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  ‘Not going to morning service today, Kit?’ Professor Johns wanted to know. He wasn’t all that much older than Marlowe but he had the grey skin that goes with the intellectual, a man who had long ago decided that his would be a world of books and scholarship and the scratching of quill on calfskin.

  ‘Not today,’ Marlowe said. The flash doublet had gone and he wore the grey fustian of a scholar. Across the quad, he saw that bastard Gabriel Harvey scurrying to the Chapel, hatred seeping from every pore. Every time he saw the man, he wondered what he’d done to upset him. What it was in the three years they’d known each other, teacher and pupil, that had made Harvey so detest him.

  ‘One of these days,’ Johns said, ‘I shall ask you why. Why you go to Chapel so rarely.’

  Marlowe turned, smiling. ‘One of these days, Professor, I might tell you.’

  ‘Professor?’ Johns laughed, his blue eyes twinkling. ‘We’re very formal today, Dominus Marlowe.’

  ‘Ah.’ The scholar held up his hand. ‘Not Dominus yet, I fear.’

  ‘This afternoon, though,’ Johns said. ‘I can be forgiven a little prematurity.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Marlowe said. ‘But I shan’t take my degree until the lads get theirs.’ He looked at the man before him, and decided to speak what was on his mind. ‘Tell me, Michael, can you step in with the Master? On behalf of the lads, I mean?’

  ‘The Parker scholars?’ Johns resumed his seat by the window. ‘You’ve always been a father figure to them, haven’t you?’

  ‘I’m older,’ Marlowe said with a shrug. ‘It’s only natural.’

  ‘No, there’s more to it than that. They look up to you. Most of the student body does. What Marlowe does, they do.’ He paused, knowing that what Marlowe did was not always a good thing. ‘Were you with them last night?’ he asked.

  Marlowe turned to face him. ‘Is the Pope the Bishop of Rome?’ he asked.

  Johns laughed. Then, suddenly, he was serious. ‘Kit,’ he said. ‘Sit down, will you?’

  Marlowe turned on one toe and flopped down on the window seat, leaning back against the transom and folding his arms, looking at Johns from under his half-lowered lids.

  ‘What are you going to do with your life?’ the Professor asked.

  ‘Do?’

  ‘Well, the Church, naturally,’ Johns said. ‘But somehow, I just don’t see you . . .’

  ‘In a surplice handing out the Eucharist?’ Marlowe chuckled. ‘No. Neither do I.’

  ‘The law, then?’ Johns suggested. ‘When your new classes begin . . . Or what about medicine? It’s a subject that’s the coming thing, believe me. All those potions and elixirs. Fascinating.’

  ‘The theatre,’ Marlowe cut in.

  ‘What?’ Johns blinked.

  ‘Drama. Poetry. Air and fire. That’s the coming thing.’

  Johns looked as if somebody had just stabbed him in the heart. ‘Not coming to Cambridge, I hope,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no.’ Marlowe chuckled. ‘All that’s coming to Cambridge is more of the Godly, the Puritan persuasion. If there’s a tavern standing come Lady Day, I’ll be astonished.’

  ‘Don’t joke, Kit,’ Johns warned solemnly. ‘You don’t know how powerful . . .’

  ‘The college authorities are? Oh, I’ve got a pretty good idea.’

  ‘No,’ Johns said, looking even more ashen than usual. ‘I didn’t mean that. Kit – promise me something.’

  Marlowe shrugged. He didn’t make promises, not ones he couldn’t keep. It had something to do with his immortal soul.

  ‘Conform, Kit.’ Johns leaned forward to him. ‘Please – conform.’

  Marlowe pushed himself upright from where he lounged on the window seat, then stood up, stretching. ‘Perhaps that word sounds better in Greek.’ He smiled down at Johns. ‘Or Hebrew. I’m afraid I don’t understand it in English.’ He crossed to the door. ‘Time for breakfast,’ he said. ‘Michael –’ he turned in the archway – ‘you’ll do what you can for the lads?’

  And he was gone.

  They stood in a hollow square as the sun sat high in the Heavens, nearly a hundred strong, the Master, Fellows and Scholars of Corpus Christi College. Only the servants were absent, busy with their duties and forbidden to watch what was to follow on pain of the same.

