Chapter Nine

WHEN WE LEFT THE ROOM Barak told me he had things to collect. I went outside, fetched Chancery and led him into the front yard. From a little distance a murmuring was audible, and I heard a shout of 'Don't shove there!' The doles were being distributed.

My mind was in a whirl. Cromwell and reform about to fall? I remembered Godfrey's distress a few days ago, the mutterings everywhere about the queen. Though my faith had reached a low ebb, I felt a clutch of dread at the thought of the papists back in charge, the bloodshed and return to superstition that must follow.

I began walking distractedly about the yard. Now I was saddled with this churl Barak. What was he doing? 'A pox on it all!' I burst out aloud.

'Ho there, what's this?' I whirled round to see Barak grinning at me. I reddened with embarrassment.

'Don't worry,' he said. 'Things affect me like that sometimes. But I've a choleric temperament. His lordship said you were a man of melancholy humour, who keeps his feelings to himself.'

'Usually I do,' I said curtly. I saw that Barak carried a big leather satchel slung over his shoulder. He inclined his head to it. 'The papers from the abbey and some material my master has gathered about Greek Fire.'

He fetched the black mare and we rode out again. 'I'm starving hungry,' he said conversationally. 'Does your house-keeper keep a good table?'

'Good plain fare,' I replied shortly.

'Will you see the girl's uncle soon?'

'I'll send him a note when I get back.'

'His lordship has saved her the press,' he said. 'It's a nasty death.'

'Twelve days. We don't have long, either for Elizabeth or this other business.'

'It's all a fog to me.' Barak shook his head. 'You're right to question Mother Gristwood again.'

'Mother? She's childless.'

'Is she? Not surprised. I wouldn't want to tup her. Nasty old stoat.'

'I don't know why you dislike her so, but that's no basis for suspicion.' I spoke shortly. Barak grunted. I turned and looked at him. 'Your master seems very concerned Sir Richard Rich should not be involved.'

'If he learned about Greek Fire and its loss he'd use it against the earl. My master raised Rich up, as he said, but he's a man who'd betray anyone for his own advantage. You know his reputation.'

'Yes. He founded his career by perjuring himself at Thomas More's trial. Many say that was at your master's bidding.'

Barak shrugged. We rode on in silence for a while, up towards Ely Place. Then Barak drew his horse in close. 'Don't look round,' he said quietly, 'but we're being followed.'

I looked at him in surprise. 'Are you sure?'

'I think so. I've taken a quick look back once or twice and the same man's been there. Odd-looking arsehole. Here, turn in by St Andrew's Church.'

He led the way through the gate, behind the high wall enclosing the church, and jumped quickly down from his horse. I dismounted more slowly. 'Hurry now,' he said impatiently, leading the mare behind the wall. I joined him where he stood peering round the gateway.

'See,' he breathed, 'here he comes. Don't stick your head out too far.'

There were plenty of pedestrians around and a few carts, but the only rider was a man on a white colt. He was about Barak's age, tall and thin, with a thatch of untidy brown hair. His pale face had a scholarly look, though it was pitted as an old cheese with the scars of smallpox. As we watched the man halted, shading his eyes against the sun as he looked up the road to Holborn Bar. Barak pulled me back. 'He's missed us. He'll be looking round in a moment. What a face, he looks as if he's just been dug up.' I frowned at his presumption in grabbing at me, but he only smiled back cheerily, pleased to have bested the white-faced man.

'Come on, we'll lead the horses round the church and go back by Shoe Lane.' He took the mare's reins. I followed him on the path through the churchyard.

'Who was that?' I asked as we halted on the far side of the church — somewhat breathlessly, for he had led a brisk pace.

'Don't know. He must have been following us since we left his lordship's house. There's not many would have the nerve to set watch there.' He heaved himself deftly into the saddle, and I lifted myself onto Chancery's back more slowly; after my day of riding hither and thither my back was sore. Barak looked at me curiously.

'You all right?'

'Yes,' I snapped, settling myself in the saddle.

He shrugged. 'Well just ask, any time, if you want a hand. It's nothing to me you're a hunchback, I'm not superstitious.' I stared after him, speechless, as he turned and led the way into Shoe Lane, whistling tunelessly.

As we rode on to Chancery Lane I was too offended by his insolence to speak, but then I thought I should find out what I could about the wretched man. 'That's twice I've been watched this last week,' I said. 'By that man and before by you.'

'Ay,' Barak answered cheerfully. 'His lordship set me to see what sort of case you were in, whether you might stand up to this job. I told him you had a determined look about you.'

'Did you? And have you worked for the earl a long time?'

'Oh, ay. My father came from Putney, where the earl's father kept his tavern. When he died I was asked to enter Lord Cromwell's service. I had my own contacts round London then, doing this and that' — he raised an eyebrow and gave that cynical smile again — 'and he's found me useful enough.'

'What did your father do?'

'He was a gong-screwer, cleaned out people's cesspits. Silly old arsehole, he fell into one of the pits he was digging out and drowned.' Despite the lightness of his tone a brief shadow passed across his face.

'I am sorry.'

'I've no family now,' Barak said cheerfully. 'Free of all ties. What about you?'

'My father is still alive. He has a farm in Lichfield, in the Midlands.' My conscience pricked me. He was getting old, but I had not been back to see him in a year.

'Son of carrot crunchers, eh? Where did you get your education? Do they have schools up there?'

'They do. I went to Lichfield cathedral school.'

'I've an education too,' Barak replied. 'Know some Latin.'

'Oh?'

'I went to St Paul's school, got a scholarship for a clever lad, but I had to fend for myself after my father died.' Again that brief shadow of sadness, or was it anger? He tapped his satchel. 'Those Latin papers my master gave me for you, I can read them. Well, just about.'

As we turned in at my gate Barak studied my house; I could see he was impressed by the mullioned windows and tall chimneys. He turned to me, raising that eyebrow again. 'Fine place.'

'Now we are here,' I said, 'we had better have our story clear. I suggest we tell my servants you are the agent of a client and are helping me on a case.'

He nodded. 'All right. What servants have you?'

'My housekeeper, Joan Woode, and a boy.' I gave him a fixed stare. 'You should also look to how you address me. Given our respective stations, "sir" would be appropriate; "Master Shardlake" would at least be civil. All the way here it has been "you" as though I were your brother or your dog. That will not do.'

'Right you are.' He grinned cheekily. 'Need a hand down, sir?'

'I can manage.'

As we dismounted, the boy Simon appeared from behind the house. He stared at Barak's mare in admiration.

'That's Sukey,' Barak told him. 'Look after her well and there'll be something for you.' He winked. 'She likes a carrot now and then.'

'Yes, sir.' Simon bowed and led the horses away. Barak watched him go.

'Shouldn't he have shoes? He'll be cutting his feet on ruts and stones this dry weather.'

'He won't wear them. Joan and I have tried.'

Barak nodded. 'Ay, shoes are uncomfortable at first. They rub on your calluses.'

Joan appeared in the doorway. She gave Barak a look of surprise. 'Good afternoon, sir. May I ask how it went at the court?'

'We've got twelve days' grace for Elizabeth,' I said. 'Joan, this is Master Jack. He will be staying with us a short while, to help me with a new matter on behalf of his master. Could you make a room ready for him?'

'Yes, sir.'

Barak bowed and gave her a smile, as charming as his earlier ones had been mocking. 'Master Shardlake did not tell me his housekeeper was so attractive.'

Joan's plump face reddened and she pushed some greying hairs under her cap. 'Oh, please, sir—'

I stared, surprised my sensible housekeeper should fall for such nonsense, but she was still red-faced as she led Barak in. I supposed women would find him good-looking if they were susceptible to rough charm. She led him upstairs. 'The room hasn't been slept in for a while, sir,' she said, 'but it's clean.'

I went into my parlour. Joan had opened the window and the tapestry on the wall showing the story of Joseph and his brothers stirred in the warm breeze. There was new rush matting on the floor, giving off the harsh tang of the wormwood Joan put on it to discourage fleas.

I remembered I must write to Joseph arranging to meet. I climbed the stairs to my study. As I passed Barak's room I heard my housekeeper clucking like an old hen about the state of the blankets. That room, I remembered, had once belonged to my former assistant, Mark. I shook my head in puzzlement at how the wheel of fortune turned.

===OO=OOO=OO===

JOAN PREPARED an early supper. It was a fish day so we had trout and afterwards a bowl of strawberries. The good weather that spring had brought them on early. Barak joined me at table, and I said grace, though I no longer did that when I was alone. 'For the food the Lord has provided, let us be thankful. Amen.' Barak closed his eyes and bowed his head, raising it as soon as I had finished intoning. He tucked happily into his fish, lifting his food to his mouth with his knife in an ill-bred way. I wondered what his religious views were, if any.

He interrupted my train of thought. 'I'll give you those books and papers later,' he said. 'By Jesu, they're strange reading.'

I nodded. 'And I should consider how to proceed.' It was time to try and stamp my authority on the matter. 'Let me get it right. The first person involved in point of time was the friar, the librarian.' I ticked names off on my fingers. 'Then the Gristwoods went to Bealknap and he went to Marchamount. Marchamount told Lady Honor, who told Cromwell. Three of them, then. We can discount the friar as the moving force behind this.'

'Why?'

'Because someone hired two ruthless rogues to kill the Gristwoods. I can't see Lady Honor or either of the lawyers charging in there with an axe, can you? But any of those three could have afforded to hire killers, though it would cost much more than a pensioned-off friar could raise. I still want to talk to him — he saw the stuff discovered. I'll see Bealknap and Marchamount tomorrow at Lincoln's Inn; there's a lunch in hall. For the Duke of Norfolk,' I added.

He screwed up his face in distaste. 'That arsehole. How he hates my master.'

'I know. We can use tomorrow morning to go to the jetty where you saw that ship burned up, and I'll try to see Joseph then too. We can also go to Augmentations — they're so busy these days they keep open on Sundays. I can miss church for once. What about you?'

'My parish in Cheapside is so full of people coming and going the vicar scarce keeps note of who's there or not.'

Pleased at the brisk way I had formulated my plan of action, I gave Barak a satirical half-smile to match his own. 'You don't feel the need to humble yourself before God then, ask forgiveness of your sins?'

He raised his eyebrows. 'I serve the king's vicar-general and the king is God's anointed representative on earth. If I am on his business, how can I be doing other than God's will?'

'Do you really believe that?'

He gave his mocking grin. 'About as much as you do.'

I took some strawberries and passed the bowl to Barak. He spooned half the dish onto his plate and added cream. 'Then there is Lady Honor,' I continued.

He nodded. 'She usually has these sugar banquets of hers on a Tuesday. If you haven't heard by Monday morning I'll ask his lordship to give her a nudge.'

I looked at him levelly. 'Doing what you can do to assist, eh?'

'Ay.'

'And is that what you are? My assistant?'

'Assist and facilitate,' he replied briskly. 'That's what his lordship asked me to do. I know what I'm about. Don't mind that fussy old arsehole Grey; he doesn't like my rough ways. He thinks he knows my master's business better than my master, but he doesn't. Sniffling old pen gent.'

I would not be diverted. 'You started as my watcher.'

He changed the subject. 'That Wentworth case — there's more to it than meets the eye, if you ask me. That girl in court, y'know what she reminded me of? John Lambert's burning. Remember that?'

I remembered only too well. Lambert was the first Protestant preacher to go too far for the king. Eighteen months earlier he had been tried for the heresy of denying transubstantiation, before the king himself as head of the Church, judge and inquisitor, dressed in the white robes of theological purity. It had been the first major reversal for reform. 'That was a cruel burning,' I said, looking at him sharply.

'Were you there?'

'No. I avoid these spectacles.'

'My master likes his people to go, show loyalty to the king.'

'I remember. He made me go to Anne Boleyn's execution.' I closed my eyes for a moment against that memory.

'It was a slow burning, the fire fairly sweated the blood out of him.'

I was relieved to see a look of distaste cross Barak's face. Burning was a terrible death, and in those days of accusation and counter-accusation it was the one everyone feared. I shuddered, passing my hand across my brow. It felt red and sore, I had a touch of the sun.

Barak leaned his elbows on the table. 'The way Lambert walked to the stake with head bowed, refusing to answer the taunts of the crowd, that was what reminded me of the girl. His demeanour. Later, of course, he was screaming.'

'You think Elizabeth seemed like a martyr, then?'

Barak nodded. 'Ay, a martyr. That's the word.'

'But for what?'

He shrugged. 'Who can say? But you're right to talk to the family; I'll warrant the answer's there.'

The idea of Elizabeth's manner as martyrlike had not occurred to me, but it rang true. I looked again at Barak. Whatever else he was, he was no fool. 'I've sent Simon with a note asking Joseph to call here tomorrow at twelve.' I got up. 'We can go to the jetty first thing, we should start early. Where is it exactly?'

'Downriver, out beyond Deptford.'

'And now I should look at these papers of yours. Could you bring them to me?'

'Ay.' As he got up he nodded. 'You're getting to grips with the matter, I see. Planning everything out. My master said you were like that, didn't let go once you were started.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

THE SUN WAS BEGINNING to set as I took Barak's satchel out into the garden. I had had much work done there these last two years and often sat outside enjoying its calm and fine scents. Its design was simple; squares of flower beds divided by trellised paths shaded by climbing roses. No knot gardens with complex designs in the form of puzzles for me; there were puzzles in my work and my garden was a place of quiet order. Once I had thought reform might similarly order the world, but that hope was long gone. More recently I had hoped that the peace of my garden might be a foretaste of a quiet life away from London, but that too now seemed very far off. I sat on a bench, glad simply to be alone at last, and opened the satchel.

I sat reading for two hours as the sun sank gradually and the first moths appeared, flickering towards the candles Simon lit in the house. I turned first to the papers Michael Gristwood had brought from the monastery. There were four or five illustrated manuscripts written by old monastic writers, giving vivid descriptions of the use of Greek Fire. Sometimes they called it Flying Fire, sometimes the devil's tears, fire from the dragon's mouth, Dark Fire: I puzzled over that last name. How could fire be dark? An odd image came into my head of black flames rising from black coals. It was absurd.

There was a page in Greek torn from the biography of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I who reigned four hundred years ago.

 

Each of the Byzantine galleys was fitted in the prow with a tube ending with the head of a lion made of brass, and gilded, frightful to behold, through the open mouth of which it was arranged that fire should be projected by the soldiers through a flexible apparatus. The Pisans fled, having no previous experience of this device and wondering that fire, which usually burns upwards, could be so directed downward or towards either side according to the will of the engineer who discharges it.

 

I laid down the paper. What happened to the apparatus? I wondered. Had that been taken from Wolf's Lane too? If it was metal it would be heavy. Had the killers brought a cart there? I turned to another account, of a giant Arab fleet sent to invade Constantinople and utterly destroyed by flying fire in AD 678, fire that burned even on the very surface of the sea. I stared out over the lawn. Fire that burned downwards, that could burn on water itself? I knew nothing about the mysteries of alchemy, but surely such things were impossible?

I turned next to the only paper in the collection in English. It was written in a round, clumsy hand.

 

I, Alan St John, late soldier of the Emperor Constantine Palaiologos of Byzantium, do make this testament in the hospital of St Bartholomew's in Smithfield, this eleventh day of March 1454.

 

The year after Constantinople fell to the Turks, I remembered.

 

I am told I am like to die and have confessed my sins, for I followed the rough ways of a soldier of fortune all my life. The friars of this blessed place have treated and comforted me these last months since I returned from the fall of Constantinople sore wounded, which wounds grow infected again. The friars' care is proof of the love of God, and to them I leave my papers, that tell of the old secret of Greek Fire the Byzantines knew, that was passed down secretly from emperor to emperor and lost at last, together with the last barrel of distilled Greek Fire itself, that I brought back from the East. The secret was found by a librarian of Constantinople as he cleared the library to rescue the books from the approaching Turks, and he gave the papers and the barrel into my care before we fled the city in the ships the Venetians sent. I do not understand the Greek and Latin and meant to consult with alchemists in England, but then my illness disabled me. May God forgive me: I meant to make a profit from this thing, but no money can aid me now. The friars say it is God's will, for this is a terrible secret that could bring much ruin and bloodshed to unhappy humanity. It is no surprise they called the principal element in Greek Fire Dark Fire. I leave it all to the friars to do with as they will, for they are close to the Grace of God.

