The Devil Will Come

and take a Marlowe’s rightful place on the top of the pile.’

Christopher was the only son and the oldest child now that his older sister had died of a fever. He attended the petty school at Saint George the Martyr run by the parish priest, Father Sweeting. He’d quickly learned to read from the ABC and Catechism and from the first days when the printed page made sense to him verses and rhymes had popped into his head, demanding that he write them down. They were a cheerful counterpoint to the other thoughts that bubbled in his brain, dark thoughts that had scared him when he was younger.

‘Are we different?’ he remembered asking his mother when he was five.

‘We are.’

‘Did God make us so?’

‘It’s nothing to do with God.’

‘Sometimes I get frightened.’

‘Your fears will go away,’ his mother assured him. ‘When you’re a bit older you’ll be happy you’re different, believe me.’

She’d been right. The fear faded soon enough and was replaced by something altogether marvelous, a feeling of superiority and power. By the age of seven he genuinely liked who he was and what he was becoming.

The baker’s son, Martin Plessington, was in his class at petty school. Thomas Plessington was one of the more successful merchants in Canterbury, a wealthy Protestant with five apprentices and two ovens. Martin was a heavy-boned boy on his way to being a giant like his father. Inside the school he was slow-witted but on the streets he was a bully, using his muscles for primacy.

One day, Christopher was among the last to leave school, reluctant, as always, to part with one of Father Sweeting’s books. On his way home he took his usual short cut behind the Queen’s Head Tavern and the livery stables.

To his surprise, he saw the thick legs of Martin Plessington poking from a window at the house of the stable master. Martin lowered himself to the ground, clutching something. His eyes met Christopher’s.

‘Bugger off,’ Martin hissed.

‘What do you have?’ Christopher asked boldly.

‘None of your bleeding business.’

Christopher came closer and saw it. It was a pewter candlestick adorned with an ornate Catholic cross.

‘Have you stolen that?’

‘Do you want me to thrash you?’ was the angry response.

Christopher didn’t back away. ‘I assume you mean to sell it. Unless your family are closet Papists who mean to use it in an illegal mass.’

‘Who are you calling a Papist!’ Martin said, growing red in the face. ‘The Marlowes aren’t fit to wipe a Plessington ass.’

‘Tell you what,’ Christopher said evenly. ‘If you let me see it, I’ll swear I won’t tell a soul what you’ve done.’

‘Why do you want to see it?’ the boy asked suspiciously.

‘It’s pretty, that’s why.’

Martin thought about it and handed the candlestick over. It had a heavy round base, the weight of a brick or two. Christopher inspected it closely, then looked up and down the alley. ‘Did you notice this?’ he asked.

‘What?’ Martin answered, drawing closer.

‘This.’

Christopher swung the candlestick with all the might his small frame could muster and slammed its base against Martin’s temple. With a satisfying crunch, the sound of a boot breaking through ice, the boy fell to his knees and pitched forward, blood gushing from the wound. He moved for a few seconds and went slack.

Christopher stuffed the bloody candlestick into his shirt and began dragging the lifeless body toward the stable. It was harder work than he’d imagined but he didn’t let up until he had Martin well inside. The tethered horses shifted and whinnied and tugged at their ropes.

He dropped Martin beside a pile of hay and paused to catch his breath. Then he fished inside his shirt for the candlestick. He grasped it by its base, staining his fingers red.

With one hand he opened Martin’s mouth and with the other he shoved the stick as far down his throat as it would go and watched blood well up and fill the gaping hole.

The next day, Martin’s chair at petty school was unoccupied and Father Sweeting commented prophetically that the boy had better be dead than miss a day of studies. Christopher skipped lightly home, passing by the stables again. The stable doors were shut and no one seemed to be about. When he got home his mother and father were seated at the table talking in low tones, his sisters padding about on bare feet.

‘Did you hear?’ his father said to him. ‘Did you hear about Martin Plessington?’

Christopher shook his head.

‘Dead,’ his father said, starkly. ‘His head stoved in and a Catholic candlestick down his gullet. People are saying the Papists done it, killed a Protestant lad. They’re saying they’ll be trouble in Canterbury for sure. A right civil war. There’s talk of a couple of recusant boys already done in by Protestant gangs. What do you say about that?’

Christopher had nothing to say.

His mother piped up, ‘You wore your good shirt today. I found your other one balled up between your mattress and the wall.’ She reached down between her legs and produced it. ‘There’s blood on it.’

‘Did you have anything to do with this?’ his father demanded. ‘Tell the truth.’

Christopher smiled, showing the gap of his missing milk teeth. He actually puffed out his chest and said, ‘I did it. I killed him. I hope there is a war.’

His father rose slowly and stretched to his full height, towering over the seven-year-old. His lips quivered. ‘Good lad,’ he finally said. ‘I’m right proud of you. There’re dead Catholics today because of you and more to come, I reckon. You’re a credit. A credit to the Marlowe bloodlines.’

ELEVEN

ELISABETTA’S FIRST INSTINCT was to call her father but what would that accomplish beyond rousing him from his bed and upsetting him no end? Micaela, she knew, was on hospital duty. She called Zazo instead. He arrived half an hour after the Polizia and sat with Elisabetta in the kitchen while she waited to be interviewed by an officer.

She clutched her robe to her chest. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you. You’re so busy.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Zazo said. He was out of uniform, wearing jeans and a sweater. ‘Did you call Papa?’

‘No.’

‘Good. So the guy was at your door?’

‘That’s what Sister Silvia said.’

‘Did you get a look at him?’

‘Only his back.’

‘It was probably an addict looking for some cash.’ Zazo said. ‘And too brain-dead to realize he was breaking into a convent. I’ve been unhappy that there’s no alarm system here.’

‘There’s never the money for that sort of thing, and anyway …’

‘Yeah, God protects,’ he finished derisively. ‘I know the man who’s in charge here, Inspector Leone. Let me speak to him.’

Elisabetta’s upper lip quivered. ‘Zazo, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’

‘I know you’re upset. I’ll be right back.’

Leone was a gruff, unpopular fellow nearing retirement. Back in Zazo’s day there’d been no love lost between them and Zazo could say with confidence that he hadn’t thought about the man once since leaving the force.

‘I remember you,’ Leone said when Zazo approached him in the residence hall. ‘What are you doing