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Authors: M. J. Trow

Tags: #16th Century, #England/Great Britain, #Fiction - Historical, #Mystery, #Tudors

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BOOK: Scorpions' Nest
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Slowly, the girl on the bed sat up and turned round to lean her back to the wall. She was wearing a short chemise and sat with her knees akimbo, leaving nothing to anyone’s imagination. Her friend slapped her thigh.

‘Stop it, Sylvie. Where is your modesty? If you won’t take your wares out on the street to earn some bread, don’t display yourself to me.’

Sylvie shrugged and put her knees together, hugging them to her flat chest. She turned wide eyes up to her friend. ‘Mireille,’ she said, in a voice harsh from crying, ‘I don’t care what you or anyone else sees. I will walk down the street dressed as I am. I am no one without him to love me.’

Mireille spun on her heel across the room and threw herself down onto the bed against the opposite wall. ‘Have you gone simple, Sylvie?’ she asked in disgust. ‘What makes you think he loved you? You know what we are; no one loves us if we don’t love ourselves.’

The girl’s mouth turned down at the corners and then her bottom lip began to tremble. A tear rolled fatly from each eye. ‘He did love me.’

‘You gave him for nothing what other men pay for,’ Mireille screamed in her face. ‘Of course he loved you. Who wouldn’t? Everyone loves a bargain.’

Before either girl knew what was happening, Sylvie flew across the room like a tigress, nails out for Mireille’s face. But the older girl was too quick for her and she grabbed her slender wrists. She pushed them both off the bed and twisted the girl’s arms behind her back, holding her hands effortlessly in one of her own. She reached for a broken shard of mirror from the top of a battered press and held it up so their faint reflections looked back at them.

‘What do you see, Sylvie?’ she asked, savagely.

The girl tried a smile. ‘Sylvie and Mireille,’ she said, in an ingratiating voice.

‘Yes, Sylvie and Mireille. Mireille with the big tits and arse, Mireille, all woman, the woman who shows her backside to men at the English School door. And Sylvie. Flat chested as a boy. Sylvie who goes for free into the bed of a wicked priest who wants a boy in his bed but doesn’t want to be damned. So, he goes for Sylvie, the lesser sin.’

The girl pulled away and sank to the floor. ‘No,’ she sobbed into her friend’s skirts. ‘No. He loved me. And now he’s dead.’

Mireille put a gentle hand down and stroked her hair. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘Yes, indeed. We can argue for ever whether he loved you. But that he is dead is without question. I wonder if we will ever know why.’

FIVE

‘B
enedictus, benedicat
.’

‘Amen.’

Members of the English College, Master, professors, scholars, lay brothers and guests brought up their heads from their devotions and jostled with each other briefly as they took their places on the benches before their long tables. A long line of popes glowered down at them from the portraits on the walls and a chanting priest began reciting in perfect pitch and indifferent Latin in the corner. He needn’t have bothered, because once grace was over, it was every man for himself on the long tables. Marlowe had experienced this mad free for all before, as a crop-headed sizar at Corpus Christi. He remembered how it was then, running up and down the Court, desperately trying to keep warm in the biting Cambridge winds, longing to hear the clang of the bell that called the scholars to dinner.

But now he was on the top table, four along from the Master. His hair lay on his shoulders and his shoulders were clad in velvet. He had no satchel bulging with his Lucan and Aristotle, just a purse comfortably portly with Walsingham’s money. And he had a dagger in its sheath in the small of his back. He noted that while the scholars in front of him crammed bread and cheese into their mouths and washed it down with water, the bowl in front of him was brimful with a rich stew with a mouth-watering aroma.

‘It’s called ragout,’ a voice muttered to his left. His neighbour was unlike the others at the top table. In fact he looked just like the rest of the lads in their grey fustian and with their cropped hair.

‘Robert Greene.’ Marlowe extended a hand to him before sampling the excellent wine. Master Aldred had outdone himself.

‘Edmund Brooke,’ the lad said, shaking the man’s hand. ‘
Secundus convictus
.’

‘Ah.’ Marlowe smiled.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Brooke said, tucking into the stew with gusto. ‘Why is a poll man sitting at the Master’s table?’

Marlowe leaned towards him, ‘Got something on him?’ he whispered, with a dark smile.

