Silent Court (22 page)

‘The rooms are taken, Dominus Greene,’ the proctor insisted.

‘Taken?’ Robert Greene narrowed his eyes at the man. For four years he’d known this idiot, boy and man and their true minds had never married. ‘By whom?’

The proctor consulted the ledger with its spidery scrawl. ‘Dr John Dee and two servants. And –’ he squinted a little at the writing and held the book up at a different angle, hoping that might help – ‘a goose.’

‘A goose?’ Greene was almost speechless.

‘That’s what it appears to say here,’ said the proctor, putting the ledger down again. He pointed. ‘One goose.’

‘Is this or is this not, Master Proctor, St John’s College of the University of Cambridge?’

‘It is, Dominus Greene.’ The proctor sighed, knowing exactly where the man was going with this line of unreason.

‘And you are letting out rooms in this hallowed hall to a goose? The damned thing will be elected Master next and we’ll have to kiss its wing feathers.’

The proctor held up his hand. ‘I am merely a link in the chain, sir,’ he told him. ‘I do as I’m commanded by a higher authority. As do we all.’ The emphasis was not lost on Greene but he had no intention of backing down now. His own rooms were not uncomfortable but they faced north-east and the wind blew the river smells along the cobbles and they eddied up into his apartments in the summer. In the winter, the wind just blew. To the north-west however lay a particularly imposing set of rooms belonging to Richard Clare that were the envy of every graduate and sizar in the college. And Richard Clare had gone of the ague not three weeks since. There had been a full college funeral, everyone in their academic robes laced with black and a suitably mournful-looking Robert Greene had composed a requiem. But all that was just so much show and
so
three weeks ago. The rooms had been thoroughly cleaned and Greene had watched the bedder in question with a hawk’s eye to see how she fared. When there was no sign of sickness after three weeks, Greene decided that the time was right to strike, before anyone else got the coveted rooms. So now, here was Greene, on his dignity. In fact, it was not often he was off it.

‘You do know, sir –’ the proctor came over all conspiratorial – ‘who Dr Dee is, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do,’ Greene snapped. ‘The Queen’s magus. That doesn’t give the man the right—’

‘He
was
a member of the college, sir, before my time, but my old dad remembers him well.’

‘Yes, well,’ Greene sniffed. ‘I’m very happy for your old dad’s reminiscences, but I am a member of this college now.’ He paused as that particular bomb merely bounced off the granite that was Proctor Boddington. ‘Tell me, Boddington –’ Greene only ever used the man’s name when he wanted something – ‘why is Dr Dee coming to St John’s?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir,’ Boddington said, stern-faced.

Greene sighed and reached below the man’s counter, jingling silver in his purse. Boddington caught the coins expertly, had the temerity to test them with his teeth and pocketed all but one. That one he pushed back towards Greene. ‘Dud, sir, sadly,’ he said and waited. Greene, with a sigh, replaced the forged penny with another which passed the molar test and Boddington went on. ‘His wife’s died,’ he told Greene. ‘At their house in Ely not a week ago. They do say…’ He bent lower to the graduate, pausing in the hope of more inducement. When it was clear that none was forthcoming, he carried on nonetheless. Since Mrs Boddington had had it away on her toes with the dairyman, he had few to exchange gossip with, and this had been burning a hole in his tongue. ‘They do say she was murdered.’

Greene’s eyes widened. ‘Do they now?’

‘The old man’s prostrate with grief. Coming back to his roots for comfort, they do say.’

‘And do they say how she died?’ Greene asked.

The proctor tapped the side of his nose. ‘I know what you’re thinking, sir,’ he said, as if he and Greene were twins born in time, ‘the husband did it. Whenever there’s a domestic ruction such as this, sir, look to the spouse.’

‘But you said Dee was prostrate,’ Greene reminded him.

‘A front,’ Boddington told him flatly. ‘He’s blaming the Egyptians.’

‘The Egyptians?’ Greene repeated. This began to sound more and more like the weakest excuse in the world for not letting him have those nice, warm, west-facing rooms.

‘You know, the band of ruffians who passed through the town. Constable Fludd was on their tail, they do say, but he might as well have pissed into the wind. Dee invited them to his place at Ely, to talk magic or whatever Devil-driven nonsense they speak. They say the constables at Ely have taken one of their women for the crime.’

‘Who are “they”?’ Greene asked.

