‘I am sorry,’ I said.
He clutched my hand. ‘Sir, come with me, come now to Newgate. When they show her the weights, the stone to go beneath her back, it may frighten her into speech. That could save her, could it not?’
‘Yes, she’d be brought back for trial. But she won’t do it, Joseph.’
‘Try, sir, please - one last try. Come with me.’
I closed my eyes for a moment, ‘Very well.’
As we walked into the vestibule of the court, Joseph gave a gasp and clutched his stomach. ‘Agh, my guts,’ he said. ‘This worry has put them out of order. Is there a jakes here?’
‘Round the back. I’ll wait for you. Hurry. They’ll take her to the press straight away.’
He shouldered a way through the departing crowd. Left alone in the hall, I sat down on a bench. Then I heard a rapid patter of footsteps from the court. The door was flung open and Forbizer’s clerk, a round little man, ran up to me, his face red, robes billowing around him. ‘Brother Shardlake,’ he puffed. ‘Thank goodness. I thought you had gone.’
‘What is it?’
He handed me a paper. ‘Judge Forbizer has reconsidered, sir. He asked me to give you this.’
‘What?’
‘He has reconsidered. You are to have another two weeks to persuade Mistress Wentworth to plead.’
I stared at him uncomprehendingly. No one could have looked less like reconsidering than Forbizer. There was something shifty, uneasy, in the clerk’s face. ‘A copy of this has gone to Newgate already.’ He thrust the paper at me and vanished back into the courtroom.
I looked at it. A brief order above Forbizer’s spiky signature, stating Elizabeth Wentworth was to be detained in the Newgate Hole for another twelve days, until the tenth of June, to reconsider her plea. I sat staring around the hall, trying to work it out. It was an extraordinary thing for any judge to do, let alone Forbizer.
There was a touch on my arm. I looked up to find the sharp-faced young man at my elbow. I frowned and he smiled again, a cynical smile that turned up one corner of his mouth, showing white even teeth.
‘Master Shardlake,’ he said, ‘I see you have the order.’ His voice was as sharp as his face, with the burr of a London commoner.
‘What do you mean? Who are you?’
He gave a small bow. ‘Jack Barak, sir, at your service. It was I persuaded Judge Forbizer to grant the order just now. You did not see me slip behind the bench?’
‘No. But - what is this?’
His smile vanished and again I saw the hardness in his face. ‘I serve Lord Cromwell. It was in his name I persuaded the judge to give you more time. He didn’t want to, stiff-necked old arsehole, but my master is not refused. You know that.’
‘Cromwell? Why?’
‘He would see you, sir. He is nearby, at the Rolls House. He asks me to take you there.’
My heart began pounding with apprehension. ‘Why? What does he want? I haven’t seen him in close on three years.’
‘He has a commission for you, sir.’ Barak raised his eyebrows and stared at me insolently with those large brown eyes. ‘Two weeks’ more life for the girl is your fee, paid in advance.’
Chapter Six
BARAK LED ME at a brisk pace to the courthouse stables. My heart still banged against my ribs and the skin on my face had a tight, drawn feeling. I knew Lord Cromwell was not above bullying judges, but he always liked to observe the legal niceties and would not have done this lightly. And Barak was a strange person to use to confront a judge. But though he had risen to be chief minister, Cromwell was the son of a Putney alehouse keeper and was happy to work with men of low birth so long as they were intelligent and ruthless enough. But what in Christ’s name did Cromwell want from me? His last mission had plunged me into a hell of murder and violence I still shuddered to recall.
Barak’s horse was a beautiful black mare, its coat shining with health. He cantered out while I was still saddling Chancery, pausing in the stable doorway to look back impatiently. ‘Ready?’ he asked. ‘His lordship wants to see you this morning, you know.’
I studied him again as I climbed on the vaulting block and eased myself onto Chancery’s back. A hard eye and a fighter’s build, as I had observed before. A heavy sword at his hip and a dagger too at his belt. But there was intelligence in his eyes and in the wide, sensual mouth, whose upturned corners seemed made for mockery.
