Marlowe was still asleep in John Dee’s second-best bed when the magus came trotting in, all smiles. He stood and watched the playwright sleeping. He loved and worried about the man in equal measure. Children had come late to the magician and, before they had come, had been Kit. He slept as though he hadn’t a care in the world, which Dee knew to be untrue. But if there was one place he felt safe, it was under Dee’s roof and so he lay on his back, one arm curved above his head, the other flung out across the empty side of the bed. With his eyes closed and his face turned to the faint rays of the sun coming through the lattice, he looked hardly half of his twenty-eight summers. After a moment, as if he felt the gaze touch his cheek, the man stretched and opened his eyes, treacle-brown and unfathomable, letting himself wake slowly, an indulgence he rarely allowed himself.
‘Doctor,’ he said, with a slight nod and laced his fingers together behind his head.
‘Playwright,’ Dee returned, before hitching himself up onto the foot of the bed and unfolding a paper he had had tucked up his sleeve.
It was an old joke, if joke it was, but it made them both smile.
‘Do you have an answer for me?’ Marlowe asked.
‘I do. And I don’t.’
‘Very enigmatic.’
Dee looked down his nose and crossed his eyes slightly. ‘I find enigmatic goes down well with the customers,’ he smiled. ‘I like to keep in practice.’
Marlowe looked fondly at the old man. ‘You don’t do yourself justice,’ he said, hitching himself up in the bed and rearranging the pillows at his back. ‘You need no tricks to do what you do. You are no Simon Forman nor Edward Kelly.’
‘Thank you.’ A shadow passed over Dee’s face. There had been many who had sought to usurp him and some had almost succeeded, the charlatan Kelly among them. His house in Mortlake had been burned down. His beloved Helene had been murdered. And yet, here he was, still. And here he would remain.
‘And, so …?’ Marlowe lifted a quizzical eyebrow.
Dee cleared his throat and shook out his paper. He settled his wire-framed spectacles on the end of his nose and began to read, in a rather high-pitched and rapid style. ‘I was made cognizant of the death of one Robert Greene, of Kyroun Lane in the County of—’
Marlowe held up a hand. ‘Stop. Stop,’ he said. ‘This is not the Coroner’s Inquest. There is no First Finder here. Just tell me what you found.’
Dee took a deep breath but was forestalled.
‘In your own words, please. Don’t read. Just tell.’
Dee looked a little crestfallen but nonetheless put away his paper. ‘As you wish.’ He looked a little wistfully at Marlowe. ‘Shall I tell you about my tests?’
‘Perhaps later. For now, just tell me what you found.’
‘Very well. It was unexpected, I can tell you that.’ He took off his eyeglasses and polished them furiously on a corner of the bedsheet. ‘I was expecting one of the metallic poisons, mercury, that kind of thing. Taken in large enough quantities, mercury can be quite dangerous you know. My scrying mirror has enough in it to kill the whole of the Court, had I a mind.’ He blinked up at Marlowe. Perhaps he had said enough. ‘However, it was quickly obvious that it was a vegetable poison we were looking for.’
‘You were sure it was poison, then? From the start?’
Dee looked surprised. ‘Did you have anything else in mind?’
Marlowe shrugged. ‘Suffocation?’ he suggested.
‘No. I was sure that was not the case. No discoloration. No sign of linen fragments or feather in the exudate from the nose and mouth. No blood, either. No, it was poison, I am certain.’
‘What?’ Marlowe had known a good many adroit poisoners in his time and none had used the same element. It made it at once easier and more difficult to solve. Poison was not a random thing, like a dagger in the back or a cosh across the head, nor yet a wire around the throat in a dark alley. Poison was planned. Poison was administered by stealth by someone who could be three counties away before death struck. Poisoners were cruel and cold; no one poisoned in the heat of anger.
‘Vegetable, of that I am certain. It could have been put in his food or drink.’
‘I understand he had been in his room, taking very little by way of sustenance for some time before he died.’
