by M. J. Trow
Robert Greene stood cap in hand at Gabriel Harvey’s door at Corpus that Saturday morning. All Cambridge was buzzing with the story of Ralph Whitingside’s death and Greene was not the sort of man to let rumour and innuendo pass him by. He needed to be in the thick of it.
‘Dr Harvey?’ The great man had appeared at long last from behind the buttresses in The Court.
‘Who are you?’ Harvey looked him up and down. The Fellow was wearing the robes of St John’s College but his skin was dark and he appeared to be wearing an earring.
‘Robert Greene, sir. St John’s, lately back from Italy.’
‘Italy? Really. Nowhere near Rome, I trust.’
‘No, no, sir. Verona. Lucca. There was plague in Florence. We were turned back.’
Harvey was already walking. ‘Your travels are fascinating, Dominus Greene, but I am rather busy.’
‘Yes, sir, I know. On your way to the inquest on Ralph Whitingside.’
Harvey stopped in his tracks, waiting for a couple of sizars to slink past, doffing their caps to him. ‘You seem remarkably well-informed for a man –’ he pinged Greene’s earring with a fingernail – ‘so lately come from Italy.’ And he strode on.
‘But I have information, sir,’ Greene called after him. ‘About Christopher Marlowe . . .’
Sir Edward Winterton sat in the Provost’s chair in the Great Hall of King’s College. Around him clucked his clerks, carrying ink, quills, parchment and boxes of sand, to write down, in Latin, all that transpired that morning. To his left, on the hard oak benches normally reserved for the King’s scholars, sat the sixteen men and true who would decide the issue in question – whatever happened to Ralph Whitingside?
Winterton was a fierce-looking old man at first sight, but closer to, his mild eyes gave the game away; his bark was worse than his bite. He wore his coroner’s robes today and sat beneath a furled banner of Her Majesty, the Semper Eadem bright in gold lettering on the blue of the scroll. He wore his collar of office with its roses and portcullises to remind everyone that he spoke for the Queen. And he wore his sword to remind everyone that he had once ridden with Lord Dudley at Pinkie, where they’d both trounced the Scots back in the days of the boy-king, Edward.
A single chair, carved, upright, lonely, stood in front of the coroner’s dais. A long way behind it, a large crowd had squeezed itself into the Hall – the Provost and Fellows of King’s, a handful of their servants and as many interested parties and ghouls as Harry VI’s great building could hold.
‘Inquisition indented,’ intoned the clerk of the court, ‘taken this day in the County of Cambridge on the second day of July in the year of Elizabeth by the grace of God of England, France and Ireland, Queen, defender of the faith etcetera twenty fifth, the year of our Lord 1583 . . .’
After the preliminaries were over, the fanfare blown and the coughing subsided, Winterton barked in his hoarse voice, ‘First witness. First Finder.’
Nobody stepped forward. People looked right and left, frowning, muttering and wondering what the delay was. In the corner, Dr Steane pushed Eliza Laurence forward, gently shooing her into that vast space around the witness chair.
‘Who is the First Finder of the body?’ Winterton roared.
‘I am,’ a clear voice called from the back.
Everybody turned and there was a babble of voices. Gabriel Harvey’s mouth fell open involuntarily as Kit Marlowe strode through the Hall and bowed to the court.
‘Who are you, sir?’ Winterton asked.
‘Christopher Marlowe, sir, Secundus Convictus of Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge.’
Winterton waved him to the chair. Marlowe looked across at Eliza and smiled. She bobbed and doubled back, grateful to slide back into anonymity again, if only for a short while.
‘You found the body, Master Marlowe?’ Winterton asked. The clerks scratched away.
‘I did, sir,’ he said. Then, to the clerks: ‘Can you spell the name? Only, my own college seems to have difficulty with . . .’
‘Marlowe!’ Another voice ended his sentence. All eyes turned to the back of the Hall.
Winterton slammed the tip of his staff of office down on the floor by his feet to order silence. ‘Who are you, sir?’ he asked.
‘I am Dr Gabriel Harvey,’ the voice called, ‘formerly Fellow of Pembroke Hall, now of Corpus Christi. What was he doing there? How did an undergraduate come to have access to the rooms of a graduate – and from a different college?’