 

I put it down. So the friars had hidden the papers, and the barrel, away, realizing the potential for danger and destruction they had in their hands: not knowing that ninety years later King Henry and Cromwell would come and clear them all out. As I sat there, I had a vision of the fall of Constantinople, that great tragedy of our age; soldiers and officials and citizens fleeing the doomed city, making for the dock and the boats to Venice to the sound of booming artillery and the roars of the Turks outside.

I picked the paper up again, and sniffed it. It had a faint scent, pleasant and musky. I turned to the remaining papers, the same odour lingered on some of the others. I frowned; the smell was nothing like incense: surely it had not come from a monastery cellar. I had never smelt anything like it before. I laid the papers down again, then started as a moth flew into my face. The sun was touching the top of the trees over in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and cows were lowing in the distance. I turned to the books.

These were mostly Latin and Greek works that told stories of Greek Fire. I read old Athenian legends of magic garments that could burst into fire when worn, read Pliny's description of pools by the Euphrates that discharged inflammable mud. It was clear the writers were merely repeating stories, with no real idea of how Greek Fire was actually made. There were also a couple of alchemical works, which discussed the matter in terms of the philosopher's stone, the precepts of Hermes Trismegistus, and analogies between metals, stars and living things. Like the book I had taken from Sepultus's workshop, I found them incomprehensible.

I turned back finally to the old parchment Cromwell had shown me in his room, the picture of the ship spouting Greek Fire, with the top part torn off. I ran my fingers along the torn edge. That act had cost Michael Gristwood his life.

'Better the monks had destroyed everything,' I whispered aloud.

I heard footsteps and looked up to see Barak approaching. He glanced over the flower beds.

'This is a fine-smelling place.' He nodded at the documents surrounding me. 'Well,' he said, 'what d'you make of it all?'

'Not much. For all this great jangle of words no one seems to have any clue what Greek Fire really was. As for the alchemical works, they are incomprehensible riddles and obscure words.'

Barak grinned. 'I tried to read a law book once, it made me feel like that.'

'Guy may be able to make some sense of them.'

'That old black monk of yours? He's well known round where I lodge. By God, he's a strange-looking one.'

'He's a very knowledgeable man.'

'Ay, so they say round the Old Barge.'

'That is where you live?' I remembered those shutters closing.

'Ay, it's not a fine place like this but it's in the middle of London — useful as my business takes me all over the City.' He sat beside me and gave me a sharp look. 'You're to say as little as possible to the black monk, remember.'

'I'll ask him to elucidate these alchemy books, say it's something I've to look into for a client. He won't press me more than that, he knows I have to keep clients' confidences.'

'Guy Malton, the black apothecary calls himself,' Barak said thoughtfully. 'I'll wager that's not the name he was born with.'

'No, he was born Mohammed Elakbar; his parents converted to Christianity after the fall of Granada. Your own name's unusual, come to that. Barak, it is like Baruch, one of the Old Testament names reformers are giving their children now. But you're too old for that.'

He laughed and stretched long legs in front of him. 'You're a scholar, aren't you! My father's family was descended from Jews who converted to Christianity in old times. Before they were all kicked out of England. I think of it whenever I have to visit my master at the Domus. So maybe it was Baruch once. I've a funny little gold box my father left me that he said had been passed down from those days. It was all he had to leave me, poor old arsehole.' Again that sombre look passed quickly across his face. He shrugged. 'Anything else those old papers reveal?'

'No. Except I think the monks hid the formula and the barrel for fear of the destruction Greek Fire could cause.' I looked at him. 'They were right. The devastation such a weapon could wreak would be terrible.'

He returned my look. 'But if it could save England from invasion. Surely anything is worth that.'

I did not reply. 'Tell me what it was like. At the demonstration.'

'I will, but tomorrow at the wharf. I came to tell you I'm going out. I have to fetch some clothes from the Old Barge. And I am going to ask around the taverns, see if any of my contacts know of that pock-faced man. Then afterwards I've a girl to see, so I'll be back late. Got a key?'

I looked at him disapprovingly. 'Ask Joan for hers. We must start very early tomorrow.'

He smiled at my look. 'Don't worry, you won't find me wanting in diligence.'

'I hope not.'

'Nor will the girl.' He gave me a lubricious wink and turned away.

Chapter Ten

THAT NIGHT I COULD NOT SLEEP, from the heat and from the tangle of images that chased each other through my mind: Elizabeth in her cell, Cromwell's drawn, anxious look, that pair of dreadful corpses. Far into the night I heard Barak come in, footsteps creeping quietly upstairs to his room. I rose and knelt by the bed in the sticky darkness to pray for rest and guidance on the morrow. I was praying less and less these days, feeling often that my words did not ascend to God but merely dissolved inside my head like smoke, but when I returned to bed I fell at once into slumber and woke with a start to the light of early morning, a warm breeze wafting through the open window and Joan calling me down to breakfast.

Despite his night of rousting, Barak seemed fresh as a new pin, eager to be off. He told me he had been unable to trace the man who had followed us, but had set enquiries in train among his acquaintances. Straight after breakfast we walked down to catch a boat at Temple Stairs. It was not yet seven; I was seldom abroad at such an hour on a Sunday and it was strange to see everywhere deserted. The river, too, was quiet, the wherrymen waiting idly at the stairs pleased to have our business. The tide was at low ebb and we had to walk to the boat across a wooden catwalk laid over the thick, rubbish-strewn mud. I turned my head from the smell given off by the bloated carcass of a dead donkey. I was glad to step into the boat. The wherryman steered us into the middle of the river.

'D'you want to shoot the rapids under London Bridge?' he asked. 'It'll be an extra half-groat.' He was an ill-favoured young fellow with the scar of some old fight running down his face; the Thames boatmen were ever a battlesome crew. I hesitated, but Barak nodded. 'Ay, the water's at its lowest, there won't be much pull under the piers.'

I gripped the sides of the boat as the great bridge, crowded with houses, loomed up, but the wherryman steered us deftly through and we floated on downriver past Billingsgate, where the big seagoing ships lay docked, past the looming mass of the Tower of London. Then we passed the new naval docks at Deptford, and I stared in wonder at the king's great warship Mary Rose, in for repair, her enormous masts and rigging soaring high as steeples above the surrounding buildings.

Beyond Deptford signs of habitation ended and the river broadened, the far bank growing distant to the view. Wastes of marsh and reeds crowded to the water's edge. The occasional wharves we passed were mostly abandoned, for shipworking was concentrated upriver now.

'That's it,' Barak said at length, leaning over the side. A little way off I saw a crumbling jetty rising on wooden piers. Behind, a space of weed-strewn earth cleared from the surrounding reed beds fronted a large, tumbledown wooden shed.

'I expected something larger,' I said.

'My master chose it because it was out of the way.'

The wherryman guided the little boat to the jetty, grasping at a ladder fixed to the end. Barak climbed nimbly up. I followed more carefully.

'Come back for us in an hour,' Barak told the boatman, passing him his fare. He nodded and cast off, leaving us alone. I looked round. Everything was silent and still, the surrounding reeds whispering in the light breeze, richly coloured butterflies flitting among them.

'I'll just check the shed,' Barak said, 'in case some vagabond has made a home there.'

As he went to peer through the warped boards of the shed, something dangling from a ring in an iron bollard caught my eye. A thick, knotted hemp rope, such as might be used to tie up a boat, hung over the end of the jetty. I drew it up. There were only about two feet of rope; the end was charred. It had been burnt right through.

Barak rejoined me. 'All clear.' He passed me a leathern bottle. 'A drink?'

'Thank you.' I unstoppered it and took a draught of small beer. Barak nodded at the rope which I still held. 'That's all that's left of the boat I tied up there.'

'Tell me,' I said quietly.

He led me into a patch of shade cast by the shed. He looked out over the river for a moment, then took another draught of beer and began his tale. He told the story with more fluency than I would have expected, a sense of wonder overcoming his usual brashness.

'Back in March my master told me to buy an old crayer, in my own name, and have it brought down here. I found one, a big thirty-foot tub, and had it rowed down and moored here.'

'I travelled from Sussex to London in a crayer once.'

'You know what they're like then. Long, heavy barges. This one was a big solid thing, with sail and oars, that used to carry coal down the coast from Newcastle. Bonaventure, she was called.' He shook his head. 'She was to have an adventure all right.

'Like I said, my master chose this place because it was out of the way. He asked me to be here at first light on a March morning, when hopefully there wouldn't be any river traffic, and wait for him. He told me I might see something strange. "More likely, though," he said, "you won't."

'Anyway, I rode down here before dawn, and damned difficult it was, following the trackways through these marshes in the dark. The old crayer was where I'd moored her, for she wasn't worth anyone stealing. I tied Sukey up and walked about, stamping my feet to keep warm as the sun came up. The strange noises those river birds make as the day starts, they made me jump a few times.

'Then I heard horses' hooves, and a creaking sound, and through the reeds I saw my master approaching on horse-back. It was strange seeing him out there. He had a lowering look on him, kept glaring at the two men accompanying him. They were on horseback and one of the horses was pulling a cart with something heavy hidden under a pile of sacking.

'They got to the wharf at last and dismounted. I got a good look at the Gristwoods for the first time. I thought them poor folk, God rest them.'

I nodded. 'Michael was an unqualified attorney. The sort who deals with small cases, pushes business for the barristers.'

'Ay, I know that sort,' Barak said with a sudden sharpness that made me glance at him. 'They were both small, skinny men, kept glancing at my master with apprehensive looks. I could see he thought all this beneath his dignity; I thought if they didn't satisfy him they'd smart for it. One of the brothers wore a skullcap and a long alchemist's robe, the complete paraphernalia, for all that it was spattered with mud from his trip through the marshes. My master had on a simple black cloak, as he does when he travels alone. He introduced me to the Gristwoods and the pair doffed their caps and scraped to me like I was an earl.' He laughed. 'I thought they were the crookedest-looking pair of arseholes I'd ever seen.

'My master ordered me to tie the horses to posts by the shed, where I'd put Sukey. When I got back, the brothers were unloading their cart. I'd never seen such a pile of strange stuff: a long thin brass pipe and a big metal handpump like some of the conduits have. The earl came over and said quietly, "Look over that boat with me, Jack. I want to be sure there's no trickery." I dared to ask him what it was all about, and he looked dubiously to where the brothers were unloading an iron tank of some sort; by the way they were sweating and grunting there was something heavy inside. He told me then that Sepultus was an alchemist and had promised to show us a great wonder with that apparatus. He raised an eyebrow, then walked over to the boat.

'I helped him in and he looked the ship over from end to end. We even went down to the hold and walked about, coughing for there was a little coal dust. He said to look for trickery, anything strange. But there was nothing; it was just the empty old tub I'd bought cheap from the ship merchant.

'When we got back on deck the brothers had set up their apparatus on the jetty. The metal tank had been attached to the pump at one end and to the pipe at the other. I caught a whiff of something from the tank. It was like nothing I'd ever smelt before, a harsh tang that seemed to go right up your nostrils into your skull.'

'Tell me more about how the apparatus looked.'

'The pipe was about twelve feet long, and hollow, like a gun barrel. Under the end they'd fixed a wick, a pot of string greased with candle wax. The other end was fixed to the tank, as I said.'

'How big was the tank? Enough to hold, say, a large barrelful of liquid?'

He frowned. 'Yes. Though I don't know how full it was.'

'No. I'm sorry, go on.'

'When my master and I got back on land we saw they'd heaved the tank onto a big iron tripod. To my surprise, they were trying to light a fire of sticks underneath it now, fussing about with flints.

'Then Michael Gristwood gave a great shout of excitement. "It's lit!" he cried. "It's lit! Move away, my lord, away from the pipe!" My master looked scandalized at being addressed so familiarly, but went to stand behind the brothers. I went with him, wondering what on earth was to happen.'

Barak paused a moment. He looked out over the water, swirling with little gurgling eddies as the tide swept in again.

'It happened very quickly then. Michael took a twig from the fire and lit the wick, then ran back, and he and Sepultus worked the pump up and down. I saw a movement at the front of the pipe and then a great sheet of yellow flame, a dozen feet long, shot out with a roaring sound, flew through the air and hit the boat amidships. It seemed to twist in the air like a live thing.'

'Like fire from a dragon's mouth.'

He shivered. 'Ay. The wood caught light immediately, the flames seemed to stick to it and devour it like an animal eating its way along a carcass. Some of the flames fell down on the water and by the throat of God I saw the water burning. Saw it with my own eyes, a patch of flames leaping up and down on the river. For a minute I was terrified the whole river might burn up, fire leaping all the way to London.

'Then the brothers turned the pipe round at an angle, pumped again, and another long gout of flame, too bright to look at, shot out and hit the stern. It seemed to leap at it like something alive. The boat was burning merrily now. The heat from that flying fire was tremendous. I was twenty feet away but my face felt scorched. Another burst of fire, and another, and then the poor old crayer was blazing from end to end. Everywhere birds were clattering up from the marshes and flying off. By Jesu, I was frightened, I'm no godly man but I was praying to Our Lady and all the saints to protect me and if my master allowed rosaries I'd have been fondling the beads till they broke.

'We watched the boat, just a mass of flame now, clouds of thick black smoke rising into the sky. I looked at my master. He wasn't afraid, he just stood watching with his arms folded, a gleam of excitement in his eyes.

'Then I heard the screaming. I think it had been going on for a while but I hadn't noticed. It was the horses, they'd seen those huge gouts of leaping fire and they were terrified. I ran to them and they were kicking and flailing, trying to escape from the posts. I managed to calm them before they did themselves real harm, for I've a way with horses, and thank God there were no more sheets of flame; what was left of the boat was sinking now. When I went back to the jetty it had gone, even the rope holding it had burned away as you can see. My master was talking with the Gristwoods, who were looking pleased with themselves for all that their clothes clung to them with sweat. They began packing up their stuff.' He laughed and shook his head. 'The river was quiet again, the boat had sunk and the fire on the water had gone out, thank Christ. It was like nothing had ever happened: except a thirty-ton crayer had been burned to nothing in moments.' Barak took a deep breath and raised his eyebrows. 'And that's it, that's what I saw with my own eyes. Afterwards, when the Gristwoods had driven off again, my master told me that what I had seen was called Greek Fire, told me how Michael Gristwood had found the formula at Barry's, and swore me to secrecy.'

I nodded. I walked to the end of the jetty, Barak following. I looked down into the dark, heaving waters.

'Were you at the second demonstration?'

'No. My master commissioned me to find another, larger, ship, an old balinger, and have it taken here, but he attended that one alone. He told me the second ship was destroyed in exactly the same way.' He looked into the river. 'So there's the remains of two of them down there.'

I nodded thoughtfully. 'So to get Greek Fire to work you need that apparatus. Who built it for them, I wonder, and where did they keep it?'

Barak looked at me quizzically. 'You believe in it now that you've heard what I saw?'

'I believe you saw something very extraordinary.'

A merchantman came into view, sailing up the middle of the river, a huge carrack returning home to London from some far corner of the world. Its sails were unfurled to catch the light breeze, the high castellated prow riding the waves proudly. The seamen on deck, seeing us, shouted and waved; probably we were the first Englishmen they had seen in months. As the ship passed up to London, I had a terrible vision of it aflame from end to end, the sailors screaming, no time to escape.

'You know there are many who say the last days of the world are upon us,' I said quietly. 'That soon the world will be destroyed, Christ will return and the Last Judgement will come.'

'Do you believe that?' Barak asked.

'Not until now,' I said. I saw another boat, tiny by comparison, pass the carrack and approach us. 'Here's our boatman, we must get back to London, look for that librarian.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

WE GOT THE WHERRYMAN to take us on to Westminster, for the Court of Augmentations' offices were housed in a room off Westminster Hall. We climbed Westminster Stairs and paused in New Palace Yard to get our breath. The sun was high now; it was another hot day. The water in the fountain was low; I thought of pumps, siphons, tanks.

'So this is where the lawyers come to argue,' Barak said, staring with interest at the high north face of the hall with its enormous stained-glass window.

'Ay, this is where the civil courts sit. Have you never been here?'

'Like most honest people I keep clear of the place.'

He followed me up the steps to the north door. The guard, seeing my lawyer's robe, nodded and we passed inside. In winter the interior of the giant stone building is icy, everyone shivering except for the judges in their furs. Even today it felt chilly. Barak looked up at the giant carved ceiling and the statues of ancient kings by the high windows. He whistled, the sound echoing as every noise did there.

'Bit different from the Old Bailey.'