‘It wouldn’t need to be much, but I take your point.’ Dee sucked his teeth and thought carefully. ‘It would need, therefore, to be something that had little or no taste. Or something that is, in itself, food.’
‘For example?’ Marlowe ate to live and wasn’t really that interested in food for its own sake.
‘Mushrooms, for instance.’ Dee got up and left the room, coming back minutes later with a book under his arm. ‘See, here, the shaggy ink cap, as the country folk know it. It is edible, though I am not that fond of mushrooms myself, so cannot tell you how good it tastes. And here, on the next page, the death cap.’ He handed the book to Marlowe, who flicked from one page to another.
‘They look the same.’
‘Precisely. Are we sure that his landlady did not make a mistake?’
Marlowe flopped back on his pillows. ‘She didn’t strike me as a woman who would cook anything special for her lodgers. They would have what she was having, and like it, I would guess.’
‘In that case, if it was mushroom, it would have to be done on purpose. This is the season for them, of course. Though …’ again, Dee paused in thought, ‘I wouldn’t have thought that Dowgate was awash with mushrooms, edible or otherwise. And you wouldn’t say this lady would waste her money on bringing up delicacies from the country?’
Marlowe laughed, remembering the mean little house. ‘No. I would say definitely not. But, are you saying it is mushroom, then?’
‘Not for certain. I am simply giving an example of something which would not arouse Greene’s suspicion. It could be a soporific, given in enormous doses. But then, you have the problem of the victim becoming drowsy before the full dose was taken and then waking up. And, of course, valerian and other herbs with that effect would have to be taken by the bucketload to actually kill anyone. By the way, some of the stains on the shroud were from bone broth. No poison in it, but I was puzzled.’
‘Apparently, Dominus Greene was in the habit of sitting in his shroud while he worked. He was obviously a messy eater as well as more than usually eccentric.’ Marlowe was beginning to feel almost sorry for the man; he cut a sad and lonely figure.
‘Well, that explains that, at least. I’m sorry I can’t be more precise, Kit. But I think that the poor Dominus was poisoned by a friend’s hand. A stranger coming to his room with food would be unusual, surely.’
‘A friend.’ Marlowe swung his legs over the side of the bed and slid to the floor. ‘Thank you, Doctor. That may be the answer we have been looking for.’
‘Did Robert Greene have a large circle of friends?’ Dee asked. ‘From the little I have heard, he was rather a recluse, to say the least.’
‘He was,’ Marlowe said, slipping on his jerkin and lacing his Venetians. ‘He was a man with rather a lot of lukewarm enemies, myself included, and one very hot friend.’
‘Do you know who?’
‘Indeed I do,’ Marlowe said. ‘And I know just where to find him; Paternoster Row, if memory serves.’
‘He’s gone.’ The secretary had a mouthful of quill at the time and was staggering down some stairs under a pile of books.
‘Anywhere in particular?’ Marlowe asked. The house in Paternoster Row had four floors, linked by creaking stairs and the secretary was glad to reach the ground and put the books down. He took the quill out of his mouth and peered at Marlowe. ‘Who did you say you were?’
‘I didn’t,’ Marlowe said. ‘I was enquiring after Dr Harvey.’
The secretary produced a pair of spectacles from his gown and attached them to his rather beaky nose, making much play with winding the side pieces around his protuberant ears. He looked up at Marlowe, squinting. ‘You’ll forgive me,’ he said, ‘if I make the point that this conversation is going in circles.’
Marlowe gripped the man by his narrow shoulders. ‘Let’s get it on a straighter path, then,’ he smiled, icily. ‘Where has Dr Harvey gone?’
‘I cannot give out information of that sort,’ the secretary shook himself free and wriggled his shoulders to settle his clothing.
‘Really?’ Marlowe frowned. ‘What a pity.’ It was the work of a second to flick the dagger from its sheath in the small of his back and the blade’s tip was tickling the secretary’s throat.
‘Cambridge,’ the man spluttered, afraid to move. ‘Pembroke Hall. He’s staying with the Master, Dr Andrewes.’
