Death by Disputation (A Francis Bacon Mystery Book 2) (15 page)

As the procession approached their pew, Tom heard hissing, sharp and intrusive, issuing from Steadfast’s lips. Abstinence was clucking her tongue at short intervals:
tsk tsk tsk — tsk tsk tsk.
John Barrow rapped his knuckles on the back of the next pew. More hissing rose from Wingfield’s group, where Tribulation, Resolved, and Obedient zealously bared their teeth like fierce little watchdogs.

Tom was shocked by the sheer rudeness of it. Why had no one warned him this was going to happen?

People glared at them. Some hissed back.
Shhhhh!
Tom wanted to slide under the pew. Steadfast dug his elbow into his side again. He had to join them; that’s what he’d come here to do. He thought a prayer.
I hope you understand what I’m about to do, dear Lord, because I surely don’t.
Then he clenched his teeth, peeled back his lips, and hissed.

He discovered instantly that joining in was far better than standing alongside wishing you were somewhere else. Hissing woke you up; it stirred your blood. He began to glare insolently back at the angry faces turning toward them. He recognized one, a student from St. John’s, a baron’s son. He’d never liked the pompous prancer. He stared straight at him and hissed even louder.

The ministers in the procession struggled to ignore them, keeping their eyes fixed steadily on their tasks. They finally reached the altar and placed the tall candle on its stand. The president said, “Alleluia! Christ is risen,” and led the congregation in the Easter Song of Praise.

Steadfast leaned close to whisper into Tom’s ear, “That broke their pagan spell for them. Now they can think about God with clear minds.” He grinned, satisfied with a job well done.

Tom grinned back, his teeth still clenched.

They got through the song. Everyone sat to listen to the reading from Romans. Tom heard whispering and saw Abstinence tilt her head toward Barrow. Something about the familiar way they leaned in to one another — a subtle curving of their bodies — stabbed a spike of jealousy through Tom’s gut. He remembered that Barrow was not yet thirty; the perfect age for a husband, and a heartier specimen of manhood would be hard to find. His broad face was matched by broad shoulders; his deep, warm voice perfectly tuned for whispering soft words into a woman’s ears. He would finish his term as a teaching master inside the year and move on to his own parish. He’d need a wife, a sturdy helpmeet. A wife like Abstinence Wingfield.

Tom hissed again under his breath.

“Do you think he understands a word of what he’s saying?” Steadfast spoke in a normal tone of voice, not whispering.

“Who?” Did he mean Barrow? What
was
he saying to Abstinence, that made her smile so sweetly?

“The minister,” Steadfast said. “Mumbling his way through the Gospels. Why doesn’t he preach? Probably because he only half believes what he’s saying.”

Tom grunted sarcastically because he knew it was expected. In truth, he never listened to the readings; he’d thought that was the point of them. The resonant droning was part of the majesty of a great church, like the candles, the flowers, and the soaring stonework. And it gave you a chance to rest between songs.

The reading ended. People began filing up to the altar for Communion, starting with the front pews. When their turn came, Tom tried to leave his hat, but Steadfast shook his head again. “Follow my lead.”

When they reached the altar rail, Tom started to kneel, but Steadfast pulled him up. “It’s only bread, Tom. We don’t worship bread.”

The minister refused to offer them the sacrament. They stood with their hats on, smiling calmly, waiting for what felt like an eternity to Tom. People in the front pews cried, “Shame! Shame!” Some started hissing, turning their tactics back at them.

What were they waiting for? People to start throwing stones?

Finally, Barrow nudged them along. Each member of their party followed suit, each pausing for only a moment, but all told creating a long disruption in the proceedings. If their goal was to break the spell of familiar ritual and shake people out of their old ways, they succeeded. The congregation turned from piety to fury, scolding and scowling, wagging their fingers and shaking their fists.

The Puritan party paced slowly down the aisle, led by Parson Wingfield. Tom saw faces twisted with disgust and anger as he passed. Faces he knew: his college butler, his mathematics master, the bookseller, the haberdasher who’d sold him his brown hat, Dr. Eggerley, and Mrs. Eggerley, who gaped at Tom as if she’d caught him dancing before her mirror wearing her clothes. Nearly everyone Tom knew in Cambridge was there.

He’d taken his small step this morning, sure enough. Right across the line.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tom stuck close to his desk for the next few days, pretending to be absorbed in his studies. In truth, he was ashamed of what they’d done on Easter Sunday. He didn’t trust himself to manage his face in front of Steadfast and the others. He pretended to be taken with a cold and stayed in his rooms, even skipping commons. He subsisted on the cold pies Dilly brought him from the vendor at Hobson’s when he went to collect Tom’s letters.

