Scorpions' Nest (16 page)

Marlowe did. The newly opened slit looked directly at Aldred’s front door along the Rue de Valvert. Aldred flicked another one on the opposite wall and Marlowe could see the yard behind the house where the homely Veronique was hanging out her washing.

‘Clever,’ Marlowe said. ‘But it didn’t help last night?’

Crestfallen, Aldred let the shutters close. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘One of Nicholas Faunt’s little gadgets. Utterly useless after dark. And anyway, I’d have to be in this room at the time to have a commanding view of the back and front.’

‘Veronique wouldn’t like that?’ Marlowe couldn’t resist a smile.

‘She
is
very demanding in that respect.’ Aldred sighed and the thought of it made him reach for a goblet and decanter of wine. ‘But that’s not it. She knows nothing about my alter ego, so to speak. To her, as to the rest of Rheims, I am just Solomon Aldred, the English vintner.’

‘And what are you to your visitor of last night, do you think?’ Marlowe asked.

Aldred shrugged. He wasn’t just turning into a vintner. He was turning into a Frenchman. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been racking what’s left of my brain. I couldn’t get anything rational out of Phelippes. If his attacker had horns and a cloven hoof, I shouldn’t be at all surprised. Johns wasn’t much better.’

‘Was it wise to involve the Watch?’

‘Johns’ idea, backed up by Veronique. For some reason, which I admit escapes me, she seems to think that this is a respectable house. She has personally buried three husbands.’ He paused to consider what he had said. ‘I obviously don’t mean she personally buried them, but she has been present when they needed burying.’ He shook his head, still not sure he had made himself clear, but plunged on anyway. ‘None of them was actually her own husband and the wives were a little testy, but she is a rich woman by anyone’s reckoning, so paid them off. I am her latest… addition to the household and possibly a little more respectable than the preceding incumbents, in that my wife is—’

‘Living with a fish-curer from Lowestoft,’ Marlowe added, to show he had been listening.

‘Quite.’ Aldred took his first proper swig of the morning and shuddered as the burgundy hit his tonsils. ‘But even without her support, Johns would have won the day. A determined bugger, isn’t he? For a scholar, I mean? I refused at first, but he dashed off into the night and found a patrolling Watchman. I sent Veronique for a doctor.’

‘This doctor,’ Marlowe said. ‘Can he be trusted?’

‘Of course not,’ Aldred snorted. ‘He’s a doctor. But Johns paid him over the odds so he’ll keep his mouth shut for a while.’

‘What about the Watch?’

‘Apparently Johns had the very devil of a job to get him to come along at all. He took one look at Phelippes and then at Johns, said “Lovers’ tiff?” and shrugged. I slipped him a couple of bottles and sent him on his way. Waste of space!’

‘So that leaves you, Solomon,’ Marlowe said, leaning closer. ‘Have you received such a visitor before?’

‘Never,’ Aldred told him. ‘Oh, I’ve had the odd run in with an aggrieved customer. Some nonsense about spoiled brandy and a watered-down Bordeaux – all rubbish, of course. But a thief in the night? No, never. There isn’t a thief in Rheims who would risk meeting Veronique in the dark, I shouldn’t think.’

‘A thief?’ Marlowe frowned. ‘What was taken?’

‘Nothing,’ Aldred told him. ‘At least I don’t think so. Johns and Phelippes must have disturbed him. I checked the other rooms; nothing amiss there.’

Both men fell silent.

‘A groat for your thoughts, Kit Marlowe,’ the vintner said after a while.

Marlowe laughed. ‘You can have my thoughts freely, Master Aldred,’ he said. ‘Though you might have to pay for my poetry and plays.’ He looked at the man. He was far from ideal, but at this hour, between Lauds and Prime, he was all Marlowe had. And he’d have to do. ‘I was sent to find a fugitive,’ he said. ‘One Matthew Baxter, one of Babington’s plotters. You tell me he’s here, under an assumed name, at the English College.’

‘The scorpions’ nest,’ Aldred reminded him.

Marlowe nodded. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘And the scorpions are killing each other in that nest. There was another one last night.’

‘What?’ Aldred sat up, slopping his drink.

‘A scholar, name of Brooke. Nice lad. I had dinner in his company on one of my first nights here.’

‘Another one for the crypt.’ Aldred nodded, topping up his spilled drink.

‘This one was suffocated,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Probably with the pillow he lay on.’

Aldred frowned. ‘A scholar. Didn’t he sleep in a dormitory?’

Marlowe shook his head. ‘A shared room,’ he said.

‘And his ingle?’

