A Prisoner in Malta (23 page)

The class was past its time, and, as usual, half the students were asleep. Everyone else shifted and sighed in an effort to make the professor understand that the class was over.

After several more sentences, the professor ground to a halt in the middle of a phrase. He was staring directly at Marlowe, as if he had just noticed the new presence in his class. He looked around then at his comatose audience and sighed.

“Very well,” he grumbled. “Dismissed!”

Many a man jumped to his feet. Others forced themselves awake and stumbled out of the room. When Marlowe was alone with Bartholomew, he strode boldly toward the professor.

Before he could speak, he saw Bartholomew's eyes dart suddenly to the left, in the direction of a side door. It was suspiciously ajar. They had an audience. Bartholomew spoke in a deliberately theatrical manner because of it.

“So you have decided to apply yourself to this class, have you?” he demanded before Marlowe could speak.

“I—yes.”

“You look familiar, but I cannot place the name.”

“It's Greene, sir,” Marlowe offered. “Robert Greene.”

“We had a student by that name only a few years ago,” Bartholomew said slowly.

“I am that man, sir,” Marlowe answered formally.

“I thought you were in London,” Bartholomew said, “writing plays.”

“Yes,” Marlowe said quickly, “but I have come to Cambridge on a matter of financial importance to me. You have a student in this class, I believe, by the name of Walter Pygott. He is the reason I visit your classroom today. I had hoped to see him here, but he was not in evidence. Could you tell me where he might be?”

“Yes, well,” Bartholomew stammered in his usual manner. “You see, the fellow—why is it you wish to see him?”

“As I say,” Marlowe continued, his eyes flashing toward the open door, “my motive is a simple one: he owes me a great deal of money. Upon several visits to London, he required of me large sums for gambling and whoring, sums which he has yet to repay and which I have come to collect.”

“Ah.” Bartholomew nodded. “That does sound like our Master Pygott. Alas, I fear your journey has been in vain and your debt must be forever unrequited: Walter Pygott is dead.”

“Dead?” Marlowe grumbled.

“Murdered, it is said, by another student.”

“Well. I must say I am not surprised. He was a foul boy.”

“Just so,” Bartholomew agreed.

“I suppose I shall have to pursue his father, Sir John Pygott.”

“I suppose.”

“By the by,” Marlowe drawled, “who killed him, do we know?”

“A man by the name of Marlowe,” Bartholomew said. “One of our better students.”

“Marlowe, yes,” Marlowe answered, “I've heard the name. Remarkable poet, unbeatable swordsman.”

“His poetry was lacking in dignity,” Bartholomew said stiffly. “But I do believe there are few in England who might best him at swordplay.”

“And where is Mr. Marlowe now?”

“Fled,” Bartholomew answered. “On a Portuguese ship, some say.”

“And it is certain that he is the murderer?”

“Certain?” Bartholomew said lightly. “Pygott's body was found in Marlowe's room. Stuffed inside the mattress.”

“Stuffed inside the—surely not. Unless it was a monstrous huge bed. Pygott was not a small man.”

“Still, I have told you the fact of the matter.”

“But this is insane. This Marlowe, his reputation is not that of an idiot. He would never have done such a thing.”

“I may be inclined to agree.” Bartholomew began to pack up his papers. “I have another class.”

“Yes.”

Marlowe took one last look at the open door. The gap was wider, and there was a visible shadow of two figures.

“Are there other students who might have wanted to kill Pygott?” he asked Bartholomew. “Aside from Marlowe, I mean.”

“Dozens,” the old man answered instantly. “But why would that interest you?”

“If I can present the true murderer to Pygott's father,” Marlowe said a little too loudly, “that could get me my money.”

“You catch his son's killer,” Bartholomew concluded, “and he might pay the son's debt.”

“Yes.”

“It's the right idea,” Bartholomew agreed, eyes shifting once more to the open door, “but I cannot help you. And I am late for my next class. I am leaving now, through those doors there.”

