Scorpion's Nest (2012)

by Trow, M J

  Aldred sighed. Even for a visit to the English College, he’d downed rather more than was strictly good for him today and he was beginning to wonder whether it was the thickness of his tongue that was letting him down.

  ‘Marlowe?’ he hissed, scuttling alongside the man’s longer stride.

  ‘Greene,’ Marlowe corrected him. ‘Robert Greene. Corpus Christi College.’

  ‘Ah, of course,’ the merchant said with a bob. ‘Solomon Aldred; my card.’

  He passed Marlowe a crumpled piece of parchment. It read ‘Vintner to the English College. Minimum orders only.’

  Marlowe slipped it into his left cuff. ‘When the strain gets too much and I have a need of a skinful, rest assured, Master Aldred, I’ll be in touch.’

  Aldred dropped heavily onto the cold stone bench in the cloister’s dead corner. From any angle here, the pair could keep an eye on anyone getting too close and could change their conversation accordingly.

  ‘Overrated, don’t you think?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘What is?’ Solomon was unpacking his samples again.

  ‘Spenser.’

  ‘Er . . .’

  Marlowe looked at the little soak. What was Walsingham thinking? This place was too crucial to trust it to a man who took his cover too seriously. ‘The code,’ Marlowe reminded him. ‘The western wind, the withered leaf. Edmund Spenser.’

  ‘Is it?’ Aldred grinned. ‘Well, well. To business, Master Greene. Tipple?’ He held up a rather pleasing claret.

  Marlowe shook his head.

  ‘You’re looking for someone.’ Aldred shrugged and swigged in one fluid movement.

  Marlowe nodded. So far, so correct.

  ‘We’ve no idea when he arrived,’ Aldred told him.

  ‘Are you sure he’s here at all?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. He was shadowed from Deptford, on board The Lady Liberty on the tenth. He met someone – and don’t ask me who – at Rouen. I’m afraid we lost him for a day or two, but found him again on his way here.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘No idea.’ The vintner swigged again.

  Marlowe held Aldred’s drinking hand, forcing the glass from his lips so that it clinked loudly on the stone. ‘What do you mean, you’ve no idea?’ he hissed.

  Aldred forced his eyes to focus. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Why are you here, exactly? Why has Sir Francis Walsingham sent you here? Have you come to kill him?’

  ‘If I have to,’ said Marlowe. ‘A man who plotted with Babington isn’t likely to undergo a change of heart and throw himself on the mercy of the Queen of England, when all is said and done.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Aldred nodded. ‘Have you done this before?’ He found himself looking the man up and down, assessing his likely strength and speed.

  ‘Have you?’ Marlowe countered.

  Aldred ignored him. ‘Look, it’s one thing to sit in Whitehall or Placentia with the spymaster, drinking his rather excellent Bordeaux and putting the Papist world to rights. It’s a bit different out here, I can tell you. Watching your back morning, noon and night, going to endless bloody masses, speaking French. You don’t know the half of it.’

  ‘I don’t need to know the half of it,’ Marlowe told him flatly, ‘I just need to know who I’m looking for.’

  Aldred sighed. If he’d hoped for a kindred spirit or even a sympathetic ear from Walsingham’s new man, he wasn’t going to find it in Kit Marlowe. ‘Your Babington plotter is either a Londoner whose name I don’t know – big fellow, lodges over the bakery. Or he’s a singing idiot called Salter, from Yorkshire. What’s his real name, the one you’re after?’

  ‘Matthew Baxter,’ Marlowe told him, ‘and he’s not from London or Yorkshire.’

  Aldred shook his head, grinning, and risked another sip. ‘Don’t you just love this business?’ he asked. He cleared his throat as a lay brother ambled past, smiling and nodding at them both. ‘Any way,’ he muttered to Marlowe as soon as the coast was clear. ‘There are complications.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘How are you at –’ he closed in to his man – ‘unexplained deaths?’

  Marlowe shrugged. ‘I’ve seen a few,’ he said.

  Aldred looked to right and left again, just in case the walls indeed had ears. Satisfied that they didn’t, he murmured, ‘Three months ago, a scholar fell out of a window. To be precise, that one up there.’ He nodded to the roof and Marlowe followed his gaze.

  ‘Singularly careless of him,’ he said.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Aldred said, nodding. ‘To the point of physically impossible.’

