Christopher Marlowe checked the purse at his hip to make sure he still had the ring there, the one he’d appropriated from Gerald Skelton’s study. The pale sun shone on the whitewashed circular towers and glinted on the fleurs-de-lys wrought in gold-flecked iron above the roof. No one challenged him at the gate and he trotted on his hired horse into a wide courtyard, strewn with straw and chickens. Clearly the Sieur de Fleury had known better times. Marlowe knew the name. One of the man’s ancestors had died at Agincourt, trampled in the mud of that wet October day and it looked from the state of this place that the family fortunes had died with him. Marlowe had made enquiries around the town. Anne de Fleury was a passionate Frenchman and a Papist through and through but he was old and had quarrelled with his sons so that whenever the family met they squabbled incessantly over inheritance. Was it that, Marlowe wondered, that meant the man went in fear of his life? Perhaps not, but it was a useful thing to know.
