Dark Fire

  ‘I’ll stay outside,’ Goodwife Gristwood said nervously. ‘Take care, David.’

  I followed Barak in. David opened the shutters and I saw a cluttered workshop, more pipes and valves and pans and an empty furnace. Harper picked up a coal from it. ‘Stone cold,’ he said.

  Set in one wall was a door to the house. Harper hesitated, then inserted the key in the lock and opened it. Another darkened room. I caught a slight, familiar tang and grabbed Barak’s arm. ‘Wait,’ I said.

  Harper opened the shutters and turned round. Then his mouth fell open. We were in a parlour, surprisingly well appointed, but it was in chaos. The buffet cupboard had been overturned and lay on its side, silver plates scattered around.

  David Harper had gone pale. He stood with his hand over his mouth. ‘They got him too,’ I whispered. ‘They took the apparatus and killed him.’

  ‘Then where’s the body?’ Barak asked.

  ‘Somewhere in the house, maybe. I smell blood.’ Instructing Harper to stay where he was, Barak and I searched the rest of the founder’s home, Barak drawing his sword as we climbed the narrow stairs. Everything was in order, it was only the parlour that had been wrecked. We returned there to find David Harper had gone outside; through the window I saw him with his mother, looking at the house with a frightened expression. A man with a load of pans on his back passed by, giving them a puzzled look.

  ‘They took the body with them,’ I said, ‘together with the apparatus. They didn’t want a hue and cry about a murder in Lothbury.’ I knelt and examined the floor. ‘See, this part of the floor’s been cleaned, there’s no dust.’ I saw a pair of flies buzzing around the overturned buffet, and took a deep breath. ‘Here, Barak, help me move this.’

  I wondered what horror we might find underneath the buffet, but there was only a patch of dried blood. Barak whistled.

  ‘Where did they get the key?’

  ‘From Leighton’s body, perhaps.’ I looked over to the front door. ‘They didn’t break the door in. I guess they knocked, and when Leighton answered they shoved him inside and then followed and killed him. Probably a quick blow with an axe again.’

  ‘Risky. What if he called out and neighbours came? Harper’s right, the founders are a close lot.’

  ‘Perhaps Leighton knew them.’ I bit my lip. ‘Or knew someone who was with them. One of our potential conspirators, maybe.’

  ‘We should ask the neighbours.’

  ‘We can, but I’m willing to bet they came at night when no one was about. Come, there’s no more we can do here.’

  We rejoined Harper and Goodwife Gristwood in the street. Standing together, they were very alike, even to their looks of drawn anxiety.

  ‘What’s happened, sir?’ Harper asked. ‘Is Master Leighton—’

  ‘He is not there. But I am afraid there are signs of violence—’

  Goodwife Gristwood gave a little moan.

  ‘I am concerned for the safety of you and your son, madam,’ I said. ‘Is the watchman still at your house?’

  ‘Ay, he brought me here, then I sent him back.’

  I turned to Harper. ‘I think your mother should stay with you for now. I will try and find somewhere safer.’

  The old woman gave me an appalled look. ‘What did they do? For Jesu’s sake, what did Michael and Sepultus do here?’

  ‘Meddled with dangerous people.’

  She shook her head, then looked at me again, her mouth tightening into its old hardness. ‘That whore,’ she asked abruptly, ‘did you see her?’

  ‘I tried to, but she ran away.’ I turned to David. ‘Is it possible someone could carry away that apparatus without being noticed? Perhaps on a cart?’

  He nodded. ‘People are always trundling carts through Lothbury with goods to take to customers and the shops. Day and night too when we’re busy.’

  I nodded. ‘Ask around, would you, among the neighbours? Just say Leighton’s missing. Would you do that?’

  He nodded, then put his arm round his mother. ‘Are we truly in danger, sir?’

  ‘I think your mother may be. Who knows where she is?’

  ‘No one save me and the watchman at Wolf’s Lane.’

  ‘Tell no one else. Can you read?’

  ‘Ay.’

  I scribbled my address on a piece of paper. ‘If you have any news, or require anything, you can reach me here.’

