by C. J. Sansom
He smiled. ‘Yes. Lancelot is a fine beast.’ It was two months since Nicholas had bought a sturdy young gelding which, I suspected, had denuded his savings. He looked at me, hesitated, then asked, ‘Sir, is it only the long journey that worries you?’
‘Yes. I want to go. I need something for my mind to –’ involuntarily, I clenched a fist – ‘to bite on. Even if the details are nasty.’
‘We may meet a murderer.’
I nodded. ‘We shall certainly meet John Boleyn.’
‘And if it is someone else?’
I smiled. ‘Then I will have you there to ensure I am not knocked on the head.’ I looked at him, then added more seriously, ‘Unless you would rather not.’
‘No. So long as there is no politics. No mixing with the rulers of the realm who would kill men as easily as a fly.’
‘Ay, and I regret that it was through me that you learned how they can behave. But we are not going to Norfolk to play a political game, rather we play down Elizabeth’s interest. Not that she is of great moment in the political scheme of things just now.’
He considered. ‘We should bear in mind that quarrels over land can also be vicious.’
‘Yes. They make fat purses for us lawyers. And they’re not always resolved through the law. Parry said Boleyn and his neighbour had been involved in some sort of violent affray.’
Nicholas picked up a piece of bread from his plate and crumbled it between his long fingers, suddenly looking thoughtful, and sad. ‘My father –’ he broke off.
‘Yes?’
‘Five years ago, he had a quarrel with a neighbouring landowner, who, like my father, had the right to pasture beasts on the local common land. My father – for he began the trouble – started overstocking. There is only grass for so many beasts. His neighbour went to the manor court, but my father had greased the palm of the lord of the manor, and so his right to graze was upheld.’
‘If his neighbour had gone to the higher courts, pleaded manorial custom—’
‘You know how long that can take. Seasons pass, and beasts need to eat. The neighbour got together with the poor tenants of the village, whose grazing rights were also affected, and drove out my father’s beasts, threatening to set about him with cudgels if he came back. My father barked about hiring men of his own, but the local Justice of the Peace stepped in, settled the matter against my father and said he would have no battles between bands of ruffians in his jurisdiction.’ Nicholas’s face set in hard lines. ‘My father can be fierce, but he is not brave enough to get himself in trouble with the Justice.’ He wiped the remaining crumbs from his fingers.
I looked at him, wondering not for the first time what it must have been like for him, only child to a hard, unjust man. Nicholas smiled wryly. ‘My father was furious, said that allowing himself to be intimidated by a gang of peasants impugned his honour.’
‘His status, at least,’ I said.
‘It was no matter of honour. Honour is a right behaviour, honest dealing between gentlemen, and recognition of the right order of society. He was right at least that his neighbour should not have descended to hiring common folk to brawl with each other.’
‘From what you say, the poor tenants’ interests were under threat as well.’
‘They have their rights, but also their place.’ He looked down at the table. ‘Well, I am out of that now.’
‘It sounds like a similar affair in Norfolk.’
‘But at least here I can take a lawyer’s impartial view.’ He laughed, a bitter laugh for one so young. He washed his fingers in the bowl of water provided for us and wiped them on his napkin. ‘I think I shall go to bed. It has been a long day.’
‘It has. But, strangely, I am not tired. My mind has been working too hard. I think I shall go for a walk, clear my head.’
*
OUTSIDE IT WAS still light, the air fresh and clear. Whetstone village consisted only of a few houses straggling down the road to an old church. The church doors were open, and I walked towards them, entering the lychgate and following the path between the gravestones.
Within, a man was whitewashing one wall, broad brushstrokes covering a painting of angels in bright flowing robes. The other walls were already whitened over. The stained-glass windows had gone as well, replaced with plain glass in accordance with Archbishop Cranmer’s injunctions. The rood screen was down, the altar open to the body of the church. On one wall the Ten Commandments had been painted in black Gothic script; the idolatry and imagery of the past replaced with the Word of God, though most of the parishioners would be illiterate.