  The scholars had all seen this before and some of them had felt it, the knotted lash with its nine tails. Gabriel Harvey stood four-square with the Master, the Fellows behind him in their tassels and gold lace, glinting in the summer sun. Funny how everybody dresses up for torture, to celebrate a Roman holiday.

  The three stood in the centre, leaning forward with their wrists strapped with leather thongs to the rough wooden pyramid frame the Proctors had placed there. They were stripped to the waist, the points dangling from their woollen hose and their skin pale in the sunshine.

  ‘Scholars of Corpus Christi.’ Dr Norgate’s voice was strong over the rising breeze that fluttered gowns and headgear and took some of the heat from the midday sun. ‘Witness the punishment of three of your number who failed to obey the college curfew and were found the worse for drink.’

  He let the words sink in, noting one or two of the older scholars who arched an eyebrow or eased a collar. This was to encourage the others; the lesson would not be lost.

  ‘Proctors, do your duty.’

  Marlowe saw the relish on Lomas’ face as he began to lash. His right arm snaked back and the whip thudded across Bromerick’s shoulder blades, followed almost instantly by Darryl’s strike. There was a gasp from the younger boys as the knots bit home, the wicked tips of the whip cutting the pale flesh and leaving a slash of blood.

  Bromerick’s body convulsed and he bit down on the leather pad that Darryl had shoved unceremoniously between his teeth. As the second blow fell and the third, a single tear trickled down Bromerick’s cheek. His hair was matted with sweat and his legs felt like jelly but he wasn’t going to cry out. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

  Before the last stroke, Lomas held back, shifting the haft of the cat in his hand, for more purchase for his encore. Darryl’s rope sliced the air and cut diagonally across the pulp of Bromerick’s back. As the scholar turned to stare defiantly at his tormentors, Lomas deliberately sent the whip high, slapping across his mouth and cheek so that the blood spurted in a sudden arc.

  Marlowe moved forward, his jaw set, his body rigid. Only Michael Johns quietly standing in front of him and laying a hand on his chest stopped him. ‘Conform!’ he hissed.

  Then, as the bleeding Bromerick slumped, exhausted and beaten on the triangle, the Proctors went to work on Colwell, then Parker. They had had to wait in an agony of helplessness and frustration, watching the pain inflicted on Bromerick and knowing it was coming to them. It seemed to go on forever, the whistling and thump of the whips, the grunts of exertion from the Proctors. In the far corner, near the Master’s Lodge, there was a brief commotion as a sizar fainted. The lad turned white and pitched forward on his face. He had been unable to watch and unable to look away, all at the same time. Somebody scooped him up and propped him, with his cold, sweating forehead lolling on his updrawn knees, against a wall.

  Then, all was silence, except for Lomas and Darryl, who were puffing, red-faced from their hard work. No one was sorry to see that Lomas in particular found his breath hard to catch, and the tortured whistle as he drew air into his lungs was music to many ears in the hollow square.

  Kit Marlowe was not a man to make promises, but he made one to himself that morning. There would be a reckoning.

  Dr Norgate stepped forward as if he were taking the service in Chapel. ‘An offence like this,’ he said, his voice echoing around the courtyard, ‘would normally result in these scholars being sent down.’

  Even the Proctors were silent now.

  ‘However,’ the Master went on, glancing in Johns’ direction, ‘representation has been made and these young men, fine young men as I know them to be, will be given their degrees when their wounds have
healed.’

  No one dared cheer or applaud. Somehow, the moment was not right. Marlowe nodded to Johns a silent thank you. Then he went to unhitch his lads from the triangle. The Master and the Fellows marched away, followed by the scholars, whispering urgently to each other about what they’d just seen.

  ‘Next time, Master Marlowe,’ Lomas sneered as he coiled his whip away.

  Marlowe smiled at him, untying Bromerick’s hemp first. ‘Oh no, Master Proctor,’ he said. ‘In a few days I shall be Dominus Marlowe and if you lay a hand on me – or any of my friends – I will kill you.’ And there was something in his eyes that made Lomas believe it. Marlowe closed to him, grinning widely. ‘Not much moon again tonight, I’ll wager. You watch your back.’

