Marlowe looked at the man. He seemed quite sane, most of the time, and yet it was hard to swallow his belief in souls and wandering spirits. He dropped his voice so low that it was just a breath in Dee’s ear. ‘I rather thought it was Meg,’ he said.
Dee bridled. ‘When you are an expert in raising the dead, Dominus Marlowe,’ he said, sharply, ‘then I will take your advice on these things. Why would Meg make Steane scream and run for his life?’
‘Because he
thought
it was the soul of Ralph Whitingside,’ Marlowe said. ‘It hardly matters, does it, whether it was or not?’
‘It matters to me,’ the magus said, in a huff. ‘And it matters to all those who use that church, unless they mind a shiftless ghost attending their services when it fancies.’ He picked up his ale mug and drained it. ‘But, I must be away. My manservant is sorting out the horses at the livery and I have a lot of work to do when I get home.’
‘And when do you expect to get home, Dr Dee?’ Marlowe said, drily.
‘First thing tomorrow, Master Marlowe,’ Dee said with a twinkle. ‘It would be sooner, but I have decided to take the scenic route.’ He stood up and looked down at the scholar. Dee could see, all laid one over the other, the boy he had been and the man he would, with the grace of something, possibly God, become. ‘Travel safely, Kit,’ Dee said.
‘And you, too, John.’
They clasped hands briefly, then, with a smile and just a hint of saltpetre and a shower of sparks for the look of the thing, the magus was gone.
‘You’re very quiet back here, Master Marlowe.’
The voice came from above his head and behind him and he twisted his neck to check who it was.
‘Meg!’ he said. ‘Can you come and sit with me?’
‘I can,’ she said, ‘but only for a minute. I had the afternoon off for the inquest, but I am back at work now, officially.’
‘Officially?’
‘Well –’ she patted her stomach – ‘I won’t be working, here or in the other way, for much longer. So it doesn’t matter if Jack Wheeler tells me to go today; it will all be the same in the end.’
‘What will you do?’ Marlowe knew there should be some sort of justice for Meg and her baby, but didn’t know how to make it happen. In fairy-tales, he would have married her himself and they would have lived happily ever after, but this was no fairy-tale.
‘Sir Roger Manwood has offered me a place in his house,’ she said, ‘but I’m not sure. It’s a long way from home and . . . well, I’m not sure why he did it.’ She bent closer. ‘I’m not sure what he’s after.’
‘Justice, of a sort,’ Marlowe said. ‘Don’t forget that you . . . well.’ He dropped his voice until she could hardly hear it. ‘You did . . . kill Benjamin Steane.’
She looked at him, her eyes wide. ‘Don’t say that, Master Marlowe. Anyone could be listening. I thought when you didn’t mention it in the inquest . . .’
‘It doesn’t mean I don’t know, though, Meg,’ Marlowe said. ‘I had to tell Sir Roger and Dr Dee; they had been helping me with the case from the beginning, they deserved to know.’ He clapped her on the shoulder. ‘Go to Sir Roger’s house. He lives in acres of woodland, with a lake, a stream, everything that little Ralph could want as he grows up. And . . . don’t forget the baby’s father grew up there too. It will be like a homecoming.’ He didn’t tell Meg Sir Roger’s feelings about children; there would be plenty of occasions, he felt sure, when she would discover that for herself.
She looked dubious still, but nodded, for the baby’s sake. ‘Anyway, I didn’t kill him. He fell . . .’
‘He fell because you hit him with a candlestick, Meg, and please, don’t interrupt.’ He held the hand she had raised and trapped it in her lap. ‘You did what I was trying to do, and so I will never tell another soul. But, one thing I have to know. Tell me how you got ahead of him up the tower. You were behind him when you ran through the gate between the yews.’
‘What?’ Meg Hawley was confused. ‘I was in the church praying for Ralph when I heard someone scrabbling at the door. I was frightened and wanted to hide from whatever it was outside. I was already halfway up the tower when he crashed in, babbling and crying, begging someone to leave him alone. That was you.’ The statement was more than half question.
‘No,’ Marlowe said, feeling the hairs begin to rise on his neck. ‘At that point, I was limping across the field. I had put my foot in . . . in a hole. I could hardly walk.’
