by C. J. Sansom
‘What happened to Tupholme, then?’ Barak asked.
‘Wilf was a strange man,’ Gib said. ‘He was always bad-tempered and surly, seemed to prefer living alone in his isolated cottage. We’d only see him at market. A couple of years ago he became a hot-gospeller, telling everyone that the end-time was nigh. Plagues and earthquakes and Jesus coming to judge us all. He’d talk about the joys of being saved, in a smug way as though secretly enjoying that the rest of us poor cottars weren’t saved. He went across the river to some hot-gospelling church in the city. But you know how it is with these folk, often it doesn’t last long. Last autumn he took up with Welsh Elizabeth and she moved in. They’d get drunk and argue, like I said. You could hear them way out over the marshes. Then Wilf booted Elizabeth out. He was surly after that, you’d find him stumbling drunk around the lanes. Then he disappeared, his neighbour saw his cottage was locked up. After a while his neighbour thought, if he’s gone, I’ll take the land over before it goes back to marsh. So he broke open a shutter to take a look inside. Said the smell nearly felled him.’
Gib looked sombre. ‘Wilf was inside on the floor, tied up, dead. He was gagged. They said his staring eyes were terrible to see. Someone had cut him badly all over, then tied him up. His thigh had this great sore on it, all black and crawling with maggots. There was a rag in his mouth to stop him shouting. Whether his diseased leg got him, or cold and hunger, nobody knows.’
We were silent. This death was even worse than Roger’s. Tupholme would have died in slow agony.
‘If his leg went bad that would probably kill him first,’ Barak said.
‘Welsh Elizabeth deserves to hang,’ Gib said with sudden fierceness.
I looked at Barak and he shook his head slightly. Horrific as this killing was, its manner was nothing like those of Roger and Dr Gurney.
Gib led us up a side-path to where an isolated cottage stood, as poor as the others. No smoke came from the roof. The shutters were closed, and the door had a heavy padlock. The wood of one shutter had been splintered at one end where the neighbour had broken in. Gib stared at the house, then quickly crossed himself. ‘I’ll get the key,’ he said. ‘Gib’s neighbour has it. I won’t be long.’
He walked back to the main path, the reeds soon hiding him. I looked at the cultivated land around the cottage. It was already going to seed, new grass coming up among the little furrows.
‘This is a dead end,’ Barak said.
‘It seems so. And yet . . .’
‘What?’
‘Gib described a great sore. I know that phrase, or one like it. People keep using phrases that I know somehow. Treasurer Rowland talked of a fountain of blood. The man who found Dr Gurney said something too - water turned to blood.’
‘We’ve got enough to worry about without word mysteries,’ Barak said irritably. ‘Look, when he comes back, let’s just say we don’t need to go inside; it seems clear enough this Welsh whore did it for spite.’
‘That’s a huge amount of spite.’
Gib returned in a few minutes. ‘Pete Lammas has given me the key, the coroner left him responsible for the house. He doesn’t want to go in again, though.’ He paused. ‘Look, sir,’ he said. ‘I’d rather not go in either. I’ve heard enough of what it was like. Can I leave you to bring me back the key?’
‘All right,’ I agreed.
Gib handed the key to Barak, bowed to us and left. I was still lost in thought, those phrases jostling in my head.
‘I’ll be the one to open the door, then, shall I?’ Barak asked with heavy sarcasm. He unlocked the padlock and pushed at the door. It was stiff, scraping along the ground as it opened. Barak and I both stepped backwards at the smell that hit us, a butcher’s shop stink overlaid with the stench of sweat and dirt. And a great buzzing, as from a swarm of flies.
‘Jesu!’ Barak said.
We stepped carefully into the dark interior. I saw the shapes of chairs, a table and what looked like heaps of rubbish scattered around. Despite the season blowflies were everywhere, buzzing around the room, slow and disoriented in the cool weather. We batted them away from our faces. The earthen floor was spotted with dead ones. Barak went across to the shutters and opened them.
