Stice called out, ‘We’re having a party! Fuck off !’ His confederates laughed. There was silence from the next house. I looked down at Barak, quite still now, blood still flowing from his severed wrist, though less freely. I glanced at his severed hand, lying a foot away on the floor, still holding his sword. ‘Right,’ Stice said decisively. ‘Time to go.’
I said, ‘Who is your master? It’s not Richard Rich, is it? I was at Hampton Court, and saw how you avoided him. Who are you really working for?’
Stice frowned. ‘You’ll find out soon, Master Hunchback.’
The bald man nodded at the prone Barak. ‘What about him?’
‘Leave him to bleed out,’ Stice replied.
I said desperately, ‘Leave him to die here? Leave a body in this house to be found? That neighbour is already worried. He’ll be looking in the windows tomorrow. Then there’ll be a coroner’s enquiry – in public – and they’ll do a search to find out who owns the house.’ I continued rapidly, for I knew this was my last dim hope of saving Barak’s life, if indeed he was not already dead. ‘It’s known that Jack Barak works with me. Whatever you have planned for me, this is murder and it won’t be allowed to rest. Not when the Queen hears – she won’t let it.’
‘Our master could soon stop a coroner’s enquiry,’ the bald man said scoffingly. Stice frowned, though. He looked down at Barak; his face, from what I could see, was still and ashen against his brown beard. He could be dead already. I thought of Tamasin, pregnant. I had brought him here.
‘The hunchback could be right,’ Daniels said uneasily.
‘All right,’ Stice agreed. ‘Our master would wish us to be careful. Here, one of you make a tourniquet with your handkerchiefs, or he’ll bleed all over us as well as the floor.’
‘I know where we can put him.’ The bald man give a little giggle. ‘I came here round the back ways. There’s an empty building lot the people round here have turned into a rubbish heap. Two streets away.’
‘All right,’ Stice agreed. ‘Bind those two now.’
Cardmaker produced a length of rope from the bag at his belt, which he must have brought for Brocket. He cut it in two with his knife, then approached us. ‘Hands behind your backs.’
We could do nothing else. I looked desperately at Barak’s prone form as they bound our hands behind us. Meanwhile Stice bound Barak’s arm tightly with a handkerchief, making a tourniquet to lessen the flow of blood, and tied another securely round the stump. Bright red blood immediately began to seep through. Then Stice said, ‘Daniels, throw him across your horse. We’ll put these two on the horse we brought for Brocket, tie their legs together under the horse’s belly. If we’re stopped on the way to Whitehall, say they’re traitors and we’ve arrested them.’ He looked at Barak’s severed hand lying on the floor in a pool of blood, still gripping his sword. ‘God’s teeth, what a mess. We’ll have to come back and clean this up after. Our master often uses this house.’
They took us out to the back, where there was a stable, three horses waiting. It was horrible to see Barak unconscious, being lifted up under the arms by Cardmaker and dumped over the back of one of the horses as though he were a sack of cabbages. From what I could see, the bleeding was much less, though a few drips still fell to the ground. But I knew enough to understand that even if Barak still lived, he did not have long, perhaps fifteen minutes, before he bled out.
Stice looked at me over his handkerchief, his eyes bright with savage pleasure. ‘It’ll be up to my master whether the two of you live. He’ll get a surprise; he was only expecting one frightened steward.’
Chapter Fifty-one
WE RODE DOWN THE LANE behind the stables. Nicholas and I had been placed, hands bound, on one of the horses, Nicholas in front. It was a moonlit night, though the narrow track between the garden fences of the new houses was hard to see. Then we turned into a second lane, running down the back of another row of houses. Halfway down the lane there was a square plot where for some reason no building had been put up. As Cardmaker had said, it was a rubbish heap. I saw an old bed frame, broken stools, household refuse and a huge heap of grass clippings where servants had been scything the gardens. It had mulched down into a soft green compost. The rubbish heap stank.
We halted. Stice’s men dismounted and Barak was lifted from his horse and tipped, head first, into the compost. I seldom prayed nowadays – even if God existed, I was sure that he was deaf. Now, though, I prayed hopelessly that somehow my friend might live.