  The three friends sat side by side on a bench in the Swan in Bridge Street that night and, despite the ale in front of each one, no one felt too much like celebrating. Henry Bromerick in particular had difficulty swallowing, his lips purple and swollen, his teeth scraping on each other as he tried to sip his ale. The corner of one eye was red where the cat-tip had caught it and the bruise spread down his cheek in one direction and in the other disappeared into his hair. The others’ wounds were not so easy to spot, but anyone could see from the way that they sat, stiff and unmoving, that they were in great pain, hurting under the grey fustian.

  ‘Come along now, gents.’ The innkeeper was clearing away the debris of earlier revellers. ‘Shouldn’t you lads be on top of the world tonight?’ He glanced at Bromerick and considered qualifying his remark, but thought better of it. ‘Masters of Rhetoric, or whatever it is you do?’

  Jack Wheeler had been keeper of the Swan since before these boys were born. He had seen generations of scholars come and go since the Queen was newly-crowned. In fact, as he never tired of telling everybody, he’d had the honour to present Her Majesty with a cup of his finest local brew on the occasion of her one and only visit to the town. He’d noted the Queen smiling at him but was too busy bowing low to be aware of her passing the cup to the Earl of Leicester who sniffed it and poured away its contents. Wheeler was still waiting for the letter with the lion and dragon seal which would allow him to write ‘By Appointment’ on his shingle. ‘By disappointment’ would have been more apt.

  ‘We got caught last night, Jack,’ Tom Colwell told him, in an admission of defeat. ‘Felt a taste of the cat.’

  ‘Not unlike your very own brew, Master Wheeler.’ Kit Marlowe swept in from nowhere, back in the roisterer’s doublet, remembering not to pat anybody on the back. ‘I’ll have a brandy. The same for my friends and . . .’ he looked around him, frowning. ‘Still no Ralph? Where is the toad’s harslet?’

  ‘Who?’ Matt Parker surfaced from under the smothering golden curls of the girl who he was, very carefully, balancing on his lap.

  ‘Whingside.’ Bromerick gave it his best shot, but his lips felt like blanc mange – very painful blanc mange – and he gave up.

  Marlowe smiled and ruffled his hair before hauling up a footstool to sit on. ‘What Dominus Bromerick is trying to say is Whitingside; Ralph by Christian name. He’s not here.’

  ‘He wasn’t here last night either,’ Parker remembered, smiling at the girl.

  The rest of the company looked at him. Had this man just received a degree from the finest university in the world, or had he not?

  ‘That’s King’s men for you,’ Colwell grunted. ‘He’ll have been carousing at the Cardinal’s Cap last night. Meg –’ he half-turned as best he could to the girl perched on Parker’s lap – ‘doesn’t your sister work there?’

  ‘She does,’ Meg told him. ‘Who’re you looking for?’

  ‘Ralph Whitingside,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘That tall bloke?’ Meg asked, unconcerned. ‘The one with the six pairs of hands?’

  Marlowe smiled. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘He was in here last night. He . . .’ She looked up and caught the eye of Jack Wheeler. He was all for extras on the bill, but he doubted Parker could afford them. She jumped up and gave the table an ineffectual wipe with her apron. ‘I must go,’ she said, pecking Parker on the cheek. ‘His master’s voice.’

  ‘Last night?’ Marlowe reached out and pulled her back by the arm. ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure. One night’s very much like another in this business, Master Marlowe. Latish. All I know about time is that it passes.’

  ‘It surely does,’ Marlowe agreed, letting the girl go.

  ‘What’s the matter, Kit?’ Colwell asked. ‘You’ve got a faraway look on your face.’

  Marlowe snapped out of it. ‘Probably nothing,’ he said. ‘But as far as Ralph Whitingside knew we were all going to graduate today. I just thought he’d be here. It’s . . . ah, that’s my girl!’ Meg had brought their drinks. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said and raised his brandy. ‘Here’s to Doctor Gabriel Harvey.’ Nobody drank. ‘May he roast in Hell!’

  ‘Gabriel Harvey!’ they roared and downed their drinks in one. Except Henry Bromerick, who slopped most of his over his cheek.

  Meg Hawley made her way along Jesus Lane as another dawn crept over the graves of the Grey Friars. Her step was a little unsteady and her cloak dragged through the Cambridge dust as she turned the corner. She half-expected to see her sister crossing the low fields by the river, but she wasn’t there. She had probably got off early and was already snoring in her truckle bed at the farm, grateful to be off her feet after a long night.