I sat on one of the chairs set out for elderly members of the congregation, and watched the painter work on. I thought, Here is the faith denuded of papist ceremony and ritual that I had argued for so fiercely as a young man. And yet I remembered too, as a country child, how in the grey bleak months of winter it was wonderful to experience the colour and brightness of the church on Sunday, smell the incense and see the paintings; a feast for the senses, attuning the mind to things of the spirit. Even the mumming of the Latin Mass had once sent a thrill through me. Well, I had rejected all that. I had got what I wanted and now it seemed cold, and hard, and stark.
The workman ceased his labours and began washing his brushes in a pail of water. He jumped when he saw me sitting there in my black robe, then took off his cap and approached, bowing.
‘Forgive me, sir, I did not see you.’ He looked to be in his fifties, his lined face flecked with paint.
I smiled. ‘You are working late, fellow.’
‘Ay. And must start again at first light tomorrow. Our new vicar wants all done for the new Prayer Book service on Sunday.’
‘You are doing a thorough job.’
‘I’m being paid well enough, though—’ The man broke off and stared at me with bright blue eyes, a bold look from a working fellow to a gentleman. ‘In a way I’m being paid with my own money, and that of my ancestors.’
‘How so?’
‘Because this work is being paid for from church funds, we couldn’t afford it if it weren’t for the money from the sale of all the old silver plate we were ordered to remove. There was one candle holder, beautifully carved, it was bought by my great-grandfather’s family for a candle dedicated to him, perpetually lit in the church.’ He looked at one of the many empty niches, then lowered his eyes and said hastily, ‘I know, we must obey King Edward’s orders as we did King Henry’s. I am sorry if I offended at all.’
‘Change is sometimes hard,’ I said quietly.
‘Did you have business with the vicar, sir?’ He looked anxious now, afraid he had said too much.
‘No, I am just a traveller who wandered in.’
He nodded, relieved. ‘I must lock up now, for the night.’
I left the church. When I closed the door it made a hollow, echoing noise.
*
I DID NOT FEEL like returning to the inn; there was a wooden bench beside the church and I sat down, watching the sun set. I reflected that old King Henry himself would not have approved of what was happening, but power rested now with the Duke of Somerset and with Cranmer, who were taking England halfway to the continental radicals like Zwingli and Calvin. Though there were, of course, plenty who did approve, especially in London where some churches had even replaced the altar with a bare Communion table. Yet it had all been imposed from above, like every religious change these last sixteen years, whether people liked it or not. I recalled the sudden fear in the painter’s eyes after he spoke to me about the candle holder. I remembered Jack Barak’s total cynicism, his disrespect for both sides of the religious divide. ‘Balls to it all,’ he had said when we last met for a drink a couple of weeks before, in a tavern near the Tower where we were unlikely to see anyone who knew his wife Tamasin.
Tamasin. I shook my head sorrowfully. I had been present the day she met her husband, and for years we had been good friends; I had shared her sorrow at the death of her first child, her joy at the birth of
the second. But for three years now she had been my open enemy. I recalled the terrible night when she learned Barak had been maimed, and might die, after I had got him, behind her back, to help me in a dangerous enterprise. I remembered her balled fists, the fury in her face as she cried out, ‘You will leave us alone, never come near us again!’ She blamed me for what had happened, as I partly blamed myself, though Barak stoutly insisted he was responsible for his own actions.
When Barak had recovered sufficiently Guy had worked to find a suitable prosthesis for his missing right hand. They had settled on a device, strapped to his arm above the elbow, with a little metal stump at the end, from which a short knife protruded. Underneath it was a curved half-circle of metal, with which Barak could carry things and even, after practice, ride, while the knife could be used at table, to manipulate latches and open boxes, and in the last resort, in the dangerous London streets, serve as a weapon. It was a clumsy-looking thing, but he had learned to use it with dexterity. And, to my amazement, he had taught himself to write with his left hand. It was a scrawl, but perfectly readable.
