Free Scorpions' Nest by M. J. Trow

pupils all but gone and a thick layer of brick dust coated his hair and eyelashes. His tongue, black and purple, protruded through his teeth and his head jutted awkwardly to one side. This poor shattered thing had not been buried here with all the panoply of death which the Catholic Church had in its armoury. This body had been carried down here, probably on a hurdle, and propped unceremoniously up in this niche until time disarticulated the bones so that they could be shovelled up and put higher up in the smaller niches in the wall, where he would be forgotten. A weeping mother in Westley Waterless would remember him, then she would die and he would be no more. Just a whispering ghost across the fenlands.
    Marlowe peeled back the robe’s hood and saw the tell-tale mark of a hanging. There was a dark purple line across the throat and up to the ear on the left side. Gently, he patted the dead boy’s cheek and the head lolled to the left with a click.
    ‘Who’s there?’ he heard a voice call. He snuffed out his candle and stood stock still in the darkness. He blessed his velvet clothes, silent as the grave without a rustle to betray him. The call came again, first in Latin, then in Greek, then in French. For a split second, Marlowe toyed with trying to pass himself off as one of the dead, the company of the catacombs all around him. Immediately, he knew how hopeless it was. He was too bright of eye, too quick of breath. And his clothes were wrong. The flicker of a candle was moving towards him in the vault, someone coming in a hurry on padding footfalls.
    He felt for the dagger hilt at his back. He would have achieved nothing if he had to leave the English College like this, a fugitive on the run from the place that was a refuge for fugitives. On the other hand, he had no excuse, no reason to be here in the dark with the dead. ‘
I lost my way
’ sounded hopelessly inadequate even as the words formed in his mind.
    The candlelight flickered once in his direction, then doubled back on itself and a black figure was crossing to the far arm of the vault’s cross. Marlowe saw his chance and ran for the stone steps that led to the light. He didn’t look back and didn’t stop running until he had reached the room that had once belonged to a dead man.
    In the middle of the night, Marlowe lay back on the fat feather mattress which had once borne the imprint of Father Laurenticus. He breathed in gently, trying to detect any hint of death in the bed, but there was nothing; just the faint memory of the bleaching and scrubbing. He didn’t quite know why he thought the bed was the scene of the man’s death. He had had no clue as to what had happened. For all he knew, the man had dropped dead in the street; but if that was the case, why was this room so very, very clean? He was tired, the meal had been heavy and the wine generous, even for his strong head, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw the rotting dead in line abreast and every time he breathed in, there was the faint sweet odour of incense and corruption in his nostrils. He tossed and turned and decided to try to wait for the dawn, if sleep would not come. The clocks of Rheims chimed the hours, quarters, halves and it seemed every minute in between. None of them seemed to agree and their constant tintinnabulation didn’t help his attempts to sleep. In the end, he bowed to the inevitable, got up quietly, dressed and slipped out of the College, by the wicket gate that led to the East. A walk in the predawn light might clear his mind enough to let him catch some sleep. He had had some of his best nights wrapped up in a cloak propped up against a tree somewhere with a mighty line thundering in his head, so he went in search of a quiet, grassy corner.
    He finally found a welcoming tree, with roots straggling above ground almost making a chair for the wandering insomniac, growing on the bank of the Vesle as it meandered through the town. He wrapped his cloak over his head