'Yes.' I looked down the hall, beyond the empty shop counters to the courts behind their low partitions, King's Bench and Common Pleas and Chancery, the benches and tables deserted and silent. Tomorrow the law term would begin and every inch of the place would be thronged. I remembered I was to argue against Bealknap here next week: somehow I would have to find time to prepare. I looked across to a door in a far corner, from behind which a murmur of voices was audible. 'Come on,' I said and led Barak to the Court of Augmentations' office.

It was no surprise that Augmentations had obtained a dispensation to open on a Sunday. Responsible for the sale of hundreds of monastic buildings and for the pensions of the former monks, there was no busier place in the land. Inside there were counters on two sides of the room where clerks dealt with enquiries. A gaggle of anxious women in sober dresses stood arguing with a harassed-looking clerk.

'Our abbess was promised the High Cross,' one of the women was saying plaintively. 'That she might have it to treasure, sir, a memory of our life.'

The clerk gestured impatiently at a paper. 'It's not mentioned in the surrender deed. Why d'you want it anyway? If you ex-nuns are still meeting together for papist services, that's against the law.'

I led Barak on past a little group of well-dressed men poring over a ground plan which showed the familiar shape of a monastic church and cloisters. 'It's not worth a thousand if we've to bring the building down,' one was saying.

We came to a counter marked 'Pensions'. There was nobody there. I rang a little bell and an elderly clerk appeared from behind a door, looking cross to be disturbed. I told him we wished to trace the address of a former monk. The man began to say that he was busy, we should call back later, but Barak delved in his doublet and produced a seal with Cromwell's coat of arms. He slapped it on the table. The clerk looked at it and at once became servile.

'I'll do anything I can, of course. To help the earl—'

'I'm looking for one Bernard Kytchyn,' I said. 'Former librarian at St Bartholomew's Priory, Smithfield.'

The clerk smiled. 'Ah yes, Barty's — that'll be easy. He'll collect his pension from here.' He opened a drawer and, producing a massive ledger, began leafing through it. After a minute he stabbed at an entry with an inky finger.

'There it is, sirs. Bernard Kytchyn, six pounds and two marks a year. He's listed as chantry priest at St Andrew's Church, Moorgate. It's a wicked scandal, sir, the chantries being allowed to stay open, priests still mumming Latin prayers for the dead day after day. They should bring the chantries down too.' He smiled at us brightly; as we were Cromwell's men he would expect us to agree. I only grunted, however, and turned the ledger round to check the entry.

'Barak,' I said, 'when I go back to Chancery Lane, I suggest you go and find Kytchyn, tell him—'

I broke off, as the door behind the clerk opened. To my astonishment Stephen Bealknap stepped out, a frown on his thin face. 'Master clerk, we had not finished. Sir Richard Rich requires—' He broke off in turn as he saw me. He looked surprised, his eyes meeting mine for a second before angling away.

'Brother Shardlake—'

'Bealknap, I did not know you had an interest in Augmentations pensions.'

He smiled. 'I don't usually. But there… there is a corrodian, a pensioner with right of residence, attached to my property at Moorgate. It seems I have taken on responsibility for him too. An interesting legal problem, is it not?'

'Yes.' I turned to the clerk. 'We are finished now. Well, Brother, I shall see you the day after tomorrow.' I bowed to Bealknap. The clerk replaced his book and ushered Bealknap back to his room. The door closed behind them.

I frowned. 'Corrodies are attached to monasteries, not friaries. What's he really doing here?'

'He mentioned Rich.'

'Yes.' I hesitated. 'Could Cromwell have the clerk questioned?'

'That would be difficult, it would mean Sir Richard Rich would get to hear of it.' Barak ran a hand through his thatch of brown hair. 'I've seen that pinch-faced old arsehole before somewhere.'

'Bealknap? Where?'

'I'll have to think. It was a long time ago, but I swear I know him.'

'We must go,' I said. 'Joseph will be waiting for me.'

I had arranged for Simon to bring Chancery and Sukey down to Westminster so that we could ride back from Westminster to Chancery Lane, and he was waiting by one of the buttresses by the east wall, sitting on Chancery's broad back and swinging his newly shod feet. We mounted, leaving him to walk back at his own pace, and set off.

As we passed Charing Cross, I noticed a well-dressed woman on a fine gelding, her face covered from the sun by a vizard. She was attended by three mounted retainers, with two ladies walking behind carrying posies and looking hot. The woman's horse had stopped to piss and the party was waiting till it had finished. As we passed she turned and stared at me. Her vizard, framed by an expensive hood, was a striped cloth mask with eyeholes and the blank, masked stare was oddly disconcerting. Then she lifted the mask and smiled and I recognized Lady Honor. She looked quite cool, though the mask must have been stifling and women's corsetry is an unkind thing in hot weather. She raised a hand in greeting.

'Master Shardlake! We are met again.'

I reined Chancery in. 'Lady Honor. Another hot day.'

'Is it not?' she replied feelingly. 'I am pleased to have met with you. Will you come and dine with me next Tuesday?'

'I should be delighted,' I said.

I was conscious of Barak at my side, his eyes cast down as befitted a servant.

'The House of Glass in Blue Lion Street, anyone will tell you. Be there at five. It's a sugar banquet only, it won't go on late. There will be interesting company.'

'I shall look forward to it.'

'By the way, I hear you are representing Edwin Wentworth's niece.'

I smiled wryly. 'It seems all London knows, my lady.'

'I've met him at Mercers' Company dinners. Not as clever as he thinks he is, though good at making money.'

'Really?'

She laughed. 'Ah, your face went sharp and lawyerly then, sir. I have piqued your interest.'

'I have the girl's life in my hands, Lady Honor.'

'A responsibility.' She grimaced. 'Well, I must get on, I am visiting my late husband's relatives.'

She lowered her vizard and the party moved off. 'A fine looking piece.' Barak said as we rode on.

'A lady of natural distinction.'

'Bit too pert for me. I like a woman who keeps her place. Rich widows are the devil for pertness.'

'Know many, do you?'

'I might do.'

I laughed. 'She is out of your league, Barak.'

'Out of yours too.'

'I would not be so impertinent as to think otherwise.'

'She'll never fall to beggary.'

'The great families don't have the assured places they once held.'

'Whose fault's that?' he said roundly. 'They fought each other in the wars of York and Lancaster till they near wiped each other out. I say we're better off under new men like the earl.'

'He still likes his earldom, Barak. A coat of arms is everyone's dream. Marchamount has made a joke of himself round Lincoln's Inn trying to persuade the College of Heralds he has people of gentle birth in his background.' A thought struck me. 'I wonder if that's why he is cultivating Lady Honor. Marriage to someone of birth—' At the thought I felt an unexpected pang.

'Got his eye on her?' Barak said. 'That could be interesting.' He shook his head. 'This chasing after status among the high-ups, it makes me laugh.'

'If one aims for gentlemanly status one aims for a higher way of life. Better than a lower.'

'I have my own lineage,' he said with a mocking laugh.

'Ah, yes. Your father's trinket.'

'Ay, though I keep quiet about my blood. They say the Jews were great bloodsuckers and gatherers of gold. And killers of children. Come on,' he said abruptly. 'I've to find this Kytchyn fellow.'

'If you find him, ask him to meet with me tomorrow. At St Bartholomew's.'

Barak turned in the saddle. 'At Barry's? But Sir Richard Rich lives there now. My master wants him kept out of this. And your friend Bealknap mentioning his name worries me.'

'I must see where the stuff was found, Barak.' He raised his eyebrows. 'Very well. But we have to be careful.'

'God's death, d'you think I don't realize that?'

At the bottom of Chancery Lane we parted. As I rode up the lane alone I felt suddenly nervous, remembering how we had been followed yesterday and seeing again those bodies in the Queenhithe house. I was relieved to approach my gate. As I did so I saw Joseph approaching from the other end of the lane. His shoulders were slumped, his face sad and preoccupied, but as he saw me he smiled and raised his hand in greeting. That heartened me; it was the first friendly gesture I had had since the trial.

Chapter Eleven

AS I REINED IN BESIDE HIM I saw that Joseph looked tired and hot. Simon had not yet returned, so I bade Joseph go indoors while I led the horses to the stables.

Returning to the hall, I removed my cap and robe. It was cooler indoors and I stood a moment, savouring the air on my sweat-coated face, then went into the parlour. Joseph had taken a seat in my armchair and he jumped up, embarrassed. I waved a hand.

'Don't worry, Joseph, it's a cursed hot day.' I took a hard chair opposite him. Despite his tiredness I saw there was an excited gleam in his eyes, a new look of hope.

'Sir,' he said, 'I have been successful. My brother will see you.'

'Well done.' I poured us some beer from a pot Joan had left on the table. 'How did you manage it?'

'It wasn't easy. I went to the house; they had to let me in or else cause a scene in front of the servants. I told Edwin you were uncertain of Elizabeth's guilt and wanted to talk to the family before deciding whether you could continue to represent her. Edwin was very hostile at first, angry at my interference. And I'm no good hand at lying; I feared I would become confused.'

I smiled. 'No, Joseph, you are too honest for that trade.'

'I don't like it. But for Lizzy's sake — anyway, my mother persuaded him. That surprised me because she was against the poor girl most of all, though she's her own granddaughter. But Mother said if we could convince you it must have been Elizabeth that killed Ralph, you would leave them alone to grieve. Sir, they'll see us tomorrow morning at ten. They will all be at home then.'

'Good. Well done, Joseph.'

'I fear I let them believe you have doubts about Lizzy's innocence.' He gave me an imploring look. 'But it was not an unchristian thing, was it, to lie for her sake?'

'Often the world does not allow us to be too pure, I fear.'

'God sets us hard dilemmas.' He shook his head sadly.

I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. I should have to hurry. 'I am sorry, Joseph, but I must leave you again. I have an engagement at Lincoln's Inn. Meet me at the Walbrook conduit tomorrow, just before ten.'

'I will, sir. You are good to give me your time when you are so busy.'

'Have you eaten? Stay here, my housekeeper will fetch you something.'

'Thank you, sir.'

I bowed quickly and left him. I told Joan to fetch him some food, then hurriedly donned my robe again; it had been washed the day before but already had a City stink. I wanted to catch both Marchamount and Bealknap before the dinner. As I hurried out to the street, I thought: poor honest Joseph, if he knew the nightmare tangle of deceptions Cromwell had involved me in he would flee the house. But no, he would not; while I was his only hope of setting Elizabeth free he would stand fast, like a much-battered rock.

===OO=OOO=OO===

I REFLECTED ON WHAT Barak had told me at the wharf. With my naturally sceptical temperament it was hard for me to believe Greek Fire could be real, and as for 'Sepultus' Gristwood, no class of persons is more associated with trickery than alchemists. Yet I had no doubt Barak had truthfully described what he saw. And he and Cromwell were hardly people to be taken in easily. There were new wonders and terrors every day in this world, which many prophets said was coming to its end; but I could not quite believe in it all yet. It was too fantastical.

And if it was real? The Byzantines might have kept the secret so well they ended by losing it, but in this our Europe of spies and religious quarrels England could not keep such a secret for long. It would be stolen sooner or later, and then what? The seas empty of ships, whole navies devoured by fire? I shook my head in troubled perplexity; how bizarre it seemed to me, thinking of such things and all the while trudging through the dust of staid, familiar Chancery Lane. I must put such thoughts from my head, I told myself, concentrate on the task ahead. And after being followed yesterday I had an eye out for my own security. I cast a quick glance round, but the only others in the lane were more robed lawyers riding to the Inn. An acquaintance waved and I returned his salute. With a dark glance at the Domus opposite, I turned under the Lincoln's Inn gate, the guard in his box bowing as I passed.

I went first to my chambers, for I needed to leave a note for Godfrey. I had expected them to be empty but when I entered Skelly was there copying, slouched so low over his quill his nose almost touched the papers. He peered up at me.

'In on a Sunday, John? You should not bend your head so close to the paper, the humours will rush to your brain.'

'It took me so long to rewrite the Beckman conveyance, sir, I got behind. I came in to copy the arbitration agreement for the Salters' Company.'

'Well, this shows application,' I said. I leaned over to have a look, then caught my breath. He had failed to ensure his ink was well mixed and a pale dribble of words ran across the page. 'This is no good.'

He looked up at me tremulously, his eyes red. 'What's wrong with it, sir?'

'The ink is watery.' His miserable stare made me suddenly angry. 'Look, can't you see? This will fade in a year. A legal document is no good unless it be written in thick black ink.'

'I'm sorry, sir.'

My irritation spilled over. 'It'll have to be done again. That's more good paper you've cost me, Skelly. The cost will come from your wages.' I frowned at his anxious face. 'Oh, just start again.'

Godfrey's door opened. 'What's afoot? I thought I heard raised voices.'

'John Skelly would make an angel in the heavenly spheres raise its voice. I didn't think you'd be in, Godfrey. You're not going to the lunch with Norfolk surely?'

He grunted. 'I thought I should see what the papist rogue looked like in the flesh.'

'Now that we are met, may I ask a favour? Come into my room.'

'Certainly.'

I closed the door on Skelly, and bade my friend sit down. 'Godfrey, I have a — a new matter. Something urgent. Together with the Wentworth case it will take much of my time this next fortnight. Can you deal with some of my work? For a share of the fee, of course.'

'I would be happy to. Including the Bealknap hearing?'

'No, I had better keep that. But everything else.'

He studied me carefully. 'You look troubled, Matthew.'

'I hate losing my temper. But between Skelly and this new affair—'

'Something interesting?'

'I can't speak of it. Now —' I lifted a heap of papers from a table — 'I will show you what cases I have.' I spent half an hour going through my matters with him, relieved that, apart from the Bealknap case next week, I should not have to appear in court for a fortnight.

'I am in your debt again,' I said when we were done. 'Any news of your friend Robert Barnes?'

He sighed heavily. 'Still in the Tower.'

'Barnes is a friend of Archbishop Cranmer's. Surely he'll protect him.'

'I hope so.' He brightened. 'The archbishop is to give the sermons at St Paul's Cross next week now Bishop Sampson is in the Tower.' He clenched his fist, reminding me that for all his mild ways he was fierce in his religion. 'With God's help we will prevail over the papist troop.'

'Listen, Godfrey, I'll try to get into chambers when I can. Keep an eye on Skelly, try and get him to produce work that's at least presentable. I have another appointment now, but I will see you at the lunch. Thank you, my friend.'

I went out again, crossing the courtyard to Marchamount's rooms. Over by the Great Hall servants were bustling in and out, getting everything ready for the dinner. The four Inns of Court vied for the patronage of those near to the king and Norfolk's presence was something of a coup, for all that his politics would be unpopular with many members of Lincoln's Inn.

I knocked and entered Marchamount's outer office. It was impressive, books and documents lining the shelves and, even on Sunday, a clerk labouring busily over papers. He looked up enquiringly.

'Is the serjeant in?'

'He's very busy, sir. Has a big case starting in Common Pleas tomorrow.'

'Tell him it is Brother Shardlake, on Lord Cromwell's business.'

His eyes widened at that and he disappeared through a door. A moment later he was back and bowed me through.

Gabriel Marchamount, like many barristers, lived as well as worked in Lincoln's Inn. His receiving room was as opulent as any I had seen. Expensive wallpaper in bright reds and greens lined the walls. Marchamount sat in a high-backed chair that would not have shamed a bishop, behind a wide desk strewn with papers. His broad figure was encased in an expensive yellow doublet with a pea-green belly that emphasized his choleric colour; his thin reddish hair was combed carefully over his pate. A robe edged with fur lay on a cushion nearby together with his white serjeant's coif, the mark of his rank: the highest position a barrister can reach short of a judgeship. A silver goblet of wine stood at his elbow.

Marchamount was known as a man who lived and breathed the law and loved the status it brought him; since his admission to the Order of the Coif three years before his patrician manner and habits had expanded to the extent that they were the subject of mocking jokes about the Inn. It was said he hoped to rise further, to a judgeship. Though the gossips said his advancement owed much to his cultivation of contacts among the anti-reform party at the king's court, I knew his intelligence was not to be underrated.

He rose and greeted me with a smile and a small bow. I saw his dark eyes were sharp and wary.

'Brother Shardlake. Are you here for my lunch with the duke?' He smiled with false modesty. I had not realized he had arranged the meal. 'My lunch' was typical of him.

'I might look in.'

'How goes business?'

'Well enough, thank you, Serjeant.'

'Wine, Brother?'

'Thank you, it is a little early for me.'

He sat down again. 'I hear you are retained to advise in the Wentworth case. An unpleasant business. Not much unguentum auri there, I'd guess.'

I smiled tightly. 'No. A small fee. In fact, it is another killing I have called to see you about. Michael Gristwood and his brother have been brutally murdered.'

