FOURTEEN

He took the road south across the fens that marked the Bedford Level, his cloak flying out behind him and his face low over the bay’s neck. The animal was not as fast as the Wasp, left behind in Delft, but she was steadier and by cock-shut time Kit Marlowe was clattering over Magdalene Bridge past the twinkling lights of the colleges and the skiffs bobbing on the river.

Leslie’s man had told Marlowe where John Dee had gone. And he was under no illusion that he would not have also told the Egyptian. Any man’s coin was the same as far as the footman was concerned. Marlowe’s only hope was that the Egyptian would not know Cambridge like he did. Despite the tides in the North Sea, despite the false start with the sea beggars, despite the Mass, he might yet make it in time.

He clattered into the gateway of St John’s College where the Yales of Beaufort battled for the king’s shield in the gilded stone over the arch.

‘Whoa!’ A startled Proctor Boddington scuttled out of his lodge door and grabbed his bridle. ‘What brings you so late to college, sir?’

‘Dr Dee . . .’ Marlowe was as out of breath as his horse. ‘Where is he?’

‘Who’s asking?’ Boddington refused to be impressed by good horses and flashy clothes. This was St John’s College, the finest place of learning in all the fens and probably beyond.

‘Christopher Marlowe,’ the rider told him, springing out of the saddle.

The proctor was even less impressed now that the man stood at his eye level. ‘Christopher Marlowe of Corpus Christi?’ Boddington’s words dripped with contempt.

‘The same.’ Marlowe nodded.

‘The one they call Machiavel?’ Boddington said slowly, images of Hell creeping into his mind.

‘It doesn’t matter what they call me, Master Proctor,’ Marlowe said. ‘Now, do I have to smash down every door in your God-forsaken college to find Dr Dee or are you going to tell me?’

‘Kit?’ a voice made him turn.

It was Robert Greene, swallowing carefully because Kit Marlowe’s dagger point was already poking a new hole in his ruff.

‘Er . . . hello, Kit. What a surprise.’ Greene managed with his head seriously at an angle.

‘Still writing bad poetry, Robyn?’ Marlowe asked.

‘Well, we try, you know. Do I understand that you’re looking for Dr Dee?’

‘Robyn.’ Marlowe shipped the dagger away. ‘You and I both know that you’ve been listening to this conversation ever since I arrived, so let’s drop the all-innocence bit, shall we? What do you know?’

Robert Greene knew – or thought he did – that Kit Marlowe had sold his soul to the Devil and he knew a good deal more besides, but he realized that that was not what Marlowe meant.

‘You’re looking for the Queen’s magus?’ he checked.

Marlowe nodded. ‘And unless you want his blood on your conscience and Master Topcliffe’s rack under your arse cheeks, I suggest you tell me where I can find him.’

‘Topcliffe?’ Boddington repeated. He didn’t get out much.

‘The Queen’s rackmaster,’ Greene explained. ‘Well, if you must know, he’s in the rooms that should rightfully be mine. Off the court, in the north-west corner. You can’t miss it – there’ll be goose shit on the staircase. Dr Dee has brought his own Christmas dinner with him.’

‘Dominus Greene . . .’ The proctor was outraged at betrayal on this scale.

‘Go hang yourself, Master Proctor,’ Greene snapped and ran off into the Cambridge night to find Gabriel Harvey.

Two or three sizars were crossing the Court behind a college professor, struggling under the weight of his books. There were candles burning at some windows as Marlowe reached the far corner. A solitary torch guttered on the turn of the stairs and he trod as soundlessly as a cat until he reached the landing. If Dee had brought a goose, he had also brought his cook and that meant Sam Bowes too. Three rooms – two at a pinch. Unless, of course, Dee had insisted on one for the goose. He paused by the first door and pressed his ear to the black and knotted oak. Nothing. Nothing either from the second. But at the third, he heard voices – or was it one? – muffled and secret, gabbling fast and low.

The next thing he knew his head was yanked backwards by the hair and rammed forward so that the bruise raised by van Haren’s man’s thrown pot was purpled again and he was kicked forward into the room. When he scrabbled to his feet, the door had been slammed shut and he found himself staring down the bores of two wheel-lock pistols, wound and ready, one in each of the hands of Hern, the lord of the Egyptians, father of the children of the moon.