There was hubbub in the room, until Winterton’s staff of office thudded on the woodwork again. ‘Enough!’ he thundered. ‘In my courtroom, sir, I ask the questions.’ He waited until the murmurings had died down. ‘Well, Master Marlowe,’ he said, fixing the man with his terrible stare. ‘Explain yourself.’
‘If I may, my lord?’ Another voice, gentler than Harvey’s and in its gentleness compelling, came from the back and a slender, robed figure emerged from the crowd.
Winterton looked exasperated. If he’d known he was in for a day like this, he’d have rolled over in bed and given the job to his deputy. ‘And who might you be, sir?’ He did his best to keep his voice under control.
‘I am Professor Michael Johns, of Corpus Christi College. I hate to call what my learned colleague Dr Harvey has to say into question, but technically, according to college statute, Master Marlowe was, as of two days ago, Dominus Marlowe.’
‘There has been no ceremony!’ Harvey countered, stung by the man’s interference.
‘Indeed not,’ Johns said quickly, ‘namely because Dominus Marlowe elected to wait until such time as he was able to go through said ceremony with his fellow Parker scholars. The statutes are on his side, Dr Harvey.’
‘Are they?’ Harvey rasped. He was standing nose to nose with Johns now, his eyes burning and his jaw flexing.
‘Apparently so.’ Winterton was determined to end this wrangling then and there. ‘And I will have the law observed, sir!’
For a long moment, Harvey hovered. From the tension twanging through his body like a bowstring, he looked for all the world as if he were about to strike Johns down. Then he looked at Marlowe, sitting quietly with his back to them both. ‘You, sir,’ he snapped at him, ‘are a disgrace to Corpus Christi and to this university. Not even in your robes.’
‘Indeed not.’ Marlowe stood up, spinning on his heel to face Harvey. ‘Any more than I was when I found Ralph Whitingside’s body. I had no wish to dishonour the name of Corpus Christi then and I have no wish to dishonour it now.’ He smiled and that smile made Harvey spin away, striding for the door.
‘Make a note of that man’s name,’ Winterton instructed his clerks, still pointing at Harvey’s retreating figure. ‘Contempt of court. He shall be fined five shillings. Now –’ he cleared his throat as Johns bowed to him before resuming his seat and Marlowe took the witness chair again – ‘for the benefit of the court’ – he nodded to the jury – ‘some of you gentlemen are not of the University, so it behoves me to explain. As an undergraduate, this witness had no automatic right of entry to another scholar’s rooms. As a graduate, that is different . . .’ The coroner leaned forward in his seat. ‘Although I fail to see, Dominus Marlowe, why you didn’t just walk in through the front door . . .’
Marlowe smiled. ‘Old habits, my lord,’ he said, ‘and the front gates were locked.’
There was a ripple of laughter from the younger members of the crowd, which Winterton chose to let go for the moment.
‘You went to Ralph Whitingside’s rooms,’ the coroner established. ‘Why?’
‘Ralph Whitingside was an old friend of mine, my lord. We met regularly, for academic discussion and contemplation.’
Henry Bromerick, several rows back, nudged Tom Colwell, who in turn hushed him.
‘I had not seen Ralph for three days and had expected him to help my friends and me celebrate our graduation.’
‘I see,’ Winterton said. ‘And where was this celebration to take place?’
‘Oh, forgive me, sir.’ Marlowe opened his dark eyes wide. ‘I am much afraid I am unacquainted with the hostelries of the town.’
It was Tom Colwell’s turn to stifle a guffaw, stuffing part of his sleeve in his mouth.
‘Very well.’ Winterton was prepared to take this young man at face value for the moment. ‘What did you find, First Finder?’
Marlowe told it all. Or at least the all he wanted the court to know. What he could not do, or would not do, in that house of strangers, was to talk of the smell in the chamber, the dead eyes of his friend. Neither would he tell them of the reason for a reckoning in a small room because, as yet, he didn’t know it. And the letters and the curious little book. Eliza Laurence hadn’t seen him take them and there was no one else to know they had gone.
There were no other witnesses who had seen anything. Eliza was dragged back out to that lonely place to sit in that accursed chair. She took the oath with a trembling hand and a shaking voice and swore on the Bible that she acknowledged was her crutch and comfort; but she could not look Sir Edward Winterton in the face and in the end, the kindly Dr Steane spoke for her, annoying though the coroner found it.