  There was someone there, though, leaning against the red brick of Jesus Gate. He wore his doublet open and his collar was pale against the darker skin. This wasn’t unusual. A client. Meg opened her cloak a little. All right, it was early morning and she was tired, but a groat was a groat at any time of the day or night and while she still had her looks and her youth she wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity. She had lived on the edge of this town all her life. She knew all its alleyways and dark entries like the back of her hand. Lots of places to accommodate a gentleman . . . She stopped short.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Master Marlowe,’ she said, wondering again why she always called him that. The others were Matt, Tom and Henry. The poor sizars who couldn’t afford her often, or the gentlemen who’d toss her a shilling; she called them all by their first name. But Marlowe was always different. There was something dangerous, something cold, something indefinable about Marlowe, and she’d no sooner call him Christopher than fly to the moon and back, still less Kit as his friends called him.

  Her heart was pounding. The first time she had seen Marlowe, three years ago now, when he came to the town, she was drawn to him and repelled at once. He was handsome, but not in an approachable way, like the boys he was with at Corpus Christi. She and he were of an age, she thought, give or take. She always felt much older than the boys in the Swan and those in the dark alleys, who fumbled and sweated and called her pet names. But Marlowe made her feel like a child; there was something timeless about him, something old looked out of his eyes. He was always friendly, always polite and she was, if not willing, then ready to take his money. Yet . . . nothing. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps this morning with the golden glow of mist was the time, and this the place.

  He reached out his hand and, after only a momentary pause, she slid into the crook of his arm, ignoring the fluttering in her stomach. He held her cheek and pulled her lips close to his. She opened them, waiting, staring into those smouldering dark eyes.

  ‘Tell me,’ he whispered, ‘about Ralph Whitingside.’

  She blinked. Frowned. The moment had gone, as they stood there in the red-brick shadow of Jesus College and the morning climbed in the east. Meg pulled away.

  ‘I’ve got to get home,’ she muttered. ‘My dad’ll take his belt to me.’

  But he reached out again and held her tight with a powerful right hand. ‘You saw him the night before last,’ he said, taking account of the morning which was now here.

  ‘What of it?’ She was frightened now, staring again into those hypnotic eyes. ‘Let me go
. You’re hurting me.’ She tried to wriggle free, but he held on tighter, squeezing her arm just above the elbow.

  ‘Ralph,’ he said softly. ‘Tell me about Ralph.’

  She met his gaze for a few seconds more, before squeezing her eyelids shut. A single tear showed fat and wet along her lashes before rolling down her cheek. She spoke so low he had to lean in to hear what she said. ‘I love Ralph,’ she sighed.

  He pulled back and let her go in surprise. ‘You . . . love him?’ he asked. Everyone knew that Ralph Whitingside would go off into the bushes with anything that flashed an ankle at him, and in some cases he hadn’t even needed that encouragement. Add to that the fact that Meg was well known throughout Corpus Christi and beyond as a willing girl, if the price was right, and love seemed an odd word to be hearing.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, rubbing at her cheek to dry her tears and looking up defiantly. ‘As soon as I saw him, I loved him. And he loved me the same. It’s just that, well, we both know there’s no future in it. He’s a gentleman, I’ve got my intended.’

  Marlowe patted her arm, almost absent-mindedly. Old Ralph, eh, and a tavern girl. Could this explain where he was, why he was hiding? He looked at her and realized she was waiting for a response, but everything that was going through his mind wasn’t really for her ears. ‘Hmm, yes. Lovely story. Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight? I expect you and your intended, it was like that with him, I suppose?’

  ‘Not really.’ Meg’s face fell a little. ‘I’ve known Harry all my life. He lives on the farm with us all. But Ralph . . .’

  He took her hand, gently. ‘I’ve known Ralph Whitingside since we were boys,’ he told her. He turned her hand over, rubbing his fingertips gently over the calloused palm. ‘We are kindred spirits, you and I, Meg of the golden hair, Meg of the Swan. You got these hands from the pots, didn’t you? Hauling casks when you still wore hanging-sleeves. Me too. I was a pot boy at the Star back home in Canterbury. I used to pass Ralph’s house on my way to work there and we’d talk. He didn’t mind I was a pot boy.’ He laughed and dropped her hand. ‘And I didn’t mind he was a gentleman’s son.’