‘You will unhook your pickle stabber, Master Marlowe.’ Hern indicated the rapier. Marlowe looked across at John Dee. The man was crouching near the bed, already in his night cap and he had quill and parchment in his hand.

‘Good evening, Christopher,’ he said quietly.

‘Dr Dee.’ Marlowe nodded.

‘Now!’ Hern snapped and Marlowe unhooked the sword from its hanger and threw it on the bed.

‘And now the dagger,’ Hern said.

Marlowe held out both arms and shrugged.

‘Don’t play games with me, Christopher,’ Hern snarled. ‘I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know. And I’ve known all about you since I looked at your papers from Sir Francis Walsingham. I should have disposed of you much earlier. But the women liked you and you kept the children amused, so I let you live. But now, with your left hand and slowly.’ He raised his own left hand. ‘Do it, or the first ball goes through Dee’s left eye. And I’m no Jean Jaureguy; I won’t miss.’

Marlowe reached round behind him, his right hand still in the air. He caught the hilt and just for a moment toyed with sending the blade hissing through the air, as he had back in Delft what seemed like an eternity ago. But now was not the time to test which was faster – the pistol ball or the steel; not with John Dee’s life in the balance. He threw it, sheath and all, to join the sword on the bed.

‘Where is she?’ Hern asked.

‘Who?’ asked Dee.

‘More games, magus?’ Hern chuckled. ‘After tonight, the Queen will be looking for a new fortune teller. Strange, isn’t it? Your skills and those of my people are so alike, yet you are fêted and lauded wherever you go, sitting at the Queen’s right hand and whispering in her ear. While the children of the moon are shunned and spat at and hounded out of the civilization of men. Now –’ he held the pistol level again – ‘for the last time, Dr Dee, where is your wife?’

Dee blinked, then frowned, then looked at Marlowe. Had this mad Egyptian come back from God-knew-where to pose imponderables; to debate philosophy? And what did Hern expect to hear? That Helene was with the angels, or wandering in purgatory or stoking the fires of Hell? And why should it matter to him?

‘You see,’ Hern went on, ‘Master Marlowe here tells me you can raise the dead. All I saw at Ely was smoke and mirrors, the sort of gimcrackery my people do at fairs up and down any country you’d like to name.’

‘But you couldn’t risk it, could you?’ Marlowe asked him. ‘Just in case my story was right and Dr Dee does indeed have powers . . .’

‘Powers!’ Hern spat on to the straw-strewn boards at his feet. ‘A pox on those. You are a bigger fraud than any of us,’ he growled at Dee. ‘You on the other hand –’ he pointed his other pistol at Marlowe’s head – ‘can indeed turn a tale. Your death will deprive the world of that and I am truly sorry to be the instrument of such a loss. The world needs stories, Master Marlowe.’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in Dee’s powers,’ Marlowe said.

‘Oh, I don’t,’ Hern assured them both. ‘But my own are limited too. What if Dr Dee didn’t have to bring his wife back from the dead because she wasn’t dead? Because my poison hadn’t worked? People have woken up from worse sleeps than hers; look at the Statholder, for example. Lily roused him and all had thought him dead to all intents and purposes. So . . . it might have been so with Helene. So, I came back to finish the job.’

‘Why?’ Dee croaked. ‘Why did you have to kill my Helene, the reason for my existence, half of my soul . . . ?’

‘Spare us the platitudes, old man,’ Hern sneered. ‘The reason for my existence is this.’ He used his elbow to jingle the coins in his purse. ‘We children of the moon put our heads in a noose every day of our lives because of your narrow laws and Puritan small-mindedness. All that makes it worth the risk is cold cash – the only God I need.’

‘I still don’t see . . .’ Marlowe began.