I watched carefully for his reaction, but he only nodded sadly and said, 'Yes, I know. A dreadful business.'

'How did you know, sir?' I asked sharply. 'This has been kept quiet on Lord Cromwell's orders.'

He spread his arms. 'His widow came to see me yesterday. Said you had told her the house was hers, asked for my help in getting it transferred into her name since I knew her husband.' His eyes narrowed. 'Is the Greek Fire formula gone?'

I paused; the words seemed to hang in the stuffy air for a moment. 'Yes, Serjeant. That is why Lord Cromwell wants the matter investigated quickly and secretly. She was quick off the mark,' I added. 'I wonder she didn't go to Bealknap. He was nearer her husband in station.'

'She has no money. Bealknap would turn her away in a second if she couldn't pay him, but she knew I do charitable work sometimes.' He gave a self-satisfied smile. 'I've long since stopped doing minor estate work myself, but I know a junior fellow who will help her.'

Yes, I thought, Marchamount was the sort to do charitable work in the hope it would bring him merit with God, in accordance with the old religion's tenets. He would enjoy having the old ways back, too, the rich ceremonial and sonorous Latin.

'Tell the barrister nothing about the circumstances,' I told him. 'Lord Cromwell doesn't want this news leaking.'

He bridled a little at my peremptory manner. 'I could work that out for myself. I said nothing of Greek Fire to Goodwife Gristwood. Of course, she merely said her husband and his brother had been murdered. Not that that is unusual in these times.' He paused. 'There is to be no inquest?'

'The matter is to stay in Lord Cromwell's hands. And I am instructed to talk to all who knew about Greek Fire. I have to ask you to tell me everything about your involvement, Serjeant.'

Marchamount settled himself in his chair, linking his hands together. Square strong hands, yet soft and as white as his face was red. A gold ring containing an enormous emerald glinted on one middle finger. He adopted a look of judicious consideration, yet I sensed fear there. Goodwife Gristwood's news would have been a shock — Marchamount would guess Cromwell would be making enquiries and know that if he did not satisfy him he could find himself in the Tower, for all his airs.

'I did not know Michael Gristwood well,' he said. 'He approached me to see if I needed a solicitor's assistance a couple of years ago. He had been working with Brother Bealknap, but they had quarrelled.'

'I had heard. What was that about? Do you know?'

He raised an eyebrow. 'Michael was not above a little sharp dealing, but he found the way Bealknap cheated everyone as a matter of daily routine hard to stomach. I told him there'd be no sharp practice if he dealt with me.'

I nodded, acknowledging his point.

'I farmed some small pieces of work out to him, but to be frank they were not well done and I gave him no more. I heard he'd gone to Augmentations and that did not surprise me, for there are easy profits there. God have mercy on his soul,' he added sonorously.

'Amen,' I said.

Marchamount sighed. 'Then one day last March Brother Bealknap came to my office asking to see me. He told me what Michael had found at St Bartholomew's. He wanted an introduction to Lord Cromwell.' He spread his hands. 'I thought it was all some mare's nest and I laughed at Bealknap. But when he brought me the papers I could see there was something here that should at least—' he hesitated — 'be taken further.'

'Yes, I have the papers now.' I frowned. 'March, you said. But Michael Gristwood found those papers last autumn. What happened in the six months between?'

'I wondered about that. Michael told me he and his brother had spent the winter building the apparatus used to project the stuff from old plans and experimenting to make more of the Greek Fire.'

I remembered the burn marks in the Gristwoods' yard. 'Had they succeeded?'

He shrugged. 'They said so.'

'So, you helped Michael Gristwood to a meeting with Lord Cromwell. Did Gristwood offer to pay you?'

He gave me a haughty look. 'I had no need of their money. I helped them get the papers to the earl because it was right and proper. Of course, I could not approach the chief secretary myself.' He waved a hand self-deprecatingly. 'My contacts do not quite reach his circles. But I know Lady Honor, a fine woman and discreet as any female in England, and she does know the earl. A fine woman,' he repeated with a smile. 'I asked her to take the papers to him.'

It would be another foot in the doors of power for you, I thought. 'But you could not give her the formula itself?'

'That was not in my gift. I do not think anyone apart from the brothers has seen it since they tore it from that parchment. Michael told me they had done that, but not where it was kept. And the pair wanted money for it. Michael was quite open about that.'

'But as monastic property those papers belonged to the king. Gristwood should have taken them to Sir Richard Rich, as Chancellor of Augmentations, to pass to Lord Cromwell.'

Marchamount spread his hands. 'I know that, of course, but what could I do? I could not make Gristwood give me the formula, Brother Shardlake. Naturally I told him he should have given it straight to the proper authorities.' He raised his chin and looked down his nose at me.

'So you gave the papers to Lady Honor with a message.'

'I did. And a message came back through her, from the earl, for me to give to Gristwood. Afterwards two or three further messages passed through my hands. They were sealed, of course, so I knew nothing of what they said.' He spread his hands. 'I am afraid that is all I know, Brother. I was a mere messenger, I know nothing about this Greek Fire, nor even whether it was genuine.'

'Very well. Serjeant, I must repeat you are to speak to nobody about this.'

He spread his hands. 'Of course. I am at the service of Lord Cromwell's investigation.'

'Tell me if you are approached in any way, or if you remember anything that could be useful.'

'Naturally. I believe we shall be meeting again on Tuesday, by the way; we are both invited to Lady Honor's banquet.'

'Yes.'

'A lady of distinction,' he said again, then looked at me sharply. 'Will you be questioning her?'

'At some point. And I shall probably wish to speak to you once more.' I rose. 'I will leave you to your business for now. I look forward to Tuesday.'

He nodded, then leaned back and smiled, showing his white teeth. 'Is Greek Fire genuine, then?' he asked suddenly.

'I am afraid that is a question I may not answer.'

He inclined his head, then gave me a penetrating look. 'So you are working for Lord Cromwell again,' he said quietly. 'You know, many think you deserve the coif of a serjeant: you should be pleading before Common Pleas, not oafs like Forbizer. Yet you have been passed over a few times. Some say it was because you were out of favour with those that matter.'

I shrugged. 'I cannot help what people say.'

He smiled again. 'Many say Lord Cromwell may soon be out of office. If the king puts Queen Anne away.' He shook his head sadly.

'Again, I cannot help what people say.'

Marchamount was sounding me out, I knew, wondering if I was one of the many who, hearing the rumours, might switch to the religious conservatives. I said nothing, merely folded my hands in front of me.

Marchamount made a little moue. 'Well, I must not keep you.' He rose and bowed.

I smiled inwardly at the way he had made the dismissal his. But looking in his eyes I felt again that he was afraid.

Chapter Twelve

OUTSIDE IN THE COURTYARD black-robed barristers were heading towards the hall from all directions. I saw Bealknap among them, walking alone as usual, for he had few if any friends — though he never seemed to care. It was too late to talk to him now, I would have to wait till after the lunch. Joining the crowd filing into hall, I saw Godfrey a little ahead of me and tapped him on the shoulder.

Lincoln's Inn Hall looked its very best. Beneath the vaulting hammerbeam roof the richly coloured tapestries glowed in the light of many candles. The dark oak floorboards gleamed with polish. A throne-like chair had been set for the duke in the centre of the High Table at the north end of the hall. Other long tables, set with the Inn's best silver, had been placed at right angles to High Table. People were finding their places; a few students selected for their good backgrounds, short black robes over their gaudy doublets, took the places furthest from High Table. The serjeants, sweating under the white coifs tied around their faces, sat nearest and the benchers and barristers in between.

As benchers Godfrey and I were entitled to places next to the serjeants, and to my surprise Godfrey shouldered his way to a place as near as possible to where the duke would sit. I sat next to him. On my other side was an aged bencher called Fox. As he never tired of telling people, he had been a student at Lincoln's Inn during the reign of King Richard III and had watched the hall being built. As we took our places, I saw Bealknap arguing with a bencher over a place nearly opposite me. Although he had fifteen years at the Bar, Bealknap's unsavoury reputation meant he had never been called to read, yet he was disputing crossly for the place. Perhaps thinking such an argument beneath him, the bencher allowed Bealknap to take the place. He sat down with a smile of satisfaction on his thin features.

A servant banged his staff. Everyone rose as the officers of the Inn marched up the hall. Among the black robes was one man in the rich scarlet of a peer, his wide collar trimmed with black fur; Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk. I was surprised to see how small he was. How old, too, for his long face was deeply lined and the hair beneath the wide jewelled cap was thin and grey. He looked, I thought, insignificant; in ordinary clothes one would not have glanced at him twice. A dozen retainers in the red and gold quarters of the Howard livery spread out and stood against the walls.

The Inn's officers bowed and smiled as they bade the duke take his seat. I saw Marchamount take a place at High Table. He was not an officer, but from what he said had been instrumental in organizing the lunch. He beamed at the crowd, in his element. I wondered how well he knew Cromwell's, and reform's, greatest enemy. Curious, I studied the duke's lined face. It was as hard as any man's I had seen, the thin mouth under the prominent nose pursed with severity. Small black eyes surveyed the crowd with lively calculation. The duke's gaze met mine for a second and I dropped my eyes.

The first course was brought in, steaming dishes of vegetables carved into the shapes of stars and half-moons, richly sauced with sugar and vinegar and accompanied by cold meat. As this was a lunch there would be none of the spectacular fare of an evening supper, but much effort had been put into the preparation of the food. I turned appreciatively to Godfrey.

'This fare is almost worth the company,' I whispered.

'Nothing is worth this company.' Godfrey was staring at the duke, a bitter look on his normally amiable features.

'Don't let him catch you giving him foul looks,' I whispered, but he shrugged and went on staring. The duke was talking to the treasurer, Serjeant Cuffleigh.

'Our defences couldn't stand a combined assault by the French and Spaniards,' I heard the duke tell Cuffleigh in a deep voice.

Cuffleigh smiled. 'Few have as much military experience as you, your grace. You hammered the Scots for us at Flodden.'

'I'm afraid of fighting nobody, but the balance of forces needs to be right. When I faced the northern rebels three years ago I hadn't enough men to meet them, so the king and I got them to disband their forces with sweet words. Then we hammered the churls.' He smiled coldly.

Marchamount leaned across. 'And we can't do that with the French and Spaniards.'

'I dare say not,' Cuffleigh agreed hesitantly.

'That's why we need peace. A half-baked alliance with a bunch of squabbling Germans is no use.'

Old Brother Fox leaned across to me. 'I see his grace is talking to the treasurer,' he said. 'You know, Thomas More refused the treasurership and was fined a pound. Ah, the king exacted a higher penalty when More refused to recognize Nan Bullen as queen.'

'Brother Cuffleigh looks a trifle anxious,' I said, to divert Brother Fox before he began his reminiscences of More's time at the Inn.

'Cuffleigh is a reformer and the duke loves baiting evangelicals.' Fox, a traditionalist, spoke with satisfaction. The duke was smiling coldly at the treasurer now. 'Not just apprentices,' I heard him say loudly. 'Even silly little women fancy they can read the Bible now and understand God's Word.' He laughed.

'It is permitted, your grace,' Cuffleigh replied weakly.

'It won't be for long. The king plans to restrict Bible-reading to heads of households. I'd restrict it further — I'd only permit it for the clergy. I've never read it and never will.'

All along the upper part of the tables, where the duke's words could be heard, men were looking at him, some approvingly and others with set faces. He glanced over the assembly with those bright, hard eyes and smiled cynically.

Then, before I could stop him, Godfrey rose in his place. All eyes turned to him as he took a deep breath, faced the duke, and said loudly, 'God's Word is for all to read. It is the bringer of the sweetest light there is, the light of truth.'

His words rang and echoed round the hall. All along the tables eyes widened. Norfolk leaned over, resting his chin on a beringed hand, and stared at Godfrey with cold amusement. I grabbed at the sleeve of his robe and tried to pull him down but he shook me off.

'The Bible brings us from error to truth, to the presence of Jesus Christ,' he continued. A couple of students clapped until furious glares from the Inn's officers scared them into silence. Godfrey reddened, as though he suddenly realized what an unforgivably bold thing he had done, but he went on. 'Were I to be killed for my beliefs, I would rise from the grave to proclaim the truth once more,' he said and then, to my relief, sat down.

The duke rose in his place. 'No, sir, you would not,' he said evenly. 'You would not, you would be screaming in hell with all the other Lutheran heretics. You should have a care, sir, that your tongue does not lose you your head and put you in the pit before your time.' He sat down again. Leaning over to Marchamount, who was glaring at Godfrey as though he could have slain him, he began whispering in his ear.

'Jesu, man, what were you thinking of?' I asked Godfrey. 'You'll be disciplined for this.'

He looked at me. His normally soft features had taken on a steely expression. 'I care not.' He almost spat the words. 'Jesus Christ is my Saviour, through grace, and I will not have His Word made mock of.' His eyes gleamed with self-righteous anger. I turned away. When his emotions were roused by his faith Godfrey could sometimes change into a different person, a dangerous one.

===OO=OOO=OO===

AT LAST THE MEAL ended. The duke and his retinue filed out and at once a buzz of conversation erupted. Godfrey sat there, taking satisfaction, it seemed to me, from a myriad stares. Some barristers, the traditionalists mostly, got up and left. Old Brother Fox, looking much disturbed, rose from his bench. I stood up too. Godfrey gave me a reproachful look.

'Will you stay a moment?' he asked. 'Or do you not wish to be associated with me any more?'

'God's wounds, Godfrey,' I snapped, 'I've work to do, a cartload of it. There are others in the world besides you. I have to see Bealknap before he disappears.' And indeed he was even now heading for the door. I hurried after him, catching him as he stepped into the sunny quadrangle, blinking in the light.

'Brother Bealknap,' I said crisply, 'I need to talk to you.'

'About the case?' He smiled. 'Your friend made a monkey of himself in there, by the way. He'll be disciplined —'

'It is not about the case, Bealknap. I have a commission, from Lord Cromwell. To investigate the murder yesterday of Michael Gristwood.'

His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. If he was acting ignorance, it was a good performance. But lawyers can act better than any mummer in a mystery play.

'Your chambers, I think.'

Bealknap nodded, stunned into silence, and led the way across Gatehouse Court. He had a room on the first floor of a corner building, up a narrow flight of creaking stairs. His chamber was plainly furnished, a poor-looking desk and a couple of battered tables heaped untidily with papers. The room was dominated by a huge iron-bound chest that stood in one corner, made of thick boards and secured by iron bands and padlocks. It was said about the Inns that all the gold Bealknap earned went in there and that he passed his evenings running it through his fingers and counting it. He hardly spent any, though; it was known that tailors and innkeepers had been chasing him through the courts for years for money he owed.

Bealknap looked at the chest and seemed momentarily to relax. Many lawyers would have been embarrassed to have such stories of miserliness spread about them, but Bealknap seemed not to mind. Keeping the chest in his office was safe enough for he lived in rooms next door, and with its guards and watchmen the Inn was as safe a place as anywhere in London. Yet I remembered what the Gristwoods' killers had made of the chest in Sepultus's workshop.

Bealknap took off his cap and ran a hand through his wiry blond hair. 'Will you take a seat, Brother?'

'Thank you.' I sat by his desk, casting an eye over the papers. To my surprise I saw the crest of the Hanseatic League on one document, French writing on another.

'You have business with French merchants?' I asked.

'They pay well. The French are having problems with the Custom House these days.'

'Not surprising as they threaten war on us.'

'That won't happen. The king knows the dangers, as the duke was saying at lunch.' He waved the subject away. 'In God's name, Brother, what is this about Michael Gristwood?'

'He was found dead yesterday morning at his home. His brother was murdered too. The formula is gone. You know what I am talking about.'

'My poor friend. This is very shocking.' His eyes darted all over the room, avoiding mine.

'Did you tell anyone apart from Serjeant Marchamount about the formula?' I asked.

He shook his head firmly. 'No, sir, I did not. When Michael brought me the papers he found at Bart's I said he should get them to Lord Cromwell.'

'For payment, though they were the king's by right. Was that your idea, or his?'

He hesitated, then looked at me directly. 'His. But I didn't quarrel with him about that, Brother. It was an opportunity, and only a fool passes those up. I offered to go to Marchamount for him.'

'For a fee?'

'Naturally.' He raised a hand. 'But — but Lord Cromwell accepted the position, and I was only a poor intermediary—'

'You are a shameless fellow, Bealknap.' I looked at the papers again. 'You could have taken them to the French, perhaps. They might have offered more to keep this secret out of Cromwell's hands.'