As Tamasin had forbidden him to work for me again, Barak had looked for work among the solicitors – some respectable and others less so – who found work for the barristers around the Inns of Court. He found employment easily, for he had gained a high reputation as my assistant. He now worked for various solicitors; finding witnesses, taking depositions, rooting out evidence, no doubt with a little bribery and perhaps threats along the way. He had also gained a place as a junior assistant to the judges when, twice a year, they made their circuits of the localities, trying civil and criminal cases, and ensuring the magistrates were carrying out the Protector’s instructions. Barak’s work was in assessing jurors, rooting out reluctant witnesses, helping with the paperwork, and sniffing out the local mood in the taverns. He worked on the two nearest circuits to London, the Home Counties and the Norfolk circuit, which travelled from Buckinghamshire to East Anglia. Each circuit lasted a month, and though it paid well, he had refused work on the more distant circuits as Tamasin did not like him spending too much time away from her and the children. I suspected, too, that with his disability riding to the longer circuits would be tiring. Though he never mentioned it, when we met I could sometimes tell that his arm was painful.
I remembered him telling me, at our recent meeting, that he was coming to dislike circuit work. People in the localities feared the judges, arriving in the towns in their robes red as blood, with pomp and ceremony. ‘It’s the way the criminal trials are going,’ he said. ‘The judges don’t encourage jurors to give the accused the benefit of the doubt on capital charges the way they did. There are more hangings every time. And that comes from orders at the top.’
‘From Chancellor Rich?’ I asked him.
‘I think from the Protector and those around him. The Calvinists, who want to root out and punish sin.’
‘So much for the Protector’s promise of milder times when he abolished the old Treasons Act.’
Barak spat in the sawdust on the tavern floor. ‘Milder climes for radical Protestants. Bishop Gardiner’s in gaol, and all unlicensed preaching’s forbidden. Funny sort of mildness.’
‘Who are the judges on the Norfolk circuit this summer?’
‘Reynberd and Gatchet.’
‘Watch Reynberd,’ I said. ‘He has the air of an easy-going, sleepy old fellow but he’s sharp and watchful as a cat.’
‘I’ve been on circuit with Gatchet before,’ Barak said. ‘He’s clever, but cold and hard as a stone. He’s one of Calvin’s followers. The hangman will be busy.’
*
THE SUN WAS ALMOST below the horizon now; I stood up, wincing at the stiffness in my back and legs. There was barely enough light now to see my way down the church path. I thought that if I saw Barak in Norfolk, and Tamasin learned of it, she would consider it a betrayal on his part. And then, with a burst of anger, I reflected that chance had taken us to the same Assizes, which was hardly uncommon in the small legal world, and we could not just ignore each other. And why should I not seek his help in gathering information? There was nobody better at keeping his ear to the ground.
I stumbled over a projecting oak root, and cursed. Watching my way carefully, I went through the lychgate and headed up the street, the flickering candlelight from the inn windows guiding me back.
Chapter Five
Though we left Whetstone village early the following morning, we did not enter London till after midday, for a couple of miles out of the City we found ourselves stuck behind a row of gigantic carts, each drawn by eight heavy horses and laden with new-cast bricks. The drivers wore the Protector’s red and yellow coat of arms and we followed at a snail’s pace as the carts lumbered on, making deep ruts in the road.
‘More bricks for Somerset House,’ Nicholas observed sourly.
‘Ay, Edward Seymour’s palace will eat up half of London before he’s done.’ Since becoming Protector, the Duke of Somerset had begun work on a vast new palace on the Strand, clearing away rows of old tenements and even digging up part of the ancient St Paul’s Cathedral charnel house, sending cartloads of bones of ancient distinguished Londoners to be buried with the rubbish out in Finsbury Fields.
Nicholas said, ‘I hear he’s ordered two million bricks for rebuilding that crumbling old family place of his in Wiltshire – what’s it called, Wolf’s Hole?’
‘Wolf Hall. All paid for by the public purse, empty though it is.’
We had to halt outside the Moorgate, for there was scarce enough space for the carts to enter. I saw a new proclamation in the King’s name posted outside: from now on the gates were to be closed during the hours of darkness, and a good night watch to be appointed in each ward.