‘There, now,’ Marlowe beamed. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it? When did he leave?’
‘Yesterday,’ the secretary said, through clenched teeth. He knew he had a tendency towards a rather wobbly Adam’s apple and he couldn’t be too careful.
‘By the North Road?’
‘Yes, sir.’ In the nick of time, the secretary stopped an incipient nod.
Marlowe stepped back and the dagger had vanished. He nodded at the man, whose nose was dribbling, and turned to the door, the one that led out to the weak sunshine of Paternoster Row.
‘Who shall I say was calling, sir?’ the secretary managed.
‘Machiavel,’ Marlowe said without turning. ‘But I’ll see Harvey before you do.’
It had been nine long years since Kit Marlowe had seen the spires of Cambridge and there had been a lot of Granta water under Magdalen Bridge since then. The university term had just begun and the town, from the old castle to Trumpington, was crawling with scholars in their grey fustian, carrying weighty tomes of leather and vellum, their fingers blue already with cheap ink, their linen beginning to grow as grey as their gowns, their hair wispy, without their mothers’ care.
For old times’ sake, the playwright sampled the ale at the Eagle and Child and looked across the narrow, cobbled lane to Benet College, the Corpus Christi which had been his home for nearly seven years. And what an apprenticeship that had been. He still felt the blood run cold in his veins at the memory of it, pushing against the bitter winds in the court; the winds that blew, men said, from Muscovy, without so much as a hillock to slow their passage or to warm their savage breath. He felt the whips of the proctors, their bone-ended thongs slicing through the skin of his back and shoulders. One man only had shown him kindness – Michael Johns, tutor in Hebrew. Where was he now? Where were any of them? They had all but vanished, the men who were boys when he was a boy. Matthew Parker would be in a rich incumbency somewhere, dining out on the fact that his grandfather had been the Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry Bromerick wouldn’t have gone into the Church, though old Dr Norgate, the time-honoured Master of Corpus in Marlowe’s day, had assumed they all would. The law perhaps? Yes, he was certainly stupid enough. And Tom Colwell? Now, Tom Colwell, Marlowe knew about. He had gone of the sweating sickness not long after he left Cambridge. Already, the ranks of the golden lads were thinning.
He remembered other things too. That slippery bastard Robert Greene toadying up to him, watching over his shoulder as Marlowe rewrote Ovid, trying out the mighty line that one day would make his name. Greene was a stranger to iambic pentameter, not to mention plot and character, and he knew that Marlowe could help him with that. What could be easier, Greene had thought, than to creep into Corpus Christi one dark night and steal the outpourings of a greater man?
And who had helped him in this? Marlowe remembered him, too, only too well; Dr Gabriel Harvey, the dubious don who had hated Marlowe from the start. He had pretensions, did Gabriel Harvey. And he recognized a threat when he saw one. He had made it his personal business to do Marlowe down. The son of a cobbler had no place in Cambridge at all. Why not unleash Greene to carry out his mischief and use Harvey’s undoubted power if Marlowe complained?
He watched them now, the scholars of this new generation. Had he ever been that young? Here he was, a Master of Arts of the greatest university in the world, and not yet thirty. Where had the years gone? He downed his ale and said a silent farewell to the Eagle and Child. Enough of yesterday. A man must live for today. And Pembroke Hall called.
The College of Valence Mary was the smallest in Cambridge and the third oldest. It nestled, grey and medieval, along Trumpington Street, its Gothic gatehouse adorned with ogee arches and the arms of Pembroke, the scarlet martlets on the blue and silver field. There were proctors lurking there, as there were at the gate of every college, waiting to catch the tardy scholar, late for dinner or in his cups. Kit Marlowe was neither of these things; nor was he a scholar in the current sense. But the proctors stopped him anyway.
‘Can we help you, sir?’ one of them asked. He had the shaved head and thick neck of a fairground wrestler and it sounded as though the word ‘sir’ cost him dear.