‘Helene Dee may have been this old fool’s reason for living, but she was actually a nosy busybody. I caught her listening at the foot of her stairs to our casual chat. She overheard a secret Mass being planned by that religious maniac Simon. She had identified him from the first; she was looking at him all night. She had the look of a hedge witch, I knew it from the start and when Rose told Balthasar she knew her in her old life, I knew for certain. She had a lot to lose. She’d have told you, Dee. And you would have told the world, if only so that no one could accuse you of being a secret Catholic yourself. I make my living secreting Catholic priests around this country and the Church pays me well for it. I wasn’t going to have all that jeopardized by a careless word. Helene Dee isn’t the first I’ve had to silence and I doubt she’ll be the last. Rose, for example, will probably end her days shivering with gaol fever in some stinking cell.’

‘Is that it?’ Dee blinked in disbelief. ‘You would snuff out a life to save your purse?’

‘Life is cheap, Dr Dee,’ Hern reminded him. ‘But a good paying proposition – how many of those come along in the average lifetime? Not many, I can tell you. I have had too many years of starvation and privation to want to have them again. A well-lined purse can keep you very warm at night.’

‘What about Maria?’ Marlowe asked. ‘She is having your child any day now. I was sure when you ran that it was any one of the Egyptians but you. You seemed to love her. I couldn’t believe you would go.’

Hern shrugged. ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ he asked. ‘Maria and I have been together a long time. She has borne me a lot of children, some dead because of the lean years, some left us, some still with the troupe. She will understand.’

Marlowe, remembering the woman, struggling with her aching back, wondering what this last child bed might bring, wasn’t so sure.

Hern levelled the wheel lock at Dee and took aim. ‘I really don’t give so much as a flying fart for anyone but myself, please believe this. I will kill anyone who gets in my way. The nights are too cold as my bones get older, Master Marlowe, and if you have no wish to find out how old bones feel, then please, step in front of me and we will see how a young man dies.’

Dee looked up at Marlowe. ‘Christopher,’ he said. ‘My life is a burden to me without Helene. Let him kill me. He can’t kill us both at one moment. Use my death to get away. Find the proctor. Get the constables. Don’t let Helene be unavenged.’

‘She needs no avenging, Dee,’ Hern snapped. ‘I know she lives yet. For the last time, Doctor – where is your wife?’

‘Behind you!’ Marlowe hissed.

It was the oldest trick in the book, but Hern didn’t know the Cambridge winds on college stairways and Marlowe did. The creak of the timbers made Hern turn, just for a second and Marlowe threw himself forward. A wheel lock crashed in the half darkness and Dee’s desk and Dee’s candles went flying. Two men struggled on the floor, wrestling desperately for the remaining gun with its single shot. Each time the muzzle moved in the grappling hands, Dee threw himself sideways, first left, then right. Then the muzzle disappeared as Marlowe forced Hern’s fist down to his chest. Locked together as they were, the explosion made them both jump and lie still.

Blood trickled out from the lifeless figure and crept over the straw.

Professor Michael Johns looked at his reflection in his window pane. In the glass it looked for all the world as though Kit Marlowe was at his shoulder, his portrait misty in the shadows across the room. He had hung the picture up to keep it safe, or so the story would go should anyone ask him, but it was already both a comfort and an irritant to his soul. The chapel bell at Corpus Christi was tolling the faithful and the not-so-faithful to prayer, but he wouldn’t be going to the morning service today. And probably no other day. Not in this chapel. He checked the leather on the beautiful volume of Bale’s Acts of the English Votaries. Michael Johns didn’t approve of bribes, although he acknowledged that they were how the world turned. He was due that morning to explain to Dr Norgate why he had not mentioned the sudden disappearance of Kit Marlowe, Quartus Convictus of Corpus Christi College in the University of Cambridge. So either Bale’s hideously expensive book would buy Johns a second chance to keep the post he loved or it would be a magnanimous farewell present for the Master. He hefted the thick volume up under his arm a little more securely as he reached for the rail of the stairs with his other hand.

The feel of the worn wood under his palm, the touch of the stair under his foot, the smell of the cool stone, the leather book, the paper, the humanity; the slow peal of the bell, the sound of the scurrying feet of the scholars, the whisper of their fustian gowns; the sudden shaft of thin sunlight through a small and dusty window of the stairs, the dead fly caught in a cobweb which had been there, unreachable high up in the rafters since he had been a scholar himself – all of this moved him so much suddenly that tears smeared his eyes and he could hardly go on. To lose all this, even the dead fly, would surely break his heart.