‘Well, who was it, then?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, slowly.
‘I backed up the stairs,’ she told him, ‘and halfway up, in the bell loft, I found an old candlestick. I picked it up in case he followed me and he did. But it was not following so much as that he was also hiding from someone, the person he had been shouting at in the church.’
Everything around them had seemed to go very quiet, as though the whole town held its breath.
‘I got to the top of the tower,’ she carried on. ‘I looked over and saw you come through the gate.’ She stopped, frowning. ‘Who was it, then, in the church?’
Biting his lip, Marlowe shook his head and gestured for her to go on.
‘I heard the trapdoor slap back and Dr Steane was suddenly there with me, on the leads. He was running, running at me, with his hands out. He was screaming at me to leave him alone, which seemed a bit strange, because he was chasing me. I hit him with the candlestick. I was so scared. He . . . he . . .’ she broke down and covered her eyes.
Marlowe held her to him. He knew what had happened next. The sound that Steane had made as he hit the path would be with him for the rest of his days. He remembered Meg rushing out of the church. He remembered holding her against his chest so that she couldn’t see the broken thing on the ground. He remembered the roughness of her cloak against his cheek Her black cloak. Over a black dress.
‘I thought I’d take this opportunity to say goodbye, Michael.’ Marlowe held out his hand. The pair stood in The Court, near the buttresses that had so often hidden roistering scholars creeping back after dark.
‘Goodbye?’ Johns frowned. ‘But Kit, your degree? Your Master’s?’
Marlowe shrugged. ‘After the last few days,’ he said, ‘I’ve rather lost the taste for scholarship. But I wanted to apologize.’
‘Apologize? What for?’ Johns asked.
‘I thought it was you. When I found you in my rooms that time . . . It all seemed to fit at first.’
Johns shook his head. ‘I played my part,’ he said. ‘Giving Henry’s translation to Steane . . .’
‘You couldn’t have known,’ Marlowe said.
‘Well, then.’ Johns suddenly couldn’t find the words. ‘Look after yourself, Dominus Marlowe. If you should ever change your mind . . .’
And the pair shook hands, the roisterer scholar and the quiet man who loved him.
Tom Colwell and Matt Parker were waiting by the front gate, still in their grey fustian, still waiting for their degrees.
‘Lads –’ Marlowe spread his arms – ‘I’m away.’
‘Where to, Kit?’ Colwell asked. Corpus and Cambridge would never be the same now.
‘Who knows?’ Marlowe shrugged. ‘I have charges to answer from Edward Winterton and Gabriel Harvey. I doubt the law will let me get far. Tom,’ he said, and hugged the man, ‘you know, it wouldn’t surprise me to see you in old Norgate’s chair one day. Keep up the good work. Matty.’ He held the boy close to him as the tears welled in Parker’s eyes. Marlowe held him at arm’s length, frowning. ‘Now then,’ he scolded, ‘remember where you are, man. Your grandfather was Archbishop of Canterbury, for God’s sake.’
He turned across the flagstones. ‘When they give you your degrees, lads,’ he shouted, ‘have a swig from the auroch’s horn for me, will you?’
And he was gone, through the gates into the High Ward.
Christopher Marlowe, Secundus Convictus, Bachelor of Arts of Corpus Christi College and a scholar of the finest university in the world was travelling south through Trumpington. He left his books behind him for Colwell and Parker and had thrown, in time-honoured tradition, his grey gown into the Cam to float, like the bodies of the drowned, downstream. All he took with him were the clothes he stood up in, his roisterer’s doublet and colleyweston cloak and the swept-hilt rapier that was once Ralph Whitingside’s slung over his shoulder. The rattle and groan of carts and the lowing of oxen made him stop and stand to one side on the road.
Lord Strange’s battered company plodded past him, wagons tied with rope and clothes patched and stitched. There was no fanfare now, no clarion call and absolutely no fireworks. It would be a long time before Ned Sledd allowed any frivolous fires near his company. The seamstresses who had seemed to be anything but as they all rode into Cambridge were now quiet and actually
sewing
. The Fair Maid of Kent, on the lead wagon, peered at Marlowe through two black eyes and nodded to him.