‘I doubt it,’ Marlowe said, breezily.
But the second man blocked his path. ‘What my brother-proctor means,’ he said softly, ‘is that you cannot merely walk into a college of the university, without so much as a by-your-leave.’ This man was half the size of his colleague, wizened and bent from years of peering round corners and listening at keyholes. His hands were white and gnarled, his legs bowed. He looked as if he couldn’t blow the froth off a frumenty yet, of the two, he was by far the more frightening. He had the look of a man who would stop at nothing when it came to doing what he thought was right. No matter how wrong that might be.
‘As a matter of fact, as an alumnus of this university, that is exactly what I can do.’
‘Oh?’ The first proctor loomed behind the second. ‘Which college?’
‘Corpus Christi. In Dr Norgate’s time.’
The proctors exchanged glances. ‘Never heard of him,’ the smaller one said.
‘Your loss, pizzle,’ Marlowe shrugged. ‘Now, are you gentlemen going to let me pass or am I to tell Dr Andrewes the reason for my lateness?’
The proctors shifted uneasily. ‘You’ve got an appointment?’ the shaven-headed one growled.
‘I have. As of …’ Marlowe waited for the college clock to strike, ‘Now. Good morning gentlemen,’ and he was already striding across the court.
‘Good God!’ Gabriel Harvey was looking out of Lancelot Andrewes’s leaded window onto the courtyard below. ‘I don’t believe it!’ His London fashions looked out of place in this scholar’s sanctum, and, truth be told, his ruff was killing him.
‘What is it, Gabriel?’ Andrewes had given up waiting for his steward. The buffoon never answered the Master’s bell; he would have to go. So the Master was reduced to pouring his own wine. He passed a cup to Harvey.
‘Either your Rhenish is particularly powerful stuff, or that is Christopher Marlowe.’
‘What is Christopher Marlowe?’ The Master was busy mopping up the spilled wine. It wasn’t as simple a job as it at first appeared.
‘There. Crossing the quad.’
‘I asked what, not where.’ The Master had a tendency to literalness which drove even those who liked him to distraction.
Harvey turned to his friend, keeping his voice level. He was, after all, this man’s guest. It hurt him to even think it, but how could anyone not have heard of Christopher Marlowe, for good or ill? ‘He’s an ex-scholar of Corpus. Although for the life of me, I don’t know how he ever reached that status. I remember, when we were both here permanently, as it were, there was some kerfuffle over his Masters degree.’
‘That’s right,’ Andrewes dredged his memory. ‘Didn’t the Privy Council intervene on his behalf? He has some powerful friends, does young Marlowe.’
‘He’s a string-puller, that’s for sure. The question is, what’s he doing here?’
There was a rap at the door, short, sharp, that brooked no waiting.
‘Attempting to gain entry, I shouldn’t be at all surprised.’ Andrewes bent his gentle, innocent gaze on Harvey, who managed to stay smiling, though only just. ‘Come in.’
The door swung open, oiled by the sweat of generations of fearful scholars oozing past its hinges.
‘Dr Andrewes?’ Marlowe bowed; not the casual, rakish gush of London and the Court, but the formal bob of a Convictus Secundus to a Master that no man forgets.
‘I am Lancelot Andrewes,’ the Master agreed. ‘Who are you?’
Marlowe took in the man. He was shorter than Harvey, older and with greying hair. His scholarship was renowned, his Puritanism legendary. The plain white collar and the black doublet spoke volumes. ‘Dr Harvey will have told you who I am,’ he said, ‘watching me cross the quad as he did. I apologize for barging in, relatively unannounced, Master, but it is Dr Harvey to whom I wish to speak.’
No one was fazed by the immaculate Queen’s English. All three of them knew that Marlowe could have delivered it in Latin or Greek – even Hebrew, at a pinch. Andrewes looked the man up and down. ‘Do I take it, Master Marlowe,’ he said, ‘that as an ex-alumnus of Corpus, you did not take the cloth?’
