Scorpions' Nest (19 page)

Marlowe sat down next to the boy, spreading his cloak on the ground and crossing one elegant buskin over the other. ‘I’m Robert Greene,’ he said. ‘Corpus Christi.’

The boy nodded. He wasn’t in the mood for conversation and didn’t care who knew it.

‘Your ingle is dead,’ Marlowe said, coming straight out with it. ‘I’m sorry.’

Camb frowned, focusing now on the dark eyes, the soft mouth. ‘No, you’re not,’ he muttered. ‘And anyway, Edmund wasn’t my ingle, as you put it.’

‘No?’ Marlowe raised an eyebrow.

‘No!’ Camb’s response was louder than he meant it to be and he looked round, startled. Scholars were scuttling, late to lectures, across the quad. Brother Tobias scowled at him from the main gate. ‘No,’ he hissed. ‘Such things are an abomination. Our Lord Himself frowned on sodomy.’

‘Actually, he didn’t –’ Marlowe folded his arms – ‘if I remember my scripture.

‘What do you want?’ Camb asked him. He wasn’t up to rhetoric at this time of the morning, especially with an older man who knew more than he did. His head was banging, a slow and distant rhythm which nevertheless managed to drown out almost everything else and make coherent thought next to impossible. He wanted to lie down in a dark, cool room and wait until everything stayed still and the right way up, at the same time. Currently, it was either one thing or the other and the pain was so bad it reached to the ends of his hair.

‘Information.’ Marlowe produced a gold coin from his purse and watched it catch the light.

‘About what?’ Camb wanted to know.

‘Edmund Brooke,’ Marlowe told him and tossed the coin so that it spun in the air. Camb caught it and bit it. Marlowe smiled. ‘You didn’t learn that in the English College,’ he said.

Camb’s face creased into a smile for the first time and he looked the better for it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘The news about Edmund came as a… a bit of a shock. These things take a bit of getting used to. And I must say, I’m not feeling any too well at present.’

‘You don’t look it, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ Marlowe said. ‘I was expecting quite an improvement on my glimpse of you last night, but if anything you look rather worse.’

‘Oh, please,’ Camb said, testily. ‘Please don’t be polite for my sake. I can take the truth.’

‘I’ll make allowances,’ Marlowe said, with a small smile. ‘How well did you know Edmund?’

‘Oh, you know, shadows in the night.’ He suddenly shuddered. ‘I’m seeing a lot of those at the moment.’ Marlowe took his hand. It was as cold as a stone. And the pupils of his eyes were tiny, lost in the irises of clear blue.

Camb instinctively pulled his hand away. ‘Why do you want to know about him?’

‘I have a curious nature.’ Marlowe smiled. ‘When a man is suffocated, I have a tendency to ask questions. I hope I may be forgiven.’

‘Suffocated?’ Camb was sitting upright, quivering in the cold of the morning. ‘The Master said it was—’

‘Apoplexy.’ Marlowe finished the sentence for him. ‘Yes, I know. It’s his favourite word. When did you see the Master?’

‘Er… I don’t know. Last night, I think. He was asking me questions too. Dominus Greene, I don’t understand. What’s going on?’

Marlowe smiled at a hidden joke. ‘The Master and I,’ he said. ‘We ask the questions. Where were you when Edmund died?’

‘I don’t rightly know. On the town… somewhere.’

‘Are you often on the town, Master Camb?’ Marlowe looked hard into the boy’s eyes.

Camb looked back. Were there two Robert Greenes now? He couldn’t be sure. He could keep them down to just the one if he closed one eye, but then the other one wanted to close as well and an ingrained sense of self-preservation made him want to keep both his eyes firmly on Greene. Greenes. He blinked several times and swallowed hard as the background swam out of focus. He wanted to speak up for himself, tell this interloper where to stick his inquisitive nature. ‘Often,’ he said. Not very compelling as answers went, but it was all his lips could manage.

‘And when Edmund died?’ Marlowe persisted. He felt almost sorry for the lad; his headache proclaimed itself in his furrowed brow and tight neck and shoulder muscles. He would have screamed with the pain, but for the pain it would have caused. Marlowe forced himself to be firm with him. ‘Be specific, Martin. And be accurate. Your life may depend upon it.’

‘Um… I left the College… let’s see, it would have been after Vespers. It’s easier to slip out when people are still moving. Once we’re abed and it’s lights out, there are creaking floor boards and marauding cats… Tread on a cat’s tail and you can wake the College in seconds, from the gate to the attics.’