Without another word, the professor was off in the direction of the open door. There was an all-too-obvious scuffling of feet beyond the doorway, and the figures who had been listening disappeared seconds before Bartholomew pulled the door wide and shambled into the room beyond.

Marlowe folded his arms. Bartholomew was a riddle. Did he know more than he would say?

He seemed unwilling to help at all, at least with spies listening in the shadows. Marlowe turned his mind to the students most affected by Pygott's bullying.

He knew Richard Boyle had been especially troubled. Marlowe had gone to the King's School with him in Canterbury. Then there was Benjamin Carier, a shy, introspective man from Kent known to have Catholic leanings. They seemed a good place to start.

Hearing the noise of approaching students behind him, Marlowe realized that another class was about to begin. He hurried out of the room through the same door that the professor had used, partly hoping to catch a glimpse of the shadows that had hidden there. The room was, however, little more than a hallway, and it opened onto a narrow path between buildings.

Marlowe paused before leaving the small preparatory room, wondering who had hidden there, and why. But the more pressing issue, questioning his old school chum Boyle, and the Catholic sympathizer Carier, hastened him outside and onto the path.

There were no students about in the narrow passageway. Marlowe took a small gate between two other buildings and moved quickly into the larger common yard. The sun was out, and late students were hurrying to classes. Several flew by Marlowe before he was able to stop an older one, an upperclassman, dressed in burgundy red.

“Pardon,” he said without ceremony, “but I must find my friend Richard Boyle. It is a matter of grave urgency. Do you know where he is, what class he's in now?”

“Boyle?” the man asked, affronted that he'd been delayed in his forward progress. “Never heard of him.”

With that, the man broke away and hastened toward the nearest building.

“Boyle's sick,” someone else called out.

Marlowe turned to see a small man, a boy, really, with his arms filled with books, too many to carry happily.

“Sick?” Marlowe asked.

The overwhelmed boy lowered his voice. “With drink. He's in his room.”

The boy rushed away, dropping and retrieving several books as he went.

Boyle had enough money to live on campus, in one of the finer rooms, having descended from an ancient landed family. Marlowe had been to the rooms several times, but he'd been tremendously drunk. He had to concentrate to remember a window looking out toward St. Benet's. His back to the church's general direction, gauging which of several windows might be Boyle's, he took a guess and hurried into that building.

Up a narrow set of stairs, only one flight, he was presented with several doors.

“Boyle?” he called out softly.

No answer.

“Boyle!” he shouted.

“Christ!” came the answer. “What is it?”

Marlowe judged that the sound had come from behind the second door on his left. He stepped quickly, grabbed the handle, and thrust the door inward.

“You are not in class,” he said plainly, before his eyes adjusted to the sight of Boyle's room.

The deranged disarray of the place was alarming. Marlowe feared, for a moment, that fiends had destroyed all of Boyle's belongings. And there lay Boyle himself, sprawled out as if someone had dumped a pile of dirty laundry on his bed.

The pile of laundry groaned, and tried to sit up.

“What
is
it?” the pained voice demanded.

“I say that you are not in class,” Marlowe repeated. “You do not take your education seriously.”

Instantly Boyle was up, dagger in hand, eyes focused, his stance firm on the floor. His hair was a wiry halo, his face smeared with grease, and his blue-and-white-striped tunic was made almost entirely of spilt food.

“Is this serious enough for you?” he hissed.

Marlowe merely shook his head. “Put that away.”

Boyle blinked. He tilted his head, trying to get a better look at the face behind the beard.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“Will you sit down?” Marlowe responded.

Boyle held his dagger steady, and scratched his backside with the other hand.

“No,” he said slowly. “I do not believe that I will sit down. What's your business, then? Because it's not to hasten me to class. I'll get my paper whether or not I go to a single lecture. And let me tell you why.”

“No need,” Marlowe said, edging his words with boredom. “Your father's family has land in Herefordshire and your mother gave you the diamond ring that you never remove from your hand. I know that you can purchase your degree. But you won't, because you fear that a boyhood compatriot of yours, one Christopher Marlowe, might best you among the regions of knowledge. That is a thing you cannot abide. Ergo, you languish here, in this filth, because you must, and not because you prefer it.”