‘There is cloth and cloth,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘These simple sleeves will answer my calling. No, I did not take the cloth in the sense that you mean.’
Lancelot Andrewes was not a kind man at heart and many were the things which riled him; one of them stood before him now. He narrowed his eyes and put down his goblet. ‘You are a playwright, sir,’ he hissed. It was all coming back to him now. ‘A writer of fornication who fabricates for the delight of the unwashed. All Cambridge knows my views on the theatre.’
Marlowe chuckled. ‘So does the Master of the Revels. And Her Majesty, I am told.’ He clicked his tongue and shook his head. ‘Enjoy your time here, Dr Andrewes. There’ll be no advancement for you beyond this.’
‘How dare you!’ Andrewes bellowed, his face and neck purple with rage. Marlowe looked on with interest – it was always a revelation to see a mild man come to the boil. He thought that the citizens of Pompeii had probably seen something not unlike this when the top blew off Vesuvius, all those years ago.
‘I’m sorry, Lancelot,’ Harvey intervened. ‘My visit here has caused us both embarrassment. On behalf of Master Marlowe, I apologize.’
‘I do my own apologizing, Doctor,’ Marlowe said, ‘as and when it becomes necessary.’
‘May we use your library, Lancelot?’ Harvey asked. ‘Master Marlowe clearly wants a word in private.’
‘Private or public,’ Marlowe said. ‘It makes no difference to me.’
‘Make it public, then,’ Andrewes said. ‘Let’s all hear what this popinjay has to say.’
Harvey said nothing, so Marlowe crossed to the window and leaned forward, resting his elbows on one of the Master’s spartan chairs. ‘Robert Greene,’ he said.
Andrewes looked blank.
‘What of him?’ Harvey asked.
Marlowe looked at the man. He was greyer than when they had last met, this arrogant Fellow of the university who had set himself up as a critic of critics. His face had a permanent sneer, born of showing contempt for the talents of men who were far greater than he was himself.
‘He is dead, Dr Harvey,’ Marlowe said simply, ‘as you well know.’
‘A tragedy.’ Harvey leaned against the oak panelling, folding his arms. ‘A pity he never wrote one. Or anything else of note, come to that.’
Marlowe stood up. ‘He deserves better at your hands, Doctor,’ he said.
Harvey roared with laughter. ‘You couldn’t stand the man, Marlowe. He used to try to steal your fire; fumbling efforts, if memory serves. There was a time when you’d have cut your throat.’
‘But I wouldn’t have poisoned him,’ Marlowe said softly.
‘Poison?’ Harvey blinked. ‘Greene died of a surfeit of pickled herring and …’ he chuckled at the cup in his hand, ‘Rhenish wine.’
‘And you know this because …?’
‘I went there!’ Harvey said. He saw Andrewes looking at him, but he had said too much to backtrack now. ‘To his foul lodgings in Dowgate. Spoke to that trollop of a landlady.’
‘Why?’ Marlowe asked.
It was a while before Harvey answered. ‘I once had a certain respect for Dominus Greene,’ he said finally. ‘Scholar of St John’s, after all.’
Andrewes nodded approvingly. It wasn’t Pembroke Hall, but it wasn’t at all bad.
‘When did you see him last?’ Marlowe asked.
‘I saw his corpse, Marlowe, lying on his bed in a shroud.’
‘You just happened to be passing?’ The playwright would not let it go.
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘There is the Pestilence in Dowgate, Dr Harvey. Are you telling us that you would risk all that to visit the body of a man you had lost touch with?’
‘I don’t have to tell you anything,’ Harvey blurted out. ‘This is not the Inquisition and you are no Torquemada. Lancelot, this man has tried my patience long enough. Not content with reading the filth of Ovid when he was a scholar here, he has become Machiavel; dabbling in the occult, sleeping with the Devil himself, I shouldn’t wonder. And here he is, accusing me of … what, Marlowe? Murder?’
Marlowe could play the Biblical scholar when he had to. ‘The words are yours, Doctor,’ he smiled.