He spent his time writing long letters to Francis Bacon. He worked through everything he’d done and seen and thought and felt since he’d arrived in Cambridge, casting it as a sort of review before moving into the second phase of his commission. He told his spymaster everything except his affair with Margaret Eggerley, not wanting to tarnish her name, not caring if he sounded weak or inadequate for his assigned task. When it came down to it, he trusted Bacon to understand what had happened to him and to help him regain his footing.

He had no one else to talk to. He and Marlowe had avoided each other since their night in gaol by unspoken mutual consent. He’d seen him now and then in passing but never uttered so much as a “by your leave.”

Philip avoided him too, but ostentatiously, as if avoiding a rat-ridden dung heap. He’d never seemed to mind Diligence’s extra prayers, but then Tom was his own age and a member of his own social sphere. And Tom had changed before his very eyes.

Harder to deal with were Dilly’s worried looks, always peeking over his shoulder to see what Tom was doing, handing him his towel or some such with tender care. He tried to hide his concern, but the boy had no talent for deception. Steadfast, on the other hand, wisely left Tom to himself during this period. He seemed to understand that he needed time to recover.

When Tom went down to his desk on Wednesday morning, he found a note on a sheet of foolscap. He recognized the hand as Marlowe’s. He’d drawn a large X across the writing on the back, which looked like notes about geography, and thriftily written on the other side.

“Tom:

No need to lurk in your chambers any longer. I’m off. Or perhaps you’re hiding your burning cheeks after that anti-passion play you and your new friends performed on Easter. Nashe told me all about it. I wish I could stay to watch the main event, but I’m wanted elsewhere. I only waited for Old Eggy to sign my supplicat. We made a deal, the head and I: he would sign, provided that I go away. I’ll be back to collect my belongings and take my place in commencement. I’ve earned that much. Neither teaching nor preaching was ever in the stars for me. My destiny lies elsewhere.

We’ll meet again, never fear. If we miss each other in June, you can look me up in London. My name will soon be on everyone’s lips, your rosy pair included.

Don’t lose yourself in your work.

From Corpus Christi College, this April Fool’s Day

Christopher Marlowe.”

Tom could see that sardonic smile in his mind’s eye as he read. He smiled, feeling heartened, even though now his only ally, however ambiguous, was gone. The letter was a sign, as clear as a man could wish. It was time to dive back to into the fray.

He felt revived. Ready. He turned to the next letter, his daily instructions from Francis Bacon. He took out his penknife to slip under the seal but stopped short. The hair was missing. A jolt of fear shot through him.

Could Bacon have forgotten it? No. The man never forgot anything. His capacity was formidable. He could write a letter in French, debate a point of natural philosophy, and devise a scheme for reorganizing the court docket all at the same time. Bacon had not forgotten the hair.

Tom studied the seal more closely and sure enough, he found a slender crack. It had been lifted with a knife, warmed, and replaced; a tricky maneuver, easily botched. He opened the letter himself now and read it. Fortunately, Bacon had chosen to review the relative merits of the major commentaries on St. Augustine’s works, noting which Tom would find easiest to absorb quickly. Half of Bacon’s letters were like this. He had many ideas about the improvement of England’s educational system and seemed to think Tom’s sojourn in Cambridge was a good opportunity to test some of them out.

Had Dilly opened it or had he brought it to someone else? He couldn’t have gone all the way out to Babraham. He might have shown it to Steadfast, who knew enough in his second year to recognize mere academic counseling. Even so, the fact the letter had been opened showed that someone was suspicious of him. Why? Because he was relatively new? Because he’d been asking questions about Leeds?

He’d been lucky this time. Still, Tom cursed himself for a white-livered, crack-brained, double-dyed fool. He’d have to be more careful henceforward.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The month of April went by in a blur. The days grew longer and warmer, step by imperceptible step. Plum blossoms faded and fell, leaving tiny fruits in their wake; apple trees in turn burst forth in fragrant blooms. Carpets of bluebells sprang up in the woods. Bowls of spring greens and plates of fresh fish appeared on the table at commons. Swallows returned to their nests under the eaves, waking everyone at sunrise with their squeaks and twitters.