He jumped up, agitated. 'God's death, that would have been treason! D'ye think I'd take the risk of being gutted alive at Tyburn? You have to believe me.'

I said nothing. He sat down again, then laughed nervously. 'Besides, I thought the whole thing was nonsense. After I took Michael to Marchamount he paid me and I heard no more till just now.' He jabbed a finger at me. 'Don't try to involve me in this, Shardlake. I'd no part in it, on my oath!'

'When did Michael first bring you the papers?'

'In March.'

'He waited six months after finding them?'

'He said he and his brother the alchemist had been experimenting with the formula, making more, building some sort of apparatus to fire the stuff at ships. It made no sense to me.'

It was a similar tale to Marchamount's. 'Ah yes,' I said, 'the apparatus. Did they build it themselves, I wonder?'

Bealknap shrugged. 'I've no idea. Michael said only that it had been made. I tell you, I know nothing.'

'They said nothing of where the apparatus, or the formula, were kept?'

'No. I didn't even study their papers. Michael showed them to me, but half of them were in Greek and what I could read sounded like nonsense. You know some of those old monks were jesters? They'd forge documents to pass the time.'

'Is that what you thought those papers were? A jest, a forgery?'

'I didn't know. I introduced Michael to Marchamount and then I was glad to be shot of the matter.'

'Back to your compurgators, eh?'

'Back to business.'

'Very well.' I rose. 'That will do for now. You will tell no one Michael is dead, Bealknap, or that we have spoken, or you will answer to Lord Cromwell.'

'I've no wish to tell anyone, I don't want to be involved at all.'

'I am afraid you are.' I gave him a tight smile. 'I will see you at Westminster Hall on Tuesday for the case. By the way,' I added with apparent casualness, 'did you resolve the problem with your corrodiary?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Strange, I did not think friaries took on pensioners living in.'

'This one did,' he said with a glare. 'Ask Sir Richard Rich if you don't believe me.'

'Ah, yes, you mentioned his name at Augmentations. I did not know you had his patronage.'

'I don't,' he answered smoothly, 'but I knew the clerk had a meeting with Sir Richard Rich. That was why I urged him to hurry.'

I smiled and left him. I was sure I was right about corrodians, I would check. I frowned. There was something about Bealknap's response to my question about the corrodian that did not ring true. He had been frightened, but had seemed suddenly confident when he mentioned Richard Rich. Somehow that worried me very much.

Chapter Thirteen

I WALKED TIREDLY DOWN Chancery Lane to my house. Barak would be back by now. I had enjoyed the respite from his company. I would have liked nothing better than to rest, but I had said I would go to Goodwife Gristwood's that day. Another trip across London. But we had only eleven days left now. The words seemed to echo in time with my footsteps; el-e-ven days, el-e-ven days.

Barak had returned and was sitting in the garden, his feet up on a shady bench and a pot of beer beside him. 'Joan is looking after you, then,' I said.

'Like a prince.'

I sat down and poured myself a mug of beer. I saw he had found time to visit the barber's, for his cheeks were smooth; I was conscious of my own dark stubble and realized I should have had a shave before such an important dinner. Marchamount would have mentioned it had I come on less serious business.

'What luck with the lawyers?' Barak asked.

'They both say they just acted as middlemen. What about you? Did you find the librarian?'

'Ay.' Barak squinted against the afternoon sun. 'Funny little fellow. I found him saying Mass in a side chapel in his church.' He smiled wryly. 'He wasn't pleased to hear what I wanted, started trembling like a rabbit, but he'll meet us outside Barry's gatehouse at eight tomorrow morning. I said if he didn't turn up the earl would be after him.'

I took off my cap and fanned myself. 'Well, I suppose we had better be off to Wolf's Lane.'

Barak laughed. 'You look hot.'

'I am hot. I've been working while you've been resting your arse on my bench.' I stood up wearily. 'Let's get it done.'

We went round to the stables. Chancery had travelled further than he was used to the day before and was unhappy at being led into the sun again. He was old; it was time to think of putting him out to pasture. I mounted, nearly catching my robe in the saddle. I had kept it on as it lent me a certain gravitas that would be useful in dealing with Goodwife Gristwood, but it was a burden in this weather.

As we rode out, I went over what I should say. I must find out if she knew anything of the apparatus for projecting Greek Fire; there had been something, I was sure, she had been keeping back yesterday.

Barak interrupted my reflections. 'You lawyers,' he said, 'what's the mystery of your craft?'

'What do you mean?' I replied wearily, scenting mockery.

'All trades have their mysteries, the secrets their apprentices learn. The carpenter knows how to make a table that won't collapse, the astrologer how to divine a man's fate, but what mysteries do lawyers know? It's always seemed to me they know only how to mangle words for a penny.' He smiled at me insolently.

'You should try working at some of the legal problems the students have at the Inns. That would stop your mouth. England's law consists of detailed rules, developed over generations, that allow men to settle their disputes in an ordered way.'

'Seems more like a great thicket of words to keep men from justice. My master says the law of property's an ungodly jumble.' He gave me a keen look and I wondered if he was watching to see whether I would contradict Cromwell.

'Have you any experience with the law then, Barak?'

He looked ahead again. 'Oh, ay, my mother married an attorney after my father died. He was a fine sophister, flowing with words. No qualifications at all, though, like friend Gristwood. Made his money by tangling people up in legal actions he'd no knowledge how to solve.'

I grunted. 'The law's practitioners aren't perfect. The Inns are trying to control unqualified solicitors. And some of us try honourably to gain each man his right.' I knew my words sounded prosy even as I spoke them, but the sardonic smile that was Barak's only reply still irked me.

As we passed down Cheapside we had to halt at the Great Cross to let a flock of sheep pass on their way to the Shambles. A long queue of water carriers was waiting with their baskets at the Great Conduit. I saw there was only a dribble of water from the fountain.

'If the springs north of London are drying up,' I observed, 'the City will be in trouble.'

'Ay,' Barak agreed. 'Normally we keep buckets of water to hand in summer in the Old Barge in case there's a fire. But there's not enough water.'

I looked at the buildings around me. Despite the rule they should be made of stone to avoid fires, many were wooden. The City was a damp place in winter — sometimes the smell of damp and mould in a poor dwelling was enough to make one retch — but summer was the dangerous time, when people feared hearing the warning shout of 'Fire' almost as much as the other summer terror, plague.

I jerked round at the sound of a high-pitched yell. A beggar girl, no more than ten and dressed only in the filthiest rags, had just been thrown out of a baker's shop. People stopped to look as she turned and banged on the door of the shop with tiny fists.

'You took my little brother! You made him into pies!'

Passers-by laughed. Sobbing, the girl slid down the door and crouched weeping at its foot. Someone laid a penny at her feet before hurrying on.

'What in God's name is that about?' I asked.

Barak grimaced. 'She's mazed. She used to beg round Walbrook and the Stocks Market with her young brother. Probably kicked out of a monastery almshouse. Her brother disappeared a few weeks ago and now she runs up to people screaming they've killed him. That's not the only shopkeeper she's accused. She's become a laughing stock.' He frowned. 'Poor creature.'

I shook my head. 'More beggars every year.'

'There go many of us if we're not careful,' he said. 'Come on, Sukey.

I looked at the girl, still crouched against the door, arms like sticks wrapped round her thin frame.

'Are you coming?' Barak asked.

I followed him down Friday Street, then down to Wolf's Lane. Even on this hot sunny day the narrow street had a sinister look, the overhanging top storeys cutting out much of the sun. Many houses leaned over at such an angle they looked as though they could collapse at any moment. Under the alchemist's sign I saw a crude repair had been made to the door with planks and nails. We dismounted and Barak knocked on the door. I brushed a layer of brown dust from my robe.

'Let's see what the pinched old crow has to say for herself this time,' Barak grunted.

'For Jesu's sake, she's just lost her husband.'

'Fat lot she cares. All she wants is to get her name on the deeds of this place.'

The door was opened by one of Cromwell's men. He bowed. 'Good day, Master Barak.'

'Good day, Smith. All quiet?'

'Yes, sir. We've had the bodies taken away.'

I wondered where. Did the earl have a place kept aside for inconvenient corpses?

The girl Susan appeared, looking composed now.

'Hello, Susan,' Barak said. He gave the girl a wink, making her blush. 'How's your mistress?'

'Better, sir.'

'We would talk with her again,' I said.

She curtseyed and led us in. I touched the old tapestry in the hall. It was heavy and smelled of dust. 'Where did your master get this?' I asked curiously. 'It's a fine piece of work. Very old.'

Susan gave it a look of distaste. 'It came from the mother superior's house at St Helen's nunnery, sir. Augmentations didn't want it — it was so faded it had no value. Great ugly thing, it flaps in the breeze and makes you jump.'

Susan took us into a parlour with another view of the strangely blackened yard, and went to fetch her mistress. It was a large room with fine oak beams, but the furniture was cheap and there was only a little poor silver on display in the cupboard. I wondered if the Gristwoods had gone beyond their means in buying this house. Michael would not have earned much as an Augmentations clerk and an alchemist's income, I guessed, could be uncertain.

Goodwife Gristwood came in. She wore the same cheap dress as yesterday, and her face was stiff with strain. She curtseyed to us perfunctorily.

'I'm afraid I have some more questions for you, Goodwife,' I said gently. 'I hear you have been to see Serjeant Marchamount.'

She gave me a fierce look. 'I have to look to my own future now. There's nobody else. I only told him Michael was dead. Which he is,' she added bitterly.

'Very well, but you must tell as few people as possible about what happened here. For now.'

She sighed. 'Very well.'

'And now I would ask you more about yesterday's events. Please, sit down.'

Reluctantly she took a chair. 'Did your husband and brother seem as normal when you and Susan left the house to shop?'

She looked at me wearily. 'Yes. We left before the markets opened and returned at noon. Michael hadn't gone to Augmentations yesterday — he went up to help his brother with one of his vile-smelling experiments. When we got back we saw the front door had been staved in and then those — those red footprints. Susan didn't want to come in, but I made her.' She hesitated. 'Somehow I knew there wasn't anybody here, not living.' Her tightly held features seemed to sag a little. 'We went upstairs and found them.'

I nodded. 'Is Susan your only servant?'

'She's all we could afford, silly lump though she is.'

'And none of the neighbours saw or heard anything?'

'The goodwife next door told your man she heard a great banging and clattering, but that was nothing unusual when his brother was at his work.'

'I would like to look at the workshop again. Do you feel able to come with me?' I recalled her terror at the notion the day before, but now she only shrugged apathetically.

'If you wish. They've taken them away. After you've seen it, can I get it cleared? If I'm to keep myself fed, I'll have to let it out.'

'Very well.'

She led me up the twisting staircase, still complaining about the need to let the room and how she had no money coming in now. Barak followed; behind her back he worked his mouth in a silent gobble in imitation of her. I gave him a stern look.

At the top of the stairs she fell silent. The door still hung off its hinges. I looked at the other doors leading off the corridor. 'What are these?' I asked.

'Our bedroom, my brother-in-law's, and that third one is where Samuel kept his rubbish.'

'Samuel?'

She grimaced. 'Sepultus. Samuel was his real name, his Christian name. Sepultus,' she said again, with mocking emphasis.

I went to the door she had indicated and threw it open. I had wondered if I might find the Greek Fire apparatus in there, but there was nothing but a jumble of broken chairs, bottles, cracked flasks and, staring up from a corner, a large toad preserved in a vinegar bottle. Barak peered in over my shoulder. I picked up an enormous, curved horn that lay on a cloth. Little pieces had been cut out of it.

'What in heaven's name is this?'

Goodwife Gristwood snorted again. 'A unicorn's horn, so Samuel said. He'd bring it out to impress people, powder up bits of it in his messes. I'll be reduced to boiling it for soup if I can't let some rooms.'

I closed the door and looked around the hall with its bare boards, its dried-up old rushes in the corner and the big crack in the wall. Goodwife Gristwood followed my gaze. 'Yes, the house is falling down. This whole street's built on Thames mud. It's drying out in this hot weather. Creaks all the time, makes me jump. Maybe the whole place will fall on my head and that'll be an end to all my problems.'

Barak raised his eyebrows to the ceiling. I coughed. 'Shall we go into the workshop?'

The bodies had gone but the floor was still covered with blood, its faint tang mixed with the sulphurous stink. Goodwife Gristwood looked at the spray of blood on the wall and went pale.

'I want to sit down,' she said.

I felt guilty at having brought her; lifting a chair from the wreckage, I helped her sit. After a minute some colour returned to her face and she looked at the smashed chest. 'Michael and Samuel bought that last autumn. Heaved it up here. They'd never let me know what was in it.'

I nodded at the empty shelves. 'Do you know what was kept on those?'

'Samuel's powders and chemicals. Sulphur and lime and God knows what. The smells I had to put up with, the noises.' She nodded at the fireplace. 'When he was heating potions there I was sometimes afraid he'd blow the house up as high as a monastery church. Whoever killed them took Samuel's bottles as well, God knows why. This is where all the great knowledge Samuel claimed to have brought him in the end,' she said wearily. 'And Michael with him.' There was a sudden catch in her voice; she swallowed and made her face severe again. I studied her. She was holding in some powerful emotions. Grief? Anger? Fear?

'Has anything else been taken that you can see?'

'No. But I came up here as little as I could help.'

'You did not think much of your brother-in-law's trade?'

'Michael and I were happy enough on our own till Samuel suggested we all buy a large house together when the lease ran out on his old workshop. Samuel was all right purifying lime for the gunpowder makers, but when he tried anything more ambitious he'd come unstuck. He was greedy beyond his knowledge, like all alchemists.' She sighed. 'A couple of years ago he fancied he'd found a way to strengthen pewter, some formula he'd teased out of one of his old books, but he never managed it and the Pewter-masters' Guild sued him. And Michael was always so easily led, was sure one day his brother would make their fortune. These last few weeks Michael and Samuel spent half their time up here. They told me they'd found out a marvellous secret.' She looked at the bloody doorway again. 'Men's greed.'

'Did they ever mention the term Greek Fire?' I watched her face. She hesitated before replying.

'Not to me. I tell you, I wasn't interested in what they did up here.' She shifted uneasily in her chair.

'You spoke of experiments, sometimes out in the yard. Did they have an apparatus, a large thing of tanks and pipes? Did you ever see anything like that?'

'No, sir. I'd have noticed. All they took out to the yard were flasks of liquid and powder. That's not what the earl's men have turned my house upside down looking for, is it? I thought it was some papers.'

'Yes, it was,' I said mildly. Her eyes had narrowed warily when I mentioned the apparatus. 'But there was a big metal construction as well. You are sure you know nothing of that?'

'Nothing, sir, I swear.' She was lying, I was sure. I nodded and stepped to the fireplace. The stoppered bottle lay where I had left it, but to my surprise the thick liquid on the floorboards seemed to have evaporated; there was nothing left but the barest stain on the floor. I touched it; the floor was quite dry. I hesitated, then picked up the little bottle, still half-full of the stuff.

'Might you have any idea what this liquid is, madam?'

'No, I haven't.' Her voice rose. 'Greek Fire, formulae, books, I don't know what any of it means! God's wounds, I don't care either!' Her voice rose to a shout and she covered her face with her hands. I picked up the bottle and wrapped it carefully in my handkerchief, then slipped it into my pocket, suppressing a momentary stab of fear that it might be Greek Fire itself, that it might explode into flames.

Goodwife Gristwood wiped her face and sat looking at the floor. When she spoke again it was in a cold whisper. 'If you want to find who might have told the killers about my husband, you should go to her.'

'Who?'

'His whore.' Barak and I looked at each other in surprise as she continued, her voice like a thin stream of icy water. 'The woman that keeps the brewery told me in March she'd seen Michael in Southwark, going into one of the whorehouses. She enjoyed telling me too.' She looked at me bitterly. 'I asked him and he admitted it. He said he wouldn't go again but I didn't believe him. Some days he'd come home drunk, smelling like a stewhouse, goggle-eyed with sated lust.'

Barak laughed aloud at the words. Goodwife Gristwood rounded on him. 'Shut up! You churl, laughing at a woman's shame!'

'Leave us,' I told him curtly. For a moment I thought he would argue, but he shrugged and left. The goodwife looked up at me, her eyes fierce. 'Michael was besotted with that vile tart. I raged and shouted at him but still he went to her.' She bit her lip hard. 'I'd always been able to manage him before, stop him getting too involved with mad schemes, but then Samuel came and between him and that whore I lost him.' She looked again at the awful spray of blood then stared at me, her eyes fierce. 'I asked him once if his lusts were all he cared about and he said the tart was kind to him and he could talk to her. Well, you talk to her, sir. Bathsheba Green at the Bishop's Hat brothel at Bank End.'

