by C. J. Sansom
I stood up. ‘I represented John Boleyn, but only regarding the charge that he murdered his wife –’
‘Ay!’ a woman called out. ‘He was found guilty, but now sits in Norwich Castle awaiting a pardon, paid for by his kinswoman the Lady Elizabeth!’
‘One of the wealthiest landowners in England!’ someone shouted. ‘Like her sister the Lady Mary, who sits in Kenninghall surrounded by her sheepfolds and priests! Have her out!’
Again Robert Kett stepped forward, and demanded their silence. ‘The Lady Mary stays where she is! She is heir to the throne. What do you think interference with her would do for our cause with the Protector? As for Master Shardlake,’ he turned to me, ‘it is Barnabas and Gerald Boleyn who must face trial on this matter. You have never represented them?’
I stood and looked at the twins, who were grinning at me. I called out, loudly, ‘Never!’
The crowd quietened. I stood. ‘All I would say, and I know this is not evidence, is that I do not believe John Boleyn would have authorized the wicked thing done to that boy.’ My heart was beating fast, as somebody called out, ‘Ay, John Boleyn’s not one of the worst landlords. It’s his sons that are vicious brutes. And his old father-in-law.’
Alderman Aldrich spoke up. ‘Gawen Reynolds is a Norwich alderman. It is the country landlords who are to be judged here.’
Kett looked at the twins, who glowered back. ‘Leonard Witherington, you are to be returned to prison. Bring forward Gerald and Barnabas Boleyn.’ Despite their chains the twins slouched nonchalantly side by side towards the Oak, as though they cared nothing for the assembly.
They came to a halt facing Kett, expressions of amused contempt on their faces. Kett said quietly, ‘Gerald and Barnabas Boleyn, you are accused of attacking this boy, of breaking his head and damaging his wits.’ Ralph’s father held his arm as, seeing the twins, he made feeble attempts to run away. Kett addressed him. ‘Did you witness what happened to your son?’
‘We were both in the party sent to occupy Master Boleyn’s land,’ he said, a tremor in his voice. ‘We planted banners, but then a crowd rushed us from the trees.’ He pointed at the twins. ‘Those two were there, and I saw the one without the scar raise his club and smash it down hard as he could on my poor son’s head. Ever since he can do nothing on his own, neither eat nor shit.’
A man shouted from the crowd, ‘I was there too! I saw it all.’ Kett asked his name and Barak wrote it down.
Kett said, ‘I have had dealings enough with the law to know that if that happened, Gerald Boleyn is guilty of attempted murder, for which he could hang, and his brother could be indicted for conspiracy.’ He looked at me, and I nodded. He turned to the twins. ‘Have you aught to say?’
Gerald shrugged his shoulders. ‘This ain’t a murder trial.’
‘No,’ Kett’s voice deepened with anger, ‘but the evidence taken here is, I think, quite enough for an indictment.’
Gerald looked at young Ralph, who shrank away terrified. He said, ‘That boy, like his father, is only a serf. Witherington owns him as much as he owns his horse.’ Several in the crowd shouted out angrily, waving staves and pitchforks. Barak whispered, ‘Are those twins mad? Do they want the crowd to tear them apart?’ And indeed there was a surging forward, and cries of ‘Kill them!’ But the twins were clever enough to realize that if Kett allowed that, in front of Codd and Aldrich, the Norwich gates would be shut against them again.
Kett stood and called out. ‘Men! Let it be known the final ending of serfdom in Norfolk will be the strongest of our demands! We shall have bond men made free!’
There were cheers, and the crowd quieted a little, though someone called out, ‘Those thugs should be hanged!’
‘They will be! Master Shardlake, will you draw up an indictment to be presented to the justices as soon as our demands are met.’
‘Certainly. I shall be glad to.’ I looked at the twins. Witherington’s desire to keep his invasion of Boleyn’s land quiet meant that nothing had been done against them before, but now there was ample witness evidence to hang them both. Yet they seemed quite unconcerned. Barnabas said, ‘As you wish, Yeoman Kett. Are we going back to Surrey Place, or Norwich Castle with our dear father?’
‘Surrey Place for now,’ Kett answered.