‘Wait a moment,’ I said, seeing Joseph running across the yard to us, his plump face bright, clutching his cap in his hand. When he had returned from the jakes I told him Forbizer had changed his mind: I said I did not know why. ‘Your advocacy, sir,’ he had said. ‘Your words moved his conscience.’ Joseph was ever a naive man.
Now he laid a hand on Chancery’s side, beaming up at me. ‘I have to go with this gentleman, Joseph,’ I said. ‘There is another urgent case I must attend to.’
‘Some other poor wretch to save from injustice, eh? But you will be back soon?’
I glanced at Barak; he gave a brief nod.
‘Soon, Joseph. I will contact you. Listen, now we have some time to investigate Ralph’s murder there is something I would have you do for me, if you can. It will be difficult—’
‘Anything, sir, anything.’
‘I want you to go to your brother Edwin and ask if he will see me at his house. Say I am unsure of Elizabeth’s guilt and wish to hear his side of things.’
A shadow came over his face. ‘I need to meet the family, Joseph,’ I told him gently. ‘And see the house and garden. It is important.’
He bit his lip, then nodded slowly. ‘I will do what I can.’
I patted his arm. ‘Good man. And now I must go.’
‘I shall tell Elizabeth!’ he called after me as we rode out into the road. ‘I shall tell her, thanks to you, she is spared the press!’ Barak looked at me, raising an eyebrow cynically.
WE RODE DOWN Old Bailey Street. The Rolls House was not far, directly opposite Lincoln’s Inn in fact. A sprawling complex of buildings, it had once been the Domus Conversorum, where Jews who wished to convert to Christianity were instructed. Since the expulsion of all Jews from England centuries before, the building had been used to house the Court of Chancery Rolls, though one or two foreign Jews, who had washed up in England somehow and agreed to convert to Christianity, were still housed there from time to time. The Six Clerks’ Office, which administered the Court of Chancery, was located there too. The office of Keeper of the Domus was still combined with the Mastership of the Rolls.
‘I thought Lord Cromwell had given up the mastership,’ I said to Barak.
‘He still keeps an office in the Rolls House. Works there sometimes when he wants to be undisturbed.’
‘Can you tell me what this is about?’
He shook his head. ‘My master is to tell you himself.’
We rode up Ludgate Hill. It was another hot day; the women bringing produce into town were wearing cloths over their faces to protect them from the dust thrown up by passing carts. I looked down over the red-tiled rooftops of London, and the broad shining band of the river. The tide was out and the Thames mud, stained yellow and green with the refuse that poured every day from the northern shore, lay exposed like a great stain. People said that recently will o’the wisps of flame had been seen at night dancing over the rubbish and wondered uneasily what it portended.
I made another attempt to get information. ‘This must be important to your master. Forbizer’s not intimidated lightly.’
‘He’s a care for his skin like all men of the law.’ There was an edge of contempt in Barak’s voice.
‘This sore puzzles me.’ I paused, then added, ‘Am I in trouble?’
He turned. ‘No, not if you do as you’re told. It’s as I said, my master has a commission for you. Now come: time is important.’
We entered Fleet Street. The dust hung over the Whitefriars’ monastic buildings in a pall, for the great friary was in the course of demolition. The gatehouse
was covered in scaffolding, men hacking away at the decoration with chisels. A workman stepped into our path, raising a dusty hand.
‘Halt your horses, please, sirs,’ he called out.
Barak frowned. ‘We’re on Lord Cromwell’s business. Piss off.’
The man wiped his hand on his grubby smock. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I only wished to warn you, they’re about to blow up the Whiteys’ chapter house, the noise could startle the horses—’
‘Look—’ Barak broke off suddenly. A flash of red light appeared over the wall, followed by a tremendous explosion, louder than a clap of thunder. A heavy crash of falling stone, accompanied by cheers, sounded as a surging cloud of dust rolled over us. Hot-blooded as it looked, Barak’s mare only neighed and jerked aside, but Chancery let out a scream and reared up on his hind legs, nearly unseating me. Barak reached across and grabbed the reins.
‘Down, matey, down,’ he said firmly. Chancery calmed at once, dropping to his feet again. He stood trembling; I was shaking too.
‘All right?’ Barak asked.