'I see.'

'They do what they like over in Southwark, outside the City's jurisdiction. This side of the river she'd have her cheeks branded, and I'd do it for them.'

Despite her vicious words I felt sorry for Jane Gristwood, alone now with nothing but this big decaying house. I wondered what she had felt for her husband. Something more than the contempt and bitterness she expressed, I was sure. Certainly she would make what trouble she could for the whore.

I looked into her eyes and again had the sense of something held back. I would return when I had found this Bathsheba Green.

'Thank you, Goodwife Gristwood,' I said. I bowed to her.

'Is that all?' She looked relieved.

'For now.'

'Talk to her,' she repeated fiercely. 'Talk to her.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

AS I WALKED DOWNSTAIRS I heard voices from the back regions; a man's murmur then a woman's sudden giggle. 'Barak!' I called sharply. He appeared, sucking an orange. 'Susan gave me this,' he said, tucking the half-eaten fruit away in his codpiece. 'Fresh off the boat.'

'We should go,' I said curtly, leading the way outside. I blinked in the afternoon sun, bright after the gloomy house.

'What did Madam Sour-face have to say?' Barak asked as we untied the horses.

'More without you there baiting her. She told me Michael was seeing a whore. Bathsheba Green, of the Bishop's Hat in Southwark.'

'I know the Bishop's Hat. It's a rough place. I would have thought an Augmentations man could have afforded a better class of nip.' We mounted the horses; I adjusted my cap so some shade might fall on my neck.

'I was asking Susan about the family,' Barak said as we rode away. 'Goodwife Gristwood tried to rule the roost, but her husband and his brother paid little heed, apparently. They were thick as thieves. Both after a quick fortune, she said.'

'Did she know of Michael's dalliance at Southwark?'

'Yes. Said it turned the goodwife bitter. But you could see that, pinched old raven.'

'She's lost her husband, has nothing in the world now except that ruin of a house.'

Barak grunted. 'Apparently Gristwood married her for her money when she was nearly thirty. There was some scandal in her family, Susan didn't know what.'

I turned to look at him. 'Why do you dislike her so?'

He laughed, in a tone as bitter as Jane Gristwood's own. 'She reminds me of my mother, if you must know. The way she was after you for information about the house the moment we were in the door, and her husband lying in his gore upstairs. My ma was like that, married our lodger not a month after my father died. I quit the house then.'

'A poor widow must look to her future.'

'They do that all right.' He pulled his horse a little ahead of me, ending the conversation, and we rode on in silence. I kept raising my hand to remove the sweat that was falling into my eyes. I was not used to criss-crossing London like this. The heat was baking the rubbish in the streets, releasing all its vile humours. Beneath my doublet my armpits were damp with sweat and my breeches felt as though they were stuck to Chancery's saddle. This was a trial for him too: he was finding it hard to keep up with Barak's mare. I resolved that in future we would travel by water when we could. It was all very well for Barak and his horse — each was a decade younger than Chancery and me.

===OO=OOO=OO===

BY THE TIME we arrived back at Chancery Lane the sun was low. I told Joan to fetch us some food. In my parlour I dropped gratefully into my armchair; Barak collected some cushions together and sprawled inelegantly on the floor.

'Well, where are we now?' he asked. 'This day's nearly done. Then only ten more.'

'We've had more new leads than answers so far. But that's what I'd expect at the start of an investigation as complicated as this. We must visit that whore. And I think the goodwife is still holding something back. Is your man Smith staying with her?'

'Till otherwise instructed.' He retrieved his orange and sucked it noisily. 'I told you she was a nasty old crow.'

'It's something to do with the apparatus. I don't think they kept it the house.'

'Then where?'

'I don't know. Some warehouse? But there was nothing about any other property among their papers.'

'You looked?'

'Yes.'

I took the bottle from my pocket and handed it carefully to Barak. 'There was a pool of this stuff on the floor. It's almost colourless, has no smell, but if you taste it you get a kick like a mule.'

He unstoppered the bottle and sniffed the contents carefully, then put a little on his fingers. He touched it to his tongue and made a grimace, as I had. 'Jesu, you're right!' he said. 'It's not Greek Fire, though. I told you, that had a fearsome stink.'

I took the bottle back, stoppered it and shook it gently, watching the colourless liquid swirl within. 'I want to take this to Guy.'

'So long as you're careful what you tell him.'

'God's wounds, how many times do I have to tell you I will be?'

'I'll come with you.'

'As you will.'

'What exactly did you get out of the two lawyers?'

'Marchamount and Bealknap both insist they were just middlemen. I'm not sure about Bealknap. He's involved with Richard Rich in some way, though I don't know whether it relates to Greek Fire. Incidentally, he has dealings with foreign merchants, says he represents them in negotiations with the Custom House. I saw some papers on his desk. Lord Cromwell will have access to the records of trade. Could someone in his office check them? I've too little time.'

Barak nodded. 'I'll send a note. I've been trying to remember where I've seen that arsehole Bealknap's face before, but it hasn't come to me. It was a long time ago, I'm sure.'

There was a knock and Joan entered with a tray. She clucked at the dusty state of our clothes and I asked her to lay out new ones upstairs. I winced at a spasm from my back as I bent to pour some beer.

'You shouldn't overtire yourself, sir,' she said.

'I'll be all right when I've had some rest.'

As she left us, we both took welcome draughts of beer.

'The Duke of Norfolk was in a confident mood today,' I said. 'Baiting reformers at the lunch. A friend of mine baited him back, he'll be in trouble now.'

'I thought lawyers were all reformers.'

'Not all. And they'll turn to follow the wind, just like everyone else in London, if Cromwell falls. From fear and hope of advancement.'

'We've so little time,' Barak said. 'Are you sure we need to go to Barry's with that librarian tomorrow? I agree you need to talk to him, but you could see him at his chantry.'

'No. I need to see the roots of this, to go back to where it all started. Tomorrow we'll go to Barry's, then to see Guy and to the whorehouse in Southwark to see if that girl has anything to say. I've my interview with the Wentworths as well.' I sighed.

'Ten days.' He shook his head.

'Barak,' I said, 'I may be a melancholy man, but you have all the marks of a sanguine humour. You would rush at things too much if it was left to you.'

'We need this finished. And don't forget how we were followed yesterday,' he added gloomily. 'We might be in danger too.'

'I know that only too well.' I stood up. 'And now I am going to look at more of those old papers.'

I left him and went up to my bedroom, reflecting how I had felt afraid when I walked alone to the Inn earlier. I had to admit that when I was out I felt safer with Barak, the man of the streets, around. But I wished I did not have the necessity.

Chapter Fourteen

NEXT MORNING, the thirty-first of May, was hotter than ever. Again we left early on horseback; the way to St Bartholomew's lay due northward so we could not use the river. The sun was still low in the sky, turning a bank of thin cloud on the horizon to bright pink. Barak had gone out again the evening before and I had been asleep when he returned. At breakfast he seemed in a surly mood; perhaps he had a hangover, or a girl had sent him packing and dented his vanity. I packed a couple of the alchemical books into the battered old leather satchel my father had given me when first I came to London. I wanted Guy to look at them later.

The City was coming to life after the Sunday rest; shutters and shelves clattered as the shopkeepers made ready for the new week, shifting beggars from their doorways with curses. The homeless ones stumbled into the street, faces red and chapped with constant exposure to the sun. One, a little girl, almost stumbled into Chancery.

'Careful there,' I called.

'Careful yourself, shitting hunchback bastard!' Furious eyes stared at me from a filthy face, and I recognized the girl who had caused the commotion at the baker's shop. I watched her limp away, dragging one leg. 'Poor creature,' I said. 'When people say that beggars lick the sweat from the true labourers' brows, I wonder if they think of waifs like that?'

'Ay.' Barak paused. 'Did you manage to ferret any more out of those old papers last night?'

'There is a lot about the Greek wars in those manuscripts. There was much trickery in them. Once, to deceive their opponents into thinking they had more troops than they did, Alexander tied torches to the tails of a flock of sheep. The Persians, looking at his camp at night, thought he had far more men than was true.'

Barak grunted. 'Sounds like balls. The sheep would have bolted. Anyway, what's that to do with our business?'

'The story stuck in my head for some reason. There is reference as well to some sort of liquid being used in Rome's wars in Babylonia. There are a few books on the Roman wars at Lincoln's Inn; I'll try to find them.'

'So long as it doesn't take too much time.'

'Did you write to Lord Cromwell about Bealknap and the customs?'

'Ay. And last night I tried to find some more about that man who followed us. No luck.'

'We haven't seen him again. Perhaps he's given up.'

'Maybe, but I'll keep my eyes open.'

We passed a dead mastiff in an alleyway, its bloated carcass stinking to heaven. Why did people flock to the City, I wondered, to the ratlike scrabble for subsistence that so often ended in begging on the streets? The lure of money, I supposed; hopes of scraping a living and dreams of becoming rich.

St Sepulchre's was one of a number of streets giving onto the wide open space of Smithfield. It was quiet this morning, for it was not one of the fair days when drovers brought hundreds of cattle in to market. To one side the hospital of St Bartholomew's stood silent and empty behind its high wall, an Augmentations guard at the gate. When the monastery went down the year before, the patients had been turned out to fend for themselves as best they could; talk of a new hospital paid for by subscriptions from the rich had come to nothing yet.

The monastery itself stood at right angles to the hospital, its high buildings dominating the square, although some of those had gone now. Here too a guard stood outside the gatehouse. I saw workmen were bringing out boxes and stacking them against the wall, where a group of blue-robed apprentices buzzed around them.

'Can't see Kytchyn anywhere,' Barak said. 'We'll have to ask the guard.'

We rode across the open space, where paths led between clumps of scrubby grass. There was one large patch of earth where no grass grew and the earth was mixed with blackened cinders; the site where heretics were burned. I remembered Lord Cromwell once telling me he longed to burn a papist using his own images for fuel and two years ago he had: a wooden saint had fed the pyre when Father Forest was burned there, suspended above the fire in chains to prolong his agony before ten thousand spectators. Forest had denied the king's supremacy over the Church, so legally he should have been executed as a traitor, not burned, but Cromwell could afford to ignore such niceties. I had not been there, but as I averted my eyes from the spot I could not help reflecting on that terrible death; the flames making the skin shrivel away, the blood beneath hissing as it dropped into the fire. I shook my head to clear it as I pulled Chancery to a halt before the gatehouse and dismounted.

I saw the boxes were full of bones, brown and ancient. A group of apprentices was delving inside them, casting pieces of tattered winding sheets onto the pavement, hauling out skulls and carefully scraping away the greenish moss that clung to some of them. The watchman, a huge fat fellow, watched indifferently. We tied the horses to a post. Barak went over to the watchman and nodded at the apprentices. 'God's teeth, what are they at?'

'Scraping off the grave moss. Sir Richard is clearing out the monks' graveyard.' The big man shrugged. 'The apothecaries say the moss on the skulls of the dead is good for the liver and they've sent their apprentices up here.' He delved in his pocket and pulled out a little golden trinket in the shape of a crescent. 'There's some strange things buried with them — this monk had been on the Crusades.' He winked. 'My little bonus for letting the boys scavenge.'

'We have business here,' I said. 'We are due to meet a Master Kytchyn.'

'Lord Cromwell's business,' Barak added.

The doorman nodded. 'The fellow you want is here already, I allowed him into the church.' He studied us closely, eyes alert with curiosity.

I walked up to the gateway. The guard hesitated a moment, then stepped aside and let us through.

The scene that met my eyes on the other side of the gatehouse made me stop dead. The nave of the great church had been pulled down, leaving only a gigantic pile of rubble from which spars of wood protruded. The north end of the church still stood and a huge wooden wall had been erected to seal it from the elements. Most of the neighbouring cloisters had been pulled down too, and the chapter house stripped of its lead. I could see beyond to the prior's house, the fine dwelling Sir Richard Rich had bought. Washing hung from lines in the back garden and three little girls ran and played among the flapping sheets, oddly incongruous amid the destruction. I had seen monastic houses brought down before — who had not in those days? — but not on this scale. A sinister quietness hung over the wreckage.

Barak laughed and scratched his head. 'Not much left, is there?'

'Where are the workmen?' I asked.

'They start late if it's Augmentations work. They know it's a good screw.'

I followed Barak as he picked his way through the rubble towards a door in the wooden barrier. I had a lifetime's contempt for these huge, rich monastic churches kept for the enjoyment of perhaps a dozen monks; when the purpose of the foundation was to serve a hospital the waste of resources seemed even more obscene. Yet as I followed Barak through the door, I had to admit that what was left of the interior of St Bartholomew's Church was magnificent. The walls soared a hundred and fifty feet in a series of pillared arches, richly painted in greens and ochres, up to a row of stained-glass windows. Because of the wooden barrier at the south end, what remained of the interior was gloomy, but I could see that the niches where saints' shrines had stood were empty now and that the side chapels had been stripped of all their images. Near the top of the church, however, one large canopied tomb remained. A candle burned before it, the only one in that building, which once would have been lit by thousands. A figure stood before the tomb, head bent. We walked towards him, our footsteps ringing on the tiled floor. I caught a faint tang in the air; the incense of centuries.

The figure turned as we drew near. A tall, thin man of about fifty in a white clerical cassock, a tangle of grey hair framing a long, anxious face. The look he gave us was wary and fearful. He leaned back as though wishing he might melt into the shadowed wall.

'Master Kytchyn?' I called.

'Ay. Master Shardlake?' His voice was unexpectedly high. He cast a nervous look at Barak, making me wonder if he had been rough with Kytchyn the day before.

'I'm sorry about the candle, sir,' he said quickly. 'I — it was a moment of weakness, sir, when I saw our old founder's tomb.' He leaned forward quickly and pinched out the flame, wincing as the hot wax burned his fingers.

'No matter,' I said. I glanced at the tomb, where a remarkably lifelike effigy of a friar in Dominican black lay in the dimness, arms folded in prayer.

'Prior Rahere,' Kytchyn mumbled. 'Our founder.'

'Yes. Well, never mind that. I wanted to see the place where a certain Master Gristwood discovered something last year.'

'Yes, sir.' He swallowed, still looking frightened. 'Master Gristwood said to say no word of what we found, on pain of death, and I haven't, I swear. Sir, is it true what this man told me? Master Gristwood has been murdered?'

'It is, Brother.'

'I am not brother,' Kytchyn mumbled. 'I am not a friar any more. No one is.'

'Of course. I am sorry — a slip of the tongue.' I looked around the church. 'Are they to bring the rest of this place down?'

'No.' His face cheered a little. 'The local people have asked to keep what is left as their own church. They are fond of the place. Sir Richard has agreed.'

And their support will be useful to Rich when the prior dies, I thought. I looked around. 'I gather all this began when the Augmentations men found something in the church crypt, last autumn.'

Kytchyn nodded. 'Yes. When the priory surrendered, the Augmentations men came to take an inventory. I was in the library when Master Gristwood came in. He asked if there was any record that might help with something strange they had found down in the crypt.'

'The crypt was used for storage?'

'Yes, sir. It's a big place, there's stuff that's been there hundreds of years. I knew of nothing kept there apart from old lumber, though I'd been librarian twenty years. I swear it, sir.'

'I believe you. Go on, Master Kytchyn.'

'I asked Master Gristwood if he might show me what they had found. They brought me here to the church. It was still whole then, the nave hadn't been taken down.' He looked sadly at the barrier.

'Which part of the church was the crypt in?'

'Over by yonder wall.'

I smiled reassuringly. 'Come, I would have a look. Light your candle again.'

Kytchyn did so with much nervous fumbling, then led us to an iron-studded door. He walked slowly and sedately, the way he would have learned to walk as a young friar. The door creaked mightily as he opened it, the sound echoing through the cavernous church.

He led us down a flight of stone stairs into a long crypt running the length of the church. It was quite dark, with a dank smell. As he led the way, the candle illuminated pieces of lumber and broken statuary. A huge abbot's throne, richly decorated but pitted with woodworm, rose up before us and then I almost cried out as a face loomed out of the gloom. I jumped back, stumbling into Barak, then reddened as I realized it was a statue of the Virgin with an arm broken off. I caught a flash of white teeth as Barak smiled in amusement.