‘Can you get us some prostitutes? I see from the windows there’s some in the camp.’
That brought more growls from the crowd. ‘Get them out of here,’ Kett said to the guard. He addressed the crowd. ‘Don’t beat them, though I’m tempted to myself. They’ll be hanging from Norwich gallows in due time. You have the evidence written down, Jack Barak?’
‘I do.’
The twins were led away. Someone thrust a pitchfork at Barnabas, which nearly caught him, but he only laughed. Kett whispered, ‘What sort of lads are those? They seem more like devils than people. Surely even they should be frightened at the prospect of hanging; they could have made some defence instead of insulting the victim. Perhaps they are mad.’
I shook my head. ‘They are certainly beyond normal understanding.’
Chapter Forty-eight
The trials continued all afternoon, with only a short break for lunch. There were none of the rushed sessions of the criminal Assizes; the business was moved through with care for evidence, a substantial minority of the gentlemen were set free, and the crowd was quieter, settling into a routine. At five, the last gentleman was returned to prison and the crowd, having heartily clapped Kett, began to disperse. I heard, though, murmurs of ‘A few hangings wouldn’t have gone amiss’ from a group of young men around Michael Vowell.
During the afternoon the weather had continued close, and most people were sweating. There was a misting round the sun, as there had been before last month’s thunderstorm. ‘A storm’s coming,’ William Kett observed.
‘Probably tomorrow,’ Robert agreed. He turned to me and said civilly, ‘You did well today, Master Shardlake. We have gathered a fine set of detailed accusations. I will take them to St Michael’s Chapel. Now, tomorrow, I want you to cast an eye over the demands to be sent to the Protector.’ He gave me a look that brooked no opposition.
‘Very well,’ I said. He was driving me deeper into this rebellion every day.
‘Meet me at St Michael’s Chapel at two. Thank you again for today.’
We returned to our huts, but the others had not yet returned from work. Only Goodwife Everneke sat, mending clothes. ‘How went the trials?’ she asked.
‘Very well,’ Barak answered. ‘Many justified accusations against the gentlemen were set down.’
She nodded with satisfaction. ‘You look like you’ve had enough of sitting, bors. Why not go for a walk round the camp?’ She looked at our hut. ‘That long lad has been in there all day. He’s mopish. Take him out. He’s not a bad young gemmun,’ she added.
I smiled at her. ‘Good idea.’
Barak crawled into our tent. ‘Come on, Nick boy. We’ve come to winkle you out!’
*
WE WALKED EASTWARD, into the main body of the camp. The groups of huts, marked by bright village banners lest anyone lose their way, stretched as far as the eye could see, the sandy trails traversing the heath deep with ruts, and a host of new pathways leading through the camp. There was plenty of space, though, so vast was the heath, and there were still places where the long yellow grass remained, dotted with ragwort, thistles and the poppies the locals called copper-roses.
Barak said to Nicholas, ‘You’ll have been hot stuck in there all day.’
He shrugged. ‘How did the trials go?’
We told him, and that Kett had agreed he remain free, at which he visibly cheered. ‘I feared men would be hanged. Or that Kett could not control the crowd.’ He added quietly, ‘And that they might come for me.’
I said, ‘Kett is firmly in charge, and took care to follow legal forms. Do not mistake him, Nicholas. He wants no violence if it can be avoided. He is a born leader, and a skilled and experienced politician. But
also a man of sincerity, who means what he says.’
Nicholas kicked a flint at his feet. ‘Perhaps. But rebellion is no way to achieve it.’
‘He’s no rebel,’ Barak said. ‘He’s only working to bring justice. Can you say he’s wrong?’
Nicholas shook his head. ‘I no longer see anything clear. Last night I had a conversation with one of the Swardeston men who served in the Scottish war. It has been so badly run, and so brutal, with killing of civilians, it affected the soldiers, who were told the Scotch would welcome us. Now I do begin to doubt its justice.’ He sighed, and looked over the camp. ‘This place, who could ever have imagined it?’
