Death by Disputation (A Francis Bacon Mystery Book 2)

Copyright 2014 by Anna Castle

Cover image by Jennifer Quinlan at Historical Editorial

Death by Disputation
is the second book in the Francis Bacon mystery series.

Thomas Clarady is recruited to spy on a group of radical Puritans at Cambridge University. Francis Bacon is his spymaster; his tutor in both tradecraft and religious politics. Their commission gets off to a deadly start when Tom finds his chief informant hanging from the roof beams. Now he must catch a murderer as well as a seditioner. His first suspect is volatile poet Christopher Marlowe, who keeps turning up in the wrong places.

Dogged by unreliable assistants, chased by three lusty women, and harangued daily by the exacting Bacon, Tom risks his very soul to catch the villains and win his reward.

Chapter One

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, 2 March, 1587

Bartholomew Leeds hung from the roof beam that ran the length of the cockloft. He seemed asleep with his head bowed, his eyes closed, and his hands dangling limply at his sides.

Thomas Clarady blinked, twice, then squeezed his eyes tight shut and popped them open, hoping to clear the trick of the light creating this illusion. There must be a stool beneath Leeds’s feet, supporting him.

But who could sleep standing on a stool?

Tom took a few reluctant steps forward from where he had abruptly stopped. He’d been in a hurry and made it halfway across the long room before spotting the man hanging between the curtained bedsteads. Three beds stood crosswise in a row down the center of the loft where the roof was highest: one near the stairwell for the younger boys, Leeds’s grander one in the middle, and the one Tom shared by the far wall. Leeds was hanging between the last two.

Tom had just dashed up to get some money from the box under his bed to pay the carrier to deliver his letter. That’s why he’d skipped out of the sermon early — he’d forgotten to fill his purse. The carrier left promptly at nine and Tom’s report was overdue as it was. He was supposed to write daily, detailing his observations of the events in the college.

Well, now his report would be even later. He wondered how his spymaster, Francis Bacon, would receive the news that yet another of Tom’s tutors had died unexpectedly.

Cold air struck his cheeks. The small windows set into the eaves on each long side of the loft were wide open, letting in a breeze fresh with the earthy smells of the greening fields east of the college. Spring was awakening in Cambridge, and for a mercy, it wasn’t raining. The sky beyond Leeds’s slender figure was a perfect blue. A blackbird on a nearby ledge vigorously declared his melodious philosophy to the breeze.

How could anyone destroy himself on such a beautiful March morning?

Leeds hung perfectly still, his slipper-clad toes pointed downward, two feet above the floor. The hem of his black gown fluttered about his bare ankles. Now Tom spotted the stool, lying on its side against the bed, where it must have rolled when Leeds kicked it over.

This was not a good development. Tom’s masters would not be pleased. How could such a thing have happened with no warning whatsoever? He’d seen the man only that morning when Leeds roused them for five o’clock chapel. Sleepy-eyed, by candlelight, he had seemed his usual self. Leeds was always dapper and correct, even before sunrise. He’d been dark of complexion and had cultivated a vaguely Italianate air, but more in the way of a scholarly curate than a melancholy man.

Though Tom knew little about his humors. Leeds had avoided him as much as possible, given that they occupied the same set of chambers along with three other students. He’d checked Tom’s work in a cursory fashion and sent him off to junior Fellows for further instruction.

Tom knew why — or guessed. Leeds had been having second thoughts about his letter to Lord Burghley; that was as plain as a poor man’s cuffs. He’d written to warn His Lordship about rising rebelliousness among the Puritan Protestants in the Cambridge area. They were planning to hold a secret meeting, a synod, under cover of commencement in July. One influential zealot was pushing an extreme agenda. There was even talk of separating from the established Church by means of violence.

Tom had been sent to worm his way into the confidence of the Puritan community in Cambridge in order to identify that zealous leader. That was why he was here, living in Leeds’s chambers as an ordinary paying student. By the time he arrived, however, Leeds had obviously begun to regret sending that warning. Tom didn’t mind; he could be patient. He would go about his daily round, studying toward his bachelor’s degree, until time and the Clarady charm worked their customary magic. Leeds would come around in a month or two, remember why he’d written that letter in the first place, and give Tom at least a nudge in the right direction.

