Scorpions' Nest (17 page)

The Londoner flicked his fingers in the blacksmith’s direction. ‘Tell him to send the bill, I said,’ he snarled. ‘And I will pay it when I am good and ready.’

This time, Marlowe didn’t have to translate. The blacksmith picked up Abbot and tossed him across the yard, where he came to a skidding halt just on the edge of the hot fire the man had used to heat his iron. Then, he wrapped the reins once more round his hand and led the horse out of the yard and down the road.

‘Greene!’ Abbot screamed, rising up on one elbow. ‘Greene! As an Englishman, stop him. He’s got my horse.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Marlowe said, watching the man go.

‘Has he let it go, then?’ he said, getting up and beating out a smouldering ember on his sleeve.

‘No,’ said one of the scholars, who had been watching with interest. ‘He is leading it down the road, back to his forge, if I remember where it is correctly.’

‘Then…?’ Abbot was puzzled.

‘What I meant,’ Marlowe said, tired of the arrogant fool, ‘What I meant was that he has
his
horse, until you pay your bill. We’re not in London now, Abbot. We are ambassadors for our country, and I think paying up is what Englishmen do.’

‘Not where I come from!’ snapped Abbot, making for the road in hot pursuit of his mount.

‘No, indeed,’ Marlowe said to himself. ‘Wherever that might be, Master Abbot.’

The Book of Days lay open at the dawning of the world on the lectern in Thomas Shaw’s library. The whole room was clothed in books, their leather spines gleaming with a loving polish and the evening sun lent them a glow of their own, melting into gold.

‘The only one of its kind in existence.’ Shaw had slid in through a side entrance, his buskins gone now and soft sandals in their place.

Marlowe nodded, tracing the illuminated letters with his fingers. ‘Magnificent,’ he said. Then he snapped himself out of the scholar’s worship of ink and the written word and smiled at the librarian. ‘Rather belatedly,’ he said, ‘I have accepted your invitation to a tour of your library. Though now, I believe, we have other matters to discuss.’

‘We do?’ Shaw raised an eyebrow.

‘The lad Brooke, Dr Shaw,’ Marlowe said. ‘Not ten hours dead. I seem to remember at my first dinner you didn’t want him talking to me.’

‘
Tristan and Isolde
,’ Shaw said, patting the spine of a huge tome as he led Marlowe past it.

The projectioner knew a changed subject when he heard one and for now played along. ‘A singularly secular book for the English College,’ he observed.

Shaw chuckled. ‘Don’t let Gerald Skelton know it’s here,’ he said. ‘He’d burn it.’

‘Really? This book must have cost a fortune. I know it would pain the Bursar of my college in Cambridge to destroy something as valuable as this.’

‘As a rule, I am sure Dr Skelton would be at one with your Bursar,’ Shaw agreed. ‘He is a bit of a spoon counter, is Gerald. But he is also a Puritan. Oh, not in the literal sense, of course.’ He had noticed Marlowe’s swiftly assumed expression of alarm. ‘Ah –’ his fingers found another volume – ‘
The Chronicles of Eden
.’ He hauled it from the shelf and laid it down on a counter. ‘The 1321 edition.’

Marlowe was impressed. Doctor Johns had once told him that no copies of this book existed. ‘Tell me, Dr Shaw,’ he said. ‘Do you lend such manuscripts to the scholars? If I remember my Cambridge days, we were always pretty careless with our texts.’

‘Some things we lend out, yes,’ Shaw told him. ‘But not, you can imagine, this. Look –’ he pointed to a ripped hole in the leather of
The
Chronicles
’ corner – ‘a reminder it was once chained. From the Monastery of Melk, on the Danube. Before that, it was owned, I understand, by a Doge of Venice. No, this one never leaves this room.’

‘And the book you picked up in Edmund Brooke’s room?’ Marlowe asked.

Shaw turned to face him. ‘You are persistent, Dominus Greene,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you that. It was a copy, if you must know, of the
Iliad
,
not
strictly on Master Brooke’s reading list. I don’t know what he was doing with it.’

‘It is a rattling good yarn,’ Marlowe suggested. ‘Must make a change from regular reading. Why did you make a point of taking it back?’

‘The librarian in me, I suppose,’ Shaw said. ‘See a book where it shouldn’t be, pick it up.’

‘About Master Brooke…’

Shaw held up his hand. ‘All in good time,’ he said. ‘First, I want to show you something.’