In the light that fell into the room we saw the place was filthy, stinking old rushes on the floor, a full chamber pot in one corner and rags everywhere. The disturbed blowflies began to settle again, on the rags and the pot; a few flew out of the window.
‘Gib said his leg was a mass of maggots,’ Barak said. ‘They must have hatched. There’s enough filth in here for them to feed on.’ He lifted one of the rags with his foot, and a couple of flies buzzed upward. ‘This is his upper hose, I think. There’s a tear in it, look, it’s stiff with dried blood. Jesus, to cut someone up and leave them to die of infected wounds. That’s some revenge.’
I stood in the middle of the foul room, looking round. ‘The coroners’ men probably cut the clothes off the body and then left everything here as it was,’ I said. ‘Look, there are some fragments of cut rope over there.’
‘It must have been filthy enough here even before the poor arsehole was killed.’
I looked at a truckle bed in the corner, the sheets grey with dirt. A cheap wooden cross was nailed to the mud wall above the bed. A relic of the man’s hot-gospelling past?
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Barak said. ‘There’s nothing but filth and rags.’
‘Not yet.’ I would have liked to sit down, my back was aching from so long on my feet. ‘This is a lonely spot and he was unpopular. If Wilf Tupholme’s killer knew him, he would know that in the depths of winter if he was tied up and left to die it might be weeks before anyone opened the place up.’
‘Why do you say, he? Surely it was his woman.’
‘I wonder.’ I looked at a dark bloodstain on the floor by the long-dead fire. ‘He was overpowered, perhaps knocked out, then tied up, a rag put in his mouth, then laid down here. Finally his leg was slashed open. Surely a drunken whore he’d kicked out would be more likely to knock him on the head.’
‘She wanted to ensure a slow death,’ Barak answered grimly.
‘And if it wasn’t her?’
‘Who else could it have been?’
‘Someone who kills skilfully, carefully, to make an evil spectacle.’ A few dozy bugs still crawled over the bloodstain. ‘Jesu, how he must have suffered,’ I said.
‘This has nothing in common with those others,’ Barak said impatiently. He stirred the rags with his foot. ‘Hullo, what’s this?’
Something among the rubbish had made a metallic chink. Barak bent and, wrinkling his nose, felt among the scraps of clothing. He came up with a large tin badge, showing the painted image of an arched stone structure. I took it from Barak’s hand.
‘A pilgrim badge,’ he said. ‘From St Edward the Confessor’s shrine at Westminster. That’s an odd thing for a hot-gospeller to have. Don’t they see shrines as papist images?’
‘Maybe one of the constables dropped it while they were clearing the body out,’ Barak suggested.
‘Unlikely. People don’t wear pilgrim badges these days, in case they’re taken for papists. But someone dropped it here. Look through the rest of that stuff, Jack, see what else you can find.’
‘I do get the nice jobs, don’t I?’ Barak began turning over all the filthy clothes and other rubbish. ‘There’s nothing else here,’ he said at length. He looked at the cross on the wall, then at the bloodstained spot by the fire. ‘Poor bastard,’ he said. ‘I wonder if he repented him of his fornication as lay watching the maggots eat his leg.’
I gave a start. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said I wondered if he regretted his time with the whore—’
‘No, no, you said “repented him of his fornication”. Why did you use that phrase?’
He looked at me as though I had lost my senses. ‘I don’t know, it just came into my head. It’s from the Bible, isn’t it?’
I clapped him on the shou
lder. ‘Yes, it is. Phrases from the Bible, they are what we hear everywhere now, are they not? In the pulpit, in the streets. They have become part of our daily language. That’s why those other phrases snagged at my mind.’ I stood in that terrible place, thinking. ‘Is it possible?’
‘Is what possible?’
‘Oh, Jesu,’ I said quietly. ‘I hope I am wrong. Come.’
‘Right about what? You talk in riddles—’
‘We must get to a church. That one on the edge of the marshes will do.’