‘Master Marlowe.’ The player-king stood on the last wagon in line, as his driver hauled on the oxen rein.
‘Master Sledd.’ Marlowe bowed.
‘I’m afraid your play was lost,’ the actor told him. ‘In the fire. Dido, Queen of Carthage. A shame – it had promise. Never seen a metre quite like it before. A mighty line, sir, a mighty line.’
‘These things happen,’ Marlowe said with a smile. ‘I have other plays. Other lines.’
It was the player-king’s turn to smile. ‘Come with us, then. You’re wasted in this backwater.’ He waved a dismissive arm at Cambridge, already a distant jumble of golden buildings in the evening sun. ‘Come to London, Kit. The city of gold. The city of wonder. I’m looking for a new playwright.’ He stopped and sighed. ‘And I expect others will be too, once they know Kit Marlowe’s in town.’
‘All right, but I’m not a playwright,’ Marlowe said and swung the sword on to the baggage behind Sledd before climbing up alongside it. ‘And no promises,’ he said. ‘I never make promises I can’t keep.’
‘Good enough!’ The player-king laughed and threw the man an apple.
They had bumped and rattled their way out on to the open fenland, waving to the few people who were still stage-struck enough to line their route. Marlowe had a special wave for Constable Fludd, not so much stage-struck as he stood in the door of his carpenter’s shop as making certain the players were really leaving town. He stood under the thatch of his cottage with his wife and daughter at his side and Allys Fludd waddled away, as women with child do, to feed the chickens near cock-shut time.
Soon, Cambridge was just a shapeless mass in the dying sun. Marlowe only now realized how exhausted he was and he dozed, lying on the rolls of singed curtains in the back of the cart. He was woken sharply by something nibbling at his fingers, deftly extracting the apple core that still lay there.
He sat bolt upright to see a fine black stallion pull its head away at a jerk from its rider. The man was a gentleman, in black velvet finery and he was leading another horse.
‘Dominus Marlowe?’
‘Who wants to know?’ His mother had always warned him about strange men on the road. Pity he hadn’t listened.
‘Your fellow Parker scholars would know me as Francis Hall.’ He pulled his horse alongside the wagon’s rear wheel and leaned across. ‘But it’s actually Francis Walsingham, Privy Councillor to Her Majesty, Elizabeth, by the Grace of God.’
Marlowe was still sitting upright. ‘What business do you have with me, sir?’ he asked.
‘Her Majesty’s business,’ Walsingham said.
Marlowe looked into the man’s eyes. They burned as dark and enigmatic as his own. ‘You’re the spymaster,’ he said softly.
Walsingham laughed. ‘Ah, you playwrights,’ he roared. ‘Always the dramatic. I’ve been looking for you.’
‘Why?’ Marlowe asked.
‘Let’s just say,’ Walsingham said, leaning forward in the saddle, ‘I believe you are the kind of man who can effect Her Majesty’s business well. Very well.’ The spymaster sat upright again. ‘The pay’s not good, Marlowe,’ he said. ‘But I can guarantee you a life like no other.’
‘I am not exactly a free agent, Sir Francis,’ Marlowe said. ‘I have various charges pending against me.’
‘If you are referring to Edward Winterton and pulling a knife on him, it’s gone. I have had a word with Edward. He understood.’
‘He . . . ?’ Marlowe was amazed.
‘He works for the Queen,’ Walsingham explained. ‘As do we all. As for Dr Gabriel Harvey . . .’
‘Yes?’ Marlowe leaned forward.
Walsingham smiled. ‘Let’s just say, he’d rather like to be Master of Corpus Christi one day. He’s gone too.’
Marlowe chuckled. ‘Once,’ he said, ‘all I wanted was to take my first degree. That achieved, my second. Then –’ he waved to the theatrical pile on which he rode – ‘I had dreams of writing plays and poetry – all fire and air, eh?’
Walsingham steadied the stallion. ‘I see no reason, Master Marlowe, why Her Majesty’s business could not be fitted in around your second degree and your writing for the theatre, if you wish. After all, God gave us twenty four hours in any day.’
They rode on for a moment in silence. ‘Well, Machiavel, Kit?’ Walsingham leaned in again. ‘What do you say?’