Scorpions' Nest (30 page)

Marlowe saw him prepare for another step and stopped him with a question. ‘Charles Russell?’

‘A filthy sodomite. No one was safe.’

‘Just a lonely boy, far from home, is what I heard.’

Skelton sneered and took another step. ‘Gossip can cut both ways. Laurenticus?’ he said, mimicking Marlowe’s voice with its precise university vowels. ‘Fornicator. Brooke? Thief. And now, you. What label can I conveniently place you under in my book of my soul’s accounting?’

Marlowe laughed. ‘I have done so much, you may find it hard to find me a place.’

‘I don’t like to repeat myself,’ Skelton said, his eyes blazing. ‘But I think I will have to take advantage of our location. So, fornicator it is.’ He stepped forward.

‘Don’t rush things,’ Marlowe said. ‘Everyone in the English College knows I never attend church services unless I have to. Why don’t you list me under unbeliever, and then you have filled that niche.’

‘You tempt me, Dominus Marlowe. But how can I label you as unbeliever, here in a whore’s room?’

‘Why don’t we walk down the hill to the cathedral?’ Marlowe suggested, as though planning a picnic. ‘You could do something interesting to my body on the altar. That would drive the point home.’ He winced as he saw a good line fly into the air – if he died, no one would ever hear that line again, and it was a shame. Once a University wit, always a University wit, even with death at the door.

‘I could kill you here and carry you.’ Skelton was advancing now, spittle flying from his lips.

‘Surely, even in Rheims, even in this quarter, that would attract attention,’ said Marlowe, desperate to keep the man talking.

‘No one has seen me yet,’ Skelton said. ‘God shields my acts as I do His work.’

Oh, God
, Marlowe thought,
if you’re listening to him you must be able to hear me as well. We are only a cloth yard apart. He is as mad as any man I have ever met, and I have met some mad men in my time. He means to cleanse this College of evil in Your Name, for Your greater glory. Is that what You want?

‘Can we pray before you kill me?’ Marlowe said.

‘Pray? An unbeliever like you?’ Skelton’s eyes had lost their madness and now he was just a cold and logical Bursar. ‘I think not. But you are right, the cathedral is the right place for you to meet your end.’ Suddenly and before Marlowe could react, he grabbed him by the hair and pulled him to him, the projectioner’s back against his chest. ‘Walk with me and don’t struggle,’ he hissed in his ear, ‘and I will make sure your death is quick and painless.’

‘I’m in pain now, since you mention it,’ Marlowe said, tears springing to his eyes. He leaned his head back, to try to reduce the strain on the roots of his hair near the temple. ‘Can you release me just a little?’

They stepped through the door, one behind the other and Marlowe felt the cold breath of frost on his face. With luck, it would be slippery underfoot and he would be able to make his move then. Each step could bring a new plan, but for now the important thing was to keep him talking.

‘Can you just release me for a minute?’ he said. ‘Just to let me get more comfortable? We will draw a lot of attention if we walk down the hill like this.’

The pressure on his hair stopped, to be replaced by an iron hand on his shoulder. It seemed to weigh a ton. Then, the hand clawed down his back and he was pushed forward onto his hands and knees as the weight hit his thighs. He lay there, pinned to the ground by a dead weight across one leg and both feet, twisted round uncomfortably on the ground. He had felt no pain, but thought this must be how it feels when a sharp blade has severed the spine. This is how it feels in the moment before all feeling stops. He let his head drop to the greasy cobbles and waited.

‘Get up and stop behaving like such a girl,’ a voice came from above his head. Twisting round to look up, he had a worm’s eye view of Peregrine Salter, a dripping dagger in one hand. With the other, he leaned down and hauled Marlowe to his feet. They looked down at the man lying sprawled on the ground.

‘Is he dead?’ Marlowe asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Salter said, giving him a prod with his foot. ‘I hope so, for his sake. He would have spent what remained of his life chained up somewhere, for what he has done.’

‘The English College is powerful,’ Marlowe said. ‘They would probably have taken him in and nursed him.’

‘Hmm. I doubt it. But, wait a minute.’ Salter knelt by the dead man and bowed his head, ‘
Subveníte, Sancti Dei, occúrrite, Angeli Dómini
,’ he began.

Marlowe frowned. ‘You just killed him. And you’re praying over him?’

Salter looked up at him, a sweet smile on his face. ‘Oh, Dominus Marlowe,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You’ll never understand us Catholics if you live with us until your dying day.’ He paused. ‘Which you almost did, of course. Please, let me continue.’

‘I really think we ought to get away from here. The Watch is not that bright but they are not so stupid that they will ignore two fit young men, with daggers at their backs, saying prayers over a man who is still warm.’

