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by M. J. Trow

  ‘It’s a little late for that now, Mayor,’ Winterton yelled in his ear, trying to be heard over the din.

  ‘Edward!’ the Coroner’s wife was bewildered. Doling out domestic violence was her meat and drink, but this was getting out of hand.

  ‘Not now, dearest,’ Winterton snapped. ‘Mayor, get the ladies out of here, will you?’ And the Mayor was only too happy to oblige.

  On the edge of the field, Nicholas Drew, the ferryman, was trading punches with a couple of Jesus men. He really wanted to get across to the Corpus lads to give them a smacking for pinching his church. His wife stood behind him, fists clenched, ducking and diving for her husband. Then it was cudgels out and the clack of quarterstaff on quarterstaff, among the screams and cries.

  ‘How are we doing?’ The Fair Maid of Kent popped his head above the stage parapet. His nose was bleeding, but his stomacher and farthingale were holding up quite well.

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Thomas.’ Ned Sledd was kneeling on one knee above him, his temple dripping blood from a carelessly-lobbed stone. ‘But Lord Strange’s Men appear to be outnumbered about twenty to one.’ He had a commanding view of the battlefield that was Parker’s Piece from where he crouched and his troupe were in danger of being engulfed by sheer numbers.

  ‘Rally with the boys on the right,’ Sledd ordered, as much a general as a player-king if the need arose. ‘I’ll take the lot on the left. Push them all back from the stage area. I don’t want to face his Lordship if they get their hands on our flats.’

  Thomas complied, hauling up his skirts and shouldering struggling scholars out of the way.

  ‘Not easy, is it, sonny?’ a village woman snarled at him. ‘Fighting in a skirt.’ And she smacked a shovel down on the head of the Fair Maid of Kent. It was the last thing he saw for quite a while.

  ‘We can’t hold them on the left, Joe!’ an exhausted under-constable stumbled alongside Fludd. ‘We need the militia.’

  Fludd looked at him. The man must have taken too many knocks to the head. ‘Well, I’ll just write a letter to the Lord Lieutenant, shall I?’ he asked. ‘Send a messenger to London for him? Wait for him to issue a commission of array? That’ll be perfect. They’ll be here in a month or so. Oh, and by the way,’ he said, pointing to the melee, where men were knocking lumps out of each other, ‘most of the Cambridge militia are already here!’

  The constables knew only too well that fists, boots and cudgels would soon be replaced by knives and then things would get really nasty. Fludd sent his man back into the fray and clouted a man over the head with his staff. In the centre, Harry Rushe, his broken arm strapped into his jerkin, was kicking a Puritan in the groin. Meg Hawley, alongside him, was doing her best to drag her man away. Part of her felt sorry for him – he was at a serious disadvantage, after all, with only one arm. But part of her hated him for the lout he was, gouging the eyes of another scholar with his good hand.

  One woman who wasn’t helping her man was Allys Fludd. In fact, she’d only seen him once, before the trouble began and had done her best to shrink down in the crowd, hoping that little Kate wouldn’t see her daddy and call out to him. But the excitement of earlier in the day had given way to terror and knots of people, some bleeding and hurt, were staggering away from the chaos on Parker’s Piece. Allys was with them. She’d lost her bundle back in the terrifying, swaying mob and had held Kate to her, the little girl screaming and crying. If this was what a play was like, she never wanted to see one again.

  ‘Hello, darlin’.’ A Bedford Levels man stood in Allys’s path. ‘Now, where are you goin’ in such a hurry?’ He grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her to him. Allys bit the man’s lip as it brushed her mouth and he pulled back, bleeding and swearing. In a second, he’d shaken his head and slapped her hard across the face, sending her reeling.

  ‘Don’t hurt my mummy!’ Kate screamed at him, pounding his leg with fists and feet. He scooped her up and held her on high, dangling her at arm’s length, laughing.

  It was then that Fludd saw his daughter, being twirled like a puppet above the mob. He didn’t remember the next few seconds or how he crossed that field, but the next thing Allys Fludd knew was that the oaf was lying senseless alongside her and her husband was straddling her, holding their daughter to him and soothing her crying. He snatched Allys to her feet and held them both tight.

  A body collided with the little group and Fludd turned, staff at the ready to crack more heads.

  ‘Good afternoon, Constable,’ the scholar said.