We rode back to the main road. It was hard merely to keep my balance. My face throbbed from where I had been elbowed. Stice’s confederates walked one on either side of us; Stice, leading the horse which had carried Barak, rode in front, still dabbing at his face with his handkerchief. We came out onto Smithfield and passed the front door of the hospital. I wondered if Guy was working within.
We were stopped at Newgate by a constable. Lifting his lamp and seeing our bound hands and Stice’s bloody face, he asked Stice sharply what was happening. But Stice took out a seal, thrusting it into the man’s face. ‘Official business,’ he snapped. ‘Two traitors to go to Whitehall for questioning. As you’ll see from my face, they made a fight of it.’
The London constables knew the different seals of all the great men, it was part of their training. The man not only withdrew, but bowed to Stice as he did so.
WE RODE ON through the quiet streets, past Charing Cross and down to Whitehall. I wondered why we were being taken there rather than to Hampton Court. Surely, apart from the guards, there would be only a few servants left to maintain the place? Yet such considerations hardly mattered in comparison to what had happened to Barak. I was sitting tied up on the horse, my back was excruciatingly painful and my face throbbed. A wave of exhaustion washed over me, and my head slumped forward onto Nicholas’s back. He took the weight, saying over his shoulder, ‘Stay awake, sir, or you will fall.’
‘Just let me rest against you a little.’ Then I said, ‘I am sorry, sorry.’ He did not reply. Whatever happened now, I must try to save Nicholas at least.
AS EXPECTED, Whitehall Palace was dark and deserted, only a few dim lights visible within. But the guard at the gatehouse had obviously been told to expect Stice, for as we rode up he stepped forward. Stice bent to speak to him; there were some murmured words and then I heard the guard say, ‘He’s waiting in the Privy Council Chamber. Rode here from the Hampton Court celebrations half an hour ago.’
Two more guards came out of the gatehouse. Stice dismounted and quickly scribbled a note, and the first guard ran into the building with it. No doubt it was to inform Stice’s master that he had come back not with Brocket, but with me.
The two guards accompanied us across the courtyard, the horses’ hooves clattering loudly on the cobbles. We came up to the wide doors of the King’s Guard Chamber. Stice dismounted and cut the ropes binding us. Nicholas helped me to dismount, and I stood a little shakily at the bottom of the steps. Stice, bloodied handkerchief still held to his face, turned to Daniels and Cardmaker. ‘Thank you, goodmen, for your work these last two months. Your money is in the gatehouse. Leave London for a while, find some alehouses and brothels in another town to spend your wages. But keep in contact, in case you are needed again.’
The two murderers bowed, then turned away without another glance at us. I watched them go, the men who had killed Greening and Elias and those others. Hired murderers, strolling cheerfully to collect their reward. I looked at Stice, who glared back at me. ‘I will leave you as well now, Master Shardlake. I need to get your handiwork on my face seen to. I doubt you will leave here alive, which is a comfort. If you do, watch out for me.’ Then he followed his henchmen back to the palace gatehouse. Nicholas and I were left with the two guards. One inclined his halberd towards the doorway of the Guard Chamber. ‘In,’ he said brusquely.
I looked at Nicholas, who swallowed hard. Then we mounted the steps, one guard ahead of us, one behind.
THE MAGNIFICENT STAIRCASE
leading up to the King’s Guard Chamber was quiet and barely lit, only two men posted at the top; the torches in their niches showing empty spaces on the wall where paintings had been removed to Hampton Court. One of the guards at the top said we were to be taken to the Privy Council Chamber, where I had stood and sweated the week before. ‘He’s not ready yet, you can wait in the Privy Chamber. It’s empty as the King’s not in residence here.’