‘Mistress Laurence is a simple soul, my lord,’ Steane said. ‘I have talked to her at some length and she is in awe of your honour’s greatness . . .’
Winterton rolled his eyes.
‘. . . she was told by Master Whitingside that he would be away and that she was to clean his room against his return on the day that she – and Master Marlowe – found him.’
‘Except that he had been nowhere?’ the coroner asked.
‘Who is to say, my lord?’ Steane replied. The question was rhetorical.
‘Quite so. The man who called himself Machiavel.’ Winterton threw one last question at her, bypassing Steane in the process. ‘Do you see him in this court?’
Eliza Laurence shrank back in the chair, tucking her chin as far into her coif as it would go. Her hands were knotted in her lap but somehow she wrenched her sweating fingers apart and pointed to the far wall where Marlowe lolled with his arms folded. Murmurs filled the court.
The rest was mere formality, demanded by Sir Edward Winterton who was a stickler for such things. Dr Goad, the Provost, confirmed that Ralph Whitingside had presented himself at the college shortly after Christmas Day in the year of our Lord 1578. He offered to show the Court the ledgers if it so wished. Whitingside had matriculated Bachelor of Arts three years later and was now studying for his Masters degree. It was generally assumed that he would enter the church, but on receiving his inheritance some two years ago, that seemed less likely. His interests? Hebrew, obviously; Rhetoric; the Discourses. The old man had frowned as he recited this – what a curious question for the coroner to ask. Had the man no academic leanings at all?
‘He sang fairly,’ Goad suddenly remembered, ‘had a fine tenor voice when he joined us, from the King’s School, Canterbury. Er . . . you’d have to ask Richard Thirling, my choirmaster, for more.’
Winterton pursed his lips. He’d never heard of a man killed for his voice before. This whole thing was an irrelevance. It was mid-afternoon before the procedure came to an end. The coroner outlined the evidence for the benefit of the jury and asked them if they needed to retire. They didn’t.
‘Your task,’ Winterton told them in time-honoured fashion, ‘is to decide how, when, where and by what means the deceased came to his death.’ He paused, secretly enjoying, as he always did, his moment in God’s light. ‘But if you’ll take my advice, you will find that, in a moment of madness, Ralph Whitingside took his own life.’
The murmurs in the hall grew to a mutinous rumble. There was nothing in anything anyone had heard to lead to such a conclusion. The Parker scholars looked at Winterton, at each other. They hadn’t known Whitingside like Marlowe had, such was the age gap among former schoolboys. But Kit didn’t believe it. And if Kit didn’t believe it, it wasn’t so. There was so much shouting that the jury’s foreman could barely agree with the coroner that that was, indeed, the verdict of them all.
Winterton rammed his staff down for silence and the usher proclaimed, with all solemnity, that the business of the court was over. He commended Ralph Whitingside’s lost soul to God and called for three cheers for Her Majesty. Everybody responded lustily. Everybody except Christopher Marlowe.
‘Machiavel,’ Winterton called to him as the crowd shuffled out into the sunlight of King’s quadrangle.
Marlowe turned to him. ‘Sir?’
The coroner stepped down from the dais, slowly passing his staff and chain of office to his clerks. Now, he was stripped of his role and stood toe to toe with Marlowe, man to man.
‘You don’t approve of the Court’s findings?’ he asked.
‘You were wrong,’ Marlowe told him.
‘The Court was wrong,’ Winterton said.
Marlowe half turned, as if to leave. ‘You are Sir Edward Winterton,’ he said softly. ‘A Queen’s Coroner, knight of the shire. You own half of Cambridgeshire –’ he pointed to where the jury had sat – ‘and half those men, too, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Winterton started. ‘You insolent young puppy,’ he snarled. ‘Do you accuse me of jury tampering?’
Marlowe looked at him. ‘They are serving men, tapsters, petty bookkeepers and Bible readers. If you told them the moon was made of cheese, they’d believe it. They’d walk into the fire for people like you. It’s the way of it and it always has been. But it still doesn’t make it right.’
‘And what of you, Master Machiavel?’ Winterton asked, calmer now. ‘Who will you walk into the fire for?’