I led the way out of the cottage and began walking rapidly down the path. Barak locked it and came after me, for once having to run to keep up as I led the way back to Gib’s place. He was back at work. I left Barak to hand over the key, while I unhitched the horses and used a tree trunk as a mounting block.
‘What’s the hurry?’ Gib called out as Barak ran back to me, his face alive with curiosity. ‘What did you find?’
‘Nothing!’ Barak called back as he swung into Sukey’s saddle. ‘He has to go to church, that’s all!’
THE door OF the church was open, and we stepped into the cool interior. It was, I saw, still decorated in the old style, the walls painted in bright colours, worn patterned tiles on the floor. Candles burned everywhere and there was a smell of incense, although the niches where reliquaries and statues of saints once stood were bare. On a lectern beside the richly decorated altar lay a Bible, fixed to it by a chain. The English Bible, ordered by Lord Cromwell to be set in every church, the year before his fall. This particular church, I reflected, was a faithful image of what the King wished to see: saints and relics gone, but otherwise everything as it was before the break with Rome. Here, at least, everything was conformity.
‘Why are we here?’ Barak asked, following me down the aisle.
‘I want to look at that Bible. Sit down in a pew while I seek what I want.’
‘But what do you want?’
I turned to face him. ‘We’ve been talking about the hot-gospellers, the end-timers who say Armageddon will soon be here. They preach their message everywhere these days, that’s why Bishop Bonner is so keen to stop them. But where do they get their message from, which part of the Bible?’
‘The Book of Revelation, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, the Apocalypse of St John the Divine. That’s where most of their religious quotes come from. The last book of the Bible; full of wild, fiery, cruel language, hard to understand, unlike anything else in the New Testament. Erasmus and Luther both doubted whether Revelation was really the word of God, though Luther at least calls it inspirational now.’
‘You’re saying that’s where these phrases you remember come from? But how does—’
‘I think they come from a specific part of the Book of Revelation. But please, sit quiet a minute, don’t distract me.’ I spoke somewhat unfairly, as I had been doing the talking.
With a shake of his head, Barak sat down on the thick-cushioned pew of a rich family in the front row. I mounted the lectern and opened the great blue-bound Bible. I paused at the frontispiece: the King on his throne, underneath him Cromwell and Cranmer passing the Bible down to richly dressed lords, who in turn passed it down to those of lower degree. Then I turned the heavy pages until I came to the very end, to Revelation. I found the part I was seeking and read slowly, following the text with my finger. At length I stood up. ‘Barak,’ I said quietly. ‘Come up here.’
He joined me. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘This is the part of the Book of Revelation where St John is shown the seven angels who pour the seven vials of wrath upon the earth.’
‘I remember our vicar reading about that once. I couldn’t follow it, it sounded like a mad dream.’
‘A mad dream. Yes, well put. Here, look at this, in Chapter 2.’ I quoted: ‘And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. When you used that phrase, or a version of it, I realized where all these other gobbets that had stuck in my mind came from. Here.’ I turned several pages, until I came to a heading: The angels pour out their vials of wrath. ‘Now, listen to this,’ I said. ‘Chapter 16:
‘And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, pour out your vials of wrath upon the earth.
‘And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image. A noisome and grievous sore. Gib said “a great sore”. Poor Wilf Tupholme was murdered in the manner of the victims of the first vial. And he was a believer who had lapsed into fornication. Many would say that meant he had the mark of the beast on him.’
Barak frowned. ‘Aren’t you making what happened to the cottar fit what’s in here?’ he asked dubiously. ‘Like the hot-gospellers try to fit everything that happened into these prophecies? He didn’t have any mark on him, of the beast or anything else. What is the mark anyway?’
‘The number 666. But it’s not clear from Revelation whether that is an actual mark on the body.’
‘And if all apostate hot-gospellers were to be killed there’d be men dead of grievous sores all over London.’