Andrewes lurched forward, eyes bulging in his head, but Marlowe raised a hand. ‘Forgive me, Master,’ he said. ‘I have outstayed my welcome. Gentlemen,’ he bowed again, ‘I’ll see myself out.’
For a long moment, neither man spoke after the door had slammed.
‘Once again, Lancelot,’ Harvey said, calmer now, ‘my apologies. Here I am, visiting an old friend and garbage like that follows me from London.’
‘Proctors, Gabriel?’ Andrewes was looking out of the window as Marlowe strode for the gate.
‘I’m sorry?’ Harvey didn’t understand at first.
‘Proctors of colleges are inestimable fellows, aren’t they? Good, for example, at clearing up such things as garbage that follows one from London.’
Harvey was not a little shocked. He had never seen this side of Andrewes before and had had no idea what depths lay beneath the benign scholarly surface. He found himself hoping he never had to delve any deeper. For now, a simple grunt of assent seemed to be all the Master needed, so he gave it. Andrewes smiled icily and remained, staring out of the window, until he knew Marlowe was no longer in the purlieus of the college. Then he raised an eyebrow at Harvey and walked over to the table. ‘Rhenish?’ he asked.
Kit Marlowe had not finished with Gabriel Harvey. There were too many unanswered questions. Even so, he would bide his time. It would be a week or so before The Massacre at Paris was due to open at the Rose and Philip Henslowe was always at his grouchiest in the run-up to an opening.
But a certain nostalgia had hit Marlowe, one of those sorts of mixed emotions that playwrights and poets found useful. He watched the willows trailing in the Cam, the ducks squawking and flapping as the punts passed by, carrying casks of wine and boxes of paper between the colleges. He sat for a while in the peace of King’s, the magnificent beams soaring above him and he listened to the choir.
Like all grown choirboys, he liked to think that it was not a patch on any of the choirs in which he had sung, but he really had to admit it wasn’t at all bad. There was a boy treble in the mix somewhere who would be a marvel in six months or so, as long as his balls didn’t drop too soon. Marlowe had been one of the rare ones; his voice hadn’t broken, just mellowed and matured until the day when he could simply gather up his music and move from the treble decani to the alto cantoris and then finally to the tenors. He closed his eyes and allowed the music to invade what was left of his soul. Sometimes, choir practice was better than the service; it came without all the claptrap that Marlowe tried to avoid.
Then, something invaded his brain that couldn’t be avoided and reminded him of why he was there. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ soared the voice of the almost-perfect treble. The burial service. Morley, unless he missed his guess. So, in the midst of life, he was yet again in death and some poor soul was waiting, wrapped in his linen, for these young voices to speed him on his way. Outside the dark was gathering but, for one man at least, the dark had come to stay.
Dusk was late to be out and about looking for lodgings. It made landladies nervous, to open the door in the gloaming to see a figure dark against the fading sky. He wandered the lanes, hoping he would find a welcoming house soon and, as he walked, he thought about tomorrow. He would visit Harvey again, this time without the pompous Puritanism of Andrewes in the background and do some straight talking. He was crossing Parker’s Piece now, the field that Trinity College had bought to feed its sheep and the setting Fall sun was gilding the turret tops of the colleges around him. Bells were tolling, summoning scholars to dinner in their halls, and Marlowe knew that the various butteries would be loud with the chatter of voices and the clatter of pewter on polished oak.
He saw the man ahead of him, indistinct in the half-light but wearing the unmistakeable gown of a proctor. As he got closer, he noticed that the heraldic device was gone from the man’s sleeve; he clearly had no wish to advertise his college this evening. He also saw the club in the man’s right hand. Kit Marlowe was no stranger to the smock alleys of London, the murky depths by the river where the lanterns of the night Watch never shone. He felt his dagger hilt at his back and slowed his pace.
