Heslop looked up. ‘Yes, Brother Bealknap, I agree with you. I think this case settles the matter.’
I rose. ‘Your honour, if I may answer. The cases I passed to you are both more numerous and later in time—’
Heslop shook his head. ‘I have the right to choose which precedent best expresses the common law and Brother Bealknap’s case is the only one that deals directly with the issue of royal authority—’
‘But Brother Bealknap bought this house, your honour, a contract intervenes—’
‘I have a full list today, Brother. Judgement for the plaintiff, with costs.’
We left the court, Bealknap smiling. I glanced over to where Rich had stood, but he had disappeared. It was no surprise to see him at Westminster Hall, his own Office of Augmentations was nearby, but why had he stood staring at me like that? I walked over to where Vervey and Barak stood together. I reddened at the thought that Barak had now seen me lose two cases, Elizabeth’s and Bealknap’s. ‘You bring me bad luck when you come to watch me,’ I told him grumpily to cover my embarrassment.
‘That was a monstrous decision,’ Vervey said indignantly. ‘It made a nonsense of the law.’
‘Yes, it did. Sir, I am afraid my advice must be to take this matter to Chancery, expensive as that will be. Otherwise that judgement gives carte blanche to all purchasers of monastic properties in London to flout the City regulations—’
I broke off as Barak nudged me. Bealknap was at my elbow. I frowned; it was a breach of etiquette to approach a fellow lawyer in conference with a client. Bealknap too was frowning, his composure ruffled.
‘You would take this to Chancery, Brother?’ he asked. ‘But you would merely lose again. To put the Common Council to such expense—’
‘I was having a private conversation, Bealknap, but that will be my advice. That was a biased judgement and the Court of Equity will overturn it.’
He laughed with a show of incredulity. ‘When it comes on. Have you any idea how long cases are waiting in Chancery these days?’
‘We will wait as long as we must.’ I looked at him: as ever his eyes evaded mine. ‘A word, Brother.’ I led him away from the others and leaned close to him. ‘How did the case come to be on Heslop’s list, hey? Did a little gold pass between you and him?’
‘Such an accusation—’ he blustered.
‘I would put nothing past you, Bealknap, where your pocket is concerned. But we shall have a fair contest in Chancery. And do not think I have forgotten that other matter. I have been investigating your links with French merchants. They would pay much for that formula.’
His eyes widened at that. ‘I wouldn’t—’
‘I hope not, for your sake. If you have been involved in anything treasonable, Bealknap, you will find you have been playing with fire in more ways than one.’
For the first time he looked afraid. ‘I haven’t, I swear. It was all as I told you.’
‘Was it? It had better be.’ I stood away from him. He brushed himself down, recovering himself, and gave me a look of pure venom.
‘I will have my costs for this case, Brother,’ he said, a momentary tremble in his voice. ‘I will send the Common Council a fee note—’
‘Ay, do that.’ I turned my back on him and rejoined Barak and an uncomfortable-looking Vervey. Bealknap slunk away.
‘He promises us a fee note,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘Master Vervey, I will let the council have my recommendations. Once again, I am sorry for this outcome. I suspect the judge may have been bribed.’
‘It would not surprise me,’ Vervey replied. ‘I know of Bealknap. Will you write to us with your views as soon as may be? I know the Common Council will be worried by the implications.’
‘Ay.’
Vervey bowed and disappeared into the throng. ‘What did you say to Bealknap?’ Barak asked. ‘I thought you were going to rough him up.’
‘I warned him I still had my eye on him. Told him I’d been looking into his connections with the French.’
‘Bealknap was definitely the arsehole who came to my—my stepfather.’ He spoke the word bitterly.
I set my lips. ‘Do you think you could find more about his running fake compurgators? Find an adult who could give evidence. It would be something to threaten him with—’
I was interrupted. There was a stir in the crowd around us, and I turned to see Rich bearing down on me, a smile on his face but his eyes holding me with the same cold stare as they had in court.
‘Brother Shardlake again and his ruffled-headed assistant.’ He smiled at Barak. ‘You should have a care to comb your hair, sir, before coming to court.’
