Scorpions' Nest (22 page)

The two men watched him go. They both knew he never said anything he didn’t mean, but one had his head full of the text and the other of the dying as the sound of his boots died away on the stairs.

M
arlowe sensed that someone was there even before he opened the door. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and instinctively his hand was behind him, resting on the dagger hilt. He twisted the knurled knob quickly and kicked the door open; if someone was behind it he’d have a ringing head by now and probably double vision too.

In the event there was no one behind the door, just Peregrine Salter sitting in Marlowe’s chair at Marlowe’s desk.

‘Good morning,’ the Yorkshireman chirped. ‘I hope you don’t mind. The door was unlocked.’

‘Yes,’ Marlowe said with a nod. ‘Unusual around here, isn’t it?’ He checked his books. Allen’s treatise was open to the page at which he’d last read it. The level in his wine decanter seemed the same. His colleyweston cloak still hung behind the door. He crossed to his cupboard and checked the corner. His sword was still there, oiled and ready in its scabbard.

‘Master Greene, I’ll come to the point. I’m worried.’

‘You are?’ Marlowe closed the door. ‘There are priests a-plenty here to hear your confession, Master Salter.’

‘Hah!’ Salter scoffed. ‘You’d expect that, I suppose, at a seminary. No, it’s not a priest I need; it’s some answers.’

Marlowe opened the decanter and poured them both a drink. ‘If memory serves,’ he said, ‘you’ve been here longer than I have. What can I know that you don’t?’

‘A-hah!’ Salter took the glass and raised it in salutation. ‘But you’re not quite what you seem, are you, Master Greene?’

Marlowe suppressed a smile. No man could walk a tightrope like his for long and perhaps his moment had come. ‘Really?’ he frowned. ‘I don’t follow.’

‘I’ve been watching you,’ Salter said. ‘You’re looking for somebody.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Marlowe sighed. ‘Someone to walk this vale of tears with us.’

‘Well, you won’t find her here.’ Salter laughed. ‘You’ve probably noticed the English College is singularly short of women.’

‘What makes you think I was talking about a woman?’ Marlowe sat on the edge of the bed.

‘Oh…’ Salter was momentarily nonplussed. ‘Oh, I see.’

Marlowe smiled. ‘No, I don’t think you do. Tell me, Master Salter, since you have been at the College, how many people have died?’

‘Precisely!’ Salter jabbed the air with a triumphant finger. ‘My point exactly. Oh, we all know the Lord takes away as he pleases and who are we to deny it… but this? Well, it’s odd.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well…’ Salter was about to launch into what he knew, but he checked himself. ‘No,’ he said. ‘First – you. Am I right? Are you what you seem?’

‘That very much depends on what I seem.’ Marlowe could fence with this man all day.

Salter looked him up and down. ‘If I didn’t know better,’ he said, softly, ‘I’d say you were a sworder. A professional killer.’

‘Tsk, tsk.’ Marlowe shook his head. ‘My dear, white-haired old mother would be horrified to think that her little boy…’

There was a silence between them, each of them deciding which way to jump next.

‘But you’re right –’ Marlowe blinked first and felt Salter tense, as if he might be next to feel his knife between his ribs – ‘and you’re wrong. My name is not Greene, it’s Marlowe, Christopher Marlowe. The Curia sent me.’

‘Rome?’ Salter was impressed.

‘I carry His Holiness’ writ.’

‘I see.’

‘I’m still not sure you do,’ Marlowe said. ‘You’re right that things here are not as they seem. Murder is being done.’

‘Murder?’ Salter paused in mid swig and crossed himself.

‘Three men have died – two scholars and a tutor. Two of them at least were taken since you’ve been here, Master Salter.’

The Yorkshireman’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ he said flatly.

‘That,’ Marlowe said, ‘is what they all say. Did you know Father Laurenticus?’

‘I met him once,’ Salter admitted. ‘I can’t say I formed any real opinion of him.’

‘What about Edmund Brooke?’

‘Who?’

‘The scholar who was found dead in his bed the night before last.’

‘Was that his name? I’m afraid I don’t have much to do with the scholars.’

‘Too juvenile? That’s a little condescending, don’t you think, Master Salter? A few years ago you and I were scholars ourselves, though in my case at least, not much like these lads.’

‘No, no, it’s not that. As you say, Master Marlowe, we were seventeen ourselves once and not too long since. No, I’m not a university wit. I was educated privately. At home.’

‘By a Jesuit,’ Marlowe remarked, without inflection.

Salter laughed. ‘Holy Mother of God, is it that obvious?’

