by M. J. Trow
‘How’s the back now?’ Johns asked.
‘Getting better, sir, thank you. The Master will be able to award our degrees any day now.’
Johns smiled. ‘Good. Come into the decent light and show me this Greek.’
Under the arch of the stairwell, the professor and the scholar stood head to head, reading by the candlelight guttering in the sconce on the wall. It was a slip of paper, in Bromerick’s handwriting.
‘I transcribed it,’ Bromerick said. ‘I just hope I got it right.’
‘Transcribed it from where?’ Johns asked. ‘Something obscure in the library?’
‘Not exactly, Professor.’ Bromerick looked furtively from side to side. ‘Can I trust you?’
Johns smiled. ‘You’ve attended enough logic lectures to know, Henry,’ he said, ‘that only you can answer that.’
The scholar dithered for a second. ‘Then I can,’ he decided. ‘This came from Ralph Whitingside’s rooms in King’s. The original is part of a journal of some kind. Written in Latin, Greek and Hebrew.’
‘I’m impressed,’ Johns said. ‘Glad they’re teaching them something at King’s. How did you come by it?’
Nothing.
‘Henry?’ Johns looked at the man, the kindly eyes boring into him.
‘Kit,’ Bromerick said.
‘Ah.’ For Johns, that said it all. ‘And what does Kit make of it? I didn’t see him at supper, now I think of it.’
‘Kit hasn’t seen it, at least not this bit. Tom . . . er . . . Dominus Colwell is working on the rest, but he’s drowning in it so he passed this page to me.’
‘Well, you’re right, Henry,’ the professor said, tilting the paper this way and that. ‘It isn’t like any Greek you’ve ever read. That’s because it’s not Greek. It’s a code of some kind, a cypher. Beyond me, I’m afraid.’
Bromerick looked crestfallen.
‘It’s important to you, isn’t it?’ Johns asked.
‘Kit thinks it might help explain why Ralph died,’ the scholar said.
Johns nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Leave it with me. I know someone who may be able to shed some light . . . no promises, mind.’
‘No, sir, of course not.’ Bromerick brightened.
‘Now,’ Johns said with a sigh, ‘go to bed, Henry. You have to be up again in four hours time and I not long after.’
‘Thank you, sir. Good night, sir.’ And the scholar was gone.
Marlowe was already saddled before the sun had crept over the rickety rooftops of Ware and took the road south-west. The carts increased now that he was in the south of Hertfordshire, creaking and rumbling their way to London and the Thames. By midday he was walking his gelding over the rough marsh ground near Barnet, edging his way past ponies, asses and palfreys being led to the great horse fair. Here, he knew, in his great grandfather’s day, Yorkist and Lancastrian had killed each other in the thick fog of an April morning and the great kingmaker, Earl of Warwick, had gone down to the merciless halberd blade of some anonymous foot soldier. His ghost, men said, still wandered the misty hollows near the road, looking in vain for his lost soul.
He followed the road through the boggy ground, getting ever lower and wetter until he came to the pontoon ferry, tied up at an unstable-looking quay. The ferryman was sleeping, curled up in the middle of the raft, looking in his dung-coloured clothing like something left behind by his last passenger. Marlowe coughed extravagantly and the man leapt to his feet, almost overturning his craft which, being low in the water, shipped quantities of the Thames and rocked and rolled before regaining its equilibrium.
‘Take yer somewhere, sir?’ he asked Marlowe, shading his eyes against the sunset.
Marlowe was a little nonplussed. Here he stood at the bank of a river, served by a ferry pulled across that river on a rope to one destination: the other side. And yet the ferryman seemed to be giving him an option. Marlowe could only applaud his hubris in assuming he still had freedom of choice. However, there was also a chance that the man was completely barking mad. So he kept things simple. ‘Just across to the south bank, if you would,’ he said and eased his nervous horse on to the pontoon, the animal slithering and clattering on the planks, whinnying softly in mild panic.
The ferryman reached up to take the penny which was his fee. He derived a lot of innocent amusement from these foreigners; come out of the north they did, knew nothing of the ways of London and her river. Sat up there, they did, on their horses, skitting and shying across the flow. If they just got down and stood at the animal’s head, they wouldn’t keep falling in and drowning. He sighed. He bore them no ill will and there was a lot of fuss with a drowning, but it broke the tedium of an otherwise uneventful day. He’d been First Finder eight times now; must be a record west of the Vintry.