Barak returned his stare evenly.
Rich smiled and turned to me. ‘That’s an impertinent fellow you keep, Brother Shardlake. You need to teach him manners. And perhaps learn some yourself.’
Rich’s stare was unnerving, but I held my ground. ‘I am sorry, Sir Richard, I do not know what you mean.’
‘You involve yourself in matters beyond your station. You should stick to helping country farmers with their land disputes.’
‘What matters do you mean, Sir Richard?’
‘You know,’ he said. ‘Don’t play innocent with me. Take care or you’ll suffer for it.’ And with that he turned round and was gone. There was a moment’s silence.
‘He knows,’ Barak said, his voice low and intense. ‘He knows about Greek Fire.’
‘How? How could he?’
‘I don’t know, but he does. What else could he have meant? Perhaps Gristwood did go to see him after all during those missing six months.’
I frowned. ‘But—if he threatens me, he threatens Cromwell.’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t know the earl’s involved.’
I looked after Rich thoughtfully. ‘Bealknap scurries away and a second later Rich appears. And he was doing something that involved Rich that day at Augmentations.’
‘Perhaps he has Rich’s protection.’ Barak set his lips. ‘The earl must know of this.’
I nodded reluctantly. ‘God’s death, Rich involved too.’ I exclaimed crossly as someone jostled me. ‘Come, let’s get out of here. We’re due at Lothbury.’
Chapter Twenty
THE RIVER WAS CROWDED again and we had to wait at the steps for a boat. Barak leaned on the parapet.
‘Do you think Bealknap bribed that judge?’ he asked.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. Heslop has a poor reputation for honesty.’
‘Will you win if you take the case to Chancery?’
‘We should do. They’ll look at the merits of the matter. But God knows when we’ll get on. Bealknap’s right about their delays - I named my horse for their slow ways.’ I looked at Barak seriously. ‘Find one of these compurgators. We can offer a reward and perhaps immunity from prosecution if Cromwell will agree. We need a lever over Bealknap, especially if he’s got Rich behind him.’
‘Ay, I’ll do it.’ He turned to face me. ‘I’ll not go to my stepfather, though, even if I knew where he and my mother lived. Not even for the earl.’
‘No? I thought there were no limits to your loyalty.’
His eyes flashed. ‘I loved my father, for all he smelt of shit. My mother would have nothing to do with him; he took up his trade after I was born or I’d not be here at all. I was twelve when he died.’ I nodded, interested. For the first time my difficult companion was showing me something of himself.
‘We’d had this cheating attorney as a lodger for years, Kenney his name was. He had the best part of the house while we had two rooms. He was good with words and my mother liked him, he was—’ Barak almost bit off the words - ‘a step up the social chain. She married him a week after father died: the poor old arsehole wasn’t even cold in the ground. D’you know what she said to me? Same as you did coming from that house in Wolf’s Lane. “A poor widow must look after herself.”’
‘So she must, I suppose.’
‘After that, I went mad for a while.’ He gave a bark of
laughter. ‘Sometimes I think I’m still a bit mad. I ran away from home, left school, though I’d been doing well. I got in with the gangs. A poor child must look after himself too, you know.’ He stared out over the water. ‘Ended by getting caught stealing a ham. I was put in prison and would have faced the rope; it was a big ham, worth over a shilling. But the warden was a Putney man and recognized my father’s name. Coming from the same part of the world as Lord Cromwell he had contacts with him; I ended up going before him and he put me to work, running errands at first and then other things.’ Barak turned to me. ‘So I owe the earl everything. My very life.’
‘I see.’
He stood up, taking a deep breath. ‘There was a pub by the Tower where my stepfather met Bealknap. I think it was a meeting place for Bealknap’s stable of rogues. I’ll go down there, try to find it.’
I looked at him. ‘No wonder you have no good opinion of lawyers.’
‘You’re more honest than most,’ he grunted.
‘You never see your mother or stepfather?’
‘I’ve seen them once or twice about the City, but I always turn away. I’m dead for all they know or care.’