  ‘And “accident” is the official College line? The verdict of them all?’

  Aldred chuckled. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘You’ll learn, Marlowe, that this place is a nest of scorpions. Don’t turn your back on anybody.’

  ‘I never do,’ Marlowe assured him.

  ‘The accident verdict first appeared the next day, courtesy of Dr Allen in one of his interminable sermons. Father Laurenticus had other ideas.’

  ‘Laurenticus?’

  ‘You’re in his room. At least, according to Brother Tobias, you are.’

  ‘Tobias is your eyes and ears?’ Marlowe asked. It was as well to know who was who in this place.

  ‘Four of them, anyway,’ Aldred told him. ‘It’s damned useful with a cover like mine. Vino, veritas and all that. The stuff loosens tongues better than any of Master Topcliffe’s infernal gadgets in the Tower. And the best thing is, hardly anybody remembers what they’ve told me.’

  ‘This scholar,’ Marlowe reminded the vintner, steering his mind back onto the subject. ‘What do we know about him?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Marlowe’s eyebrows were nearly in his hair with surprise. ‘You’ve let me down, Master Aldred. Tell me –’ and he lowered his voice still further – ‘you are a spy, aren’t you?’

  ‘More of a facilitator, really,’ Aldred said modestly. ‘I would never venture to claim I was an intelligencer, still less a projectioner. A humble vintner, with a twist.’

  ‘But even a humble vintner must know something. This is a small place. People talk.’

  ‘Oh, there’s always tittle tattle in the town,’ the vintner told him. ‘The boy was a secret alchemist. He was in league with Satan. They even said –’ and he paused to check behind him and to both sides once more – ‘they even said he was an illegitimate son of Pope Sixtus.’

  Marlowe let out a slow whistle through his teeth. ‘Be still, my beating heart,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, you can mock,’ Aldred said, ‘but I tell you, Marlowe, there’s something unnatural about this place. Apart from the fact that it’s full of Papist fanatics who have all sworn to slit the throat of the Queen of England, of course.’

  ‘Do we know the scholar’s name?’

  ‘Charles, is all I know. From Westley Waterless. You might know it.’

  ‘I do indeed,’ Marlowe said with a nod. ‘God-awful place in the fens. I ride through it on my way to Cambridge. What was he doing here?’

  ‘Same as everybody else,’ Aldred said. ‘Plotting the return of the Catholic faith to England. If you mean how did he get here from Cambridge and what particular demons drove him, I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  Marlowe looked up again to the sharp slope of the roof and smiled broadly as two brothers walked past, deep in liturgical conversation. ‘So,’ he said, marshalling his thoughts, ‘Charles of Westley Waterless jumps – or was pushed – from that casement. He would have hit the roof . . . about there . . . bounced or rolled down, probably hitting that gargoyle and landing . . . there, in the quad.’

  ‘At least two blows –’ Aldred was following the man’s thinking – ‘perhaps to the head.’

  ‘Did you see the body?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘No,’ Aldred told him. ‘By the time my weekly visit was due, Scholar Charles was with his Maker. Or at least in the vault. Want to see him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hm,
intriguing, isn’t it? And not for the faint hearted. Every scholar of the College who passes over is placed in the catacombs, a little south west of where we’re sitting now. It’s a little tradition they had when the College was at Douai. It took Allen months to find a suitable building here, with deep enough foundations. The rumour is that he had to pay a small fortune. He brought all the bodies with him, or at least the most recent. Something to do with keeping the Papal flame. It’s beyond me.’

  ‘How do I get there?’

  ‘You don’t.’ Aldred wafted the last of the brandy under his nose. ‘Members of the College only. I only know of it. I’ve never been there.’

  ‘Aren’t I a member of the College?’ Marlowe asked, a little indignantly.

  Aldred guffawed, then stifled the noise with a swig. ‘Let me see. You’ve probably told Allen a cock-and-bull story about why you’re here and you kneel down inside while they spout the bell, book and candle nonsense and you think you’re a member of the College?’ Aldred looked hard at the man. ‘You really haven’t done this before, have you? Allen didn’t come down with the last manna from heaven, boy,’ he said. ‘He was dodging Lutherans and Calvinists while you were still in your hanging sleeves. He’ll be checking out your story.’