Sometimes, Boddington wondered just how these scholars ever got their degrees. He spoke more slowly. ‘Egyptians, sir,’ he said, sounding every syllable with exaggerated care.

‘No, you said “they say”. Who are they that say?’

Boddington frowned and his disbelief that Greene was an actual graduate of St John’s at all deepened. He threw up his hands. ‘
They
, sir,’ he repeated. It would have to suffice. ‘They also say –’ Boddington’s nose was almost in Greene’s ear-ringed ear – ‘that that Christopher Marlowe was with them. You know, the one they call Machiavel.’

The driving sleet had driven most of the good Cambridge folk off the streets by nightfall. The husbandmen had shut the cocks away, the market stalls had dropped their shutters along Petty Cury and the scholar roisterers had downed the last of their ale and had made for their colleges, ready to run the nightly gauntlet past their proctors.

The clock of St Mary’s clanged the midnight chimes as the three men ordered more wine in the upstairs room of The Eagle and Child along Bene’t’s Lane. Dr John Dee, in his funeral black, had been drowning his sorrows in his old drinking haunt when he had been hailed by an acquaintance, Dr Gabriel Harvey of Corpus Christi and an Italian-looking fellow with an earring who, Dee was horrified to discover, was of Dee’s own college. They had spent the evening talking of this and that, of the likelihood of war with Spain or France; of the foolhardy nonsense of sending Francis Drake to sea on some wild goose chase; on the cost of claret and the new trend coming from London, drinking smoke.

‘Tell me, Dr Dee –’ Harvey was as oily as ever – ‘have you news of Kit Marlowe? I haven’t seen him around the college recently.’

Now, John Dee was usually a reader of men’s souls. His grey eyes glittered in the firelight and the candle’s flame flared back at them in Harvey’s vision. Robert Greene was peeling an apple with his dagger, apparently unconcerned. Normally, John Dee would have read those two like a book, divined their joint intent, understood their common loathing of Marlowe. But tonight was not normal for John Dee. He had wandered Magdalene Bridge in the pouring rain, ignored the street vendors along the High Ward and had relived his youth. Thirty years ago, in the days of the stone-hearted Mary, he wore his ignorance on his sleeve, dared God out of Heaven with the best of them and had taken his life in his hands. Now he was older, sadder. Was he wiser? Perhaps not. Tonight, all he knew was that his darling Helene was dead and he desperately needed to know why. He desperately needed to talk to her, but his powers, those devils that sat on his hunched shoulders, had been washed away by rain and tears and he was alone.

So it was not the normally astute, second-guessing John Dee who answered Gabriel Harvey in The Eagle and Child that night. ‘The last I saw of Marlowe,’ he said, ‘he was riding on a cart, travelling with the Egyptians. They were bound, I think, for King’s Lynn and the Flemish coast.’

‘King’s Lynn and the Flemish coast?’ Dr Norgate’s tired old eyes fluttered up from the Ramus he was devouring. ‘Marlowe gone with the Egyptians? I can scarcely believe it.’

‘Nor I, Master.’ Gabriel Harvey was rectitude itself. ‘I was shocked. Profoundly shocked. After you gave him a fresh start, so to speak, agreed to let bygones be bygones—’

‘Gabriel,’ Norgate interrupted him. ‘I may be creeping nearer to my appointment with the Almighty, but I cannot see St Peter’s gates yet. You have no love for Christopher Marlowe and, I have noticed, seize every opportunity to blacken his name.’

‘I, Master?’ Harvey was outraged. ‘Has Dr Lyler not mentioned that Marlowe is missing from his Schools? Professor Johns?’ The name hung in the air like a poison. If there was one man in all Cambridge that Gabriel Harvey hated nearly as much as Kit Marlowe, it was Michael Johns.

Norgate hesitated. He knew what this meant. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘They have not.’

‘There is one thing more, Master –’ Harvey was getting into his stride – ‘though I hate to mention it.’

‘I’m sure you do.’ Norgate closed the heavy, leather-bound Ramus, sure that his researches would be ruined for the day now.

‘Marlowe may be involved in murder.’

Norgate turned his head as well as he could, frowning. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Dr John Dee, the magus. He it was who told me about Marlowe. The poor man’s wife died while Marlowe was under his roof. The next thing he knew, he had fled.’

‘From which you deduce… ?’ Norgate asked.