‘Yes.’ I gulped. ‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘God’s death, the dust.’ The powdery cloud, filled with the acrid tang of gunpowder, swirled round us and in a moment my robe and Barak’s doublet were spotted with grey. ‘Come on, let’s get out of this.’
‘I’m sorry, sirs,’ the workman called after us anxiously.
‘So you should be! Arsehole!’ Barak called over his shoulder.
We turned up Chancery Lane, the horses still nervous and troubled by the heat and flies. I was perspiring freely but Barak seemed quite cool. I was reluctantly grateful to him; but for his quick action I could have had a bad fall.
I looked longingly for a moment at the familiar Lincoln’s Inn gatehouse as Barak led the way through the gate of the Rolls House directly opposite. At the centre of a complex of houses stood a large, solidly built church. A guard in the yellow and blue quarters of Cromwell’s livery stood outside the door with a pike. Barak nodded to him and the man bowed and snapped his fingers for a boy to lead our horses away.
Barak pushed open the heavy door of the church and we stepped in. Rolls of parchment bound in red tape lay everywhere, stacked against the walls with their faded paintings of biblical scenes and piled up along the pews. Here and there a black-robed law clerk stood picking among them, seeking precedents. More clerks waited in a queue beside the door to the Six Clerks’ Office, seeking writs or dates for hearings.
I had never visited the office, for on the rare occasions I did have a case on in Chancery I would send a clerk to deal with the notoriously lengthy paperwork. I stared at the endless rolls. Barak followed my gaze.
‘The ghosts of the old Jews have poor reading,’ he said. ‘Come on, through here.’ He led me towards a walled-off side chapel; another guard in bright livery stood outside the door. Did Cromwell take armed guards everywhere nowadays? I wondered. Barak knocked softly and entered. I took a deep breath as I followed him, for my heart was thumping powerfully against my ribs.
The wall paintings of the side chapel had been whitewashed over, for Thomas Cromwell hated idolatrous decoration. The chapel had been converted into a large office, with cupboards against the walls and chairs drawn up before an imposing desk lit incongruously by a stained-glass window above. There was no one behind it; Cromwell was not there. In a corner, behind a smaller desk, sat a short, black-robed figure I knew: Edwin Grey, Lord Cromwell’s secretary. He had been at Cromwell’s side for fifteen years, since the time the earl had worked for Wolsey. When I was in favour I had had much legal business through him. Grey rose and bowed to us. His round, pink face under the thinning grey hair was anxious.
He shook my hand; the fingers of his own were black from years of ink. He nodded at Barak; I caught distaste in his look.
‘Master Shardlake. How do you fare, sir? It has been a long time.’
‘Well enough, Master Grey. And you?’
‘Well enough, given the times. The earl had to deal with a message, he will be back in a moment.’
‘How is he?’ I ventured.
Grey hesitated. ‘You will see.’ He turned abruptly as the door was thrown open arid Thomas Cromwell strode into the room. My old master’s heavy features were frowning, but at the sight of me he smiled broadly. I bowed low.
‘Matthew, Matthew!’ Cromwell said enthusiastically. He shook my hand with his powerful grip, then went and sat behind his desk. I studied him. He was dressed soberly in a black gown, though the Order of the Garter awarded to him by the king swung from his dark blue doublet. Looking at his face, I was shocked by the change in his appearance since I last saw him three years before. His hair was far greyer, and his strong, coarse features seemed pulled tight with strain and anxiety.
‘Well, Matthew,’ he said, ‘how are you? Your practice prospers?’
I hesitated, thinking of my lost cases. ‘Well enough, thank you, my lord.’
‘What’s that on your robe? It’s on your doublet too, Jack.’
‘Dust, my lord,’ Barak replied. ‘They’re bringing down the Whiteys’ chapter house and nearly brought us down with it.’
Cromwell laughed, then gave Barak a sharp look. ‘Is it done?’
‘Ay, my lord. Forbizer gave no trouble.’
‘I knew he wouldn’t.’ Cromwell turned back to me. ‘I was interested to learn of your involvement in the Wentworth case, Matthew. It occurred to me then we might be of help to each other for old times’ sake.’ He smiled again. I wondered uneasily how he had heard; but he had eyes and ears everywhere and certainly at Lincoln’s Inn.