WE TOOK A WHERRY as far as Three Cranes Stairs, then walked north to Lothbury. I had to hurry to keep up with Barak’s loping pace. By the Grocers’ Hall a couple of young gentlemen in fine doublets were mocking a beggar who sat in the doorway, displaying a face caked with weeping sores to stir the public’s pity.
‘Come, fellow, you should go for a soldier!’ one was saying. ‘Everyone is needed at muster now, to fight the pope and the king’s enemies.’ He took a sword from a leather scabbard and waved it. The beggar, who looked hardly fit to rise let alone take up arms, scrabbled back in panic, making the hoarse grunts of a dumb man.
‘He can’t speak the king’s English,’ said the other fellow. ‘Maybe he’s a foreigner.’
Barak walked over, hand on his own sword, and looked the young gallant in the eye. ‘Leave him,’ he said. ‘Unless you’d like to try your luck with me?’
The fellow’s eyes narrowed, but he sheathed his sword and turned away. Barak took a coin from his pocket and laid it by the beggar. ‘Come on,’ he said curtly.
‘That was a brave gesture,’ I said. The words of the motto on the barrel of Greek Fire came back to me. Lupus est homo homini: man is wolf to man.
Barak snorted. ‘Those arseholes are only fit to bait those who can’t fight back.’ He spat on the ground. ‘Gentlemen.’
We reached Lothbury Street. Ahead of us stood St Margaret’s church, beside which narrow lanes led off into a warren of little buildings from where a metallic clangour could be heard. Because of the endless noise virtually no one save the founders lived in Lothbury.
‘Goodwife Gristwood will meet us at her son’s foundry,’ I said. ‘We go up here, Nag’s Lane.’
We turned into a narrow passageway between two-storey houses. Cinders and fragments of charcoal were mixed with the alley dust and there was a harsh smell of hot iron. Nearly all the houses had workshops attached; their doors were open and I could see men moving within. Spades scraped on stone floors as coal was loaded into furnaces from which a bright red, concentrated glow was visible.
At length I halted in front of a small house. The workshop door was closed; Barak knocked twice. It opened and a wiry young man wearing a heavy apron over an old smock pitted with burn holes looked at us suspiciously. He had Goodwife Gristwood’s thin, sharp features.
‘Master Harper?’ I asked.
‘Ay.’
‘I am Master Shardlake.’
‘Come in,’ the founder replied in a less than friendly tone. ‘Mother’s here.’
I followed him into his little foundry. An unlit furnace dominated the room, a pile of charcoal beside it. A collection of pots was stacked by the door. On a stool in one corner Goodwife Gristwood sat. She gave me a surly nod.
‘Well, master lawyer,’ she said. ‘Here he is.’
Harper nodded at Barak. ‘Who’s that?’
‘My assistant.’
‘We founders stick together,’ he said warningly. ‘I’ve only to call out for half Lothbury to be here.’
‘We mean you no harm - it is only information I want. Your mother has told you we seek information about Michael and Sepultus’s experiments?’
‘Ay.’ He sat down beside his mother and looked at me. ‘They told me they wanted to build something, an arrangement of pumps and tanks. That’s beyond my capacity, but I do a lot of casting for a man who works for the City repairing the conduits.’
‘Peter Leighton.’
‘Ay. I helped Master Leighton cast the iron for the pipes and the tank.’ He looked at me keenly. ‘Mother says there could be danger for those who know about this.’
‘Perhaps. We may be able to help there.’ I paused. ‘The liquid that was to be put in the tank? Did you see anything of that?’
Harper shook his head. ‘Michael said it was a secret, it was better I didn’t know. They did some tests in Master Leighton’s yard. They leased the whole yard from him and wouldn’t let him near. It has a high wall; he keeps lead pipes there for work on the conduits.’
I wondered what Harper’s relationship had been with Gristwood, who was, after all, his stepfather. I guessed it had not been one of affection, but that the nature of his employment made him useful.