He shook his head to clear away the tears. ‘Kit, Kit, Kit,’ he muttered, and continued up the stairs.

‘What did you say your name was again?’ Dr Norgate peered over his spectacles at the sorry-looking huddle in front of him.

‘Kelly,’ the man said. ‘Edward Kelly. Personal friend and private secretary to Dr John Dee, late of this college and the Queen’s magus.’

Norgate frowned and swept off his glasses. ‘I have no doubt that Dr Dee is the Queen’s magus,’ he said. ‘But he is not, not has he ever been, to my knowledge, a member of this college.’

Kelly blinked. Since Ely and the disastrous night when Helene Dee died, he had been living on his wits. Nothing amiss there – it was what the man had done all his life – but Edward Kelly was staring forty in the face and perhaps, just perhaps, his old touch wasn’t quite what it was. He’d been run out of Ely by the Constable and his dogs. He had been set upon by angry fishermen at King’s Lynn who had accused him of cheating at cards. Him. Edward Kelly. Personal and private secretary to the Queen’s magus. Just because a man had clipped ears, it didn’t mean he was a bad person, but for some reason everyone seemed to think that he was some sort of confidence trickster. What ever had happened to Christian charity? That’s what he wanted to know.

‘Are you trying to tell me that John Dee lied to me? That he was never a member of St John’s College?’ Kelly was outraged. He hated it when people lied to him.

‘No, indeed I am not,’ Norgate said, winding his spectacles over his ears again with the intention of continuing his interrupted studies. ‘I believe that Dr Dee is a very well-respected member of that institution.’

Kelly thought for a moment. What was the man saying? Then he worked it out. ‘Tell me the truth, you old fool!’ Kelly snapped at the man sitting in front of him, so smug in his gold tassels, surrounded by his parchment and his inkwells. ‘Is this or is this not St John’s College?’

‘Heaven forfend!’ Norgate mouthed, deeply affronted. In the good old days, he would have crossed himself, but the world had turned.

Kelly’s knife was suddenly in his hand and he grabbed the Master by his ruff, hauling him upright. ‘Tell me the truth, you lying old shit!’

It was the last thing he said for a while, because a large leather-bound volume of Bale’s Acts of the English Votaries knocked him into the middle of next week. The book had Professor Michael Johns on the other end of it.

‘Are you all right, Master?’ he asked Norgate, stepping over Kelly’s recumbent form.

‘I believe I am.’ Norgate had turned several shades greyer in the past minutes and had aged by several centuries. ‘Thanks to you, Michael.’ He suddenly smiled and gripped Johns with both hands. ‘You’ve saved my life.’

‘Oh, I doubt that, Master,’ Johns said. ‘Who is this?’ He knelt by the fallen man.

‘Er . . . I can’t quite remember,’ Norgate said. ‘I didn’t catch the name, I’m afraid. He did have a tendency to mumble, as so many people do nowadays. But I believe he said he was looking for Dr John Dee, of St John’s. Wandering lunatic, I expect.’

Michael Johns wasn’t quite sure to whom the Master was referring, but chose to believe it was the man now groaning slightly on the floor. ‘He’s a convicted felon, I can tell that much at least,’ he said. ‘Look – clipped ears.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Norgate peered closer with some distaste. ‘I thought perhaps he’d been out in the cold; frostbite, perhaps. Something of that nature.’ He shook his head. ‘I really should try to get out more.’

Johns stood up, having removed Kelly’s knife for health and safety reasons. ‘About the other matter, Master,’ he said.

‘Other matter?’ Norgate blinked.

‘Christopher Marlowe,’ Johns reminded him.

Norgate frowned, then he smiled and clapped an arm around his protégé’s shoulder. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said softly. ‘I think we can let those particular sleeping dogs lie, can’t we? In light of my gratitude . . .’ And he nodded at Kelly, who had stopped groaning, but was breathing loudly and jumping slightly in his book-induced sleep.