‘It’s difficult to be educated at home in the true faith these days without a Jesuit. I hope you had a suitable hole for him to skip back to when anyone knocked at the door.’

‘As I was going up the stair,’ Salter said, ‘I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish, I wish he’d go away.’ And he tapped the side of his nose.

‘Let’s not wish that,’ Marlowe said. ‘If the Jesuits leave England, what hope is there for any of us? I put the same question to Anthony Babington before I left.’

‘Anthony Babington?’ Salter asked. ‘Why does that name sound familiar?’

‘He stood trial with other friends of mine for carrying letters to the Queen of Scots. Walsingham had him hanged, drawn and quartered.’

Salter spat copiously onto Marlowe’s floor. ‘May he rot in Hell, that one,’ he said.

‘Oh, I’m sure he will. But in the meantime, I have more pressing matters. Someone is targeting members of the English College, killing them, one by one. There is no pattern to it, except that they were all within its walls. The three victims scarcely knew each other, as far as it is possible to be strangers in such a closed community as this. The methods are not the same – in my small experience, a strangler is always a strangler, a knife man swears by his blade. I have to find who is behind these crimes, Master Salter. Will you help?’

‘Root out a Puritan?’ Salter asked. ‘My hand on it,’ he continued, and he shook Marlowe’s hand warmly. In a second, the projectioner was on his feet, his finger to his lips. He crossed the room in a single stride and wrenched open the door. Antoinette the maid stood there, broom and cloths in hand, gasping at the sudden movement.

‘Pardon, Monsieur,’ she said with a bob. ‘I can come back.’

‘No, no,’ Marlowe said, smiling. ‘Master Salter was just going. Weren’t you, Master Salter?’

‘Oh, absolutely, yes indeed.’ The Yorkshireman finished his wine and patted Marlowe’s shoulder. ‘Here’s to rooting out Puritans,’ he whispered and he clattered off down the passageway.

Marlowe watched him go and closed the door behind Antoinette. The woman trembled as she ferreted around with her feather duster.

‘Antoinette.’ He was standing with his back to the door and she knew there was no way out. ‘We need to talk.’

She ignored him at first, not making eye contact, finding something fascinating in every nook and cranny of the room and rubbing it feverishly with her cloth.

‘Antoinette…’ he repeated.

‘I can’t,’ she suddenly blurted out, turning to him with a red face and trembling lip. ‘I promised Dr Skelton.’

Marlowe took the little minion by her shoulders and sat her down on the bed. He took the feather duster from her, then the cloths and looked deep into her eyes. ‘What?’ he asked her. ‘What did you promise Dr Skelton?’

‘That I wouldn’t tell a soul what I know, Monsieur. Not a soul. For the sake of my own soul. Not a word. I have already said much too much.’

‘Your own soul?’ Marlowe frowned. ‘What do you mean, Antoinette?’

She looked frantically around the room. Laurenticus’ room. And there was no escape. ‘Dr Skelton,’ she whispered. ‘He said the Lord’s wrath would be visited on me if I told.’

Marlowe put a comforting arm around the terrified woman, as a son might squeeze his mother. ‘He was thinking of the College’s reputation, Antoinette,’ he said. ‘It’s his job. He didn’t want you talking to the wrong people. He didn’t mean me.’

‘But you… you’re an Englishman, Monsieur.’

Marlowe laughed. ‘Almost to be expected in the English College, surely? Who do you take me for, Antoinette? Beelzebub? Asmodeus? Lucifer himself?’

She crossed herself and, since Marlowe had used the names of three demons, did it twice more. He took those shaking hands and held them together in an attitude of prayer, clasped between his own. ‘I am ready to hear your confession, daughter,’ he said. ‘Place your burden on the Lord.’

‘Confession?’ she repeated, staring into his dark eyes. ‘You mean, you’re…?’

‘A priest? Of course,’ Marlowe lied smoothly. ‘Why else do you think I’m here?’

Antoinette hesitated, her eyes swivelling wildly from side to side. She saw again the blood on the coverlet, the one they sat on now, washed clean of crimson. She saw the sprays of blood on the wall, the ones she herself had washed and scrubbed away. She saw the dead man sprawled on his pillow, his throat another mouth gaping open. But this man didn’t look like a priest. He was young and handsome, though that was no bar to the priesthood, as many a village maiden had discovered over many a long century. But he didn’t have the air about him… she couldn’t put her finger on it. She made her decision.

‘I… I will speak to my God myself,’ she said at last. It didn’t sound rehearsed, but it took Marlowe aback.

