‘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 that 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; eleven days, eleven 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 Barty’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 st
opped 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 Pewtermasters’ 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?’