  ‘Master Marlowe,’ Fludd panted. ‘Enjoying the play?’

  Marlowe smiled. ‘I don’t think much of the metre.’

  Fludd was suddenly serious. ‘Marlowe, my wife and child. Get them to safety, for God’s sake.’

  Marlowe looked at the Fludd women, one tiny, one heavy with child, both tear stained. ‘It will be my pleasure,’ he said and he shepherded them away.

  ‘Joe!’ Allys screamed, but Marlowe held her fast, with little Kate clinging to her skirts. They all saw the man disappear into the crowd again, pulling fighters apart and laying about him with his tipstaff.

  ‘Constabulary business,’ Marlowe said, smiling. ‘Calm yourself, Mistress Fludd. Your husband is very good at pursuing his enquiries.’

  Gradually, the sounds of battle on Parker’s Piece died away and Marlowe and the Fludd family joined the throng drifting along Silver Street. Occasionally, as they hurried west, there were shouts and roars as some new outrage was committed around the wooden O that had started the whole thing. Then, they were hurrying down St Edward’s Passage and around the corner to the front gate of Corpus. It was locked. Marlowe drew his dagger for the first time that day and hammered on the gnarled old oak with its pommel. There was a grating sound and the grille slid back.

  ‘College is locked, Marlowe,’ Proctor Lomas grunted. ‘You’re on your own.’

  ‘I’ve a woman and child here, Lomas,’ Marlowe hissed. ‘If you won’t let me in, at least think of them. It’s murder out here, man.’

  Lomas grinned. ‘Oh, you’ve got lots of ways to get in and out of Corpus, Dominus Marlowe. Why don’t you use one of them now?’

  There was a metallic clink as Marlowe’s blade flashed upwards, catching the Proctor’s nose along with the grille. ‘Avert your gaze, Mistress Fludd,’ he said. ‘There are some things a constable’s wife shouldn’t see.’

  Allys Fludd was made of sterner stuff. And after this afternoon, she’d seen enough for a lifetime, constable’s wife or not. Marlowe had gripped Lomas’ nose with one hand and held the glinting blade under his nostrils.

  ‘Now, Proctor Lomas,’ he said softly. ‘You will very slowly raise your right hand and unlock this gate. If you don’t, you won’t be picking your nose for a while because you won’t have a nose to pick.’ And the blade edged infinitesimally higher.

  Behind the gate, Lomas was on tiptoe already and he couldn’t pull away for fear of the speed of Marlowe’s knife. Gingerly, very gingerly, he turned the heavy key to his right and the door creaked open. Marlowe kicked it so that it slammed back on the Proctor and he ushered the Fludd women inside before locking it again behind them.

  Briefly, he bent over the man. ‘I promised you that there’d be a reckoning,’ he said.

  Professor Johns strode past the Proctor’s Lodge at that moment and glanced at the scene that met him, Lomas lying groaning on the flagstones, holding his head.

  ‘Lying down on the job again, Lomas?’ he chirped. ‘Tut tut.’

  In another part of the field, a wheezing Sir Edward Winteron found a bleeding Joseph Fludd.

  ‘Sir Edward,’ the Constable shouted in his ear as all Hell raged around them, ‘you shouldn’t be here. Go home, sir.’

  ‘When you do, Constable,’ the coroner shouted back. ‘Tell me, is there still a cannon in Great St Mary’s?’

  ‘Yes, sir, a saker. It’s in one of the outbuildings.’

  ‘How many men to get it here?’ Winterton wanted t
o know.

  Checking the parish gun was part of the Constable’s duties. The thing was eight feet long and weighed 1500 pounds. ‘Four,’ Fludd said, optimistically. ‘Three at a pinch.’

  ‘Three it is, then. Take two of your men and get it here. There’ll be powder and shot with it.’

  ‘Er . . . I should point out, Sir Edward –’ Fludd knew his local legislation – ‘that that gun was placed there on the orders of King Harry. In case the French should invade.’

  ‘Yes, laddie,’ Winterton humoured him. ‘I’m impressed by your grasp of history.’ He looked at the man closely under the mask of blood. ‘You weren’t even born then, surely? I remember it as though it were yesterday.’

  ‘That’s my point, sir,’ Fludd shouted. ‘Nobody’s fired the gun in forty years. As for the powder . . .’