Brooke looked aghast. ‘It’s my turn,’ he explained. ‘Every night, the Master chooses one of the scholars to dine with him. It’s done on a strictly rotational basis.’ He closed his eyes as his stew-laden bread went down. ‘I’ve been waiting a hundred and sixteen days for this.’

Marlowe chuckled. ‘Otherwise it’s bread and cheese, eh?’ he asked. Brooke nodded, loosening up as the unaccustomed combination of good food and wine found their mark. ‘What brings you to the College, Master Greene?’

‘The same as everybody.’ Marlowe carefully inspected the contents of his spoon. Most of it he recognized. ‘To serve his Holiness in any way I can.’

‘How are things at home?’ the boy asked, a stranger now to his own land.

‘Where is home, exactly?’ Marlowe asked. He smiled as the Master caught his eye and raised his glass, twinkling in the light of what seemed a thousand candles.

‘Berkhamstead,’ Brooke said. ‘It’s in Hertfordshire. Though I barely remember it. My parents left when the Jezebel of England became Queen.’

Marlowe sighed. ‘I wish mine had.’

‘Where are you from, Master Greene?’

‘Cambridge,’ Marlowe told him. It was only a half-lie. ‘Westley Waterless. You wouldn’t know it, of course. Horrible little place in the fens.’

‘I couldn’t help noticing…’ Brooke paused now that the stew had taken the edge off his hunger. ‘You’re armed.’ He nodded at the cold hilt of Marlowe’s dagger.

‘Most men are,’ he told him, ‘beyond the confines of this place. And perhaps even here.’

‘Oh, no.’ Brooke shook his head, taking a huge swig of the wine. Marlowe ignored the hovering servant and took the silver ewer, topping up the scholar’s glass, ‘No. No one goes armed here. By order of the Master. Only guests like you.’

‘Are there many guests like me?’ Marlowe asked. It was a more loaded question than the boy knew.

‘A constant stream,’ Brooke said, ‘whenever that Godless Church of England persecutes our people. But it won’t be long now.’

‘What won’t?’ Marlowe held his wine up to the light as if the talk he was making was the smallest thing in the world. Hundreds of tiny candles seemed to dance in its depths and he seemed to be doing nothing more important than counting them as they winked and sparked.

Brooke looked a little taken aback. ‘Until we make our great return, of course. Oh, I’m not privy to such discussions but there are moves afoot. The Duke of Guise, they say, is ready with twenty thousand men to invade England. The Duke of Parma has more.
And
he’s the best soldier in Europe.’

‘So I’ve heard,’ Marlowe said.

‘And that’s not all…’

But Brooke’s sentence was cut short by the dinner guest on Marlowe’s right.

He leaned around Marlowe, with a deprecatory gesture and said sharply

Marlowe’s Greek, thanks to the unstinting efforts of Doctors Johns and Lyler was excellent and it was difficult to look uncomprehending. He took a large mouthful of stew and smiled brightly at each man. The scholar had been told to shut up in no uncertain terms and that road looked closed. The boy had turned pale and watched as the steward took both his plate and his glass away.

Marlowe saw that a hand was being held out, he assumed in friendship, although the recent exchange made him feel that this was by no means genuine. ‘Thomas Shaw,’ the man said, ‘I’m the College Librarian.’ The man was huge, utterly the wrong build for a man closeted away with books. He looked as though one touch of his ham-like hand would cause the more fragile tomes to disintegrate to powder.

‘Robert Greene.’ Marlowe took the proffered hand and shook it.

‘Ah, the Cambridge man. How does the Master’s table compare with your old college fare?’

‘It outshines it –’ Marlowe raised his glass – ‘as day is to night.’

A huge platter of pickled vegetables appeared at Marlowe’s right shoulder. He didn’t recognize much of the contents, although Nat Sawyer of Lord Strange’s Men would have made much comedic play with the large white one in the middle. Shaw sensed his difficulty. ‘Artichokes –’ he pointed – ‘cauliflower. The big one in the middle is chicory. It doesn’t matter which you choose. They all have a kick like a mule. We had to stop them sending in the horseradish; poor old Father Bernard almost died one night when he absent-mindedly took a large bite. God knows what cook soaks it all in. But, as long as you are reasonably circumspect, I guarantee you’ll like it.’

Marlowe sampled some on his spoon. The librarian was right; it was a taste explosion, although it did burn rather on the way down. However, he could appreciate the skill that must have gone into its preparation.