‘He is still warm, my point exactly,’ Salter said, bending his head again. He whispered the rest of the prayer under his breath. ‘I feel better now,’ he said. ‘It would have been a mortal sin to let him die without the prayer for the dying being said over him.’

‘But we can go now?’ Marlowe asked, pulling on Salter’s arm. Windows and doors were beginning to open around the courtyard and it was time they were gone.

After a while, as they walked down the hill, Salter spoke. ‘May I ask you a question, Kit, if I may call you that?’

‘Is that the question? In that case, the answer is yes, of course you may.’

‘No.’ Salter laughed. ‘That isn’t the question. The question is: who are you? Who are you really?’

‘I always find this really annoying when it happens to me,’ Marlowe said. ‘I am going to answer your question with one of my own. Are you Matthew Baxter?’

Salter stopped in his tracks and faced Marlowe, his hand going to the wiped blade at his back. ‘What a strange question,’ he said.

‘Does it have an answer?’

‘Yes. Yes, it does have an answer.’ The tension beat like a drum in Salter’s throat.

‘Which is?’

‘Yes, I am Matthew Baxter. So, now you can answer my question. Who are you? Really.’

‘I’m someone you have never met.’ Marlowe said. ‘I am also someone who knows the word “chunter”, as anyone from Yorkshire would. My guess is, you’ve never been further north than the Thames in your life.’

‘Damn,’ Baxter said, smiling, ‘and I thought I’d been so convincing.’

Marlowe extended his hand. ‘It was good to meet you, Matthew Baxter. I owe you my life. Now go and live the rest of yours. And please, for your sake, no more conspiracies.’

I
t was a disgruntled Solomon Aldred who trudged home past the cathedral that night. He told himself that it was luck of the draw. There was no guarantee of course, that Marlowe’s ruse would work in the first place, draw the killer out of the shadows. As it was, he, Aldred, had chosen the wrong gate. He couldn’t be blamed for that. He hoped Marlowe had had better luck. But still, he felt a little silly and not looking forward to breaking the news to Veronique that one of her most treasured customers was on the verge of penury. He needed to take stock, he needed to regroup. And above all, he needed a drink.

He was just helping himself to one in a dark corner of the shop when he heard the trill of Veronique’s laughter from a back room. He steadied the rattling of bottle on glass and padded down the passageway. The woman who doubled as his lover and his landlady was sitting on the lap of a large Englishman Aldred recognized vaguely by sight. At the little man’s entrance, Veronique instantly became a nurse, a sister of mercy, kneeling beside the Englishman and dabbing at a nasty gash on his forehead.

‘Look, Solomon,’ she said, in English so that everybody understood, ‘Monsieur Abbott; I have found him. The poor darling has been through such a terrible time.’

‘Has he?’ Aldred grunted, swigging from his beaker. ‘I’ve had people out all over Rheims looking for you, Abbott,’ he said. ‘Where the Hell have you been?’

‘Hell indeed!’ the Londoner bellowed and winced as the effort hurt his head. ‘I was about to leave this damned town of yours. And the English College can go hang. I was just buying some provisions in the market when these ruffians set about me. There must have been… twenty of them. I sent quite a few sprawling, of course, but twenty! Well…’

‘I found the poor baby stumbling about in the
merde
by the fish quay,’ Veronique said, fondling the man’s thigh. ‘He had been hit on the head.’

‘Anything wrong with his leg?’ Aldred wanted to know.

Veronique moved the hand away.

‘It’s as well you were waylaid, Master Abbott,’ Aldred said. ‘Some of us had you down for a murderer. Marlowe… er… Greene would have cut your throat.’

‘Me?’ Abbott was horrified. ‘How dare you? And by the way, why were
you
looking for me? You’re a vintner, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ a voice sighed behind Aldred. ‘I’m afraid he is.’

All eyes turned to the newcomer, a tall, pale-eyed man in the flashy clothes of a roisterer.

‘Nicholas!’ Aldred’s face had taken on a rictus grin. ‘Nicholas Faunt. What brings you to Rheims?’

‘You do, Solomon,’ the man said and he nodded to the lady. ‘Veronique.’

‘Monsieur Faunt.’ She blushed slightly and curtsied.

‘Where’s Marlowe?’ Faunt asked.

‘Where you’d expect me to be, Master Faunt,’ a voice said. ‘Right behind you.’

‘Pat – and he comes,’ said Faunt with a smile. He half turned. ‘Kit, it’s been a while.’

‘Hasn’t it, though?’

‘Well?’ Aldred ignored the presence of Abbott and crossed to Marlowe. ‘How did it go?’ He caught the confused look on Faunt’s face. ‘Kit was chasing off a murderer, Nicholas.’