  He took it, nodding. His mother clung to his arm. I was glad they had each other; they had no one else now.

  I WAS WEARY, but insisted on stopping at a barber’s for a shave in preparation for the banquet. Barak waited for me, then we caught a boat back to the Temple and walked home. I insisted on resting before getting myself ready. I dozed an hour and woke feeling unrefreshed. The sky was as leaden, the air as close, as ever. How I wished the weather would break. I got up, feeling stiff, and for the first time in days did some of Guy’s back exercises. I was bending over, trying to touch my toes and getting nowhere near, when there was a knock at the door and Barak entered. His eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘That’s a strange way to pray,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not praying. I’m trying to find some relief for my sore back. And haven’t you the manners to be asked to enter a room before barging in?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Barak sat down cheerfully on the bed. ‘I came to tell you I’m going out. An old contact of mine has some information on the two we’re after. Pock-face and his big mate. I’m going to meet him, then I’m going to see the earl.’ His expression grew serious. ‘Tell him about Rich. He may want to see you.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Very well. You know where I’ll be. And ask if he can find somewhere safe for the Gristwoods.’

  Barak nodded, then gave me a warning look. ‘So far we’ve had more requests for him than information.’

  ‘I know, but we’re doing all we can.’

  ‘You’ll have to ride to Lady Honor’s house alone.’

  ‘It is still light.’

  ‘Afterwards I’ll find that tavern where Bealknap met my stepfather. It’ll keep me occupied while you’re at the banquet.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to have a crack at that well later? After the banquet?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’ll be too tired, I have to get some sleep. I have to pace myself, Barak,’ I added irritably. ‘I’ve more than ten years on you. Just how old are you, by the way?’

  ‘Twenty-eight in August. Listen, I’ve been trying to puzzle something out. I can understand whoever organized the killing of the Gristwood brothers keeping the formula close, perhaps to sell abroad when things have quietened down. But why try to kill the founder Leighton? Why kill everyone associated with this?’

  ‘They could have killed Leighton just as a way of getting to the apparatus. We know they’ve no care for life.’

  ‘And they’re keen to get you. They don’t seem to like you being on the case.’

  I frowned. ‘But is that just because I might uncover who is behind this, the person who is paying these rogues? Or is it that they fear I might find something out about Greek Fire? Is that why those books have gone?’

  Barak’s eyes widened. ‘You can’t still think it may all be a fraud, surely? Not after what you’ve seen and heard?’

  ‘There’s something that’s not right. I must go to the Guildhall, find copies of those books.’ I clutched at my head. ‘God’s death, there’s so much to do.’

  ‘It beats me what you can hope to find from a lot of old books.’ He sighed. ‘Four possible suspects now. Bealknap and Rich. Marchamount. And Lady Honor. Make sure you question her tonight.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ I snapped.

  Barak gave his sardonic smile. ‘You’re sweet on her, you’re still a man of juice under all that learning.’

  ‘You’ve a coarse tongue. Besides, as you pointed out yourself, she’s out of my league.’ I looked at him. He had mentioned seeing a girl on the first night he came to my house, but be
yond that I knew nothing of what women there might have been in his life. Many, I guessed, for all the fears of the French pox these days.

  He lay back on the bed.

  ‘Bealknap and Rich,’ he said again, ‘Marchamount and Lady Honor. One or more of them a murdering rogue. So much for people of rank being honourable, not that I ever believed it.’

  I shrugged. ‘The idea of raising oneself up to gentle rank has always seemed a worthy thing to me. But perhaps that ideal will turn to dust, like Erasmus’s hopes of a Christian commonwealth. In these whirling days, who knows?’

  ‘Some things last,’ he said. He smiled. ‘I said I’d show you this, remember?’

  ‘What?’

  Barak sat up and unbuttoned his shirt. There was something gold on the end of a chain, glittering against his broad chest. It wasn’t a cross, it looked more like a little cylinder. He lifted the chain over his head and proffered it. ‘Take a look.’