We were led through a series of dim rooms until we reached a large chamber. The walls were almost bare here too, everything no doubt removed to the Privy Chamber at Hampton Court. We were ordered to stand and wait, a guard staying with us. I looked at the opposite wall, and saw that it was covered from floor to ceiling by a magnificent wall painting, irremovable, for it was painted directly onto the plaster just like the Cotterstoke family portrait. I had heard of Holbein’s great mural, and now, in the dim flickering candlelight, I looked at it. The other large wall painting I had seen at Whitehall had shown the present King and his family; this one, however, was a magnificent display of dynastic power. The centrepiece was a square stone monument, covered in Latin words which I could not make out from where I stood. The old King, Henry VII, stood on a pedestal with one lean arm resting on the monument, his sharp foxy face staring out. Opposite him was a plump woman with arms folded, no doubt the King’s mother. Below her, on a lower step, stood Queen Jane Seymour. I thought again how Prince Edward resembled his mother. But it was the present King, standing below his father, who dominated the mural: the King as he had been perhaps half a dozen years ago: broad-shouldered, burly but not fat, his hand on his hip and his bull-like legs planted firmly apart, with an exaggerated codpiece jutting from the skirts of his doublet.
This image of the King had been reproduced many times and hung in countless official buildings and private halls, but the original had a life and power no copyist could imitate. It was the hard, staring, angry little blue eyes which dominated the painting, whose background was in sombre colours. Perhaps that was the whole point of the mural, to make those who were waiting to see the King feel as if he were already watching and judging them.
Nicholas stared open-mouthed at the mural and then whispered, ‘It is like looking at living people.’
Another guard came in then and spoke to the first. We were taken roughly by the arm, and led out, through a second and then a third magnificent chamber, before we reached a corridor I recognized; the Privy Council Chamber. We came up to the door. The guard standing before it said, ‘Not the boy. He says to put him somewhere till he knows whether he needs to question him.’
‘Come on, you.’ The first guard pulled Nicholas’s arm, leading him away. ‘Courage, Master Shardlake,’ Nicholas called back to me. Then the remaining guard knocked at the door, and a sharp voice I recognized called, ‘Enter.’
I was pulled inside. The guard left, shutting the door behind me. There was only one man in the long chamber, sitting on a chair at the centre of the table, a sconce of candles beside him. He looked at me with hard eyes set in a slab face above a forked beard. Master Secretary Paget.
‘Master Shardlake.’ He sighed wearily. ‘How much work and effort you have made for me.’ He shook his head. ‘When there is so much else to do.’
I looked at him. ‘So you were behind it all,’ I said quietly. My voice sounded thick and muffled, my face swelling now where I had been struck.
His expression did not change. ‘All what?’
Recklessly, far beyond deference now, I answered, ‘The murder of those Anabaptists. The theft of the – the manuscript. Spying on me for the last year, I know not why. Nor care.’ I gulped a breath, my voice breaking as a picture came into my head once more of Barak dumped on that rubbish heap.
Paget stared back at me. He had the gift of sitting still, focused, like a cat watching its prey. ‘Murder?’ His tone was admonitory, accusing. ‘Those men were heretics, and traitors too, who would gladly have killed me, or the King, or you for that matter, to advance their perverted notions. They had easier deaths than they deserved, they should have been burned. They were stupid, though. When my spies among the radicals warned me of a nest of Anabaptists in London, my man Curdy infiltrated it with ease. Now there was a loyal servant, and he was murdered.’ Paget drew his heavy eyebrows together in a frown.
‘He was killed in a fight.’
‘Yes. By one of Richard Rich’s men.’ He waved a hand contemptuously. ‘Rich was after what Anne Askew wrote before she was burned, I know that. I believe John Bale has it now.’ For the first time Paget laughed, a flash of surprisingly white teeth amid the coarse brown of his beard. ‘That may come back to haunt Sir Richard yet.’
‘You suborned Rich’s servant,’ I said.
Paget shifted a little, settling more comfortably in his chair. ‘I keep my eye on those who work for the great men of the realm, and sometimes I find men among them of such ambition they can be persuaded to work for me and earn two incomes. Though organizing a watch to be kept on you, Shardlake, that was a nuisance, a waste of Stice’s talents, I thought. And there was nothing to find. Until – ’ he leaned forward, frowning now, his voice threatening – ‘until last month.’ He paused, then spoke slowly and deliberately. ‘A moment ago you mentioned a manuscript.’
I did not reply. I should not have spoken of it. I must keep my control. I waited for Paget to question me further, but he only smiled cynically. ‘The Lamentation of a Sinner,’ he said, ‘by her majesty, the Queen Catherine.’