‘My child,’ he said, ‘that is the way of the Lutherans.
Solo fide
. By faith alone. It is not the way of our mother church.’

She looked at him as if transfixed, her lip trembling again, her whole body cold though beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. She wrenched her hands free and fumbled in her placket. Out came a crumpled piece of parchment and there was blood dried brown on one corner.

‘What’s this?’ he asked her.

‘I found it, Father,’ she said, on a sob, ‘bless me, for I have sinned,’ and she fell into his lap, crying helplessly. He lifted up her head and made the sign of the cross over her, muttering the old Latin incantation he had known as a child. Then he took a corner of her gown and gently wiped her eyes.

‘Where did you find it?’ he asked her.

‘There, Father –’ she flung her left arm behind her in the direction of the bed – ‘on the morning I found poor Father Laurenticus. It was in his hand. I don’t know why I picked it up. Why I touched it. I shouldn’t have. God forgive me. I shouldn’t have.’ She held his hand tightly. ‘Is it a curse, Father? Is it a curse, written down to hurt Father Laurenticus?’

‘No, no,’ Marlowe said, patting her white knuckles with his free hand. ‘Of course it isn’t. It wasn’t magic that killed Father Laurenticus. Only men wield knives. And God has forgiven you, if you needed forgiveness.’ He slipped the parchment into his doublet. ‘Now, wipe your eyes or you will be late with your work.’

She jumped to her feet, grabbing a cloth to show her willingness to sweep the dust behind the door. ‘There was something else…’ She sniffed, feeling much better now that she had confessed and found absolution. ‘There was a ring.’

‘Oh?’ Marlowe raised an eyebrow. Perhaps he had blessed her prematurely.

‘I didn’t take it, Father,’ she said quickly. ‘I didn’t even touch it.’

‘And where was the ring, Antoinette?’

‘There, Father.’ She pointed to the bed again.

‘On the right side?’ he checked. ‘Away from the body?’

She nodded.

‘It was nothing,’ he said. ‘A meaningless trinket.’

‘Oh, but it was valuable, Father,’ she told him. ‘That’s why I didn’t touch it. A man’s ring, it was, gold with a funny design.’

‘A
man’s
ring?’ Marlowe frowned. ‘Tell me, Antoinette, this design. What did it look like?’

‘I don’t know, Father. It had… it was an eagle on one side. And a key, I think it was, on the other.’

Marlowe crossed to his table. He dipped the quill into the ink and sketched quickly on the parchment that lay there. He showed what he had done to the maid. ‘Like this, Antoinette?’ he asked. ‘Did the ring look like this?’

William Allen was dining in his private quarters that night and Gerald Skelton was with him. Marlowe batted the little monk at his door aside and crashed into the solar.

‘What the devil…?’ Skelton was on his feet, the knife he was using on his bread suddenly a dagger in his hand.

‘It’s all right, Gerald,’ Allen said. ‘You see how I am fussed over, Dominus Marlowe?’ And he patted Skelton’s sleeve to make him sit down again. ‘Wine? Cheese?’

‘Thank you, Master, no.’ Marlowe stood across the laden table. ‘Forgive this intrusion, but I must have words with you.’

‘And I take it they can’t wait?’ Allen cut himself another chunk of bread.

‘I’m afraid not. And this
is
private, Master.’ Marlowe nodded in Skelton’s direction.

‘If I haven’t made this clear already,’ Allen said, ‘I am doing so now. Gerald is my right arm in this College. Talk to the whole man.’

‘Very well,’ Marlowe said and threw his rough sketch across the table.

‘What’s this?’ Allen asked, turning it this way and that.

‘I was hoping you would tell me,’ Marlowe said. No one had asked him to sit and he felt like a naughty scholar again on the Persian carpet in old Dr Norgate’s study.

‘Where did you get this?’ Skelton asked, narrowing his eyes.

‘I drew it,’ Marlowe told him, ‘from a description given to me.’

‘By whom?’ Allen wanted to know.

‘That damned maid!’ Skelton shouted.

‘Maid?’ Marlowe was at his most convincing when he played the idiot. ‘I know nothing of any maid. I got this from a strumpet.’ Marlowe folded his arms to emphasize what he was about to say. ‘A strumpet who was lying with Father Laurenticus on the night he died.’

The silence in the room was almost deafening.

‘This strumpet.’ Skelton was the first to break it. ‘Does she have a name?’

‘I expect so,’ Marlowe said. ‘I didn’t ask her. The point is, Doctors, you have not been honest with me.’