Boyle hesitated, then lowered his dagger.

“There is only one person I know,” he said, trying not to smile, “who uses ten words when two would do, and who thinks so highly of himself as to speak his own name in the third person: a whoreson bastard called Marlowe.”

Marlowe nodded. “I see no reason to impugn my parents just because I've caught you drunk in the middle of the day.”

“Drunk!” Boyle roared. “I'm not drunk. It's much worse than that, I'm waking up from being drunk. I've a dead rat taste in my mouth, a bed full of piss, and a head so stony I can barely stand to stand.”

“Then, as I was saying, why don't you sit down?” Marlowe said again.

“Right.”

Boyle fell back on his bed. The bed nearly collapsed.

“Where have you been?” he managed to ask Marlowe, “and what are you doing in that ridiculous getup?”

“I have been abroad, finding a wider education than I ever could here in this place,” Marlowe began, “and I'm disguised as you see me to avoid being arrested for a murder that you committed.”

Eyes closed, dagger across his chest as if it were a flower on a corpse, Boyle managed to mumble, “Which murder is that?”

“Walter Pygott's,” Marlowe answered loudly, “you know very well.”

“Pygott?” Boyle opened his eyes. “Hang on a moment. You're the one who killed
him
.”

“No, in fact, I am not.”

Boyle struggled to sit up once more.

“And that is why,” he said, shaking his head to clear his brain, “you visit me here?”

Marlowe stood very still.

“You think
I
killed Walter Pygott?” Boyle growled.

“Well,” Marlowe confessed, “you're not my only choice. I think Carier got the worst beating of anyone on campus. I suspect him too, if that makes you feel any better.”

“It was Carier, then,” Boyle yawned. “Pygott was caught cheating on an examination. Carier saw it. He went to Professor Bartholomew on that account, but nothing was done about it. And after that, Pygott nearly killed Carier, as you know.”

“So you didn't kill Pygott?”

Boyle sighed. “I wish I had done. I hated him. What a worthless lump of flesh he was, always bullying the younger boys, picking fights and then running to his father, or worse: to Bartholomew.”

Marlowe's head snapped back.

“What? Bartholomew?”

“They were thick,” Boyle said, then belched.

“How do you mean?”

“Pygott was in Bartholomew's rooms quite often,” Boyle yawned. “Crying.”

“This is—this is very puzzling.” Marlowe stared down at the list.

Boyle sheathed his dagger, shook his head violently for a moment, and then stood.

“Give me a moment,” he growled. “I've got to wash my face. Then we'll go to St. Benet's.”

“What? To church?”

“Wait!” Boyle lumbered forward and nearly toppled his washbasin. He spent what seemed to Marlowe an eternity splashing his face with cold water and fixing his clothing.

“Now,” Boyle said at last. “Shall we?”

“Why on earth are we going to St. Benet's?” Marlowe asked, irritated.

“Carier is a devout man,” Boyle mumbled, heading for the door. “He prays every morning about this time. Likes to make a show of it. We'll look for him there first because I'm certain that's where he is.”

Marlowe followed Boyle out into the hall and down the stairs. The building was fairly quiet and their boots clattered on the stone steps.

In no time at all they were out of the building and across the lawn, headed toward St. Benet's. The tower of the church loomed above the yard. The Saxon archway that connected that tower to the rest of the church seemed cold.

Marlowe had a strange sense of foreboding as they drew nearer the spot where Pygott had been killed. As they came to the front door of the chapel, a sense of impending danger provoked him to pull his dagger from its sheath and keep it discreetly by his side.

Boyle led the way. He pushed through the heavy wooden door. It creaked, the hinges complaining. The oddly darkened chapel was illuminated only by the light through the high, clear windows; no candles were lit. There was a single figure, on his knees, close to the stone slab altar near the spiral staircase, apparently praying.

“Carier?” Boyle whispered loudly.

The man did not move.

“It's Boyle. And Marlowe.”