The church of St Mary was gilded by the dying sun as Marlowe rode into Mortlake. The sleepy little town on the banks of the rushing Thames was the end of his journey and he was glad of it. His legs ached, his back ached, his shoulders ached. In fact, he was hard put to it to find any part of him that didn’t ache. He asked directions from a man at work on the riverbank with his hurdles and nets.
‘Dee?’ the man repeated in an accent Marlowe had never heard before. ‘Dr John Dee?’ And he spat volubly into the river.
‘Not a friend of yours, then?’ Marlowe sat upright in the saddle.
‘Not a friend of anybody’s,’ the eel-fisherman told him. ‘What d’you want him for?’
‘I rather think that’s my business,’ Marlowe said. ‘Will you help me or not?’
The fisherman looked Marlowe up and down, taking him in. The man was riding a good horse and he couldn’t help noticing the rapier-hilt, cold and chiselled under the horse-blanket. Then there were the eyes – dark and deep like the waters he fished every day. Best not to mess with this man.
‘A mile yonder.’ He pointed. ‘There’s a depiction of the world on his gatepost.’
Marlowe nodded and swung the horse away.
‘I hope you’re a friend of his,’ he heard the fisherman call. But he didn’t catch the rest. ‘’Cause if you are, you’re a rare breed, but it might save your life.’
SEVEN
Marlowe allowed his horse to amble from then on. The fisherman had seemed to know his geography, but Marlowe had no confidence in the distance-judging skills of someone who made his living up to his waist in water most of the time. But, a mile down the road, give or take a gnat’s whisker, he came upon a high yew hedge, pierced by a gate. The posts on either side of it carried wooden spheres, roughly hacked by an uncertain hand into depictions of the coastlines of the known world. Frobisher’s new islands were most freshly incised, and someone had tried hard to show a man being eaten by a large bear. Since this was only some three inches high and seemed to have been done with a large chisel, Marlowe had to use all of his imagination and a great deal of his acquired knowledge to guess this correctly.
He swung his leg over the horse’s back with difficulty as his muscles had now ceased all communication with his skeleton or brain and he looped the bridle around the gatepost. With a friendly admonition to the creature not to eat the hedge for the good of its health, he pushed open the gate and walked into the world of the magus, John Dee.
The house seemed to squat in a slight dip in the ground ahead of him. The brick glowed in the last rays of the sun creeping over the hedge and reflecting in the many panes of the windows, giving the building an air of looking out from its garden with blind eyes that could see right into the onlooker’s head. Marlowe shivered, but resolutely approached the door and raised his hand to the knocker, which was shaped like a Gorgon’s head, its mouth ever-open to hold the clapper.
Before he could raise it, the door creaked inwards and a voice intoned, ‘You are here to see my master.’
Marlowe was almost speechless with shock. In the last few miles with the sun rapidly sinking, he had tried to imagine what this house and its occupant would be like and so far, nothing had been a
disappointment. He licked his lips and cleared his throat before speaking. ‘Yes.’ Not exactly his usual level of witty riposte, perhaps, but it served its purpose. ‘How did you know?’ He addressed the fresh air of the entrance hall, as he had yet to see another human being in the vicinity.
A small, wizened man stepped from behind the door and looked Marlowe up and down with the air of one who didn’t much like what he saw. ‘You were about to knock on the door. It gave me a clue.’ Again the disparaging glance and then, ‘Follow me.’ He paused to light a candle from a guttering stub near the door. The candle grease had been dripping from it for so long that it had reached the floor and so the candle end was perched on top of a greasy cone. Bits of wick studded the wax and looked like insects encased in a morbid amber. The little old man turned in a doorway and spoke again.
‘This way. The Master’s time is precious and not to be wasted by the likes of you.’ The door opened and swung shut behind him, catching Marlowe, who had stepped lively, a smart one on the shoulder. Pushing open the door, he was just in time to see the candle flame disappear around a corner. He was in a corridor with no windows, curving to the left and slightly downward. The echoing steps of the manservant came back triple to him and the man’s shadow danced with grotesquely elongated legs behind him.