What would become of Tom’s commission now? Would he be called back, a failure?

He wished that damned bird would stop its noise so he could think. He needed to have his wits about him. This wasn’t the first corpus he’d discovered, sad to say, nor even the second. The other two had been foully murdered. The circumstances here told a different tale — Bartholomew Leeds had taken his own life. Still, Tom needed to note every detail and commit it to memory and he couldn’t concentrate in the midst of this racket.

He leaned toward the window and shouted, “Hoi!” The singing stopped.

Tom studied the scene before him with deliberation, turning his attention to each item in turn. Bacon would expect a full accounting and he had the most annoying ability to spot the smallest gaps in Tom’s reports.

The rope from which Leeds hung was plain penny-cord, nothing special. Everyone used it, to tie up trunks and whatnot. It had been passed over the massive central beam that supported the roof of the whole east range of the college quadrangle. The far end of the rope was tied around the post at the head of the bed. The bed itself was plainly decorated but solid oak, sturdy enough to support Leeds’s slender weight. The hitch around the post looked ordinary enough, but Tom was nothing like the expert on knots that his Uncle Luke was. Luke could tell you sixteen things about that noose at a glance. He said knots were as individual as the men who made them. They could tell you where a man came from, what kind of work he did, whether he was right- or left-handed.

Walking around the body, Tom looked up to examine the noose behind Leeds’s head. Something about the knot tugged at his memory, but he couldn’t bring it all the way to the fore. It wasn’t your ordinary noose; not the sort he would tie anyway, to catch a horse or trap a bird. He doubted it mattered, but Bacon had instructed him to err on the side of excessive rather than insufficient detail. Bacon had added, with the natural arrogance that made him so exasperating, that he could easily delete the extraneous material, but he could not supply what wasn’t there.

Leeds was dressed in his scholar’s gown and leather slippers. His ankles were bare and so was his neck. Tom couldn’t bring himself to peek under the robe, but he was fairly certain Leeds was wearing neither breeches nor shirt. Had he gone back to bed after breakfast? He couldn’t imagine his straitlaced tutor being so slothful. Usually, when everyone else left the college to go to lectures or hear a sermon, Leeds took advantage of the quiet to work on his book at his desk downstairs in the study chamber.

A single sheet of paper lay atop the rushes beneath Leeds’s feet near an overturned pewter wine cup — Leeds’s own special cup, a gift from a grateful student. A jug from the buttery stood snugged up against the bedpost where it wouldn’t be stepped on by accident. Drinking in bed? That was less likely than merely returning to his pillow for a bit of extra sleep.

Tom picked up the sheet of paper. It was in English, written in Leeds’s hand. He hadn’t read more than the first line when he heard a groan and a shuffle in the rushes on the other side of the bed. He jumped back, startled. “God’s eyes!”

A man appeared from behind the curtains and stumbled against the bedpost. He glared blearily at Tom, made a harsh sort of gorking noise, then lurched toward the steps and lumbered down. Tom heard the door below creak open and thump shut.

The man was Christopher Marlowe, Tom’s Latin tutor. A shiver ran up his spine. Had Marlowe been lurking in here all this time? Why hadn’t he spoken? He was odd, no question, but far from deranged. On second thought, he’d acted like a man who has been rudely awakened from a heavy sleep. Had he been dozing on the floor behind the bed and been roused by Tom shouting at the bird?

Or
in
the bed? Tom hadn’t opened the curtains. A party of dwarves could be sleeping in there for all he knew. That thought sent another shiver up his spine. Holding his breath, he whipped the curtains back in a rattle of rings and a rush of wool. Empty. He let out his breath in a sigh of relief, glad no one had seen that bit of unmanly drama. The bedclothes were well rumpled, but the bed-makers always started on the west range and worked their way clockwise around the quadrangle. They wouldn’t reach this southeast corner until after dinner.

Still, Leeds’s state of semi-undress was now explained. Tom, being a lad of better than average looks, was used to fending off advances from both sexes and had known by the end of his first Latin lesson that Marlowe was a man who preferred men. Apparently, Bartholomew Leeds was another. But how could Marlowe have slept through Leeds’s suicide? Tom was getting that tight feeling in his gut that told him there was trouble in the offing.