  ‘I know,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘And he’ll test you. Not once. But again and again. Count on it.’

  ‘I will,’ Marlowe assured him.

  ‘Well, sir . . .’ Aldred was suddenly on his feet and Marlowe looked across to his right to see Gerald Skelton and the Master walking in their direction. ‘If I can’t tempt you with the finest claret south of the Seine, I’ll trouble you no further.’

  ‘We are not famed for our wines in Cambridge, vintner,’ Marlowe said with a frown, ‘but I know a good one doesn’t usually taste of the Seine,’ and he pointed ostentatiously to the bottles Aldred was stuffing back into his bag. Doctors Allen and Skelton walked past in a waft of incense and a flap of black wool. When they were far enough away, Marlowe caught up with the retreating Aldred. ‘You said deaths. Unexplained deaths. Plural.’

  ‘Did I?’ Aldred smiled. ‘Oh, yes. So I did. One more, anyway.’

  ‘Who?’ Marlowe asked him.

  ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? Father Laurenticus. You’re sleeping in his bed.’

  The little room under the tiles was never brightly lit. In the depths of winter, with the sun low in the sky, a fragile grey beam sometimes just managed to percolate through the cobwebby skylight and touch a corner of the ceiling. In early autumn, the sunshine was just a golden glow reflected into the room from some distant cupola. But even that was not brightening the room today. The thin curtain was drawn across the window and the huddled shape on the bed had, in any event, its face turned to the wall.

  The door latch rose slowly, with just a faint click to alert anyone who cared that there was someone creeping into the room. In the gloom, the thin figure wrapped in a cloak could have been a boy, woman or child. It sat on the bed, and gently stroked the shoulder of the huddling body, not speaking, just rubbing up, down, round; up, down, round to the time of the beat of a broken heart. After a while, the intruder heaved a sigh, then spoke.

  ‘Sylvie.’ The stroking became a gentle shake, still loving, but firm. ‘Sylvie, sit up now and speak to me. You have been like this for far too long.’ The figure muttered and shook its shoulder like a petulant child. ‘That’s no good, Sylvie. You’ll die if you don’t eat and drink and don’t say you don’t care. Of course you care. Come on now, sit up.’

  The girl got off the bed and reached up to draw back the frowsty curtain. The sunlight bouncing off happier roofs glowed into the room. The golden motes danced in it like faeries.

  ‘Come, now, Sylvie. The afternoon is at its height. It is so beautiful out there.’

  There was still no movement from the bed and the girl lost her temper and stamped her foot.

  ‘I can’t go on like this any longer, Sylvie. I am working day and night to try and make enough money for both of us. I fell asleep under poor old Beausales the baker last night. He didn’t seem to mind. I’m not sure he even noticed, to be honest, but he is a simple soul.’ She sighed. ‘Not everyone would be so understanding, Sylvie. He paid me and gave me a loaf of bread. Some men would beat a girl who did that to them. Beausales, he knows he is hung like a mule. Other men are not so confident in their prowess.’ She kicked the bed and screamed. ‘Sylvie!’

  Slowly, the girl on the bed sat up and turned round to lean her back to the wall. She was wearing a short chemise and sat with her knees akimbo, leaving nothing to anyone’s imagination. Her friend slapped her thigh.

  ‘Stop it, Sylvie. Where is your modesty? If you won’t take your wares out on the street to earn some bread, don’t display yourself to me.’

  Sylvie shrugged and put her knees together, hugging them to her flat chest. She turned wide eyes up to her friend. ‘Mireille,’ she said, in a voice harsh from crying, ‘I don’t care what you or anyone else sees. I will walk down the street dressed as I am. I am no one without him to love me.’

  Mireille spun on her heel across the room and threw herself down onto the bed against the opposite wall. ‘Have you gone simple, Sylvie?’ she asked in disgust. ‘What makes you think he loved you? You know what we are; no one loves us if we don’t love ourselves.’

  The girl’s mouth turned down at the corners and then her bottom lip began to tremble. A tear rolled fatly from each eye. ‘He did love me.’

  ‘You gave him for nothing what other men pay for,’ Mireille screamed in her face. ‘Of course he loved you. Who wouldn’t? Everyone loves a bargain.’