Faunt’s raised eyebrow said it all.

‘It’s a long story, Nicholas,’ Marlowe said, raising a hand.

‘And you must tell me all about it,’ Faunt said, ‘one day. In the meantime, Veronique…’ He smiled at the woman, ushering Marlowe and Aldred out of the room. ‘Sir…’ He nodded to Abbott.

‘Good God!’ Thomas Phelippes, wakened by the voices downstairs, had put on his nightcap and was tottering down the stairs with the aid of a candle, Michael Johns in his wake. ‘Nicholas.’ He suddenly panicked, checking his hand on the banister, the stairs beneath his feet. ‘This isn’t one of your tricks, is it?’

‘Calm yourself, Thomas,’ Faunt said. ‘I’ve only just arrived. Who’s this?’

‘This,’ Phelippes announced, ‘is Dr Michael Johns, of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.’

‘Sometime of Corpus Christi,’ Johns corrected him.

‘Is he sound?’ Faunt wanted to know. The man looked harmless enough, but in these Godless days, it was hard to tell.

‘No one sounder,’ said Marlowe and for Faunt, that was good enough.

‘What news, then, Kit?’ Faunt turned to the man, ‘Matthew Baxter. Did you find him?’

‘I did,’ Marlowe said. ‘He was using the name Salter and claiming to come from Yorkshire.’

‘And?’ Walsingham’s man didn’t like the way this conversation was going.

‘He got away.’

‘Ah.’

‘I did my best,’ Marlowe said with a shrug and all the time he looked Faunt straight in the eye. For the briefest of moments, the two projectioners tried to take the measure of each other.

In the event it was Faunt who blinked first. ‘We can do no more,’ he said. ‘In our business, you win some, you lose some. Now, to other business. Thomas, you’ll be glad to be back to your inkwells and party games, no doubt.’

‘If that means Whitehall, Nicholas,’ Phelippes said, sighing, ‘I’m your man.’

‘You… Dr Johns. Back to Cambridge?’

Johns shook his head. ‘Cambridge has seen the last of me,’ he said. ‘I thought perhaps, God help me, Oxford.’

‘God help you, indeed,’ Marlowe muttered.

‘You, Kit, have a report to deliver. Walsingham will need to be briefed.’

‘Of course,’ Marlowe said. ‘Do I have some leave owing?’

‘Leave?’ Faunt gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘We never leave this business, Kit, you know that. Take a week or two. Let your hair down. Why not stay in London for a while? Take in a show?’

Marlowe smiled. ‘I might just do that.’

‘And last – and probably least…’ Faunt turned to Aldred. ‘Solomon, my little… vintner.’ He clapped an icy arm around the man. ‘Sir Francis feels you’ve been in Rheims too long. Time for a rest, perhaps, a bit of relaxation.’

‘A rest?’ Aldred chuckled. ‘That would be nice. I haven’t seen England for a while.’

‘England?’ Faunt frowned. ‘No, no, Solomon. Your… especial talents would be wasted there. Sir Francis thought… Rome.’

‘Rome?’ Aldred mouthed the word because he had all but lost the power of speech. He cleared his throat. ‘No, no, Nicholas, really. I have too much to do here… commitments…’

There was suddenly a shriek of female laughter from the next room and a scuffling sound. They all heard Veronique say, ‘Very nice, Monsieur, but do you know anything about the wine trade?’

‘Or perhaps not.’ Aldred sighed. ‘I’ll pack, shall I?’

The mists were curling along the Cam that Thursday morning and the town of Cambridge was struggling awake. Dr Gabriel Harvey was striding along the High Ward with an even jauntier spring in his step than usual, his robes billowing out like the sail of a carrack on a neap tide.

Only the night before he had received the news that old Dr Norgate, Master of Corpus Christi, was no more. He had gone to meet that great Chancellor in the sky and that left the world for Harvey to bustle in. Today, Corpus Christi. Tomorrow? Who knew, but his imagination soared as he reached the college steps.

The Proctors, Lomas and Darryl, stood by the wicket gate as they always did at this time of the morning. The college bell would soon toll the call to prayer and then to breakfast. It had been so for ever and would no doubt continue. Harvey had other ideas. All this endless prayer ritual – too Roman, surely? God had His place, of course, and it was a useful means of keeping the scholars quiet for a moment in readiness for his daily address. But no, Corpus Christi had been founded in the days of the Old Religion. Time for a new broom to sweep those dusty corners of any lingering traces of Popery. And then, there was the name. Corpus Christi. The body of Christ. All a bit visceral, wasn’t it? What about… and he felt his lips moving as he climbed the steps, trying it out for size in his head… what about Harvey College? Yes, he liked the sound of that.