  I examined the cylinder. The surface had been engraved once but the gold was worn almost smooth with time. ‘It’s been passed down in my father’s family for generations,’ he said. ‘It’s supposed to do with the Jewish religion. My father callled it a mezzah.’ He shrugged. ‘I like to have it by me, to bring me luck.’

  ‘The workmanship is fine. It looks very old.’

  ‘The Jews were kicked out more than two hundred years ago, weren’t they? One of them must have kept it when he converted and passed it down. A reminder of the past.’

  I turned it over in my hands. Tiny as it was, the cylinder was hollow, with a slit down one side.

  ‘Father said they used to put a tiny scroll of parchment in there and put the mezzah by the door.’

  I handed it back. ‘It’s remarkable.’

  Barak replaced it, buttoned up his shirt and got up. ‘I must be gone,’ he said briskly.

  ‘And I should get ready. Good luck with the earl.’

  As the door shut behind him, I turned to the window and looked out over my parched garden. The clouds were so heavy now that although it was only late afternoon it was dim as dusk. I unlocked my chest and began reaching for my best clothes. Somewhere, away over the Thames, a distant rumble of thunder sounded.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  LADY HONOR’S HOUSE WAS in Blue Lion Street off Bishopsgate. It was a big old four-storey courtyard house, the front giving directly onto the street. It had been sumptuously refurbished in the recent past. I could see why it was known as the House of Glass; new diamond-paned windows had been put in along the whole frontage, with the Vaughan family crest in some of the centre panes. I studied it: a rampant lion with sword and shield, the epitome of martial virtues. There was something feminine about the overall effect, however; I wondered if the work had been done since Lady Honor’s husband died.

  The front door was open, with liveried servants standing outside. Although I was dressed in my uncomfortable best, I worried that I would appear an unsophisticated fellow for I was unused to mixing in such high company. I pulled a little ruff of silk shirt above the collar of my doublet to display the needlework.

  I had ridden Chancery to the banquet; the old horse appeared recovered from his recent exertions and trotted along happily enough. A lad took the reins as I dismounted and another servant bowed me through the front door. He led me through a richly decorated hall into a large inner courtyard. Here too all the rooms had large glass windows, and heraldic beasts had been carved on the walls as well as the Vaughan crest. There was a fountain in the middle of the courtyard, with just enough water emerging to make a merry, tinkling noise. Opposite, a large banqueting hall occupied the first floor. Candles flickered behind the open windows, casting ever-changing shadows on the people moving to and fro within, and there was a merry clatter of cutlery. It struck me that if Lady Honor had been involved in the Greek Fire business, it was certainly not because she needed money.

  The steward led me up a broad flight of stairs to a room where bowls of hot water were set out on a table with a pile of towels. The bowls, I saw, were gold.

  ‘You will wash your hands, sir?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Three men were already standing washing; a young fellow with the Mercers’ Company badge on his silk doublet and an older man in a white clerical robe. The third man, who looked up with a beaming smile on his broad face, was Gabriel Marchamount. ‘Ah, Shardlake,’ he said expansively, ‘I hope you have a sweet tooth. Lady Honor’s banquets positively drip with sugar.’ Evidently he had decided to be affable tonight.

  ‘Not too sweet, I must watch my teeth.’

  ‘Like me you still have a full set.’ Marchamount shook his head. ‘I cannot abide this fashion for women to blacken their teeth deliberately so people will think they live off nothing but fine sugar.’

  ‘I agree. It is not pretty.’

  ‘I have heard them say the pains in their mouth are worth it, if people respect them more.’ He laughed. ‘Women of Lady Honor’s class, though, women of real estate, would disdain such effect.’ He dried his hands, replacing the showy emerald ring on his finger and patted his plump stomach. ‘Come then, let us go in.’ He took a napkin from a pile and flung it over his shoulder; I followed his example and we went out to the banqueting chamber.

  The long room had an old hammerbeam ceiling. The walls were covered with bright tapestries showing the story of the Crusades, the papal tiara carefully stitched out where the Bishop of Rome was shown blessing the departing armies. Big tallow candles, set in silver candleholders, had been lit against the dark evening and filled the room with a yellow glow.