What he did not see was the man behind him and he had no idea what happened next. He felt a sickening blow to the back of his head and he went down, his dagger half out of its sheath, blood trickling over his collar. He felt a boot thud into his ribs and another into his back. He grabbed a swinging foot and threw its owner over so that the proctor hit the hard ground with a crunch which echoed as his head made contact. He cursed, so he wasn’t knocked out, but down was half the battle. Another club came down, this time from directly above and for Marlowe, there was nothing but blackness over Parker’s Piece.
Tom Sledd was not chained to a wall and, as far as he could tell, nor was anyone else. That was the good news. Other than that, even with his normally resilient nature, he couldn’t really see anything to be pleased about. All around him were men and women in varying degrees of starvation, filth and degradation. They were wearing clothes, presumably the clothes they had been wearing when they entered the Hell that was Bedlam. Far above him, the roof was open to the sky and he heard the tolling of a bell. That would be All Hallows on the Wall, he guessed. Or it could have been a death knell. Sledd tried to keep his mind off his undoubtedly parlous situation by trying to work out how long each one of his fellow inmates had been incarcerated by the degree of raggedness of their clothes. It depressed him to discover that he could tell how long some of them had been there by whether their clothes were out of fashion. For instance, he asked himself, looking at a man in the far corner who was talking animatedly to a chair, who has worn a collar like that in the last thirty years?
When Jack and Nat had hurled him through the door, he hadn’t been too worried, being sure the mistake would soon be rectified. After all, he was perfectly sane. True, he worked for Philip Henslowe for what other people might describe as a pittance. True, he worked with actors who drove him to distraction on any given day; making them do as they were asked was like herding cats. Worse, probably. But, those things aside – and the fact that for some years he had stood in front of crowds of people whilst wearing women’s clothing – those things aside – and the fact he spent at least half an hour a day talking to Master Sackerson, who happened to be a bear. Those things aside, he was perfectly normal.
But now he had had a chance to look more closely at his companions and he was less sanguine. The man who had the straw mattress next to him was sitting calmly with his legs crossed and his back against a wall, writing on a tablet with a tattered quill pen. He had ink in a small bottle, which he held crooked in his little finger in the manner of scribes everywhere and he seemed oblivious to the chaos around him. His clothes were looking grubby but were of recent cut and his hair had not yet become long and bedraggled. Tom had engaged him in conversation when they were eating their gruel that first morning and he had been very civil and not a little amusing. But sane, certainly.
‘Good morning,’ Tom had begun. Not an original greeting, perhaps, but it was all he could come up with, given the circumstances.
The man had looked up at the high window where the late Fall sun was trying its best to shine through the grime and cobwebs. He had turned to Tom and flashed a lovely smile, one which transformed his face, if only briefly. ‘It seems to be,’ he said. ‘It’s sometimes hard to tell in here.’
It was nine coherent words in a row more than Tom had heard since he had arrived, so he persisted.
‘May I ask why you are here?’ he said, politely.
‘Oh, no,’ the man had said, sipping his gruel as if it were finest consommé. ‘We don’t ask that sort of thing here.’
‘Ah. But …’ How did one say ‘but you don’t seem mad’ without giving offence?
‘I suppose you’re thinking that I don’t seem mad,’ the man said, solving the dilemma. ‘I didn’t think I was but,’ he shrugged, ‘my wife thought otherwise and so, here I am.’
Sledd and Mistress Sledd occasionally did not see eye to eye. But to think of her having him put in Bedlam – impossible. ‘Your wife?’
Again, the man shrugged. ‘I suppose I can be a bit annoying at times. Poets are.’
And there the conversation had ended. The attendants came round to collect the gruel cups, kicking and slapping as they went when anyone got in their way. When it was Tom’s turn, he tried to explain, but just got a cuff around the head for his pains. He fell back on his lice-crawling mattress, stunned. From his left, he heard the poet murmur, ‘And that’s the other thing we don’t do here. We don’t say it’s all a mistake. Only madmen say that, or so Master Sleford tells us.’
Tom covered his head with his arms and wept. A sane man in Bedlam would soon be as mad as the rest.