Marlowe nodded. It could have been him talking not so long ago as he crept out of the Court at Corpus Christi, making for the Brazen Head or the Eagle. He felt a sudden pang of homesickness for his room, his familiar walks. He shook himself out of it. ‘Was anyone with you?’

‘God, no. There used to be, of course, but now Drs Allen and Skelton have put the fear of God into the scholars. What does our Lord say about wine, Dominus Greene? You seem to know your scriptures.’

Marlowe shrugged. ‘I know he turned water into the stuff,’ he said. ‘And His Father had some quite useful tasting advice, red, yellow, that kind of thing.’

‘Exactly!’ Camb prodded the air with his finger. ‘So I don’t see the Master’s objection.’

‘So, you went out after Vespers,’ Marlowe said, bringing the lad back to the night in question. ‘Where did you go?’

‘Er… the Casque d’Argent. It’s on the Rue Vervain. About half a mile away.’

‘Did you meet anyone there?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Anyone who could vouch for you?’

‘No one from the College, if that’s what you mean. I take a few twists and turns before choosing where to drink. Less likely to get caught that way.’

Again, the wave of homesickness for the little back lanes of Cambridge swept over Marlowe, like a sheet of iced water from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He could almost smell the waft of stale ale that would envelop him as he pushed open the door of the Eagle. He could taste the smoke-filled air of the private room at the back of the Devil.

Camb was still speaking. ‘A few locals were there, of course. I’ve drunk with them before, but they don’t know my name. Least said, soonest mended. The English College exerts a powerful sway on this town.’

‘But you know their names, surely,’ Marlowe said. ‘Just to say hello.’

‘Jacques was there,’ Camb said, then furrowed his brow. ‘Or was that last week…? Pierre was definitely there, because he had borrowed money from Louis and… no, it wasn’t Pierre, it was definitely Jacques…’

Marlowe wished that Camb would think inside his head, but he could see that the lad had the kind of memory that peopled the air around him with detail and he could see them, perhaps not clearly, but through a haze. Ask him to do his remembering quietly and there would be no remembering at all.

Finally, he came to a decision and turned to Marlowe triumphantly. ‘Jacques,’ he announced. ‘Mireille—’

‘Mireille?’ Marlowe stopped him. ‘The harlot who haunts this place?’

‘Does she?’ Camb asked. ‘I don’t know. I can’t afford her. From there I went to… La Pucelle, was it? Yes, La Pucelle. Bit of a Hell-hole, really. They were playing lansquenet. I remember I was losing…’

‘And?’

Camb shrugged. ‘I was drinking.’

Marlowe’s temper was suddenly at the end of its rope. He grabbed Camb’s hand and twisted it behind his back, pinning him under the weight of his body. ‘I’m spending too much time on you, scholar,’ he hissed into his ear. ‘Stop all of this drunken reminiscence nonsense. Your room-mate, if we can properly call him that. Your ingle. The love of your life if you want to give it that gloss, whatever he was to you, Edmund Brooke is dead. So let’s have it, the story of your wandering last night. What happened at La Pucelle, if that is where you were and not hiding somewhere in the College, with Edmund Brooke’s last breath still damp on your hands?’

Camb went limp under Marlowe’s weight, one hand trapped in the projectioner’s vice-like grip, the other hopelessly tangled in his robe where he had tucked it to keep it warm. ‘I don’t know. I blacked out. I had the horrors of drink on me.’

Marlowe looked into the lad’s eyes again and saw the pain. ‘No, you didn’t, Martin,’ he said, releasing him. ‘Somebody doctored your wine. Not very subtly, either.’ He cast his mind back to Dr John Dee, who could send someone to sleep for as long as he wanted, although his claim of a thousand years had always struck Marlowe as overblown. How could he know? When they woke up, and Marlowe had witnessed it, they felt as though they had just dropped off for a second, no headache, no gripes, no nothing. Certainly, Dee’s potions would never leave anyone in a state like this. The lad could have died. But he needed to check. ‘Are you sure you have never felt like this before?’

‘I have had bad heads,’ he said, ‘but never like this. I feel as though my skull has turned to glass.’

Marlowe nodded and patted the boy’s shoulder. ‘Do something for me, Master Camb.’ He got up suddenly and straightened his cloak. ‘Stay away from the Casque d’Argent.’ He tossed him another coin. ‘To cover your losses,’ he said, in explanation, ‘and to remind you to stay away from La Pucelle as well. Use the change to buy some candles for your friend. Will you do that for me?’

Camb nodded. ‘Wait,’ he said, trying to get up and failing. ‘Dominus Greene, who did it? Who suffocated Edmund?’