‘I am most grateful, my lord,’ I said carefully.
He smiled wryly. ‘These little crusades of yours, Matthew. The girl’s life matters to you?’
‘Ay, it does.’ I realized that these past days I had thought of little but Elizabeth’s case. I wondered why for a moment. It was something to do with her wounded helplessness, lying there in that filthy Newgate straw. If Cromwell wished to use her life as a rope to bind me to him, he had chosen well.
‘I believe she is innocent, my lord.’
He waved a beringed hand. ‘I’m not concerned with that,’ he said bluntly. He fixed me with a serious look; once again I felt the power of those dark eyes. ‘I need your help, Matthew. It’s an important matter, and secret. The bargain is I’ll keep the girl alive for twelve days. We have only that for my task. Less than a fortnight.’ He nodded abruptly. ‘Sit down.’
I did as bidden. Barak went and stood against the wall, folding his hands across a large gold-coloured codpiece. Glancing at Cromwell’s desk, I saw among the papers a miniature painting in a tiny silver frame, an exquisite portrait of the head and shoulders of a woman. Following my gaze, Cromwell frowned and turned it over. He nodded to Barak.
‘Jack’s a trusted servant. He’s one of only eight that know this story, including myself and Grey here and his majesty the king.’ My eyes widened at that name. I still held my cap, which I had removed on entering the church, and involuntarily began twisting it in my hands.
‘One of the other five is an old acquaintance of yours.’ Cromwell smiled again, cynically. ‘It’s not a matter to irk your conscience this time - you needn’t crush your cap into a rag.’ He leaned back and shook his head indulgently. ‘I was impatient with you over Scarnsea, Matthew. I saw that later. None of us could have known how complex that affair would turn out. I have always admired your mind, your skills at teasing out the truth in men’s affairs. Ever since the old days when we were all young reformers. Do you remember?’ He smiled, but then a shadow crossed his face. ‘Days with more hope and less care.’ He sat silent for a moment and I thought of the rumours of his troubles over the Cleves marriage.
‘May I ask who this old acquaintance is, my lord?’ I ventured.
He nodded. ‘You remember Michael Gristwood?’
Lincoln’s Inn is a small world. ‘Gristwood the attorney, who used to work for Stephen Bealknap?’
‘The
same.’
I remembered a small, scurrying fellow, with bright sharp eyes. Gristwood had once been friendly with Bealknap and, like him, forever on the lookout for new money-making schemes. But he had none of Bealknap’s calculating coldness and his schemes never came to anything. I remembered he had once come to me for help in a property case he had taken on. A mere unqualified solicitor, he had got hopelessly out of his depth. The case was in a dreadful tangle, and he had been fulsomely grateful for my help. He had bought me a dinner in hall, where I had listened, half-amused, as he offered to involve me in a number of hare-brained schemes by way of thanks.
‘He had a falling out of some sort with Bealknap,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t been around Lincoln’s Inn a long time. Didn’t he go to work for the Court of Augmentations?’
Cromwell nodded. ‘He did. To help Richard Rich pull in the proceeds of the dissolution.’ He made a steeple of his fingers and looked at me over them.
‘Last year, when St Bartholomew’s priory in Smithfield surrendered to the king, Gristwood was sent to supervise the taking of the inventory of chattels to go to the king.’
I nodded. The hospital priory had been a large monastic house. I recalled the prior had been in league with Cromwell and Rich, and as a reward had been granted most of the priory lands. So much for vows of poverty. Yet they said Prior Fuller was dying, of a wasting disease God had laid on him for closing the hospital. Others said that Richard Rich, who had moved into the prior’s fine house himself, was slowly poisoning him.
‘Gristwood took some Augmentations men with him,’ Cromwell continued, ‘to quantify the furniture, the plate to be melted down and so on. He took the monastery librarian to show him what books might be worth keeping. The Augmentations men are thorough: they poke into nooks and crannies the monks themselves have often forgotten.’
‘I know.’
‘And in the crypt under the church, in a cobwebby corner, they found something.’ He leaned forward, the hard dark eyes seeming to bore into mine. ‘Something that was lost to man centuries ago, something that has become little more than a legend and a diversion for alchemists.’