Kytchyn came to a halt by a wall. 'They brought me here, sir,' Kytchyn said. 'There was a barrel standing by the wall, a heavy old wooden barrel.'

'How big?'

'You can see the mark in the dust.'

He lowered the candle and I saw a wide circle in the dust on the stone flags. The barrel had been as large as a wine cask, big enough but not enormous. I nodded and stood up again. Kytchyn held the candle near his chest, making his lined face appear disembodied.

'Had it been opened?' I asked.

'Yes. One of the Augmentations men was there, holding a chisel he'd used to prise the lid off. He looked relieved to see us. Master Gristwood said, "Look in here, Brother Librarian" — I was still brother then — "and tell me if you recognize what's inside. I warn you, though, it stinks." Master Gristwood laughed, but I saw the other Augmentations man cross himself before he lifted the lid for me.'

'And what was inside?' I asked.

'Blackness,' he replied. 'Nothing but blackness, deeper than the blackness of the crypt. And a dreadful smell, like nothing I'd ever known before. Sharp, with a strange sweetness, like something rotting yet lifeless too. It caught my throat and made me cough.'

'That's what I smelt,' Barak said. 'You've caught it well, fellow.'

Kytchyn swallowed. 'I lifted the candle I carried and held it over the barrel. The darkness inside reflected the light. It was so strange I nearly dropped the candle into it.'

Barak laughed. 'God's death, it's as well you didn't.'

'I saw it was a liquid. I touched my finger to it.' Kytchyn shuddered. 'It had a horrible feel, thick and slimy. I told them I'd no idea what it was. Then they pointed to the plaque with St John's name on, that showed it had been there a hundred years. I said there might be some record of it in the library. I tell you, sir, I wanted to get away.' He looked round him fearfully.

'I can understand,' I said. 'So it was dark, black. That explains why one of the names the ancients had was Dark Fire.'

'Dark as the pit of hell. Master Gristwood agreed, ordered his man to seal the barrel up again, then came back to the library with me.'

'Let's go there too,' I said. 'Come, I can see you would like to be out of here.'

'Thank you, yes.'

We made our way back to the church, then out into the sunlight. Kytchyn stood looking at the rubble, tears at the corners of his eyes. In the old days, when a monk or friar entered the cloister he ceased to have a separate legal personality, he died to the world. An act had just gone through parliament restoring their legal status as individuals. In Lincoln's Inn people joked about them being 'restored to life' by Cromwell. But to what life? 'Come, Master Kytchyn,' I said gently, 'the library.'

He led us through the roofless chapter house and I realized we would have to pass across the garden. The children were still playing there; a maid taking in the washing gave us a curious look.

We were halfway across when a door opened and a small man in a fine silk shirt came out. I drew a sharp breath, for I recognized Sir Richard Rich at once. I had been introduced to him at a function at the Inn. 'Shit,' Barak murmured under his breath, then bowed low as Rich came over. I bowed too, as did Kytchyn, whose eyes had widened with fear.

Rich halted before us. There was a puzzled frown on his handsome, delicately pointed features. Piercing grey eyes surveyed us.

'Brother Shardlake,' he said in a tone of amused surprise.

'You remember me, sir?'

'I never forget a hunchback.' His smile reminded me of his reputation for cruelty; it was said he had sometimes operated the rack himself in his days investigating heresy. To my surprise the little girls ran towards him, arms outstretched. 'Daddy, Daddy!' they cried.

'Now, girls, I am busy. Mary, take them indoors.'

The servant gathered the children together. Rich looked after them as they were led away. 'My brood,' he said indulgently. 'My wife says I don't whip them enough. Now then, what are you three doing in my garden? Ah, the former Brother Bernard, is it not? White suits you better than Dominican black.'

'Sir — I — sir—' Poor Kytchyn was tongue-tied.

I spoke up, trying to make my tone as light as Sir Richard's. 'Master Kytchyn is showing us the library. Lord Cromwell said I might see it as a favour.'

Rich inclined his head. 'There are no books left, Brother, my Augmentations men have burned them all.' He smiled mockingly at poor Kytchyn.

'It was the design of the building, my lord,' I said. 'I am thinking of building a library.'

He chuckled. 'You'd be better looking at one with the roof still on. By God's wounds, you must be doing well at Lincoln's Inn. Or does your wealth come from Lord Cromwell? Back in favour, eh?' Rich's penetrating eyes narrowed. 'Well, if the earl says you may look at the library I suppose you may. Watch the crows nesting on the roofbeams don't shit on you. From papist shit to birdshit, eh, Brother?' He smiled again at Kytchyn, who hung his head. Rich's mouth set hard as he turned his eyes to me.

'But ask permission if you wish to walk though my garden again, Shardlake.' Without another word he followed his children indoors. Kytchyn turned and led us rapidly away to a gate in the wall.

'I knew it was a bad idea to come here,' Barak said. 'My master said Rich was to know nothing.'

'We didn't tell him anything,' I said uncomfortably.

'He's curious. Don't look round, but the arsehole's watching us through the window.'

Kytchyn led us through the gate onto a trampled lawn surrounded on three sides by roofless buildings. He pointed. 'The library's there, next to the infirmary.'

We followed him into what must once have been a large, imposing library. Empty shelving covered the walls to a height of two storeys, and the floor was strewn with broken cupboards and torn manuscripts. It saddened me even more than the church had. I looked up to where a few skeletal roofbeams still stood, casting lines of shadow on the floor. A flock of crows took off, cawing. They circled and settled again. Through a glassless window I caught a glimpse of a lawned close with houses beyond. A fountain in the middle was dry. Kytchyn stood looking around miserably.

'So,' I asked quietly, 'when you came here with Master Gristwood, what did you find?'

'He wanted me to look for references to that soldier St John. Any papers of note left by those who died in the hospital were filed away. There were some under St John's name and Master Gristwood took them all. Then the next day he came back and spent a whole afternoon here, looking up any references to Byzantium or Greek Fire.'

'How did you know that was what he was after?'

'He got me to help him, sir. He took some more papers and some books. He never brought them back and soon after all the shelves were cleared, everything burned.' He shook his head. 'Some of the books were very beautiful, sir.'

'Well, it's all done now.'

There was a sudden clatter of wings as the crows took off again. They circled above, cawing noisily. 'What made them do that?' Barak muttered.

'You helped Master Gristwood search for papers. Did you look at any of them?'

'No, sir. I didn't want to know.' He looked at me seriously. His face was covered in sweat; it was hot in there, the sun shining down on us. 'I am not a bold man, sir. All I want is to be left to my prayers.'

'I understand. Do you know what happened to the barrel?'

'Master Gristwood had it taken away on a cart. I don't know where, I didn't ask.' Kytchyn took a deep breath, and lifted his hand to open the collar of his surplice. 'Excuse me, sir, it's so hot—' As he spoke he took a sideways step. From somewhere I heard a faint click.

Kytchyn's gesture saved my life. Suddenly he jerked forward with a high-pitched scream, and to my horror I saw a crossbow bolt embedded in his upper arm, blood welling red over his white surplice. He staggered against the wall, looking at his arm in horror.

Barak drew his sword and ran leaping to the window. The pock-faced man who had followed us from Cromwell's house was standing there, glittering blue eyes fixed on Barak as he fitted a new bolt to his crossbow. Barak, though, was almost on him and the man paused, then dropped the weapon with a clatter and fled across the yard. Barak threw himself over the window sill, regardless of broken glass, but the man was already at the abbey wall, clambering up. Barak grabbed at a flailing foot, but he was just too late; the assailant disappeared over the wall. Barak clambered up and, his elbows on the wall, looked down at the street for a moment before letting himself down. He picked up his sword, walked back to the window and climbed through again. His face was like thunder.

I bent to comfort Kytchyn. He had crumpled to the floor, clutching his arm and sobbing as the blood welled between his fingers. 'I wish I'd never seen those papers,' he moaned. 'I know nothing, sir, nothing. I swear.'

Barak knelt down, lifting Kytchyn's hand from his wound with surprising gentleness. 'Come, fellow, let's see.' He studied the arm. 'It's all right, the head of the bolt's come out the other side. You need a surgeon to snap it off, that's all. Here, lift your arm.' Trembling, Kytchyn obeyed. Barak took a handkerchief from his pocket and made a tourniquet, binding the arm above the wound.

'Come on, friend, there's a surgeon across the way that tends to injuries among the drovers. I'll take you there. Keep your arm raised.' He lifted the trembling Kytchyn to his feet.

'Who's trying to kill me?' the clerk squealed. 'I know nothing, sir, nothing.'

'I think that bolt was aimed at me,' I said slowly. 'It would have hit me if Kytchyn had not moved when he did.'

Barak's face was serious, his joking manner gone. 'Ay, you're right. God's pestilence, how did he know we were here?'

'Perhaps we were followed from the house.'

'There's someone who will be able to tell us,' he said grimly. 'I'll take Kytchyn to the surgeon, then I'll have a little word. Pock-face won't come back, but stand away from the window just in case. I'll not be long.'

I was too shocked to do anything but nod obediently. I leaned back against the wall as Barak helped the moaning Kytchyn outside. My heart was thudding as though it would leap from my throat, my whole body cold with sweat. The place suddenly seemed deathly quiet; it was too far from Sir Richard's house for him to have heard anything. I groaned involuntarily. Cromwell had put my life in danger a second time. I looked at the crossbow lying where Barak had left it on the floor, squat and deadly. I jumped at a sudden clatter, but it was only the crows returning to their perches.

A few minutes later I heard voices, Barak's and another's. The big doorkeeper was propelled through the doorway, protesting loudly. Large as the man was, Barak had his arm pinned behind him in a vice-like grip. He released him and sent him spinning across the room. He fell with a crash among the debris.

'You've no right!' the gatekeeper shouted. 'When Augmentations hear about this—'

'Pox on shitting Augmentations!' Barak shouted. Grabbing the man's dirty robe, he hauled him to his feet again. He had sheathed his sword but now pulled a wicked-looking dagger from his belt and held it to the doorkeeper's flabby throat. 'Listen to me, arsehole. I serve the Earl of Essex and I've authority to take what measures I like. Like slitting your weasen-pipe, see?' The man gulped, his eyes wide. Barak took the doorkeeper's head and jerked it round to face me. 'That priest I brought out just now was struck by a crossbow bolt intended for my master there, Lord Cromwell's lawyer. And the only person who could have let him in was you, you fat whore's cunny. So talk.'

'I didn't,' he babbled, 'There are other ways in—'

Barak reached down and gave the man's balls a hard squeeze, making him roar.

'I'll tell,' he shouted, 'I'll tell!'

'Get on with it then!'

The doorkeeper gulped. 'Shortly after you arrived, sir, another man came up to me. A strange-looking fellow, looking like a clerk; he's had the smallpox. He held up a gold angel and asked what the two of you were doing here. I — I told him you were meeting someone. He offered me the angel to let him in too. It was a gold angel, sir, and I'm poor.'

'Let's see it.'

The watchman fumbled in his belt and produced the big gold coin. Barak grabbed it. 'Right, I'll have that. It'll pay for our friend's surgeon. Now, this man. Was he carrying anything? A crossbow, for example?'

'I didn't see a crossbow!' the man howled. 'He had a big satchel, I didn't know what was in it!'

Barak stepped away from him. 'Get out, then, you great bag of guts. Go on. And don't say a word. Gabble about this and Lord Cromwell will be after you.'

He cringed at that. 'I'd not do anything against Crum, sir, I mean the earl—'

'Get out! Arsehole!' Barak twirled him round and helped him through the doorway with a kick. He turned to me, breathing heavily.

'I'm sorry I let pock-face get so close,' he said. 'I dropped my guard.'

'You can't be watching all the time.'

'He must have been somewhere among that rabble in the church. By Jesu, he's good. Are you all right?'

I took a deep breath and dusted down my robe. 'Yes.'

'I'll have to get word of this to the earl. Now. He's at Whitehall. Come with me.'

I shook my head. 'I can't, Barak. I have my appointment with Joseph. I can't miss that, I'm still responsible for Elizabeth. Then I want to see Guy.'

'All right. I'll meet you outside the apothecary's in four hours and we can go on to Southwark. It was nine by the church clock as I came in — say, at one.'

'Very well.'

He looked at me dubiously. 'You sure you'll be all right on your own?'

'God's death,' I snapped irritably, 'if we have to stay together every minute we'll double the time this takes. Come,' I said more gently, 'we can ride together as far as Cheapside.'

He looked worried. I wondered what Cromwell's reaction would be when he learned a third killing had been attempted.

Chapter Fifteen

WE WERE AT Aldersgate before Barak spoke again. 'I knew we should never have gone to Barry's,' he said crossly. 'What did we achieve except for that poor arsehole being shot and Rich put on the alert?'

'We got confirmation that Greek Fire was discovered in the way the Gristwoods said it was. That there really was a barrel of — something — and a formula.'

'So you believe it now. Well, we have made a step,' he said sarcastically.

'When I was learning law,' I said, 'one of my teachers said that there is a question that applies in every case. The question is: what circumstances are relevant?'

'And the answer?'

'All the circumstances are relevant. One must know all the facts, the whole history, before proceeding. And I have learned much, downriver and again today, for all it nearly cost me. I have some leads that I would like to pick over with Guy.'

Barak shrugged, evidently still feeling the visit had been a dangerous waste of time. As we rode on it occurred to me that all who knew about Greek Fire might be in danger: Marchamount, Bealknap, Lady Honor.

'I'll have to tell the earl we met Rich,' Barak said. 'He'll not be pleased.'

'I know.' I bit my lip. 'It worries me that all of our three suspects are linked to some of the highest and most dangerous people in the land. Marchamount to Norfolk and Bealknap, apparently, to Rich. And Lady Honor, it seems, to almost everyone.' I frowned. 'What is the connection between Rich and Bealknap? I'm sure Bealknap was lying.'

Barak grunted. 'That's for you to find out.' We had reached Cheapside. 'I'll leave you here,' he said. 'Meet you at the old Moor's shop at one.'

He rode off south, and I turned down Cheapside. As I rode between the rows of busy stalls I kept a careful eye out. I told myself no one would dare assault me among such a crowd — anyone would surely be seized before he could get away. But I was glad to see a number of constables with their staffs among the crowd. I turned up Walbrook Road, where many imposing merchants' houses stood. A little way up the street I saw Joseph pacing up and down. I dismounted and shook his hand. He looked strained and tired.

'I have been to see Elizabeth again this morning.' He shook his head. 'Still she says nothing, just lies there, paler and thinner each time.' He studied me. 'You look out of sorts yourself, Master Shardlake.'

'This new case I have is a troubling matter.' I took a deep breath. 'Well, shall we face your family?'

He set his jaw. 'I am ready, sir.'

Then so must I be, I thought. Taking Chancery's reins, I followed him to an imposing new house. He knocked at the front door. It was answered by a tall, dark-haired fellow of about thirty, dressed in a new jerkin and a fine white shirt. He raised his eyebrows.

'You! Sir Edwin said you would be calling.'

Joseph reddened at his insolent manner. 'Is he in, Needler?'

'Ay.'

I did not like the steward on his looks. He had a broad sly face under long black hair and a stocky frame starting to run to fat. An impertinent servant, I thought, allowed to get above himself. 'Can someone stable my horse?' I asked.

The steward called to a boy to take the animal, then led us through a wide hallway and up an imposing staircase, the banisters carved with heraldic beasts. We followed him into a richly appointed parlour hung with tapestries. Through the window I could see a garden, large for a town house. Flower beds with trellised walkways between ran down to a stretch of lawn; the grass was browning at the edges from lack of rain. There was a bench under an oak tree and, nearby, a circular brick well. I saw its top was sealed.

Four people sat on cushioned chairs. All were dressed in black, to my surprise for it was nearly a fortnight since Ralph had died and few wear mourning so long. Sir Edwin Wentworth was the only man among them; seeing him close I saw the resemblance to Joseph not only in his plump red face but in something fussy about his manner. He fumbled with the hem of his robe as he stared at me, eyes hard with anger.

His two daughters sat together: they were as pretty as Joseph had described, both with fair hair falling over the shoulders of their black dresses, milk-white complexions and with startlingly large cornflower-blue eyes. They had been embroidering, but as I entered they laid their needles on their cushions and gave me quick, demure smiles before lowering their heads and sitting with a well-brought-up stillness that was decorous but also a little unnerving, their hands unmoving in their laps.

