Martin Stephen - The Conscience of the King

He had acted too early! One more step up the ladder and the whole bulk of Gresham's upper body would have been there to meet the blow. As it was, a normal man would have flung his head back as the flicker of a blade headed for his eyes, thereby probably unbalancing himself and falling backwards off the roof. Instead Gresham leaned forward and parried the blow with his own sword, inches from his cheek. He held the other's blade, slammed his wrist down to a rasp of steel and waited for the hilt to engage with the hilt of the other sword. A fierce, vicious twist. The other's sword flew through the air, over the ornate stonework. It must have fallen on earth. There was no noise. The man was spreadeagled below Gresham now, struggling for a knife, a hand clutching the timber of the roof ladder. Pitilessly, Gresham brought his blade back, selected his spot and plunged it through the neck of his assailant.

Kill or be killed. This man was no innocent. He had made his choice, taken his chance. And he had lost. A spasm passed through the prone body, the hand gripped even tighter to the ladder for a moment, and then let go. His body slid down the smooth surface of the roof, tumbling into the narrow passageway at its foot.

Gresham looked around. A ghostly mist, some fifteen or twenty feet high, shrouded Cambridge, the moonlight picking out its every curl and fold. Housetops and church spires poked out from the enchanted smoke, glinting with moisture. The throbbing in his head began, the throbbing he knew would develop into an agonising pain, the pain he knew came with the killing and the fear.

He walked down the opposite roof ladder. To his surprise, he found the man still alive. Dying, certainly, blood pouring uncontrollably from his neck, but still living. With an agonised last puking of muscles, the man turned his head towards Gresham, the blood thickening and spurting as it streamed from the wound.

Gresham stopped, as if struck by a blow.

It was Heaton. Nicholas Heaton. Cecil's messenger. The man who had been so confident of serving the King. And who was dying, covered in blood, an accomplice to Marlowe, wearing the livery of the King! *What does your master have to do with this man Marlowe?' hissed Gresham, hauling Heaton up to face level, dagger pressed against his chest. Heaton's eyes were glazed, blinking. With a superhuman heave Gresham hoisted him on top of the ornamental stonework that fringed the wall, hanging him over it, facing the terrible drop to the ground. His thick blood fell before him, showing the way, leaking from his torn neck.

'Will you tell me now?'

But Nicholas Heaton was dead, carrying whatever secrets he held with him. There was much here for Gresham to think on.

Minutes later, and with a final heave, Gresham pushed at the body. It slid, about to fall to the ground, but hung for a second by the tunic, ludicrously, off a cone of carved stone. Then, with a ripping and tearing of cloth, it slid over the edge. What was it he had said to Heaton all that time ago, at their last meeting?

Take care. Those who rise to greater heights have far further to fall.

Marlowe had gone. The servant still lay there, comatose. The belt, severed with stabbing rasps of a knife that Gresham must have missed, lay at his feet.

Well, if Marlowe was in league with King James, killing him might have been a murder too far, until Gresham could ascertain the nature of their link. Much more here to provoke thought.

Clutching his satchel, Gresham finally left the chapel. One servant would be found pulped on the ground the next morning. The other would probably still be in the roof. Did King James hold enough power to keep what had happened secret? Or would Cambridge be buzzing tomorrow with strange murders and men falling off college roofs?

Gresham, the pain growing in his head, decided he didn't care either way. He had a satchel to open.

September, 1612 The Merchant's House, Trumpington

"How could you leave the college with no guard? On your own?' Jane was incandescent. He had never seen fury like it. To her, a vision of him slumped like a broken doll at the foot of the college, the sheer madness of his going out to meet Marlowe, felt like a betrayal of their love. 'Do you think your wife and children want to live without you? Are we so little to you that you can throw basic caution to the wind? How would you have spoken to me if I'd run off into the night with your children, on the word of a drunken informer, because in the final count excitement mattered more to me than my love!'

She was right. That made him even more angry. Mannion was no help. He had said nothing about Gresham rushing off into the night, but he looked mournful and reproachful, like a vast cow that had not been milked or a dog whose owner had suddenly ceased to walk or feed it.

The letters, the damned, cursed letters, had been there in Marlowe's satchel, in lascivious detail, the hand presumably that of the King himself.

'Well? Will you give the letters to your Bishop, as he asked?' said Jane. Was her anger subsiding, or did she merely have it under her control?

'Probably. Possibly. I'll think on it.' He was trying to show his hurt at her failure to understand why he had had to go out into the darkness and confront Marlowe. So often there was only the one chance!

Why are men such children7, thought Jane. If a child's tantrum is ignored it loses its power. So she would ignore his tantrum. With a massive effort she reined in her anger.

'Are the other papers useful?' He had shown them to her so she was in a position to make her own judgement. By asking him for his thoughts she placed herself below him. Well, God had made the first mistake in creating women second. Who was she to deny God? Except that by a subtle use of her second place she might still lead this damned fool of a man into thinking he had made the right decision on his own.

Useful? They were two play manuscripts. Both, apparently, the text of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, but in two different hands. Neither bore even a passing resemblance to the hand of Bacon, or of Andrewes. Gresham's interest had waned.

'No. Not useful,' he had confided. 'Confusing. Yet Marlowe kept these papers alongside those that damn the King of all England and Scotland as a lusting sodomite. They must have some value I don't know of. I need to meet Shakespeare. In some way I don't understand, he's a key to the sub-plot of this whole business.'

'He's renting rooms in the old Dominican Priory, at Blackfriars.' It was Mannion. 'And he's back there. I heard, yesterday. Just after you'd gone into your feast. There's talk he's trying to buy them. Quite the little property magnate, our Master Shakespeare. You know he's been buying up half of Stratford?'

Gresham didn't know.

'There's too much we don't know.' Jane and Mannion noted the use of the conciliatory 'we". Perhaps the storm was over. 'What I do know is that I want to meet Master William Shakespeare again.'

September, 1612 The Dominican Priory, Blackfriars, London

The Priory was a warren of a building. Shakespeare was renting rooms over the east gate. They had left The House by a back entrance, disguised as masons in rough jerkins and with hammer, mallet and chisel carried around their belts. It was a good disguise. A hammer was a handy weapon. Strapped across his back, hidden under the jerkin in a special harness made of the finest Spanish leather, Gresham had strapped a sword, with a dagger positioned just above each ankle. He had not bothered to ask what weapons Mannion deemed suitable for the outing.