Johns smiled and picked up the book that had felled him and handed it to Norgate. ‘For you, Master,’ he said. ‘For your collection.’

‘Bale!’ Norgate read the spine. ‘A particularly useful volume, eh, Michael? Thank you very much. I shall treasure it. Especially this dent in the back board.’ He smiled at the professor. ‘Yes, thank you very much.’

They were standing in silent companionship when the door of the study suddenly crashed back and Gabriel Harvey stood there, fuming as usual, his gown still billowing from the speed at which he had taken the stairs. He checked himself as he noticed Kelly sprawled on the Master’s carpet, where he had hoped, metaphorically, to find Johns.

‘Sorry, Master,’ he said. ‘Is this a bad time? I just thought you ought to know about Christopher Marlowe . . .’

‘I know about Morley,’ Norgate assured him. ‘One of the finest graduates of Corpus Christi. He has been at the College for a while now, Gabriel.’ He gave a mirthless smile at Harvey’s discomfiture. ‘Do try to keep up.’

‘But last night, sir.’ Gabriel Harvey tried to reason with the senile old fool. ‘At St John’s. You clearly haven’t heard.’

‘St John’s,’ Norgate thundered. ‘That’s twice this morning I’ve heard mention of St John’s.’ He pulled himself up to his full height. ‘This is Corpus Christi, sir. And I wish you a good morning.’

Dr John Dee stretched out his hands to the fire, which Sam Bowes had built up with what looked like half the winter store of the whole college. The heat was browning the paper of the book on the floor at the side of Dee’s chair and the room smelled pleasantly of warm wool, warm paper, warm people and cooked goose.

On this Christmas Day, Dee had set aside sad thoughts, as far as he ever could, these days. Helene had been a clever present-buyer and he had never had to worry about what to give anyone, from Bowes and the cook to the Queen herself. Helene even bought her own gift from him and was always charmingly astounded and delighted when she opened it on Christmas Day, as though she had never seen it before in her life. The book on the floor had been her gift to him, bought in plenty of time and hidden in her linen press, to be found later by the cook. She and Bowes had spent many anxious huddled minutes trying to decide whether to give it to him, but it had pleased him exceedingly. As neither of them could read, it had been a real gamble, but he had had his nose in it ever since breakfast, breaking off only to eat the goose.

‘I can’t believe he isn’t here with us,’ the cook suddenly said, from the corner of the room, where she was tidying up the remains of the meal.

‘Nothing’s forever,’ Bowes said, gruffly, scratching at the dripping glazed to the pan. ‘It’s not as if you knew him all that long.’

‘You get used to it, though,’ the cook said. ‘Having him around all the time. I thought . . . well, I thought he would be here today.’

‘He’s dead,’ Bowes said, brutally. Then, seeing the bent back of his master by the fire, tried to change what he had said. ‘I . . . I don’t mean dead, of course . . . I mean . . .’

Dee turned round. ‘Sam,’ he said, kindly. ‘We can’t go the rest of our lives not saying “dead”, can we? It will make conversation very difficult, especially in my line of business. Helene will always live while we remember her. And as for you –’ he twisted round further to address the cook – ‘I seem to remember that you ate more of your lamented friend than Sam and I put together, so please don’t waste your tears on him. Did you put some aside for Master Marlowe?’

The door opened and the scholar put his head around it. ‘Taking my name in vain, doctor?’ he said. ‘Is that goose I see? I hope you have saved me some.’

The cook, wreathed in smiles now that nice Master Marlowe was here, pushed a plate across the table. ‘They’re the crispy bits,’ she mouthed to him.

‘My favourite.’ He smiled at her. ‘What’s that you’re reading?’ He reached across and took the book from Dee’s hand. ‘“Even such as by Aurora hath the sky or maids that their betrothed husbands spy, such as a rose mixed with a lily breeds or when the moon travails with charmed steeds; or such, at least long years should turn the die, Arachne stains Assyrian ivory. To these, or some of these like was her colour, by chance her beauty never shined fuller. She viewed the earth; the earth to view beseemed her. She looked sad; sad, comely I esteemed her.”’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you think, doctor? I sometimes think I forced a few lines there, to make it scan.’

