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now.
    ‘However,’ the Master went on, glancing in Johns’ direction, ‘representation has been made and these young men, fine young men as I know them to be, will be given their degrees when their wounds have healed.’
    No one dared cheer or applaud. Somehow, the moment was not right. Marlowe nodded to Johns a silent thank you. Then he went to unhitch his lads from the triangle. The Master and the Fellows marched away, followed by the scholars, whispering urgently to each other about what they’d just seen.
    ‘Next time, Master Marlowe,’ Lomas sneered as he coiled his whip away.
    Marlowe smiled at him, untying Bromerick’s hemp first. ‘Oh no, Master Proctor,’ he said. ‘In a few days I shall be Dominus Marlowe and if you lay a hand on me – or any of my friends – I will kill you.’ And there was something in his eyes that made Lomas believe it. Marlowe closed to him, grinning widely. ‘Not much moon again tonight, I’ll wager. You watch your back.’
    The three friends sat side by side on a bench in the Swan in Bridge Street that night and, despite the ale in front of each one, no one felt too much like celebrating. Henry Bromerick in particular had difficulty swallowing, his lips purple and swollen, his teeth scraping on each other as he tried to sip his ale. The corner of one eye was red where the cat-tip had caught it and the bruise spread down his cheek in one direction and in the other disappeared into his hair. The others’ wounds were not so easy to spot, but anyone could see from the way that they sat, stiff and unmoving, that they were in great pain, hurting under the grey fustian.
    ‘Come along now, gents.’ The innkeeper was clearing away the debris of earlier revellers. ‘Shouldn’t you lads be on top of the world tonight?’ He glanced at Bromerick and considered qualifying his remark, but thought better of it. ‘Masters of Rhetoric, or whatever it is you do?’
    Jack Wheeler had been keeper of the Swan since before these boys were born. He had seen generations of scholars come and go since the Queen was newly-crowned. In fact, as he never tired of telling everybody, he’d had the honour to present Her Majesty with a cup of his finest local brew on the occasion of her one and only visit to the town. He’d noted the Queen smiling at him but was too busy bowing low to be aware of her passing the cup to the Earl of Leicester who sniffed it and poured away its contents. Wheeler was still waiting for the letter with the lion and dragon seal which would allow him to write ‘By Appointment’ on his shingle. ‘By disappointment’ would have been more apt.
    ‘We got caught last night, Jack,’ Tom Colwell told him, in an admission of defeat. ‘Felt a taste of the cat.’
    ‘Not unlike your very own brew, Master Wheeler.’ Kit Marlowe swept in from nowhere, back in the roisterer’s doublet, remembering not to pat anybody on the back. ‘I’ll have a brandy. The same for my friends and . . .’ he looked around him, frowning. ‘Still no Ralph? Where is the toad’s harslet?’
    ‘Who?’ Matt Parker surfaced from under the smothering golden curls of the girl who he was, very carefully, balancing on his lap.
    ‘Whingside.’ Bromerick gave it his best shot, but his lips felt like blanc mange – very painful blanc mange – and he gave up.
    Marlowe smiled and ruffled his hair before hauling up a footstool to sit on. ‘What Dominus Bromerick is trying to say is Whitingside ; Ralph by Christian name. He’s not here.’
    ‘He wasn’t here last night either,’ Parker remembered, smiling at the girl.
    The rest of the company looked at him. Had this man just received a degree from the finest university in the world, or had he not?
    ‘That’s King’s men for you,’ Colwell grunted. ‘He’ll have been carousing at the Cardinal’s Cap last night. Meg –’ he half-turned as best he could to the girl perched on Parker’s lap – ‘doesn’t your sister work there?’
    ‘She