‘No sign.’ Marlowe sighed. ‘As missing as any pattern I can see – or rather can’t see – in this whole wretched business. Three men are dead by my reckoning. Charles, hanged and thrown from an upstairs window. Father Laurenticus, stabbed to death in his bed. And now Brooke…’

‘Two scholars and a tutor,’ Aldred said, thinking out loud. ‘Any connection between them? Other than the English College, I mean?’

‘None that I can work out yet.’ A sudden thought occurred to him. ‘What time did the intruder attack Phelippes?’ he asked Aldred.

‘Two, three of the clock,’ the vintner guessed. ‘Why?’

Marlowe sighed. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s all spinning in my head, Solomon, like St Catherine’s wheel. Could the man who tried to kill Phelippes also succeed with Edmund Brooke? Could he have got into the English College from here in time?’

‘The journey is possible,’ the vintner said. ‘But get into the College? That’s impossible after cock-shut time. In fact, it’s impossible at any hour. There are only two gates and they’re both guarded night and day…’ It was his turn to be visited by a sudden thought. ‘Then, how…?’

‘Did a mild-mannered Cambridge professor covered in blood get past the guard to bring me your little piece of news this morning?’ Marlowe smiled, nodding. ‘That is a very good question, Master Aldred. I wish I had an answer.’

T
hey were whispering among themselves that afternoon as Marlowe turned the corner. Ahead of him, scattering as they heard his boots clattering on the cobbles, a knot of scholars went about their business. This was the second time that day that Marlowe had had to break through a cordon of ghouls and he hoped it wasn’t for the same reason as in the morning.

The sun had reached its zenith now, surprisingly warm for October, and on a sudden breeze Marlowe realized what had drawn the scholars’ attention. Puffs of smoke were wafting from the stable yard, but they were few, deliberate and not the harbingers of some conflagration. A grey gelding was standing on three legs in the courtyard while the fourth was held up by a blacksmith, nailing the newly forged metal to its hoof. The animal waited patiently for the procedure to be carried out, only the occasional flick of its tail marking his impatience.

Sitting on a bale of straw with his back to the wall sat the surly Londoner Solomon Aldred had told Marlowe about. He had arrived recently enough for him to possibly be the man the projectioner had been sent by Walsingham to find. But he was not surly this afternoon. There was a pipe in his hand and he was blowing smoke rings to the sky. A flagon of ale lay on the straw beside him and he seemed content with the world.

‘A fine animal,’ Marlowe said by way of greeting. ‘We haven’t met.’ He extended his hand. ‘Robert Greene.’

‘John Abbot,’ the Londoner said, catching it. The grip was firm, the eyes wary. He was giving nothing away.

‘Yours?’ Marlowe sat himself down and nodded to the horse.

‘Bought him yesterday,’ Abbot told him. ‘I thought the London horse swindlers were a tough lot, but here in Rheims… Let’s say they saw me coming.’

‘You didn’t bring your own horse over?’ Marlowe asked. ‘From home, I mean?’

‘Not worth the cost,’ Abbot said. ‘And anyway, I wasn’t sure what sort of welcome I’d get. You?’

‘Ship to Rouen. Upriver from there. Is this your first time in the English College?’

‘My first and my last,’ Abbot grunted.

Marlowe looked surprised. ‘Dr Allen’s welcome not to your liking?’ he asked.

‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong with Allen,’ Abbot said. ‘It’s just that the place is just so damned… well,
foreign
, isn’t it? I mean, the
English
College. I thought I’d find tobacco, ale, pigs’ trotters, jellied eels.’

‘Instead of which?’

‘God knows.’ Abbot shrugged. ‘Things with eyes in. Horse. And snails. I mean, is that natural, Greene? Is it?’

Marlowe smiled at the man. ‘You seem to be coping.’ He pointed to the pipe and the ale.

‘Ah, the last of my personal stash. I’d offer you some of both, but… well, replenishment might be a little tricky.’

‘Where are you from?’ Marlowe asked. He didn’t expect a rush of confession from the man but the slow chip-chip at the outer shell might yield something.

‘Just north of the city wall,’ Abbot told him. ‘The White Chapel. St Mary Matfelon. Know it?’

Marlowe shook his head. ‘I’m from Cambridge, myself,’ he said. ‘Corpus Christi College.’

‘Ah.’ Abbot nodded, taking a selfish swig from the pitcher. ‘I’m a Furnival’s Inn man, of sorts.’

‘Of sorts?’

‘Never finished the course. Thought I was cut out to be a lawyer, then discovered I couldn’t stand the buggers. Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I’m as grasping and cut-throat as the next serjeant-at-law but they’re so bloody arrogant, aren’t they? Always quoting some damn law from the sixteenth of Edward I and expecting that to have some bearing on the state of things today.’