‘It was a gift from Helene,’ he said. ‘Bought for me before she . . . died.’

Marlowe raised a crispy bit of goose in the air as a toast. ‘Then it is perfect,’ he said. ‘She had good taste, your wife. May she rest in peace.’

‘Amen.’

The new Chamberlain, Willem de Groot, hated disturbing the Statholder at dinner. The children had kissed the royal guest, Rombertus van Uylenburgh, who they knew as Uncle Rom, and had scuttled away with their nurses, babbling over the presents he had bought them. Charlotte had chosen her moment, too, to leave the men to their talk. She was very tired these days and had never really recovered from her nightly vigils as her husband had slept like the dead.

William was pouring more claret for his guest when de Groot bobbed into view.

‘Apologies, Highness –’ he bowed – ‘but the Egyptian Balthasar is at the door. I told him you were dining.’

‘Nonsense.’ The Statholder dropped his napkin on the table and scraped back his chair. ‘One of the company of travellers I told you about, Rom, the ones who saved my life. I think I owe the man a few moments.’

‘Of course.’ Van Uylenburgh raised a glass to his host.

‘Where is he, Willem?’

‘By the stairs, Highness; he says he won’t keep you waiting.’

The Statholder swept out of the room and saw Balthasar Gerard standing at the foot of the stairs, still in his multicoloured Egyptian rags, bareheaded.

‘Balthasar,’ William boomed. ‘You are well?’

‘Very, sir, thank you.’ Balthasar bowed.

The Statholder was disappointed to see the man in tatters. He had sent clothes and money to the Egyptians, drip-feeding the gifts over the weeks that had passed since Lily had saved his life. He knew how proud they were, for all their thieving ways and everyone at court had instructions to turn a blind eye to that.

‘Are your quarters comfortable?’ the Statholder asked.

‘Perfectly, Highness,’ Balthasar said.

‘Tell me –’ William walked down the steps towards his man – ‘any news of Hern?’

‘None.’ Balthasar shook his head. ‘Any news of Kit Marlowe?’

‘Likewise.’ The Statholder sighed. ‘Odd that, both of them vanishing like will o’ the wisps. Now, what can I do for you?’

Balthasar straightened. ‘Unfinished business, I’m afraid, Highness. You have been so kind to us all, but I have a greater allegiance to others.’

‘Oh?’ The Statholder didn’t understand.

‘His Majesty King Philip of Spain.’ Balthasar wrenched a wheel-lock pistol from under his rags, then a second. ‘Not to mention –’ he fired point blank at the Statholder’s chest – ‘His Holiness the Pope.’ And he squeezed the trigger of the second gun. ‘Not to mention God. Not that there’s any chance of your meeting Him.’

William the Silent thudded back against the wall with the impact of both bullets. The blood trickled from his doublet, nose and mouth as his eyes glazed and he pitched forward to roll at Balthasar’s feet. It was something they argued about in the years ahead, whether it was Rombertus van Uylenburgh or Willem de Groot or the nameless guard on duty in the Hall that night who grabbed Balthasar Gerard first. Perhaps they all did. And certainly they all drove their boots into his body and head before dragging him off to a cell.

Van Uylenburgh turned the Statholder over, cradling the dying man’s head, the one still carrying the lead fragment of Jean Jaureguy’s attack. William clutched convulsively at his friend’s sleeve.

‘My God,’ he muttered through the coughing and the blood, ‘have pity on my soul.’ Then he raised himself up on one elbow, trying to focus on the far wall and the desperate, forlorn land that lay beyond it. ‘My God, have pity on this poor people. Where’s Kit? Where’s Kit Marlowe?’

Charlotte reached the head of the stairs. She was already in her nightdress and her braided hair was wild and flying. She saw two holes in the plaster above the steps from which blood trickled to the stone. She saw van Uylenburgh holding half her life in his arms. And from that moment, Charlotte Bourbon-Montpensier began to die too.