Marlowe smiled. ‘When I know that, Master Coroner,’ he said, tapping the man lightly on his fur-edged robe, ‘I shall be sure to let you know.’
FOUR
There is no good time to bury a man of just twenty-two summers, but that night, in its moonless dark, was as good as any other. The lingering warmth of the summer day had gone, but the dew had not yet come as the flickering lights of the dark lanterns began to gather in the lee of the wrong side of the churchyard wall. Whispered voices greeted each other as Ralph Whitingside’s friends came together to say goodbye.
The gravedigger’s cleared throat sounded as loud as a trumpet blast in the sibilant near silence. Then, he spoke, in the normal voice of one to whom death and decay is a normal stock in trade. ‘I’ll just leave you gentlemen to your business, then.’
‘Thank you, my man.’ Dr Steane, also no stranger to gravesides, was dismissive.
‘I’ll have my payment before I go,’ the man said, not unkindly, but merely speaking as someone who had often had trouble, after his necessary deed was done, in extracting the coins from the suddenly parsimonious bereaved. There was too much work in digging the body back up, and what other recourse did a man in his line of work who had not been paid have?
Marlowe’s voice sounded, low and respectful to Whitingside, a reminder to the others. ‘Thank you for your work, Master Harkness. Here is your fee, and a little for a drink to warm you tonight.’
The man mumbled his thanks. It wasn’t many men who would bother to find out his name, to treat him like a human being. His was not a trade that brought him many friends; in a crowded churchyard, he was often digging among the bones of the not long dead, and this grave had been no different. In the unconsecrated ground on the wrong side of the churchyard wall, reserved for suicides and babies who died unbaptised or perhaps even before they breathed, space was short and the graves unmarked. Only the unevenness of the ground bore silent testimony to their number, the Granta dead. The gravedigger was glad of the dark. That way, the mourners wouldn’t see the little flecks of bone in the mound of earth off to one side. He’d found a skull once, whole and grinning; even he had needed his extra drink that night. He touched his cap to Marlowe and melted away. By morning, the grave would be level again and after a few weeks of summer growing, the weeds would have masked the place where Ralph Whitingside lay, one among many.
Steane looked around at the knot of mourners, each face lit dimly from below by their lanterns. No one had come from King’s apart from him, no friends, no Fellows, no Provost. Pitching his voice low now that the gravedigger had gone, he said, ‘Thank you for coming, gentlemen. I am only sorry that this service has to take place in these circumstances.’
Marlowe spoke for them all. ‘Thank you for offering to conduct it for us, Dr Steane. It’s not every churchman . . .’
Steane held up a hand. ‘Think nothing of it, Dominus Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Ralph Whitingside was a devout member of the choir of King’s College and I think I owe him this much.’
‘Or any man who is not a suicide,’ said Henry Bromerick bitterly. ‘This should be happening in the light of day, with a proper ceremony.’ He stifled a sob.
‘This should not be happening at all,’ Marlowe corrected him. ‘But as it is, shall we continue, Dr Steane?’ He glanced over his shoulder into the dark under the trees. ‘Some of us need to get to our beds. It will get chilly soon, towards dawn.’
Steane nodded and bowed his head, waiting a while as the others adopted their chosen attitude of prayer. By an unspoken common consent, they had all put out their lanterns and so Steane’s voice spoke from total darkness. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.’ The familiar words rolled out and brought some comfort to the friends gathered around the grave. ‘The Lord be with you.’
‘And with thy spirit.’ The words echoed off the wall and trees, giving the impression of other mourners grouped behind in the dark. Tom Colwell pressed closer to the others; he was at the back of the group and felt chill mortality laying a hand on his shoulder.
‘Let us pray.’ Steane didn’t need to see the prayer book to say the words. He had been saying them now for thirty years and more and sometimes hardly heard himself speaking them. The circumstances of this burial were not something he was familiar with – churchmen were seldom at the burial of a suicide – but he had offered to do this, and he would do it properly, or not at all. But even so, part of his mind was jumping on ahead. There would be no reading, that much was clear. But he didn’t feel it was a funeral service without a psalm. He needn’t have worried. As he concluded the opening prayer for the dead man, two sweet voices lifted up to his left.
