The other Parker scholars were whimpering in their cubicles as the reality of morning began to bite. The dawn chorus which had awoken Marlowe had not been the light twittering of the swallows returning to the eaves above his window; it had been the internal rumblings and crashings of his room-mates’ bowels and he had the choice of getting out into God’s fresh air, or stifling in second-hand alcohol and the shrimp pie sold by an unscrupulous pieman on the corner of Slaughter Yard. Full of new milk and stewed apple from the buttery, he went humming a catch under his breath, up the stair to his room. As he turned the second corner, he sensed rather than heard the presence of someone on the landing. For one of the other scholars to be abroad and moving would have been a miracle by St Bibiana of a high level. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was no longer required reading, but Marlowe read by instinct anything no longer smiled upon by authority and was familiar with the saints’ areas of expertise from the toes to the top of the head.
