The man had swung his head around, displaying a frown that suggested an inclination to throw the young man into the mud as a reward for his impudence – as soon as he put his member away. But he’d changed his mind after looking the student up and down. Perhaps it was Marlowe’s hard, dark eyes or humorless tight lips, the curious gravity of his juvenile beard or the imperious way he carried his slight frame but the man yielded meekly and provided the information the boy had sought.
‘Cross over Penny-farthing Lane, go past St Botolph’s Church, right turn on Benet Street, into the quadrangle.’
Marlowe had nodded and soon arrived at the place that would be his home for the next six and a half years.
He’d won his position as a Parker Scholar by dint of a laudatory performance at the King’s School in Canterbury. That first day in Cambridge he’d been the last of the roommates to arrive at their assigned room at the north-west corner of the quadrangle. His fellow Parker Scholars, Robert Thexton, Thomas Lewgar and Christopher Pashley, all poor as dirt like himself, had been arranging their meager possessions and haggling over the few pieces of furniture allotted them: two beds, two chairs, a table and three stools, some chamber pots and basins. They’d stopped arguing and had taken the measure of the slender, brooding latecomer.
Marlowe hadn’t bothered with pleasantries. His stare had darted around like that of a feral animal scoping out a patch of territory. ‘I’m Marlowe. Where’s my bed?’
Lewgar, a plump boy with a spotted face had pointed at a mattress and said. ‘You’ll be sleeping with me. I trust you’ll keep your breeches on at night, Mister Marlowe.’
Marlowe had thrown his rucksack onto the mattress and managed his first smile in days, a fleeting sardonic one. ‘Of that, my man, you can be sure.’
Marlowe stood facing his questioners with his chin thrust out and his arms quietly at his sides. In four years he had grown taller by the better measure of a foot and all traces of boyishness had vanished. His beard and moustache had grown thicker and framed his longish, triangular face in a rakish way. His silky brown hair fell just short of his starched ruff. Whereas most of his contemporaries were beginning to develop the bulbous noses and prognathous jaws that would mark their later years, Marlowe’s features had remained delicate, even boyish, and he carried his good looks with an air of haughtiness.
The Master of the college was flanked by three older students taking their MA degrees, all of them with the countenance of sadists aiming to skewer their prey. Once the thesis for the disputation was given, Marlowe would verbally joust with them for four grueling hours and by supper his fate would be known.
Someone in the audience insistently cleared his throat. Marlowe turned. It was his friend, Thomas Lewgar, who would undergo the self-same ordeal the following day. Lewgar winked his encouragement. Marlowe smiled and faced his panel.
‘So, Mister Marlowe,’ the Master began. ‘Here is the final thesis subject of your baccalaureate. We wish you to consider the following and commence your disputation without delay: According to the law of God, good and evil are directly opposed to one another. You may begin.’
Marlowe could hardly suppress his delight. The corners of his mouth curled up, ever so slightly, but enough to unnerve his inquisitors.
The cat’s in the bag. The degree is mine.
At the dining hall, the 120 faculty and students of Benet College habitually sat with their own kind. The dirty leaded windows filtered some of the early evening light but as it was spring, the Sizars had no need to light the candles yet.
At the far end of the hall the Master and Fellows sat at High Table on a raised platform. The four Bible Clerks, holding the most prestigious scholarships with the highest stipends, sat directly beneath the Master. The six Nicholas Bacon Scholars came next. Marlowe sat at the adjacent table with the remaining scholars, including his Parker lot. The Pensioners, all rich lads, filled out the tables in the rest of the hall. Unlike the Scholars, they paid their own commons and other expenses. Their interest in the academic life was generally marginal; their lot in life was to drink, play tennis and accumulate just enough education to return to their country seats as Justices of the Peace. Rounding out the student mix were the Sizars, poor lads who were clever enough to attend university but not meritorious enough to receive scholarships. They had to wait on their fellow students for their tuition, bed and board.
Marlowe was high-spirited and ordered up extra bottles of wine for his table. He could ill afford them but his Sizar, a first-year boy, dutifully made the entry in Marlowe’s accounts for future reckoning.
‘I suppose all of you can have a few more sips, but the lion’s share is for Master Marlowe,’ Marlowe called out to his table.
‘It sounds grand, doesn’t it? Master Marlowe!’ his friend Lewgar exclaimed. ‘By this time tomorrow I pray that I too will have passed my disputation and have received my BA. I shudder to think what will become of Old Tom if I have no degree to carry back to Norfolk.’ Lewgar still had spots on his hairless face and remained a beefy lad where most of the others were rail thin. Though Marlowe was notoriously intemperate and prone to pounding his colleagues with his sly, withering sarcasm, Lewgar had remained on his amicable side by dint of perennial self-deprecation.
From across the table, an older scholar, two years Marlowe’s senior, a serious fellow taking his MA degree, piped up, ‘Rather good show, today, Marlowe. Almost as impressive as my own final disputation.’
Marlowe raised his goblet to the man. Though he had seen him nearly every day for four years, he could honestly say he hardly knew Robert Cecil and, in fact, Cecil was one of the few men in Cambridge who intimidated him. Yes, of course, his father was Baron Burghley, the Queen’s foreign secretary and by rights the most powerful man in a land without a king, but there was more to it than that. Cecil was as strong as a plowman, as smart as any of the Bacon Scholars and as confident in his own skills as Marlowe himself.
But Marlowe was Cecil’s better in one area of endeavor and he was boozily grateful when Cecil called for him to demonstrate.
‘Go on, Master Marlowe, do us the honor of one of your verses on this, the occasion of your elevation.’
Marlowe rose and steadied himself with a hand on the table. ‘Master Cecil, I have just the passage from a small work in progress, my first stage play.’
‘Have you been dabbling, then?’ Cecil asked.
‘As his bedfellow,’ Lewgar cried, to howls of laughter, ‘I can attest that he dabbles all night long!’
‘Quiet, then,’ Cecil demanded of the table. ‘Let us hear what our man hath wrote and, if it is not to our liking, I will let a birdie fly off to Court to let our Good Lady know that her schools are in disrepair.’
Marlowe raised his arms melodramatically, waiting for his moment, and when all eyes were on him he began.
‘What is’t, sweet wag, I should deny thy youth,
Whose face reflects such pleasure to mine eyes,
As I, exhaled with thy fire darting beams,
Have oft driven back the horses of the night,
Whenas they would have haled thee from my sight.
Sit on my knee and call for thy content;
Control proud Fate and cut the thread of Time.
Why, are not all the gods at thy command
And heaven and earth the bounds of thy delight?’
He grinned, drained the rest of his wine and sat back down, waving for the Sizar.