  I glanced at the enormous table that dominated the room. The candlelight winked on gold and silver tableware and serving men scurried to and fro, placing dishes and glasses on the broad buffet against one wall. As was the custom, I had brought my own dining knife, a silver one my father had given me. It would look a poor thing among these riches.

  The salt cellar, a foot high and particularly ornate, was set at the very top of the table, opposite a high chair thick with cushions. That meant nearly all the guests would be below the salt and therefore that a guest of the highest status was expected. I wondered if it might even be Cromwell.

  Marchamount smiled and nodded round at the company. A dozen guests were standing talking, mostly older men, though there was a smattering of wives, some wearing heavy lead rouge to brighten their cheeks. Mayor Hollyes himself was there, resplendent in his red robes of office. The other men mostly wore Mercers’ Company livery, though there were a couple of clerics. Everyone was perspiring in the oppressive heat despite the open windows; the women in their wide farthingales looked especially uncomfortable.

  A boy of about sixteen with long black hair and a thin, pale face, badly disfigured with a rash of spots such as boys sometimes have, was standing by himself in a corner, looking nervous. ‘That’s Henry Vaughan,’ Marchamount whispered. ‘Lady Honor’s nephew. Heir to the old Vaughan title and to their lands, such as they have left. She’s brought him down from Lincolnshire to try and get him received at court.’

  ‘He looks ill at ease.’

  ‘Yes, he’s a poor fellow; hardly cut out for the rumbustuous company the king likes.’ He paused, then said with sudden feeling, ‘I wish I had an heir.’ I looked at him in surprise. He smiled sadly. ‘My wife died in childbirth these five years past. We would have had a boy. When I began my petition to establish my family’s right to a coat of arms, it was in hope my wife and I would have an heir.’

  ‘I am sorry for your loss.’ Somehow it never occurred to me to see Marchamount as a man who could be bereaved and vulnerable.

  He nodded at the mourning ring in the shape of a skull I wore. ‘You too have known loss,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. In the plague of ’thirty-four.’ Yet I felt a fraud as I spoke, not just because Katy had announced her betrothal to another shortly before she died but because these last two years I had thought of her less and less. I thought with sudden irritation I should stop wearing it. br />
  ‘Have you resolved that unpleasant matter we discussed earlier?’ Marchamount’s eyes were sharp, all sentiment gone.

  ‘I make progress. A strange thing happened in the course of my investigations.’ I told him of the books that had gone missing from the library.

  ‘You should tell the keeper.’

  ‘I may do.’

  ‘Will your investigation be - ah - hindered, without the books?’

  ‘Delayed a little only. There are other sources.’ I watched his face closely, but he only nodded solemnly. A serving man took up a horn and sounded a long note. The company fell silent as Lady Honor entered the room. She wore a wide, high-bosomed farthingale in brightest green velvet and a red French hood with loops of pearls hanging from it. I was pleased to see she wore no leaden rouge; her clear complexion had no need of it. But it was not to her that all eyes in the room turned; they fixed on the man who followed her, wearing a light scarlet robe edged with fur despite the heat, and a thick gold chain. My heart sank - it was the Duke of Norfolk again. I bowed with everyone else as he strode to the head of the table and stood eyeing the company haughtily. I wondered with a sinking heart whether he would remember I had been sitting next to Godfrey on Sunday; the last thing I wanted was to attract the notice of Cromwell’s greatest enemy.

  Lady Honor smiled and clapped her hands. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please, take your places.’ To my surprise I was placed near the head of the table next to a plump middle-aged woman wearing an old-fashioned box hood and a square-cut dress, a large ruby brooch glinting on her bosom. On her other side Marchamount sat just below the duke. Lady Honor guided the nervous-looking boy to a chair next to Norfolk, who stared at him enquiringly.

  ‘Your grace,’ Lady Honor said, ‘may I present my cousin’s son, Henry Vaughan. I told you he was coming from the country.’

  The duke clapped him on the shoulder, his manner suddenly friendly. ‘Welcome to London, boy,’ he said in his harsh voice. ‘It’s good to see the nobility sending their pups to court, to take their rightful place. Your grandfather fought with my father at Bosworth, did you know that?’