‘You and I, Master, were weaned in the Schools of Logic. Doyens of deduction, we. And you are right. I have no love for Dominus Marlowe. Yet I cannot believe him guilty of this… whatever the evidence may say.’

Gabriel Harvey rose and took his leave from the man whose job he coveted. And as he left, he heard another nail thud into the coffin of Christopher Marlowe.

Marlowe waited impatiently at the eastern gate of the Prinsenhof for Lily to arrive. He had sent a message on ahead, for the Statholder to be prepared for Lily’s visit. He had seen her heal the sick back at Ely and had a vague memory at the back of his brain of a soft and healing touch on his own damaged muscles, but was not sure what she would need in a sickbed setting. In John Dee’s house, the woman she had healed had walked to the house herself, albeit using two crutches and help from her sons. This was different. He didn’t want to put Lily off her stroke, but on the other hand, he wanted the Statholder and his wife to feel comfortable with what was about to go on. There was only a thin, a very thin line that must be trodden, and on either side of that safe line, the swamps of failure and the quicksands of disaster sucked and swirled silently, waiting for someone to put a foot wrong.

A tap on his arm brought him back to the here and now. He looked down and there was Lily, but a Lily in a new mirror, a clean Lily. A scented Lily for sure. He smiled to see her and looked her up and down, nodding. She was still, in essence, the same. Although the coin he had given her was large enough, she had not been able to dress herself from the skin out, so she had wisely chosen to deal with the most obvious problems with her dress. Not that they were problems to her; her clothes had taken years to get to the state of near perfection they were in, but she realized that her hair and general level of grime was something that non-Egyptians might find it hard to understand. So she had had her hair washed with fine herbs and dried before the fire in a friendly inn. It glowed tawny in the light from the guards’ brazier as it tumbled down her back, held off her face by two tortoiseshell combs. Her face was glowing, not with lead or rouge, but just with the youth that was under the grime all the time, helped by a frugal diet and the wind in her face as they moved from place to place. She had trimmed her rags in places and had clean white lace at her throat, and her cloak, though not new, was clean and warm.

‘Lily!’ he said, with genuine pleasure. ‘I would hardly have known you. You are beautiful.’

She looked at him sadly. ‘Master Marlowe,’ she said. ‘Like everyone, you believe beauty to be skin deep. I am just the same Lily that woke this morning, covered in dirt, and when the dirt has gathered again, and this cloak is covered with mud and mire, I will be that same Lily again.’ She smiled at him and at that moment, they each knew they had a new friend, come what may. ‘Shall we go in? I am nervous, and waiting out here is making me shake with cold. I don’t want them to think I shiver from fear.’

‘There is nothing to fear, Lily,’ he said. ‘Do you have all you need?’

She held up a bag she had concealed under her cloak. ‘All I need is in here,’ she said, tapping her temple, ‘but all that others need is in here.’ And she raised her bag.

‘Let’s go, then, and heal a prince,’ Marlowe said and, arm in arm, they entered the Prinsenhof’s eastern gate.

The Princess Charlotte was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs that led to the Statholder’s suite of rooms. She looked Lily up and down, then turned and led them up to the next floor. She opened the door and there, on the bed, Marlowe got his first glimpse of the leader of the Dutch. He was almost the same colour as the linen sheets he was lying on, and there was a bandage around his head. His hands lay limply by his sides, palms down and the pillows behind his head and back were not tousled and crumpled as they would be behind someone who was merely asleep; they were as smooth as if they had been ironed in place and no one had touched them since. The man’s face was as smooth as his pillows. Marlowe felt Lily flinch at his side.

The Statholder’s wife walked quickly through the room and climbed the single step of the dais that surrounded his bed. She smoothed his forehead and kissed his unresponding cheek. ‘William,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Some people are here to see if they can help you. To see if you can be brought back to us.’ She straightened up, with her hand still on his forehead, still looking down into his face. ‘
Lieveling
, let’s see if you can come back to us, shall we?’ There was a tiny splash as a tear met the starched linen of his sheet, but that was the only sound from the bed. The princess came back to the two in the doorway.

Marlowe reached for her hand, and squeezed it. ‘We will do our best, Highness,’ he said. ‘But, you do know that it might not work?’

‘Nothing else has worked,’ she said. ‘Why should this?’

Again, there was the flinch from Lily.

‘Someone must believe,’ she said. ‘I cannot work against the stars. Do you have children, madam?’