‘Suffocated?’ Marlowe frowned. ‘That was apoplexy, lad. You must have been drinking again.’

W
alsingham hated Hatfield. The house itself was all right, and so too was the little church of St Ethelfreda’s that sat squatly on the slope of its churchyard. It was actually getting there he hated. The roads of Hertfordshire were appalling and now that November was here with its creeping fogs and frosty nights, the iron-hard ruts of those roads jolted him around so that he resembled a dangled puppet and ached in every limb.

Burghley’s finest claret only mollified him a little. Even his roast swan failed to hit the spot. Why, oh why, couldn’t the Chief Secretary have stayed in London?

‘So that’s it, then?’ Burghley asked him when the servants had retired for the night and the two Privy Councillors sat before the dying fire with only the Cecil hounds for company. ‘That’s the view of all of them?’

Walsingham shuffled the documents he had scattered on the side table. ‘You’ve read it yourself, my lord,’ he said. ‘Twenty peers of the realm and forty knights of the shire want the Scottish bitch dead. We’ve done our bit.’

Burghley stared at the firelight dancing in his crystal glass and turned as a burnt-out log fell in the grate, like a burning kingdom put to the sword and the flame. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The queen was allowed no counsel and given no jury. Small wonder we found her guilty.’

‘Careful,’ Walsingham warned with a smile on his lips. ‘You’re beginning to sound like Christopher Hatton.’

‘God forbid,’ Burghley growled. ‘But tell me, Francis, Councillor to Councillor, did we do right?’

Walsingham shrugged. ‘You have Her Majesty’s letter?’ he asked.

Burghley sighed. ‘I have.’

‘What did it say? Remind me.’

Burghley knew every word by heart. He knew he would never forget a syllable, as long as he lived. ‘“Let the wicked murderess know her vile deserts compel these orders”, ’ he quoted. ‘“Upon the examination and trial of the cause…”’ His voice tailed away as he shook his head.

Walsingham finished the sentence for him, ‘“You shall by verdict find the said Queen guilty of the crime she stands charged with.” Rest easy, my lord, our mistress herself is judge, jury and executioner.’

‘Executioner?’ Burghley laughed. ‘That I doubt. When will that petition be presented to her?’

‘Next Tuesday,’ Walsingham told him, ‘at Richmond.’

Burghley nodded. ‘She’ll hedge,’ he said. ‘She’ll whine about being on a stage and in the limelight. “
Who shall cast the first stone
” et cetera, et cetera. She’ll probably play the sex card too – frail womanhood and so on:
even now, if Mary confesses, I will counsel my God to spare her life
.’

It was one of the best impressions of the Queen Walsingham had ever heard and the fact that it bordered on treason didn’t faze him one bit. It was the sort of conversation that he’d had with himself on many an occasion. Looking at Burghley now was like looking into a glass. ‘Will she do it, do you think?’ he asked the Chief Secretary. ‘Will she sign Mary’s death warrant?’

Burghley looked into the eyes of the spymaster and saw only himself reflected there. ‘Yes,’ he said, after a while. ‘Yes, she will. But when she does, it’ll be our fault and personally I shall be well away from the Presence when that quill hits the parchment.’

Both men sat in silence as their thoughts overtook them.

Burghley broke the silence first. ‘In the meantime, what news of the English College?’

‘None.’ Walsingham helped himself to more claret. ‘We could have done with Phelippes at the trial. How he’s faring in the scorpions’ nest, God only knows.’

‘But this man Marlowe,’ Burghley said. ‘He’s in safe hands, surely? Phelippes, I mean.’

‘Oh, Phelippes is in safe hands, my lord. As for Marlowe, that I can’t answer.’

La Pucelle lay on the wrong side of the cathedral and a stone’s throw from Solomon Aldred’s house near the tanneries. The familiar smell of curing hides followed Marlowe all along the narrow, winding streets of another autumn night. There was no moon tonight, peeping past the chimney pots, no stars to twinkle in Heaven to remind the great and good of God’s light. But the way was lit by the welcoming glow from the open frontage of La Pucelle. A solemn wooden girl, painted white and wearing plate armour, looked down at Marlowe from her wooden perch. He knew all about Jeanne the Maid. She was a mad woman from Domrémy whom the French called a saint and who had taken Orleans back from the English when Marlowe’s great-grandfather, Richard, was a tanner in Canterbury and nobody fought anybody over religion. In the end the French church had become concerned that the Maid was more central in men’s affections than they were and they handed her over to the English who burned her in the market square. She was younger than Marlowe was today and all her life already played out.