He motioned Marlowe to follow him through the side door he had entered by. Was there no end to the labyrinthine twists in this place? ‘Watch your footing.’ Shaw’s voice echoed as he led the projectioner through a narrow dark passageway that twisted now to the left, then to the right. Little torches flickered in their iron brackets at intervals along the rough walls, giving just enough light to be a guide, but not enough so you could truly say you could see your hand in front of your face. A few in the sequence had gone out, and then the dark was almost complete. Clearly, this was not a part of the College where men walked often and there was a curious smell that Marlowe couldn’t place.

They came to a door and here Shaw stopped and placed a warning hand on Marlowe’s chest. He looked at him hard in what light there was. ‘Do you believe in God, the Father and the Son?’ he asked.

Marlowe nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘And in the primacy of the Holy Father and the Church of Rome?’

‘Is there any other?’ Marlowe asked, wide-eyed.

‘Ah,’ Shaw half growled. ‘If only. What you will see behind this door, Dominus Greene, is a secret of a very special kind. It is a secret known only to a very few in this College. And it must remain a secret. Do you understand?’

‘Perfectly,’ said Marlowe.

Shaw nodded, still watching the man’s face. Then he took a deep breath as a man might leaping into the abyss and pushed the door open. The light hit Marlowe like a wall and the noise followed it. Ahead was a huge frame with mechanical arms that slid and beat out a staccato refrain. Marlowe knew now what the strange smell was. It was paper and wet ink and the glue that stationers use to bind their books.

‘A printing press,’ he said, as much to convince himself of the reality of this bustling workshop as anything else. ‘Dr Allen’s tracts are printed here.’

‘They are,’ Shaw said. ‘But that’s not its main purpose.’ He nodded at the monk scuttling past with sheaves of parchment. ‘
This
–’ he reached across to a finished book – ‘is its main purpose.’ And he handed the book to Marlowe.

‘The Rheims Bible.’ Marlowe smiled.

‘You’ve seen one?’

‘Personally, no. But I know men who have.’ He looked at Shaw. ‘Some of them are dead.’

The librarian shook his head. ‘Is that bitch of England still burning people for following the faith?’ he asked.

‘Oh, it’s far more subtle than that.’ Marlowe flicked through the newly inked pages and sniffed them. ‘The late Queen Mary, may God bless her, used the flames. Elizabeth works through the law.’

‘The law!’ Shaw almost spat his contempt.

‘And her minions. People like Sir Francis Walsingham.’

‘Ah, the spymaster.’ Shaw nodded grimly. ‘You know he’s top of the list, don’t you?’

‘The list?’

‘Parma’s list. When the invasion comes – and it will – the Duke of Parma has some very special treatment in mind for Francis Walsingham.’

Marlowe smiled. ‘I should like to see that.’

‘So should we all,’ Shaw agreed. ‘The man is often in my prayers. In the meantime, we do what little we can. Printing the Bibles here is relatively safe as long as the Catholic League holds Rheims.’

‘And if they fail?’

‘Oh, ye of little faith,’ Shaw muttered, with unconscious accuracy. ‘If they fail, the English College will have to move on again. It’s not bricks and mortar that make this place, Greene, it’s our unshakeable belief.’

‘Amen,’ Marlowe echoed. ‘And now,’ he said, placing the Bible back on its pile, ‘Edmund Brooke.’

Shaw sighed and ushered Marlowe out of the printing room. The heavy door killed the rattle and thud of the machine instantly and they were in the half dark again. At first, Shaw took them back the way they had come. Then he turned suddenly to his left and began to climb a tight spiral of stone steps that looked more in keeping with a castle than a town house in the heart of Rheims. Another door at the top led out onto the leads and the whole city lay at their feet, twinkling as men lit their fires and smoke began to drift upwards to wreath into the fog that was breathed out by the chilly waters of the Vesle. It was a scene to make even the happiest man feel melancholy, up here on the cold roof, whilst down below, his fellow creatures were tucking themselves up warm before their own hearths. It wasn’t just the chill that made Marlowe hug himself into his doublet against the clammy air, but a breath of his own mortality wafting softly on the back of his neck. He shook himself and turned to the librarian as the man spoke.

‘What do you want to know about Edmund Brooke?’ the librarian asked.

‘Who killed him,’ Marlowe said, simply.

Shaw leaned forward, resting both elbows on the parapet so that he looked not unlike the grinning gargoyles on the great cathedral which dominated the skyline from almost every rooftop in Rheims. ‘God,’ he said. ‘We cannot fathom His ways.’

Marlowe adopted the same position and smiled at the librarian. ‘In the macrocosmia, yes,’ he said. ‘But the devil is in the detail. God didn’t press a pillow over that boy’s face and hold it there until he died.’

Shaw said nothing, just stared out over the darkling city, the muscles in his jaws flexing.