  Before either girl knew what was happening, Sylvie flew across the room like a tigress, nails out for Mireille’s face. But the older girl was too quick for her and she grabbed her slender wrists. She pushed them both off the bed and twisted the girl’s arms behind her back, holding her hands effortlessly in one of her own. She reached for a broken shard of mirror from the top of a battered press and held it up so their faint reflections looked back at them.

  ‘What do you see, Sylvie?’ she asked, savagely.

  The girl tried a smile. ‘Sylvie and Mireille,’ she said, in an ingratiating voice.

  ‘Yes, Sylvie and Mireille. Mireille with the big tits and arse, Mireille, all woman, the woman who shows her backside to men at the English School door. And Sylvie. Flat chested as a boy. Sylvie who goes for free into the bed of a wicked priest who wants a boy in his bed but doesn’t want to be damned. So, he goes for Sylvie, the lesser sin.’

  The girl pulled away and sank to the floor. ‘No,’ she sobbed into her friend’s skirts. ‘No. He loved me. And now he’s dead.’

  Mireille put a gentle hand down and stroked her hair. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘Yes, indeed. We can argue for ever whether he loved you. But that he is dead is without question. I wonder if we will ever know why.’

  FIVE

  ‘Benedictus, benedicat.’

  ‘Amen.’

  Members of the English College, Master, professors, scholars, lay brothers and guests brought up their heads from their devotions and jostled with each other briefly as they took their places on the benches before their long tables. A long line of popes glowered down at them from the portraits on the walls and a chanting priest began reciting in perfect pitch and indifferent Latin in the corner. He needn’t have bothered, because once grace was over, it was every man for himself on the long tables. Marlowe had experienced this mad free for all before, as a crop-headed sizar at Corpus Christi. He remembered how it was then, running up and down the Court, desperately trying to keep warm in the biting Cambridge winds, longing to hear the clang of the bell that called the scholars to dinner.

  But now he was on the top table, four along from the Master. His hair lay on his shoulders and his shoulders were clad in velvet. He had no satchel bulging with his Lucan and Aristotle, just a purse comfortably portly with Walsingham’s money. And he had a dagger in its sheath in the small of his b
ack. He noted that while the scholars in front of him crammed bread and cheese into their mouths and washed it down with water, the bowl in front of him was brimful with a rich stew with a mouth-watering aroma.

  ‘It’s called ragout,’ a voice muttered to his left. His neighbour was unlike the others at the top table. In fact he looked just like the rest of the lads in their grey fustian and with their cropped hair.

  ‘Robert Greene.’ Marlowe extended a hand to him before sampling the excellent wine. Master Aldred had outdone himself.

  ‘Edmund Brooke,’ the lad said, shaking the man’s hand. ‘Secundus convictus.’

  ‘Ah.’ Marlowe smiled.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Brooke said, tucking into the stew with gusto. ‘Why is a poll man sitting at the Master’s table?’

  Marlowe leaned towards him, ‘Got something on him?’ he whispered, with a dark smile.

  Brooke looked aghast. ‘It’s my turn,’ he explained. ‘Every night, the Master chooses one of the scholars to dine with him. It’s done on a strictly rotational basis.’ He closed his eyes as his stew-laden bread went down. ‘I’ve been waiting a hundred and sixteen days for this.’

  Marlowe chuckled. ‘Otherwise it’s bread and cheese, eh?’ he asked. Brooke nodded, loosening up as the unaccustomed combination of good food and wine found their mark. ‘What brings you to the College, Master Greene?’

  ‘The same as everybody.’ Marlowe carefully inspected the contents of his spoon. Most of it he recognized. ‘To serve his Holiness in any way I can.’

  ‘How are things at home?’ the boy asked, a stranger now to his own land.

  ‘Where is home, exactly?’ Marlowe asked. He smiled as the Master caught his eye and raised his glass, twinkling in the light of what seemed a thousand candles.

  ‘Berkhamstead,’ Brooke said. ‘It’s in Hertfordshire. Though I barely remember it. My parents left when the Jezebel of England became Queen.’

  Marlowe sighed. ‘I wish mine had.’

  ‘Where are you from, Master Greene?’

  ‘Cambridge,’ Marlowe told him. It was only a half-lie. ‘Westley Waterless. You wouldn’t know it, of course. Horrible little place in the fens.’