  ‘Bring it!’ roared Winterton. ‘It may be that just the sight of the damn thing will bring those rioting idiots to their senses. It won’t be long before they start on the shops and God help us then.’

  Fludd hauled two of his lads out of the fight and they ran across the field in the direction of the church of Great St Mary.

  ‘Yes, that’s it!’ Harry Rushe and his fenland men saw them go. ‘Run away, you tipstaff bastards!’ And he swung back to the punching again.

  Winterton had been right about the event, but wrong about the time. Even as Fludd and his men dragged the heavy saker across the market square and into Petty Cury, people were smashing windows and ripping down the market awnings, stuffing whatever they could into jerkin-fronts and aprons. Here and there, running battles broke out as shopkeepers fought with looters to the crash of glass and the clash of steel. Stallholders struggled to keep their frames upright and all the shutters came down in a rattle of bolts.

  Fludd himself carried the powder and shot, a six pound iron ball that bounced painfully in the canvas bag at his hip as the constables negotiated the tight corner by Pembroke Hall at a jog. Even the wounded and the just plain scared who were hurrying or straggling homeward in the evening sun stopped short at the sight of the saker. No one had seen a cannon on Cambridge streets for years; some of the younger ones didn’t quite know what it was. Fludd grabbed a couple of the more intrigued and dragooned them to putting their shoulders to the wheel.

  Parker’s Piece looked like a battlefield, with hats, clothes and rubbish lying everywhere. Winterton had been defending himself with his sword while keeping an eye out for the gun. Now he launched himself in a tired run and helped Fludd and his lads to haul it into position. Those nearest broke off the fighting to stare at the thing, with its bronze barrel and studded wheels. But if Winterton had hoped its appearance would shock the mob into civil obedience, he was wrong.

  He tossed his sword to a Constable and began tearing at Fludd’s powder supply.

  ‘Do you know how to fire this thing, Sir Edward?’ Fludd asked him, now thoroughly alarmed at the proposition.

  Winterton pulled himself up to his full height. ‘Sir,’ he said calmly, ‘I fought at Pinkie. You never forget.’ And he stuffed handfuls of the black powder into the muzzle. There were still cobwebs on the carriage and the nuts were rusted. Fludd didn’t have a good feeling about this.

  ‘Ball, ball!’ Winterton shouted and Fludd rolled the shot down the hole.

  ‘Ram!’ Winterton ordered. ‘Ram?’ he asked, arms outstretched, looking wildly at the Constable. ‘Where’s the ram?’

  ‘There wasn’t one,’ Fludd realized, all too late. He dashed across the field, disarmed a fenman of his quarterstaff and kicked the man in the groin. He threw the pole to the coroner who, improvising wildly, rammed the ball in place before Fludd packed in more powder.

  It took several attempts to get the tinderbox to flash, but once it did, Winterton applied the sparkling fuse to the touch hole and covered his ears.

  ‘You’re going to kill innocent people!’ Fludd came to his senses seeing where the cannon was pointing, straight into the melee around Lord Strange’s stage.

  ‘They’re expendable!’ Winterton told him.

  All four men stood with their hands over their ears, looking expectantly at the saker. The fuse appeared to be going out.

  ‘Oh, bugger!’ Winterton dropped his arms and went over to it. Before Fludd could stop him, the gun bucked, roaring with a dull crash and jerking backwards, carrying Winterton with it. The old man went down with a searing pain in his shoulder and back, but nobody was watching. As if in a dream, Lord Strange’s stage blew up, flats collapsing in all directions and debris raining down on those nearest to it. Flames leapt skyward in the cannonball’s path, burning gunpowder peppering the tinder-dry timbers and even setting fire to the grass.

  The fighting mob broke with a cacophony of screams and shouts, sheer panic driving them from the field. In minutes, the only people left standing on Parker’s Piece were five constables of the watch, bloodied but unbowed. There was an eerie silence for a moment, then the moans of the wounded rose here and there. Fludd patted the saker’s barrel and realized the thing had split along most of its length. It could have killed them all.

  He knelt beside Edward Winterton, who was lying on the ground, still clutching his arm. ‘How did we do, Constable?’ shouted the coroner, in the over-loud tones of the deaf. He shook his head, as a puppy will who has snapped at a fly.