‘I was there, Dr Shaw,’ Marlowe reminded him. ‘As were you. Allen’s “apoplexy” won’t work here. We are discussing murder, you and I, whether we like it or not.’

‘I don’t like it.’ Shaw pushed himself upright from the parapet and looked at Marlowe from his full height. ‘Not one bit.’

Marlowe sighed, taking stock of the situation. Not for the first time in his life he wondered whether perhaps he had made a mistake to let someone have the advantage of him. But, he reasoned, he was still here to tell the tale, so either his mistakes had been few or his luck inordinate. He decided to plough ahead. ‘I have heard it said,’ he murmured, ‘that if you want to know how a man died, you should look at how he lived. What do you know about the late Edmund Brooke, Dr Shaw? How did he live, would you say?’

‘I know precious little, I’m afraid.’ He caught Marlowe’s look. ‘I shut him up at dinner because like all scholars he had the habit of opening his mouth a little too wide. You were new then, Greene; I knew nothing about you.’

‘And now?’

‘Now, I have revealed to you my inner sanctum. And I don’t do that to everybody. I pride myself on being a judge of men. The secrets of the English College are safe with you, I’m sure.’

‘Not
all
its secrets, Doctor,’ Marlowe said. ‘There are some that are denied to all of us.’

Shaw fell silent, thinking. Then he turned again to the parapet and the city. Stars were peeping in the patches of clear sky, winking silently on and off as wisps of mist drifted over the streets and houses, as if there were no strife in the world. No Catholics. No Protestants. Just the eternal motion of the Heavens presiding over all. ‘Brooke may have been a thief,’ he said. He blew out a breath, and with it any indecision he had felt over sharing what he knew with the man at his side. ‘It’s nothing I can prove. It’s just that a number of volumes have been disappearing recently. Nothing as obvious as
The Chronicles
of course, but lesser works, valuable in their own right. Always after Master Brooke had been working in the library.’

‘So the volume in his room…?’

‘Was not one he should have had,’ Shaw admitted. ‘I try to be charitable, Dominus Greene, but even I have to admit that some men are just naturally light-fingered.’

‘How would Brooke have disposed of these books?’ Marlowe asked. ‘There was nothing in his room, except…’

Shaw looked at Marlowe in the gathering gloom. ‘Except what?’

Marlowe smiled to himself. It was all falling into place. ‘Except a little hidey-hole about so big.’ He held up his hands to sketch a box shape in the air and then realized it was almost too dark to see. ‘About the size where a book might fit. It was in the floor of his wardrobe.’

Shaw nodded. He wasn’t surprised. ‘There are a number of stationers in the town, booksellers by another name,’ he said. ‘Any of them would have made a killing out of the lad…’ His voice tailed away as he realized what he had said.

A chapel bell began tolling from the quad away over the gabled roof behind the pair.

‘Vespers,’ said Shaw. ‘Shall we?’ He gestured with his arm towards the little door back onto the winding stair.

‘You go,’ said Marlowe. ‘I have other business tonight, Dr Shaw. And thank you.’

‘For what?’ the librarian asked.

‘Your honesty,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Your openness.’

‘There’s a quicker way down,’ Shaw said. ‘If you go that way and down the steps at the end you’ll find yourself in the quad, just behind the main gate.’

Marlowe nodded and took his leave. At the bottom of the spiral steps he was out into the night air and nearly collided with a scholar leaning against a stone pillar. The lad looked pale and ill in his fustian and he mumbled something to Marlowe before he turned away to vomit in the shadows.

M
arlowe was studying the latest tract from Dr Allen that evening when he heard the rap at his bedroom door. He placed his dagger within easy reach and called, ‘Yes?’

Gerald Skelton stood in the doorway, a grim look on his face. ‘Dominus Greene.’ He nodded to him. ‘The Master would like a word. Now, please.’

Marlowe looked at the calibrated candle. ‘It’s late, Doctor,’ he purred. ‘Can’t it wait?’

‘No, Dominus Greene.’ Skelton was firm. ‘It can’t.’

Marlowe closed the pamphlet and snuffed out the candle, gesturing to Skelton to lead the way. They padded up a staircase and along a gallery decorated with the martyrdom of Catholic saints, heads lying on pavements, executioners’ swords crimson with holy blood. At the end, they turned sharp left and began a descent into darkness. Marlowe hadn’t been this way before. The warm wood of the galleries had been replaced by the cold, damp stone of northern France and they were turning a tight spiral on the worn steps. Skelton carried the candle but knew his way instinctively and Marlowe was expected to follow suit. At the bottom, the Bursar swept around a pillar to his right and tapped on an oak door straight ahead. There was a muffled response and Skelton opened the door with a rattle of iron.