The third female in the room could not have been more different. Joseph's mother sat ramrod straight in her chair, snow-white hair gathered under a black cap, veiny hands folded over a stick. She was thin, the planes of her skull visible beneath pale skin that was a patchwork of lines and smallpox scars. Wrinkled eyelids were closed for ever over her decayed eyes. She should have been a pitiful figure, but somehow she dominated the room.

She was the first to speak, turning her head towards me and thrusting out a lantern jaw. 'Is that the lawyer come with Joseph?' she asked in a clear voice with a trace of a country accent, showing pearl-white teeth I knew must be false. I shuddered involuntarily, for having dead people's teeth fixed in your jaw by a wooden plate was a conceit I disliked.

'Yes, Mother.' Edwin cast me a look of distaste.

She smiled crookedly. 'The seeker after truth. Come here, master lawyer, I would know your face.' She raised a beringed claw and I realized she wanted to feel my features as blind people sometimes will with their social inferiors. I approached slowly, for this was presumption from a woman who had once been a mere farmer's wife, but bent down. I felt all the eyes in the room upon me as her hands flickered lightly over my head and face with surprising gentleness.

'A proud face,' she said. 'Angular, melancholic' She ran her hands lightly over my shoulders. 'Ah, a satchel of books and the slip and slide of a lawyer's robe.' She paused. 'They say you are a hunchback.'

I took a deep breath, wondering if she intended to humiliate me or just spoke as she liked out of age.

'Yes, madam,' I replied.

She smiled, giving me a glimpse of wooden gums. 'Well, you can take solace in having a distinguished face,' she said. 'Are you a Bible Christian! I hear you were once associated with the Earl of Essex himself, God protect him from his enemies.'

'When I was younger, I knew him.'

'Edwin will have no papist in this house. He even gives the girls religious books, encourages them to study the Bible. Such ideas are a little advanced for me.' She waved a hand at her son. 'Answer his questions, Edwin,' she said brusquely. 'Tell him everything. You too, girls.'

'Sabine and Avice have had enough, Mother, surely?' Edwin's voice was pleading.

'No. The girls, too.' Sir Edwin's daughters cast identical wide blue gazes at their grandmother, apparently as much under the old woman's spell as their father.

'We must have all this finished,' she continued. 'Perhaps you can imagine, Master Shardlake, the misery Ralph's death at Elizabeth's hands has brought our small family. Three weeks ago we were happy, with fine expectations. Look at us now. And Joseph taking Elizabeth's part makes matters worse. Perhaps you may imagine our feelings about him. We will not have Joseph in our house again after today.' She spoke calmly, evenly, without turning her head to her oldest son. Joseph lowered his head like a naughty child. I thought what inner courage it must have taken to defy this beldame.

'Am I right,' Sir Edwin asked, in a deep voice very like his brother's, 'that if you think Elizabeth is guilty you will cease to represent her? That those are the rules of your trade?'

'Not quite, sir,' I replied. 'If I know she is guilty, then I must and shall cease my representation.' I paused. 'May I tell you how the matter seems to me?'

'Very well.'

I went over the circumstances as I knew them: the girls hearing the scream, looking from the window, then rushing into the garden; Needler coming out and finding Ralph's body in the well. I felt sorry for the two girls having to listen to the terrible story once more. They cast their heads down again, kept their faces expressionless.

'But you see,' I concluded, 'no one actually saw Elizabeth push the boy into the well. It seems to me he might have slipped.'

'Then why does she not say so?' the old woman snapped.

'Because she knows questioning would bring the truth from her,' Edwin said with sudden fierceness. 'Of course she killed Ralph! You didn't have her in your house nine months, sir; you didn't see the viciousness she was capable of!' His mother leaned across and put a hand on his arm and he sat back, sighing angrily.

'Can you tell me more about that?' I asked. 'I only know what Joseph has told me.'

Sir Edwin shot an angry glance at his brother. 'She was malapert, disobedient and violent. Yes, sir, violent, though she was but a girl.'

'From the very start?'

'She was surly from the day she came, after my brother's funeral. We were prepared to make allowances as she'd lost everything. I was prepared to share all I had and I am not a poor man, though when I came to London I'd no more than Joseph has.' Sir Edwin's chest swelled momentarily with pride, even in the midst of his grief and anger. 'I told the girls to make her welcome, teach her the lute and virginal, take her out visiting. Much thanks they got. Tell him, Sabine.'

The older girl lifted her head and turned her doll-like eyes on me. 'She was horrible to us, sir,' she said quietly. 'She said she had more to do than tinkle on a music box.'

'We offered to take her to call on our friends,' Avice added. 'To banquets, to meet young gentlemen, but after one or two visits she said she didn't want to come again, called our friends mannered fools.'

'We did try, sir,' Sabine said earnestly.

'I know you did, girls,' their grandmother said. 'You did all you could.'

I remembered what Joseph had told me about Elizabeth's bookish interests, her love of the farm. She was clearly a girl of independent spirit, different from her cousins, who I guessed would happily limit themselves to womanly interests, aiming only for good marriages. But lack of common interests could scarcely have led to murder.

'After a while she'd barely speak to us,' Avice added sadly.

Her sister nodded. 'Yes, she took to staying in her room.'

'She had her own room?' That surprised me. In most households unmarried girls would sleep together in the maidens' chamber.

'This is a large house,' Sir Edwin said haughtily. 'I am able to provide separate rooms for all my family. In Elizabeth's case that was just as well.'

'She'd never have slept with us,' Sabine said. 'Why, soon it got so that if either of us went to ask her to join in things, she'd shout at us to go away.' She flushed. 'As time went on she started using bad words to us.'

'She lost all decorum,' Sir Edwin said. 'She was scarce like a girl at all.'

The old woman leaned forward, dominating the room again. 'More and more she seemed to hate us. At meals you couldn't get a civil word from her. In the end she said she'd take her food in her room and we let her; her presence at table spoiled our meals. When you are blind, Master Shardlake, you are more sensitive to atmospheres, and the atmosphere around Elizabeth grew dark with unreasoning hate for us. As dark as sin.'

'She hit me once,' Sabine said. 'That was in the garden. She took to sitting out on the bench on her own when the weather grew warm. One day she was sitting reading one of her books there and I went and asked her if she would like to come picking mayflowers outside the City walls. And she just picked up her book and started hitting me about the head with it, using terrible words. I ran away to the house.'

'I saw that myself,' Sir Edwin said. 'I was working in my study and I saw Elizabeth fly at my poor daughter from the window. I told Elizabeth to keep to her room for the rest of the day. I should have known then what she might do. I blame myself.' Suddenly he buried his head in his hands and his voice broke. 'My Ralph, my boykin. I saw him lying there, dead and stinking—' He sobbed, a heartbreaking sound.

The girls lowered their heads again and the old woman's jaw set hard. 'You see the horrors you raise for us, Master Shardlake.' She turned to Sir Edwin. 'Come, my son, fortitude. Tell him how Elizabeth treated Ralph.'

The mercer wiped his face with a handkerchief. He glared at Joseph, who seemed near to tears again himself, then at me. 'I thought at first she might like Ralph better than my daughters. He was another one who went his own way, bless the imp. And he did try to befriend her, he was pleased to have someone new in the house. To begin with they seemed to get on well: she went for a couple of country walks with him, they played chess together. But then she turned against him too. One evening, about a month after she came, I remember we were in here before dinner and Ralph asked Elizabeth to play a game of chess. She agreed, though in a surly way. He was soon winning, forward boy that he was. He leaned forward and took her rook, and said, "There. I have him, that rook will peck out no more eyes from my men." And Elizabeth threw the board up in the air with a great cry of anger, sending the pieces all over the room, and landed Ralph a great clout on the head. She left him sobbing and ran to her room.'

'It was a terrible scene,' the old woman said.

'We told Ralph to keep out of her way after that,' Sir Edwin went on. 'But the boy loved the garden, as why should he not, and she often sat there.'

'They may say Elizabeth is mad,' the old woman said. 'If she won't speak, no one can be sure. But I say it was wicked jealousy, jealousy because her cousins were more accomplished than her and our household a better one than the home she'd lost.' She turned her face to me. 'I felt and heard it all, the growth of her unreasoning hatred and violence, for I stay at home while Edwin is in the City and the girls go visiting.' She paused with a sigh. 'Well, Master Shardlake, you have heard us. Do you still doubt Elizabeth threw Ralph down that well?'

I avoided a reply. 'You were here on that day, madam?'

'I was in my room. Needler ran up and told me what had happened. It was I ordered him to go down the well. I felt Ralph's poor dead face when he brought him up.' She waved a bony hand in the air, as though touching that dead face again. Her harsh features softened for a moment.

I turned to the girls. 'You agree with what your father and grandmother have said?'

'Yes, sir,' Avice said.

'I wish to God it were not so,' Sabine added. She passed a hand over her eyes. 'Grandam,' she said meekly, 'my vision is blurred. Do I have to use the nightshade?'

'Belladonna is good, child. By expanding your pupils, it makes you look more comely. But perhaps a smaller dose.'

I looked at the old woman with distaste. I had heard of drops of deadly nightshade being used in this way for cosmetic purposes, but it was poisonous stuff.

I thought a moment, then stood up. 'I wonder if I might see Elizabeth's room, and perhaps the garden, before I go? I will only take a few minutes.'

'This is too much—' Sir Edwin began, but once more his mother interrupted.

'Get Needler to take him. Take Joseph too, then afterwards they can both leave.'

'Mother—' Joseph had risen and taken a step towards the old woman. She tightened her grip on her stick and for a moment I thought she might strike him, but she only turned her head abruptly away. Joseph stepped back, his face working. Sir Edwin gave him an angry look, then rang a bell. The steward appeared, so quickly I wondered if he had been listening at the door, and bowed low to his master.

'Needler,' Sir Edwin said heavily, 'Master Shardlake wishes to visit the room that was Elizabeth's and then the garden. Show them, then show them out.'

'Yes, Sir Edwin.' Needler's manner was obsequious. 'And cook says he has a dish of blackbirds for tonight, if that pleases you.'

'Not too much sauce in it this time,' the old lady said sharply.

'Yes, madam.'

Neither Sir Edwin nor his mother made any move to say farewell, and the girls lowered their heads, though not before I saw Sabine glance at Needler and redden. I wondered if she could have a fancy for the boor: there was no accounting for young girls' fancies.

The steward led us out, closing the door with a snap. I was glad to be out of that room. Joseph was pale. Needler looked at us enquiringly.

'The murderess's bedroom, is it?'

'The accused's room,' I replied coldly. 'And mind your tongue, fellow.' Needler shrugged and led us up a further flight of stairs. He unlocked a door and we passed inside.

Whatever else had happened to her in that house, Elizabeth had had a fine room. There was a four-poster bed with a feather mattress, a dressing table with a mirror of glass, and chests for her clothes. There was good rush matting on the floors that gave off a pleasant scent in the warm air. Several books stood on a shelf above the dressing table. I read the titles with surprise: Tyndale's Obedience of a Christian Man, the Coverdale New Testament, and several devotional works as well as The Castel of Health and Latin poetical works by Virgil and Lucan. A learned little library.

'Is Elizabeth a religious girl?' I asked Joseph.

'A good Bible Christian like all the Wentworths. She liked to read.'

I examined the Testament. It was much thumbed. I turned to Needler. 'Did Elizabeth speak much of religion?'

He shrugged. 'Perhaps she reflected on her sins, the way she was treating her family, and asked for God's help.'

'She does not seem to have received it.'

'There is still time,' Joseph murmured.

'Did Elizabeth have a maidservant? A woman to help her wash and dress?'

Needler raised his eyebrows. 'Wouldn't have one, sir. Said the servants mocked her.'

'And did they?'

'Perhaps — at her odd ways.'

'What happened to Grizzy?' Joseph asked suddenly. He pointed at a basket in the corner, filled with straw. 'Elizabeth's old cat,' he explained. 'She brought it from Peter's house.'

'It ran away,' Needler said. 'Cats do when they come to a strange house.'

Joseph nodded sadly. 'She was devoted to it.' So she was deprived even of that company, I thought. I opened one of the chests; it was full of dresses, neatly arranged. I indicated I had seen enough and we left the chamber. The smell of the warm rushes clung to my nostrils; I thought of the contrast with the foul stink in Newgate Hole.

Needler led us downstairs again, through a side door and into the garden. It was a peaceful place in the sunshine, insects buzzing lazily round the flowers. He led us across the lawn, the grass dry under our feet. He paused at the well and pointed to the bench, shaded by the large oak. 'That's where she was sitting when I came out after I heard the young mistresses screaming. Mistress Sabine and Mistress Avice were standing by the well, wringing their hands. "Ralph's gone," Mistress Sabine screamed at me. "Elizabeth's put him in the well."'

'And Elizabeth said nothing?'

'Just sat there with her head bowed, a dark look on her face.'

I went over to the well. Joseph hung back. A round wooden board was fixed over it, secured by padlocks to metal rings driven into the brickwork.

'This looks newly done.'

'Yes, sir. The master had the cap put on last week. Bit late really: it should have been done before.'

'I would like to see inside. Do you have keys to those locks?'

He looked at me evenly. 'Sir Edwin ordered them thrown away, sir. Nobody will be using that well again. The water's been poisoned for years. Not that there was any when I climbed down, we've had so little rain this spring.'

I bent down. There was a space of an inch or so between the wood and the rim on one side. I bent close and then pulled back at the smell that came from the gap; it was the stench of something dead, rotting. I remembered what Joseph had said about the smell on Ralph's body — like a cow's head left out in the Shambles a week. I looked across at him; he had taken a seat on the bench and was staring up at the window of the room we had left. His treatment from his family must have upset him greatly. I turned to Needler, who stood looking on impassively.

'There's a mighty stink coming from that well.'

'Like I said, the water's poisoned.'

'How did it smell when you went down there?'

'Bad enough.' He shrugged. 'But I wasn't worrying about smells, I was feeling for poor Master Ralph's body and hoping the rope ladder I'd let down wouldn't break. If that's all, I ought to be supervising the lunch.'

I stared at him a moment, then smiled. 'Yes, thank you, I have seen all I need.'

His eyes narrowed. 'Is there anything you'd like me to tell the master? Perhaps you won't be representing the girl now?'

'If I've anything to tell him I'll contact him myself, Needler. Now, Joseph, we should go.'

He rose wearily and followed me back to the hall. Needler opened the front door and we went out to the street. Needler said he would have my horse brought round, then closed the door with a snap. As we stood waiting on the step, Joseph gave me a direct look.

'Do you believe Elizabeth is guilty now, as my mother said?'

'No, Joseph, I think more and more that she is innocent.' I frowned. 'There is something wrong in that house.'

'My mother is an uncommon woman. Stronger than most men. She was beautiful when she was young, though you wouldn't think it now. She always loved Edwin most, thought me a poor creature to be content with the farm.'

I touched his arm. 'It was a brave thing you did, subjecting yourself to that for Elizabeth's sake.'

'It was hard for me.'

'I saw. Tell me, when she was younger, did Elizabeth ever show any signs of trouble in her mind?'

'None, sir. Never. She was merry before she came to this house.'

'It is interesting she only seems to have become hostile if a family member approached her. Otherwise she wished only to be left alone.' I hesitated, then said, 'Joseph, I think there is something down that well.'

'What? What do you mean?'

'I don't know yet. But I remembered what you said about how Ralph's body smelt. I smelt something similar, coming from down the well. A sewage smell you might expect if there was bad water at the bottom, but Needler said there was no water at all when he went down.' I hesitated. 'I think there is something else down there. Something dead.'

His eyes were wide. 'What? What could it be?'

'I don't know, Joseph. I don't know. I'll have to think.' I put a hand on his arm.

'Oh, dear God, what has happened to us?'

I saw from a church clock it was well past twelve and touched his arm again. 'Once again I fear I must leave you, my friend. Another appointment I cannot miss. I will think what to do next. Can I reach you at your lodging house?'

'Ay, I'll be there until this matter is resolved,' he said firmly.

'What about your farm?'

'I have an arrangement with my neighbour. Things are in a poor way, there has been so little rain, but I cannot make it rain in Essex by being there, can I?'

The boy appeared round the side of the house, leading Chancery. He looked at us nosily as I gave him a farthing. I straightened my satchel and mounted.

'I will be in touch, Joseph, very soon.'

Joseph shook my hand. I looked after him as he walked away down Walbrook Road, something oddly indomitable in his big, heavy figure. Well, I must be indomitable too. I mounted Chancery for the short ride to Guy's. As I did so my heart jumped for a moment at the sight of a tall, pale figure among the people passing, but it was only an old man. He entered a shop. I shuddered slightly, then turned the horse south.