We followed his gaze. There was activity everywhere. Shoemakers and tailors had set up stalls. Nearby cuts of butchered sheep had been set out to dry, while not far off, live sheep had been penned in, some cattle too, often with the very hurdles the landowners had used, while some thirty horses were penned into a large paddock with a strong wood fence. A wooden building was being erected nearby, which I guessed might be an abattoir. How these men had laboured these last few days. Most men in the camp would not have eaten so well in a long time, which would help. As ever, peddlers traversed the huts, doing a good trade in pins with the women. Some way off I saw a blacksmith and his assistant working hard in a newly erected brick forge, where they were turning agricultural implements into bladed weapons under the supervision of a soldier. Nicholas watched them. ‘Turning ploughshares into swords,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s the other way around in the Bible.’
There were cheers as a cart with a large cannon on a wooden mount passed by, pulled by carthorses taken, no doubt, from a country house. We walked on, to where another large brick structure was being erected, a bakery. Some distance away perhaps fifty young men were practising archery, shooting at earthen butts with longbows, arrows arcing through the air.
‘By God,’ Barak said, ‘how many are there now?’
‘Too many to count. Eight thousand?’
Barak nudged Nicholas. ‘Hey, look there, the men are getting all their needs met.’ He pointed to where two young women, adjusting their skirts, were leaving one of the huts. ‘The Norwich whores will be doing a roaring trade.’
‘The people don’t seem to notice us as different any more,’ Nicholas said. ‘I suppose because now we wear scruffy clothes, and are dirty and smelly.’
Barak looked at him. ‘That should remind you we are all made of the same common clay.’
‘And all come to the same end,’ I agreed. ‘Let’s hope it’s later rather than sooner.’
We walked on, up slightly rising ground, skirting one of the deep old quarries dotting the heath – there was one near the escarpment where the ground suddenly dropped perhaps a hundred feet; people had to be careful. We took a position from which we could see across the camp; to the western escarpment, where guard posts stood. To the east it stretched further than we could see.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘people will be finishing work soon. Let’s get back.’ Barak and Nicholas agreed; in the close weather we were tired and sweaty. Over at Thorpe Wood the sound of sawing had stopped and people started returning to their huts. A man in a white surplice mounted a box and raised a bible. One of the camp prophets, waiting to harangue the workers going home. Yet they seemed popular, few mocked them as they did in London. I drew the pamphlet I had found earlier from my pocket and showed it to Barak and Nicholas. ‘What do you make of this?’
Nicholas grimaced. ‘Stupid prophetic nonsense.’
I said, ‘But this is an age of prophecy – look how the Protestant radicals prophesy about everything – I believe John Knox prophesied that the English and Scotch were God’s new chosen people, and together would destroy their popish enemies. That’s not come to much. I remember the time of the Pilgrimage of Grace, when people prophesied the king would fall on the basis of prophecies in ancient books about Merlin and the like. Those seem to have got all mixed up with calls from writers like Mors and Crowley for radical change by the rulers such as Kett wants.’
We passed an area where two small groups of men, each holding a village banner, were demanding the other move their huts further away so that an extra cesspit could be built.
‘You move instead of yagging us!’
‘We were here first, we got further to go to take a shit!’
‘Not all stand solidly together,’ Nicholas observed wryly.
I smiled. ‘That’s just people being people.’
Further on, a group of men were digging a pit in the sandy soil, already four feet deep. A man in his forties, probably one of the Hundred representatives, was supervising. ‘Sorry, bors,’ he said, ‘but the cesspit must be deeper.’
I stopped to speak to him. ‘You do well to ensure the excrement is well buried. I have seen what the consequences can be in an army camp unless care is taken.’
He looked at me curiously. ‘Yew been a soldier, sir?’
‘No, but I was at the military camp at Portsmouth four years ago, when the French invasion threatened. The bloody flux came, and killed many.’
He nodded agreement. ‘And at Boulogne, where I fought. This place is well sited for a camp, but in this heat and with no water nearer than the Wensum it is truly a breeding ground for the flux: pits are being built everywhere to dispose of ordure and rubbish. There is getting to be a problem with lice as well; the men’s beards and hair are to be trimmed.’
We started to move away from the pit, but then I stopped, for I recognized one of the diggers. My attention had been drawn because I had seen him turn his face from me. ‘Is that Peter Bone?’