‘Which college?’ Shaw asked, helping himself to twice the amount Marlowe had. ‘In Cambridge, I mean.’

‘Corpus Christi,’ he told him.

‘Ah, the Parker Library.’ Shaw beamed.

‘You know it?’ Marlowe topped up the man’s glass from the decanter to his left.

‘Sadly, no,’ Shaw said, ‘but I know of it. I’m an Oxford man myself; Merton. I’m ashamed to say we had nothing like Parker’s books. Tell me, is it true that the fellows of Gonville and Caius go to Corpus Christi every year to check if the old boy’s books are still there?’

‘They do,’ Marlowe told him. ‘At the Library Feast in August. Archbishop Parker’s birthday.’

‘I don’t suppose you knew Parker personally? I mean, you’d be too young.’

‘He died when I was nine, I believe. But I can see his portrait in Hall now. A kind face, I always thought.’

‘I’ve heard him described as the Pope of Lambeth,’ Shaw said with a chuckle. ‘Odd, that, in an Archbishop of Canterbury of a bastard church.’

Marlowe tapped the side of his nose. ‘Man on the inside,’ he lied.

‘Really?’ Shaw’s eyes widened. ‘I had no idea.’

‘I must say,’ Marlowe said, topping up his own glass, ‘you live in some style here. May I see your library?’

‘Whenever you like,’ Shaw said. ‘It’s across the gallery from here. After Compline, I’d be delighted to show you.’

‘Thank you.’ Marlowe clicked his glass against the librarian’s, sealing the deal. ‘I’m in Father Laurenticus’ room.’

‘Are you?’ There was hardly a pause before Shaw’s answer.

‘I understand he died.’ Marlowe picked at the plate of candied orange rind placed between them.

‘He did.’ Shaw nodded, suddenly sober, suddenly withdrawn. ‘Sad. Very sad.’

‘An elderly gentleman?’

‘No, indeed.’ Shaw sighed. ‘In his prime, in fact.’

‘Really?’ Marlowe flicked the napkin off his left shoulder and wiped his mouth. ‘What was the cause, I wonder?’

Shaw looked at the man, this dark newcomer with the bright doublet, the easy manner and, he suspected, an excellent command of Ancient Greek. ‘He stopped breathing, Dominus Greene,’ he said, ‘as one day we all must.’ He crossed himself and pushed back his chair. ‘But not, yet, Oh Lord, not yet.’

Marlowe crossed himself also, the movement still feeling clumsy after many years disuse. ‘Amen,’ he murmured, and picked up another fragment of candied peel. ‘Amen to that.’

But Kit Marlowe did not go to Shaw’s library after Compline. Instead, he stayed over the cheeseboard to survey the ground, test the waters, whatever analogy he had once wrestled with in the Discourses at Cambridge. Shaw he’d met and Father Tobias. The Master and his shadow, Skelton, seemed beyond his reach tonight, hemmed in as they were by serious-looking priests with earnest faces. The lad, Brooke, had vanished into the crowd of scholars and Marlowe shook his head to realize that, from his high vantage point of top table and twenty-two summers, all scholars were beginning to look alike.

‘Robert Greene.’ He shook the hand of a roisterer, dressed not unlike himself, who had slid along the bench to sit by him.

‘Peregrine Salter,’ the man said, smiling. ‘I haven’t seen you before, Master Greene.’ Unless Marlowe missed his guess, this was Aldred’s lute-playing Yorkshireman.

‘Newly arrived,’ Marlowe said, beaming. ‘You?’

‘I’ve been here a couple of weeks,’ Salter told him. ‘It’s good to be among friends, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, indubitably.’ Marlowe nodded, surrounded, as he was, by enemies. ‘You’ve heard the news, I suppose, from London, I mean?’

Salter paused with his wine glass in hand. ‘No. What news?’

‘The Queen…’

‘The Jezebel?’ Salter was all ears.

‘No.’ Marlowe frowned. ‘
The
Queen. Of Scots.’

‘Master Greene…’ Salter sighed. ‘I am not ashamed to admit, in this august company, that I am of the old religion. I am a Catholic.’ He suddenly stood a head taller. ‘But I am also an Englishman. Religion and politics do not go hand in hand with me, sir. I would sooner cut off my right hand than see that Frenchwoman on the throne of England.’

BOOK: Scorpions' Nest
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