‘This way,’ Marlowe heard him say. ‘It doesn’t do to get lost in the Master’s house.’ The scholar felt his bowels loosen ever so slightly and wondered if, in all its wonders, Dee’s house included a privy. Then, suddenly, he was in a blaze of light. The room they had entered was twice the normal height, with a mezzanine floor clinging halfway up the wall and reached by rickety-looking ladders at intervals. The far wall was floor to ceiling windows, with pane upon pane of glass far purer than Marlowe had ever seen in a window, with just a strip down the middle etched with gold and precious dyes in the shapes of mermen, dragons and un-nameable creatures. It faced west and the red glow that flooded in seemed to be straight from Hell.
There was so much to see that Marlowe could at first see nothing; the scene was just a mass of colour and flickering shadows. But after a few seconds, shapes emerged from the chaos and he could see that on almost every surface were crowded bottles and jars in which, suspended in the death of alcohol, floated every conceivable abomination of nature: two-headed kittens; a baby with no arms; a calf with six legs. These jostled mutely with preserved body parts which made Marlowe look away, suddenly queasy. He had buried his best friend too recently to be comfortable in the company of such charnel house horrors.
From the middle of the kaleidoscope a voice spoke. This voice was not like the manservant’s, harsh and slightly mocking. This voice crept like treacle in at the ears and didn’t stop until it wound its fingers into the depths of the brain and foraged there to find what it would. ‘Welcome to my house,’ the voice said and Marlowe’s eyes were able, with the clues from his ears, to pick out the man who spoke. He had seen depictions of John Dee, of course, in the chap books sold in Cambridge marketplace. He was wearing his picadil cap and his long, sparse beard spread over his chest, as in the pictures. But his eyes were beyond the skill of any chapbook illustrator. From beneath a broad brow and finely drawn eyebrows, they gazed out as if from another world, bringing the wisdom of the ancients to bear on the follies of the now. Marlowe met his gaze for as long as he could and Dee nodded. ‘Well done, Master . . . Marley?’
‘Marlowe!’ he snapped. Could no one get his name right? Then, a tiny trickle of ice water ran down his spine. How did this man get any part of his name right? He had not given it to the manservant on the door.
Dee read his expression and smiled. ‘A parlour trick, Master Marlowe, nothing more.’ He waved a piece of paper in the air. ‘This was in your saddle roll, with a pair of what I believe must be stockings.’
Marlowe smiled. A note from his mother, whose writing, like her knitting, had never been very accurate. He was disappointed and relieved in almost equal measure. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Christopher Marlowe, at your service.’ He bowed. ‘My friends call me Kit. My enemies call me Machiavel.’
Dee stood up and walked towards Marlowe, brushing aside the paperwork which littered the floor. ‘Then I shall call you Master Marlowe, I think,’ he said. ‘Why are you here? Not many people call unexpectedly, especially at sunset.’ He put an arm round Marlowe’s shoulders and propelled him towards a door hidden in the gathering shadows under the mezzanine floor. ‘That’s when the grooms release the owls and the bats.’ He bent round to look into Marlowe’s startled eyes and laughed. ‘You must learn not to take me too seriously, Master Marlowe,’ he said, giving the scholar a friendly shake. ‘The owls and the bats come with the scenery. It is the hounds the grooms release.’ As though on cue, a baying rose outside in the grounds, followed by a nervous whicker from a horse, sounding very nearby.
‘My horse,’ Marlowe said, pulling away from Dee’s guiding arm. ‘I left him outside.’
‘Don’t worry, Master Marlowe,’ Dee said. ‘My grooms stable as well as release. Your horse is rubbed down and comfortable with a nosebag of oats by now, if I know my men. Come.’ He pulled Marlowe’s sleeve. ‘Come and meet my wife. She doesn’t see enough people and it is dull living with an old fool like me. Come.’