The Parker scholars sat around a table at the Brazen George that night. They’d drunk, they’d talked, until long into the spring darkness and the town of Cambridge had fallen silent around them. The stallholders had locked up for the night and Joe Fludd’s men wandered the night with their horn lanterns and tipstaffs, keeping a careful eye open for the children of the moon.

Kit Marlowe got up and threw his coins on to the mug-littered surface.

‘Are you sure about this, Kit?’ Tom Colwell asked. Whatever they had talked about that evening, the conversation kept coming back to it. ‘London?’

‘That place’ll kill you, Kit,’ Matthew Parker prophesied.

Marlowe clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘Not if I can help it.’ He smiled. ‘And if things don’t work out on the stage, I can always try to charm old Norgate again. He took me back once; he’ll do it again.’

He hugged them both, squeezing them tight and patting their backs, to comfort both himself and them. They had been part of his life for so long and he hoped this was not goodbye. It wasn’t as though they had not been in this very situation before, but even so it was an emotional moment and Kit Marlowe’s emotions always ran near the surface.

‘Look after yourselves, lads,’ he managed, and was gone into the Cambridge night to pack his bags and find his horse. The proctors, Darryl and Lomas, had long ago collapsed into their truckle beds and Corpus Christi stood black and silent in the watches of the night. He stood for a moment, savouring the quiet dignity of the place, the only sound the jingle of his horse’s bridle and the gentle scrape of a shod hoof on the cobbles.

‘Kit.’

He spun round at the whisper of his name, knife blade glinting in the flicker of torchlight on his stair. There was a quiet laugh in the darkness. Then the blackness resolved itself into a man, wrapped in a dark cloak with a hat pulled over his eyes. ‘Not lost your touch, I see.’ He raised his face to the dim light.

‘Nicholas Faunt.’ Marlowe relaxed slowly, sheathing the dagger. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

‘News from Delft,’ Faunt said, his face grim, his mouth tight. ‘The Statholder is dead.’

Marlowe’s jaw dropped a little and his eyes widened. ‘How?’ he asked.

‘Shot twice, through the chest, or so the report goes.’

‘You heard this from Minshull?’

‘And others,’ Faunt told him. ‘You never trust just one version of anything in our business.’

‘Who?’ Marlowe dare not ask, but he had to.

‘A Frenchman from Franche-Compté. We don’t know what his real name was, but he called himself . . .’

‘. . . Balthasar Gerard,’ Marlowe finished the sentence for him.

‘You know?’ Faunt’s voice was cold.

‘When I told the last of my stories to the Egyptians at William’s court, I calculated that a murderer would run. It could have been anyone. My mistake was in thinking that the murderer of Helene Dee was also the murderer – or potential murderer – of the Statholder. I didn’t think for a moment that there might be two men with murder in their hearts so close together . . . Do you think either of them knew? I . . .’ Marlowe was unable to go on. Words were his lifeline, but they had deserted him.

Faunt raised his gloved hand. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Kit,’ he said. ‘You saved the Statholder’s life twice. As for the third time? Well, it was not to be. These things happen in our business.’

‘To Hell with your business!’ Marlowe yelled at him. ‘You and Minshull and Walsingham. I’m sick of your business. Don’t come to me again, Nicholas. I don’t want to know.’

Faunt looked him up and down, noting the cloak, the gloves, the boots. ‘You’re dressed for the road, Kit,’ he said. ‘Where are you going?’

Marlowe had half turned to take the stairs, to begin his life all over again. He turned back. ‘To London,’ he said. ‘To see if, indeed, the streets are paved with gold.’

‘How will you live?’ Faunt asked.

Marlowe smiled and tapped his forehead. ‘By this,’ he said. ‘As always.’ And he clattered up the risers.

Faunt turned to the moonless Court. ‘Take care, then, Kit Marlowe,’ he said, half to himself. He walked out into the spring air and sniffed the breeze. There was always something new for Nicholas Faunt and his kind, and there was a hint of it now, blowing from the south. He looked up to where a candle was glowing in Marlowe’s rooms, clearly just a final stub in a chamber stick for him to see his way for one final time. He laughed quietly and turned on his heel. ‘Keep in touch, won’t you, Kit?’