The brother of Edith Boleyn’s dead maidservant looked back at me. His hair and beard were longer and unkempt, his keen brown eyes standing out in a face which, pale and drawn when I had last seen him, was now fuller, and tanned. ‘Lawyer Shardlake,’ he said, with the slight hostility I remembered from before, and laughed. ‘And your friends. Where are your fine robes now? Why are you in the camp?’
‘I am assisting Captain Kett with legal matters.’
Bone stepped out of the pit. ‘Under duress, I’ll be bound.’ He spoke with a new confidence and with what a few weeks ago would have been called insolence to one of my class. But as Kett had said, the days of doffing caps to gentlemen, and speaking quickly and carefully, were over.
Barak asked, ‘What are you doing here, come to that? When last we saw you, you were living in your own house in Norwich.’
Bone rounded on Barak angrily. ‘Barely getting by on the poor rents I charged, spinning wool like a woman for pennies. So I came up here, to help right the wrongs done to the Commonwealth.’
I looked back at him. I understood his anger, but why had he turned his face away when he saw me? I remembered, back in Norwich, how I felt he was keeping something back. The other men had stopped digging and were looking at us, perhaps hoping for an argument. The man in charge said, ‘Back to work, lads. Perhaps you should move on, sir?’
‘No need to “sir” his like now,’ Bone said, but he bent to his spade. We walked on. Nicholas shook his head. ‘A strange thing, to see what the common people really think of us,’ he said.
‘There’s more to it than that,’ I said quietly. ‘He’s covering something up, I feel it. It’s not the only thing I learned today. I hadn’t realized Chawry led the party which attacked Witherington’s people so savagely.’
‘How did you find that out?’ Nicholas asked.
‘At the trials at the Oak of Reformation. He has at the very least a connection to Richard Southwell’s gang of ruffians.’ I sighed. ‘The case indeed follows us to the camp.’
*
ON OUR WAY BACK we paused to watch where some men were digging out a rabbit warren – there were several in the heath. Some held dogs by their collars, while others dug down into the ground. A few rabbits ran out, and the man with dogs released them; they caught the animals instantly. Then a man came forward, carrying a large pouch carefully. ‘I got this from the
stores,’ he said. ‘Gunpowder!’
‘By gor, be careful,’ one of his fellows called out.
‘They told me what to do.’
The man bent down and carefully let the black powder run out. Fortunately, there was not much. He took a wick, placed one end at the edge of the gunpowder and the other some feet away. Everybody stepped well back. There were a couple of tense minutes until he got a flint to light, then the flame sputtered to the gunpowder and there was a loud explosion, throwing up earth and grass. Dozens of rabbits instantly fled through the holes in the warrens, to be caught by the dogs or speared by the men. A great pile of them was set by the edge of the warren and the men, in pleasure at the result and in relief that they had not been blown sky-high, ran onto the warren. They shook hands and clapped the shoulder of the man whose idea it had been.
Then the portion of the warren where they stood, already honeycombed with burrows under the light soil and now shaken by the impact of the gunpowder and the weight of men, collapsed under their feet. Fortunately, the pit they had created, though broad, was shallow. The men emerged and stood up, dirty but cheerful, laughing; nobody was hurt. Barak clapped them, and we turned and walked on. At the time we thought the episode a mere diversion; much later, we were to learn differently.
*
BY THE TIME we arrived back at the huts the men had returned from work. Dinner – a haunch of lamb tonight – had been set to cook on a roasting spit, recently taken from a manor house. The constant tang of wood smoke, sometimes drifting into my eyes, was another thing I had got used to this last week. Everyone was sweating, it was hotter and more close than ever, the evening sky milky grey. The villagers nodded to us, and I was pleased to see that Nicholas nodded back, as though to equals. Old Hector Johnson was there, and greeted us, too. So did young Natty, sitting with a fair-haired young man, his face already weather-beaten, who gave me a nervous look. I signed to Barak and Nicholas to stay where they were, and went over to him, extending a hand. ‘I am Matthew Shardlake. Are you Natty’s friend from the Sandlings?’