running battles broke out as shopkeepers fought with looters to the crash of glass and the clash of steel. Stallholders struggled to keep their frames upright and all the shutters came down in a rattle of bolts.

Fludd himself carried the powder and shot, a six pound iron ball that bounced painfully in the canvas bag at his hip as the constables negotiated the tight corner by Pembroke Hall at a jog. Even the wounded and the just plain scared who were hurrying or straggling homeward in the evening sun stopped short at the sight of the saker. No one had seen a cannon on Cambridge streets for years; some of the younger ones didn’t quite know what it was. Fludd grabbed a couple of the more intrigued and dragooned them to putting their shoulders to the wheel.

Parker’s Piece looked like a battlefield, with hats, clothes and rubbish lying everywhere. Winterton had been defending himself with his sword while keeping an eye out for the gun. Now he launched himself in a tired run and helped Fludd and his lads to haul it into position. Those nearest broke off the fighting to stare at the thing, with its bronze barrel and studded wheels. But if Winterton had hoped its appearance would shock the mob into civil obedience, he was wrong.

He tossed his sword to a Constable and began tearing at Fludd’s powder supply.

‘Do you know how to fire this thing, Sir Edward?’ Fludd asked him, now thoroughly alarmed at the proposition.

Winterton pulled himself up to his full height. ‘Sir,’ he said calmly, ‘I fought at Pinkie. You never forget.’ And he stuffed handfuls of the black powder into the muzzle. There were still cobwebs on the carriage and the nuts were rusted. Fludd didn’t have a good feeling about this.

‘Ball, ball!’ Winterton shouted and Fludd rolled the shot down the hole.

‘Ram!’ Winterton ordered. ‘Ram?’ he asked, arms outstretched, looking wildly at the Constable. ‘Where’s the ram?’

‘There wasn’t one,’ Fludd realized, all too late. He dashed across the field, disarmed a fenman of his quarterstaff and kicked the man in the groin. He threw the pole to the coroner who, improvising wildly, rammed the ball in place before Fludd packed in more powder.

It took several attempts to get the tinderbox to flash, but once it did, Winterton applied the sparkling fuse to the touch hole and covered his ears.