‘What was this apparatus like?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘Complicated. A big watertight tank with a pump attached and a pipe leading off. It took weeks to make, then Master Leighton said I’d have to have another try—the pipe was too broad.’
‘When did the brothers first employ you?’
‘November. It took till January to get the apparatus right.’
Two months before they went to Cromwell. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘And where was it kept? In Master Leighton’s yard?’
‘I believe so. They paid him well for its use.’
Goodwife Gristwood laughed mirthlessly. ‘Did Master Leighton get his money?’
‘Ay, Mother, he did. He insisted on payment in advance.’
She frowned. ‘Then where did Michael get the money? Neither he nor Sepultus had any.’
‘Perhaps someone else paid,’ I suggested.
‘They’d have had to,’ the goodwife answered bitterly. ‘I spent fifteen years dealing with Michael’s mad schemes. Sometimes I had hardly any bread for the table. And it’s all ended with him dead and David in danger.’ She looked at her son with a tenderness that softened her face.
‘I can make sure you are both kept safe,’ I said. ‘But I would like to speak to Master Leighton.’ I looked at David Harper. ‘Have you told him I was coming?’
‘No, sir. We thought it better not.’
‘Will he be at his foundry?’
‘Ay, he has a new contract to repair the Fleet Street conduit. He said last Friday he’d have some casting for me. Pleased with himself, he was.’
‘Can you take us there?’
‘And will that be the end of this business?’ Goodwife Gristwood asked.
‘You need be involved no further, madam.’
She nodded at her son. He rose and led the way outside. His mother scuttled after him.
We walked up the lane, further into Lothbury. Through open doors we saw sweat-soaked founders, stripped to the waist, labouring over their fires. People looked out at us curiously as we passed by. At the bottom of a winding lane David stopped before a corner house, larger than most, with a workshop next to it and a high wall beside that.
‘If there were sounds and signs of fire,’ Barak muttered to me, ‘they wouldn’t attract attention here.’
‘No. This was a clever place to choose.’
David knocked at the door of the house. It was shuttered, as were the windows of the workshop. Harper tried the workshop doors too, but they were locked.
‘Master Leighton,’ he called. ‘Master Leighton, it’s David.’ He t
urned to us apologetically. ‘Many founders grow deaf in their later years. But it’s odd his furnace isn’t lit.’
I had a sense of foreboding. ‘When did you last see him?’
‘Friday, sir, when he told me about his new contract.’
Barak looked at the lock. ‘I could have that open.’
‘No,’ Harper said. ‘I know who has a key. Everyone has a neighbour’s key in case of fire. Wait here.’ He went off down the lane. All around us the banging and clanging resounded in our ears. Goodwife Gristwood began twisting her hands together nervously.
Her son reappeared, a large key in his hands. He unlocked the door and we entered the yard. It was indeed a good place for Michael and Sepultus to have chosen; the high wall enclosed it on three sides and the windowless rear of the adjacent house occupied the fourth. There was a pile of pipes and valves, for Leighton’s work on the conduits, no doubt. Blackened patches all over the walls caught my eye, like the ones I had seen in the Gristwoods’ yard only larger.
Goodwife Gristwood and her son were standing nervously by the gate. I gave David Harper a reassuring smile - he looked as though he might run off any minute.
‘Master Harper,’ I said, ‘tell me: does anything unusual strike you about this yard?’
He looked around. ‘Only that it’s been given a good clean recently.’
I nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. It’s spotless.’
‘Why would anyone want to keep a founder’s yard spotless?’ Barak asked.
‘To hide all traces of what had been here.’ I bent close to him and whispered, ‘I think someone has removed the apparatus, and all traces of Greek Fire as well.’
‘Leighton?’
‘Possibly. Come, I think we should have a look in the house.’
I led the way out of the yard. We knocked again at the house door, but still there was no sign of life. I wiped a hand over my brow; it seemed hotter and stickier than ever up here among the foundries. All around us the clanging and scrating continued.
‘We can get in via the workshop,’ Harper said. ‘It’s the same key.’ He hesitated, then opened the workshop door and stepped inside calling, ‘Master Leighton?’ Barak followed him.