He led Marlowe through corridors which twisted and turned on each other, some with windows looking out on grounds which stretched away to the river, trim box hedges leading the eye to the distant bridge, others with no windows, but with enigmatic doors, their keyholes sealed with dusty cobwebs, punctuating their length. Just as Marlowe was beginning to fear that he would never see the end of this maze, Dee reached a door and, pushing it open, revealed a cosy drawing room, complete with a beautiful woman sitting at the window, looking out on to the darkening garden. At the sight of the two men, she rose gracefully to her feet and walked towards them, seeming almost to skim across the rushes on the floor. As she reached the men, she sketched a curtsy to Marlowe who replied with a deep bow. Her beauty was almost unreal, every feature perfect, her skin like alabaster under snow.
Dee watched them fondly and then reached out and put an arm tenderly around her waist. ‘Master Marlowe, I would like to introduce my wife, Helene. Helene, this is Master Christopher Marlowe, who has come to see me. I don’t yet know why.’ He smiled at Marlowe. ‘Are we to be put out of our suspense, Master Marlowe?’
Marlowe looked at Helene Dee and then at her husband. He didn’t really want to tell his sorry and rather gory story in front of this exquisite creature. Dee seemed to read his mind.
‘Please, don’t feel at all unsure of telling your tale in front of Mistress Dee.’ He gave her waist an extra squeeze and she kissed him fondly on the ear. ‘She has been used to horrors of all kinds ever since she came to this house. And before, I fancy.’ Helene gave a small and rather theatrical shudder and closed her eyes briefly, but continued to smile.
Marlowe looked concerned and bowed his head. ‘Where did Mistress Dee live before?’ he asked. ‘That she saw horrors.’
Dee answered briskly, ‘Here and there, Master Marlowe. Here and there. But, wait. I can see that you are diffident about sharing your tale.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Run along now, my dear. We will see you later perhaps, at dinner, when Master Marlowe has shared his troubles with me.’
Helene Dee bowed her head politely to Marlowe and left the room. It was only later that Marlowe was to remember that she had not spoken a single word.
Down in the kitchen in the bowels of Dee’s house, the cook was toasting bread. Her hair hung in elf locks on either side of her face. Dee had chosen her specifically because of her unspeakable ugliness, much as he had chosen Helene for her beauty and little more. The manservant was sitting on the other side of the fire, his nose in a tankard. He looked up as the woman entered.
‘Oh, Nell,’ he said, in a friendly way. ‘Pull up a chair. Drink?’ He reached down and picked up the jug.
‘Ooh, ta,’ the girl said. ‘I’m parched. Got any more toast?’
The cook tossed her a piece, which she dunked in her ale.
‘Woss going on upstairs, then?’ the manservant asked, around a mouthful of bread.
‘Oh, he’s in the old mystery mode,’ the girl said. ‘I come from here and there, horrors, that sort of thing. The usual.’
‘Love him,’ said the cook. ‘He’s bored, that’s what it is. He ain’t had nothing in the showstone for so long, he’s wond’rin if he ain’t lost the skill for it.’
‘No, no,’ said the girl. ‘Only yesterday, he saw a black man cutting a woman’s head off.’
‘And what does that mean, then?’ the cook asked, turning another piece of bread.
‘I don’t know,’ the girl replied. ‘That’s the thing with telling the future, innit? It’s the future.’
‘He didn’t predict this Marley bloke, though, did he?’ the manservant observed, with blunt accuracy.
‘No,’ Nell said. ‘That’s true. But he’s just a wandering scholar, I think. He is a bit handsome to be much of a thinker. In my experience, most people are one or the other.’
The cook and the manservant looked at each other. Nell had, for once, hit the nail right on the head.
John Dee sat back in his chair, rereading the letter which Manwood had sent, by hand with Master Marlowe, of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It seemed quite straightforward, just an introduction really, wrapped around an invitation to stay at Madingley while Manwood was there, but the mention of a horrible murder had piqued his interest.
‘So, Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Your friend, one –’ he looked down at the letter – ‘Ralph Whitingside, has died, murdered, you think. And that’s why you have ridden for two days to come to me?’
‘Sir Roger Manwood was sure that you would be able to help me,’ Marlowe said, although what he had experienced in this house so far was beginning to make him wonder.
‘I’m sure I will,’ Dee said. There was an unhealthy gleam in his eye. ‘I haven’t done this for a while, but I think we could have a crack at raising Master Whitingside and asking him what happened.’