My mouth fell open. ‘Yes, Master Shardlake,’ he went on, ‘it was me who arranged for that book to be taken from the heretic printer Greening, as soon as Curdy told me it had been brought to his group by that wretched guard.’
I closed my eyes for a moment. Then, having nothing left to lose, I said, ‘No doubt you took it to further your own ends in the power struggle. Have you been waiting, like Rich, to see which way the wind will blow, whether the Queen would fall and Bertano’s mission succeed, keeping the Lamentation in reserve? Be careful, Master Secretary, that the King does not find you have kept it from him.’
I was speaking recklessly, dangerously. ‘Mind your words with me, master lawyer,’ Paget snapped. ‘Remember who I am and where you are.’ I stared back at him, breathing heavily. He inclined his head. ‘You are right that the King was gracious enough to receive an emissary from the Bishop of Rome, but it seems that as a condition of peace His Holiness, as he styles himself, demands that the King surrender the Headship of the Church in England – the Headship to which God has appointed him. Bertano is still here, but I think it is time now he took himself back to his master. How did you know of his presence?’ he asked sharply.
‘The Anabaptists were overheard,’ I said quietly. ‘You rogue, that cut such a swathe of murder through ordinary folk to serve your ambition.’
‘My ambition, eh?’ Paget asked coldly.
‘Yes.’
And then, to my surprise, he laughed grimly, and stood up. ‘I think it is time for you to see what you never guessed, master clever lawyer. Even Stice did not know anything of this.’ He picked up the sconce of candles and walked past me to the door. ‘Follow me,’ he said with an imperious sweep of the arm, throwing the door open wide.
I got up slowly. He said to the guard outside, ‘Accompany us.’
The guard took a position beside me as Paget opened a door opposite. I found myself in a darkened gallery filled with beautiful scents, like the Queen’s gallery, though wider and twice the length. As we walked along, our footsteps silent on the rush matting, the sconce of candles in Paget’s hand showed glimpses of tapestries and paintings more magnificent than any I had seen elsewhere in the palace, before we passed marble columns and platforms on which rested gigantic vases, beautiful models of ships, jewelled chests with who knew what within. I realized this must be the King’s Privy Gallery, and wondered why the contents had not been taken to Hampton Court. We passed an enormous military standard, the flag decorated with fleur-de-lys; no doubt a F
rench standard seized when Henry took Boulogne. It was covered in dark spots. Blood, I realized, and remembered again Barak’s severed hand flying through the air. I jumped at something small running along the wainscoting. A rat. Paget frowned and barked at the guard. ‘Get that seen to! Bring one of the ratcatchers back from Hampton Court!’
At length we reached the end of the gallery, where two further guards stood beside a large double door. Glancing through a nearby window I saw we were directly above the palace wall, on the other side of which I could see the broad way of King Street. A group of young gentlemen were walking past, link-boys with torches lighting their way.
‘Master Secretary.’ One of the guards at the door bowed to Paget, and opened it. I blinked at the brightness of the light on the other side, then followed Paget in.
It was a wide chamber, beautifully furnished, and brightly lit by a host of fat buttermilk candles in silver sconces. The walls were lined with shelves of beautiful and ancient books. In the spaces between the shelves, splendid paintings hung, mostly depicting classical scenes. A window looked out directly over the street. I realized we must be inside the Holbein Gate. Under the window was a wide desk littered with papers and a dish of comfits beside a golden flagon of wine. A pair of spectacles lay atop the papers, glinting in the candlelight.
The King’s fool, little hunchbacked Will Somers, stood beside the desk, his monkey perched on the shoulder of his particoloured doublet. And sitting beside him, in an enormous chair, staring at me with blue eyes as hard and savage as those in Holbein’s portrait, for all that they were now tiny slits in a pale face thick with fat, was the King.
Chapter Fifty-two
INSTANTLY, I BOWED AS LOW AS I COULD. After what had happened to Barak I had given Paget none of the deference due to him, but faced with the King I abased myself instinctively. I had time to take in only that he wore a long caftan, as on the day Lord Parr showed him to me from the window, and that his head with its grey wispy hair was bare.