During the week between Easter Sunday and the start of Easter term, the college underwent a general reordering. Bachelors and junior Fellows who weren’t pursuing further degrees went home. Senior Fellows who had fulfilled their teaching obligations left to take up their new professions. Their fellowships had to be regranted, so the masters spent long days bickering in the combination room. Dr. Eggerley was gone most of the time, riding about the countryside consulting the wealthy gentlemen who endowed the fellowships.

The pink scarf got plenty of use during that interval.

Tom paid little attention to the politicking, so he was caught by surprise when Simon Thorpe appeared at his chamber door one morning. Bearing the bursar’s desk in his spindly arms, he marched across the room and placed it in the center of Leeds’s table. He looked about him with a proprietary air.

“I’m sure all of you have been wondering who would be assigned as your new tutor. Thanks to the never-failing consideration and wisdom of our esteemed headmaster, I have been entrusted with your care.” His lips twitched uncertainly between a friendly smile and a stern frown. “I’ll meet with each of you in turn after dinner to review your status.”

Something to look forward to, then. Tom wondered if Thorpe would be more careless about leaving that desk unlocked than Leeds had been. He still wanted a peek inside, if he could get it.

Steadfast moved back down to his room on the ground floor. The porter brought over Thorpe’s chests, leaving one by his desk and lugging the other up the steep ladder. A third chest arrived that Tom recognized as Marlowe’s. Thorpe said he’d taken it for safekeeping along with the portrait, which had been left wrapped in thick canvas. Thorpe unwrapped it and set it atop the chest under the eaves in the cockloft, where he could see it every morning when he pulled back his bed curtains. Tom caught an expression of longing on his face as he positioned it exactly so. He must feel the loss of daily discourse with his idol, even if he had gotten mostly insults.

When the new term began, he dove into the study of divinity as if his eternal soul depended upon it. His first move was to cross the yard and ask Abraham Jenney to give him extra tutoring for a shilling a week. Tom’s knowledge improved by leaps and bounds when Jenney let him read the Geneva Bible in English instead of the Latin Vulgate. Scripture was far easier going when you didn’t have to battle your way through a foreign grammar first.

After a few lessons, Jenney invited him to join one of his Bible study groups, another invitation Tom had been angling for. Study groups were a central element of radical nonconformity; not quite illegal, they were still frowned upon by the authorities. They skirted dangerously close in form and function to the secret synods in which rebellious acts were plotted.

Jenney’s group met in a stuffy room above a tavern on Petty Cury Lane. Seven or eight men sat in a tight circle with Bibles on their knees, closely examining the text along with their own faults and inner struggles. At first Tom feared being subjected to close examination by the group. He was a spy. What did he dare to confess? Then he remembered his first three years at Cambridge, spent whoring and gaming with the pack of lordlings. He had sins of every size, shape, and color to spread before the group like a cloth seller’s wares.

Steadfast became his constant companion. They walked miles every week, often with a few other right-minded lads, visiting the churches in the area to sample the sermons. Imitating his new friends, Tom learned to turn up his nose at pickled homilies from the Book of Common Prayer and sneer at paintings of saints or altars arrayed with candles.

He genuinely enjoyed Parson Wingfield’s impassioned preaching. Sunday mornings usually found him in Babraham, sitting with the parson’s family, next to Abstinence as often as not. He’d walked her home from the market once or twice; with her brother, of course, but still a pleasure. The three of them were becoming fast friends.

Every morning when he walked out the gate with Steadfast to go to class or study group or church, he kept his eyes and ears open, noting who they met and where, always seeking a way into the inner circle of the most zealous. Every evening when his chambermates settled to their books, he penned his letter to Francis Bacon.

He’d devised a strategy for disguising his reports. Bacon had given him a cipher to use, but Tom didn’t like it. It was fussy and complicated and the result was very cipher-ish. You’d know at once something was being concealed. He started sending bare lists of everything he could think of that might be useful, like the churches he and Steadfast visited and the names of the men who attended his study group. Then he hit upon the clever idea of using quotes from the Bible to paint a general portrait of his doings and the people he met. That method had the double benefit of helping learn his Book for study group. His letters might seem peculiar to the casual reader; so much the better. Bacon was a genius; let him figure them out.

Tom had been scrupulous about collecting his own mail and hadn’t detected any further tampering, but he kept on larding his letters liberally with quotations. It helped him maintain his assumed character and allowed him to keep the big Geneva Bible open on his desk as a cover for the times when Simon Thorpe would drift up to look over his shoulder.

Every night before Tom snuffed out his candle, he winked a salute to Marlowe’s portrait,  silent thanks for the lessons in tradecraft. The poet’s knowing gaze reminded him that he was an actor playing a dangerous role.