  ‘I think we did very well, Sir Edward,’ Fludd told him, wiping the blood from his face. He looked on as the rioters, numbed and exhausted, began to drift away from the edge of the field. He faced the man to give his words the extra emphasis Winterton needed while his ears still rang. ‘Very well.’

  ‘I’d swear that was a cannon,’ Roger Manwood said, strolling in the knot garden at Madingley.

  ‘It was,’ John Dee told him. ‘A saker by the sound.’

  ‘Some sort of celebration, Francis?’ Manwood half turned to his host walking with them.

  ‘What day is it?’ Hynde often needed to be reminded of that.

  ‘Saturday,’ Manwood said. ‘Sixteenth of July.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Hynde said, bending his memory to recall the saints’ days celebrated in his youth. ‘That would probably be . . . not St Athenogenes, surely. St Faustus . . . no, I can’t think of anything that would warrant a cannon.’ He sniffed the air. ‘And a bonfire as well, unless I miss my guess.’

  Dee, who professed to know nothing of such matters, could nonetheless think of another half dozen saints who had once shared this day, but kept quiet, for the good of his reputation.

  The men stayed silent for a minute, waiting for another explosion, but none came.

  Hynde shrugged. ‘Can’t be much. Come on, gentlemen, let’s to billiards.’

  It seemed like a good idea.

  As the sun went down over Cambridge, Lord Strange’s property was still blazing into the night, sending sparks into the evening sky. The streets were strangely deserted. The churches were cluttered with bleeding people, comforting others. Stallholders in the square were trying to assess the damage. The Mayor and his corporation were making the brave decision to leave it until the morning before making an appearance. The colleges had battened down their hatches and bolted their gates. Any scholars still abroad were strictly on their own and the Proctors had orders to admit no one.

  ‘A woman and child, Michael?’ Dr Norgate sat in his study at Corpus surrounded by the books he loved. ‘This is very irregular.’

  ‘These are irregular times, Master,’ Professor Johns reminded the old man. ‘Marlowe brought them.’

  ‘I’m glad you raised the topic of Marlowe.’ Gabriel Harvey spoke from the shadows for the first time. He’d been watching the fire-glow over the rooftops and couldn’t think of a better time to consign a man he hated to Hell. ‘I have evidence of his involvement in the death of the King’s scholar, Whitingside.’

  The other two stared at him.

  ‘What evidence?’ Johns asked.

  ‘The word of a gentleman,’ Harvey told him flatly. He closed on Norgate. ‘
I hate to have to bring this to your attention, Master, but I fear it all has to do with the crime of Sodom.’

  Johns, the quiet, the sensible, the unflappable, stepped forward. He knew that if Marlowe had been there, Gabriel Harvey would be dead by now. He stood toe to toe with Harvey, eyes burning, fists clenched.

  ‘This is a purely college matter,’ Norgate said. ‘And now is not the time to investigate, sir.’

  Johns relaxed a little.

  ‘But there will come a time,’ Norgate said.

  THIRTEEN

  Ursula Hynde lay in her bed with the curtains drawn and the bedclothes up to her chin. Her linen cap was pulled down on to her forehead and tied tightly in place, to protect both her thinning curls and her modesty. It was her wedding day and she had been working tirelessly for weeks to make it perfect. Her dress was laid out in the next room, beaded and embroidered to such a depth that she could hardly move under its weight. Her bridesmaids had been gathered, chosen from the best families as befitted a Hynde, even if only by marriage. She even had three boys, kitted out in identical suits of clothes bought at huge expense, to help carry her train. They were lodged in a house in Cambridge; the proprieties were all-important to Ursula Hynde and she didn’t think it was right that three adolescent boys should be in rooms next to three adolescent girls, although her knowledge of what might ensue was hazy, having been brought up very strictly before being married to an older man. But still, it wasn’t right. So now, all she needed was a perfect summer’s day. She called to her maid, who slept in a truckle bed in the corner.

  ‘Dorcas?’

  There was a sigh and a muttered word, which may have been ‘Anne!’ Then: ‘Yes, mistress?’

  ‘Draw back the curtains. What is the weather today?’

  The maidservant whipped back the hangings of the bed. ‘I have had the window curtains back for hours, mistress. The day is fine.’

  ‘Why are you up and about so early?’ Mistress Steane-to-be struggled upright in her feather bed and straightened her cap.