He tried to walk through the sequence of events in his mind. Leeds must have prepared his rope, making the noose first and tying his hitch around the bedpost. Then he tossed the noose over the beam. No. He’d have to get the noose in place first and adjust the height before tying his hitch around the post. Then he placed his stool beneath the noose, climbed up, and looped it around his neck. He would have to settle it under his chin so it ran up behind his ears. You’d want your neck to break, if you could manage it, although the beam wasn’t really high enough.

Tom shuddered. Leeds had surely strangled, choking and gasping and kicking his feet. How could Marlowe sleep through that?

Leeds would have said a prayer, Tom supposed, even though prayer would not avail a suicide. But Leeds had been a religious man — a devout Calvinist, in fact. He would have prayed. Then he would have drawn his last breath and kicked away the stool. Had he drunk the wine for courage and dropped the favorite cup heedlessly into the week-old rushes? Had he clutched the letter in his hand until the last?

Tom turned to the sheet of paper now and read:

“For mere living is not a good, but living well. Accordingly, the wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can. As soon as there are many events in his life that give him trouble and disturb his peace of mind, he sets himself free. He holds that it makes no difference to him whether his taking-off be natural or self-inflicted, whether it comes later or earlier. He does not regard it with fear, as if it were a great loss; for no man can lose very much when but a driblet remains. It is not a question of dying earlier or later, but of dying well or ill.”

“Ay, me,” Tom sighed. “Poor Mr. Leeds. May God grant you peace.” He felt responsible, in part. His arrival at Corpus Christi College must have stirred up a torment of bitter doubt in the man’s mind over his betrayal of former friends. Amazing that he could have kept his suffering so well hidden. How long had he been contemplating this sorrowful deed?

Tom owed it to him to take him down before anyone else could see him in this sad state. He dropped the letter on the bed and clasped the body around the hips, hugging it to his own sturdy frame for support. It was pliant and still warm. He tried to reach up to loosen the noose, but it was too high for a one-handed maneuver. He stepped back to study the situation. The easiest course was to cut the rope and let the body fall to the floor, but that seemed disrespectful.

No, this was a two-man job. He’d have to go for help.

The silence since he’d hushed the bird was pure and undisturbed. The college was empty, apart from the servants somewhere beyond the hall. William Perkins was giving one of his fiery sermons in Great St. Andrew’s this morning, so everyone from every college in the university jammed into the church to hear him speak. He was better than the London theater. He could send chills racing through you and make you feel inspired, abased, and lusty all at once. Tom had hated to skip out early, but he hated even more the tart scoldings he got from Francis Bacon when his correspondence lagged.

It must be nearly dinnertime by now. The chapel bell had been tolling nine-thirty as Tom had hurried across the yard to fetch his money. Leeds’s other pupils would soon be coming up the stairs to be shocked, as he had been. He should wait for them downstairs, to warn them. Or perhaps he should go try to find the head of the college.

He jogged down the steep stair with his knees turned sideways, ducking to keep from cracking his forehead on the joist. The study chamber, where he had spent so many of his waking hours in the past six weeks, seemed smaller now and strangely unfamiliar, as if the mute stools and tables had been altered by Leeds’s unnatural death.

Tom went to the window beside his desk to look across the quadrangle, hoping to spot someone friendly coming through the gate. The central yard was greening up. They kept it neatly clipped. A pair of daffodils — the first of spring — opened their yellow faces to the sky. The sun glinted on the small panes of the windows in the west range opposite. A flash of movement in the hall on the south range drew his attention. Mrs. Eggerley, the wife of the head of the college, walked swiftly past the big oriel window. He was momentarily distracted by her lush figure and that special sway she somehow got going in her wide skirts as she walked.

The chamber door squealed suddenly. Tom wheeled around, startled. He’d seen no one in the yard. Christopher Marlowe strode to Leeds’s desk in the center of the room without a glance to either side.

“Hoi,” Tom said. “You were just here. Upstairs.”

Marlowe startled in his turn. “Clarady! What are you doing here? Didn’t you go to the sermon?”

“You knew I was here. You saw me. Upstairs, before you ran down.”