Marlowe sighed, leaning back against the wall in a postural echo of the Furnival’s Inn man. ‘Don’t get me started on the state of things today.’

Abbot looked at him quizzically. Was it the ale or was there, sitting next to him, a fellow traveller in this vale of tears? ‘You know England’s finished, don’t you?’ he said in a half whisper.

Marlowe looked at the blacksmith still working with the horse and wondered how much English he knew. He decided to play dumb. ‘How so?’ he asked.

‘Parma and Guise.’ Abbot spread his arms, for all the world like the alien Frenchmen he now lived among. ‘They’ll carve England up between them. I can just see Philip of Spain now, sitting like a steaming turd on Elizabeth’s chair.’

‘Do I assume you don’t altogether approve of the king of Spain, Master Abbot?’

‘Well, there’s the problem, Greene,’ Abbot said, swigging again. ‘You hit the nail on the head. Because of Henry VIII and his damned Great Matter; because the lad he fathered had a spine of jelly and died before he’d finished shitting yellow; because various lords listened to the ravings of the Reformers and set up a Godless church, you and I have a problem, don’t we?’

More than you know, thought Marlowe, but he’d learned long ago that men in full flight let things slip. Let the man rant on. ‘We either accept the Jezebel, in which case we have broken our faith with God and the Holy Father. Or we stay loyal to Rome and accept whatever damned foreigner shouts loudest for the throne of England. The Queen of Scots is the nearest Catholic we have to home grown.’

‘Ah.’ Marlowe nodded sagely, closing his eyes as he breathed in Abbot’s smoke. ‘And her cause is lost.’

‘Lost?’ Abbot repeated. ‘In what way?’

Marlowe opened his eyes, sat bolt upright and looked at the man. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You must have left London before it happened. Anthony Babington and his friends. All dead. Butchered to make an anti-Roman holiday.’

‘By whose authority?’ Abbot bellowed, startling his horse and making the blacksmith curse colourfully in a patois Marlowe was glad he didn’t fully understand.

‘The Queen’s.’ Marlowe shrugged. ‘The Jezebel’s, I mean. They say she stayed her hand on the second day of executions and let the hangman actually hang them first, to spare them the pain of the rest.’

Abbot snorted. ‘That’s damned good of her,’ he said, leaning his back against the wall again.

The horse, spooked out of his previous somnolence, whickered and snorted in reply. The blacksmith, who had been stretching the job out to make it seem worth his inflated price, gave a final ringing tap on the last nail and put the leg down. Marlowe could see this little interlude was drawing to a close. Abbot stood and tapped out his pipe against the wall, the smouldering ashes hissing in the damp straw. The projectioner had to be quick. He sighed. ‘All too late for my friend Chideock, I fear,’ he said.

‘Who?’ Abbot asked him.

Marlowe looked askance. ‘Chideock Tichborne,’ he said. ‘One of the so-called conspirators. Did you know him?’

Abbot shrugged. ‘I meet a lot of people,’ he said. Suddenly he stiffened. ‘Is that why you’re here, Greene?’ he asked. ‘On the run from Walsingham?’

Marlowe sighed again. ‘You might say that,’ he said.

Before Abbot could ask for any clarification, the blacksmith appeared at his elbow, the horse’s reins in one hand, his hammer in the other.

‘M’sieur,’ he said. ‘The shoe is mended.’

‘What?’ Abbot said, looking him up and down as though he had never seen him before. ‘I can’t really be doing with these country types, Greene. It isn’t the French I was taught, at any rate. What does he say?’

‘I think he is just saying that the shoe is fixed,’ Marlowe said. He had to agree that the man spoke with the accent of another region, but it wasn’t so thick that Abbot couldn’t understand it. Any gentleman who had studied at Furnival’s Inn could manage this much French.

‘Tell him to send me the bill,’ Abbot said, reaching for the reins.

Marlowe passed on the message, with some trepidation. The blacksmith looked a pleasant enough man but the gleaming muscles and the rather firm set of his mouth made Marlowe suspect that the tether he was on was not long.

The man looked at Marlowe, from his great height. ‘Tell the M’sieur,’ he said, enunciating clearly, ‘that though I come from the country, I am not stupid. If he wants his horse, he will pay me for my work. We arranged the price before I even lit my fire.’

Marlowe dutifully translated, adding, for good measure, some advice about the possible consequences of taking on a man a head taller and twice as broad, with muscles where Abbot didn’t even have fat.