‘Are they expecting trouble after the new service on Sunday?’ Nicholas asked. ‘Even though most of London is Protestant.’
‘Not everyone,’ I replied. The atmosphere in the city that spring had been tense, pamphlets against the Pope and the Mass everywhere. The performance of plays and interludes was already prohibited, and servants and youths required to keep off the streets after dark. The May disturbances in the countryside, and the unruly behaviour of soldiers from the encampments outside the city waiting to go up to the Scottish war, had added to the authorities’ concerns.
The last cart passed through the city gates, almost flattening one of the city guards as it lurched sideways over a deep rut. The man stared after it, white-faced.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’re through.’
*
WE RODE DOWN TO Cheapside, making for my house at Chancery Lane. The city was busy and noisy as ever, blue-coated apprentices and workmen in leather or wadmol jackets jostling with goodwives in their coifs and aprons, while gentlemen with swords and bucklers at their waists, retainers beside them, pushed their way through. The view from the saddle showed plenty of hollow cheeks and anxious faces. This was a hard time of the year, with last year’s store of winter food running low, two months until the new harvest, and prices raging ahead. Beggars in ragged blankets crouched in doorways, a host of them around the great Cheapside Cross, crying for alms, trying to catch the eyes of those who passed.
I said to Nicholas, ‘Come with me to my house and change, then we can go to see Copuldyke. He is a Lincoln’s Inn man, so thank God is nearby. You can go back to your lodgings after our meeting.’
*
WE PASSED ST PAUL’S Cathedral, then went under Newgate to my house in Chancery Lane. There, I ordered my steward John Goodcole to take our packs, see to the horses and prepare some water for us to wash. I went to my bedroom to lie down and ease my back; from below I heard the familiar sounds of bustle in the house. Since the death of my housekeeper Joan four years before, I had had to sack two stewards in succession for serious misdemeanours. Two years ago, however, John Goodcole, his wife and their twelve-year-old daughter had come to work for me after their old master, another Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, died. He had been a man with a larg
e family, and in working for me, a bachelor, the Goodcole family had found an easy berth. But they did their work diligently, and as a family were a contented trio, at ease with each other and genuinely keen to do good service. I gathered from gossips at Lincoln’s Inn that they favoured the old religion, but was happy to turn a blind eye to that.
There was a knock on the door. I heaved myself up and bade John Goodcole enter with my washing-bowl. It was time to make myself presentable again. And I needed to ask him to hire a horse to take me to Norfolk on Monday.
*
AYMERIC COPULDYKE practised from an office in a corner of Lincoln’s Inn Square. I knew most of my fellow barristers to some extent, but as I told Parry, had only met Copuldyke once. His main practice was in Norfolk, and he was often away. He did not look very pleased to see Nicholas and me when we arrived, but bade us enter. He was a short, fat man in his fifties with a beaky nose, a wobbling double chin and a fussy, discontented air. As he asked us to sit he waved casually at a well-built young man in a neat grey doublet sitting at a small desk under the window. ‘My solicitor for business in Norfolk, Toby Lockswood.’ Lockswood rose and gave us a quick bow before sitting again. He had thick, curly black hair, an equally thick beard, and a round, snub-nosed face. His bright blue eyes were keen. This was the man Parry had said was sharper than his master.
Copuldyke leaned back in his chair and said, in tones of peevish irritation, ‘This is a nasty business Master Parry has got us involved in.’ He shook his head. ‘I was reluctant to have my name associated with it, but Master Parry – well, his mistress has deep pockets, as you know.’ He shot me a calculating glance. ‘But I will be only too glad to have you act as my agent in this, Serjeant Shardlake, and myself stay here in London. I have no civil matters on at the summer Assizes,’ he added. ‘As a Norfolk man, Serjeant Shardlake, I know how unpleasant disputes can get up there.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Also the Protector’s commissions to investigate illegal enclosures will be setting out soon, I’m told, and the Norfolk peasants will all be claiming land rights, saying Jack is as good as his master. I want to stay away from all that. Though I understand you used to practise at the Court of Requests, so you will have first-hand experience of representing these churls,’ he ended pointedly.