‘The one death may be symbolic. Barak, if it was only this one reference I would agree with you. But listen to this:
‘And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it turned as it were into the blood of a dead man: and every living thing died in the sea. If Wilf Tupholme was the first to die, that means Dr Gurney was the second. He died in salt water, a tidal pool, turned to blood.’
Barak frowned, read the passage for himself. I had given even his sceptical mind food for thought. ‘And it continues,’ I went on quietly. ‘And the third angel shed out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they turned to blood. Roger Elliard died in a fountain turned to blood.’ Suddenly overcome with emotion, I gripped the sides of the lectern. ‘Poor Roger. This is a blasphemy.’
‘Dr Gurney and Master Elliard were said to be good people, though,’ Barak said.
‘Yes, they were. It looks as if they did something sinful; or the brute that killed them thought they had.’ I took a long deep breath. ‘And Roger, like Tupholme, had once been a radical but abandoned that path. I wonder if Dr Gurney did too.’ I looked at Barak. ‘Well, do you agree with me? Someone is killing people in accordance with the prophecy of the vials of wrath?’
‘To fulfil the prophecy,’ Barak said slowly.
‘Yes. Symbolically.’
‘Jesus.’ He looked truly shocked. He was silent for a moment, then said, ‘That means four more murders.’
‘Yes.’
‘What happens next?’
I looked at Revelation again. ‘And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to burn men with heat of fire.’
‘Shit,’ Barak said. ‘People left to rot, dead in water; and burned with fire next.’
‘I do not think this is to do with Catherine Parr,’ I said. ‘This is not politics after all, Barak; it is religion. Mad, debased religion.’
Barak looked at the pages, turned them over. ‘What happens after the seven vials have been spilled? Where does it end?’
I laughed, heard the half-hysterical sound echo round the old church. ‘What do you think? This is the Book of Revelation, Barak. It ends with the destruction of the whole world.’
Chapter Fourteen
WE WENT AT ONCE to Lambeth Palace, riding fast along the Thames-side path, sending up spatters of mud and attracting stares from passers-by. When we arrived at the palace I asked at once for Cranmer’s secretary. Morice quickly appeared, a little pale-faced man in a black robe who looked at us dubiously. I told him who I was and that I had urgent news, and he scuttled away, leaving us standing in the Great Hall. He returned a few minutes later and told us in hushed tones that the Archbishop had sent across to Whitehall for the others involved in the matter. He showed us into a comfortable little room to await their arrival.
‘O
ne thing,’ I asked him. ‘Could you please fetch me a copy of the New Testament in English?’
‘I will have one brought.’ He looked at us in puzzlement, then smiled before bowing himself out.
‘Are you sure about this notion?’ Barak asked when the door was closed. ‘It seems fantastic. I don’t know what Cranmer and the others will make of it.’
‘You saw the chapter. It speaks for itself, surely.’
‘But it talked of thousands being killed by each vial of wrath, not just one man each time.’
‘I think this is some sort of devilish, perverted symbolism—’ I broke off as a servant appeared bearing a copy of the Testament. I laid it on the table and again I pored over the text of Revelation, Barak peering over my shoulder. I was only too well aware that if I had misread, or misunderstood something, my reception from the great men now being gathered from Whitehall was likely to be unpleasant.
‘This book makes no sense,’ Barak said at length. ‘It tells the same story in different ways, different versions of how the world will end, angels and wars and vials. There is no . . .’
‘Narrative? I know. It is the only book in the New Testament that is so obscure.’
‘It’s powerful stuff though. Fixes itself inside your head somehow.’ He read. ‘The smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image. The beast being the devil?’
‘Yes, though some say it is the Church of Rome. There are as many interpretations of Revelation as there are interpreters, each one saying his understanding is the true one. And most are ill-educated fanatics. This book is causing much trouble in the world.’
‘You know your Bible well.’ Barak eyed me curiously.
‘Not Revelation especially, but the Bible, yes.’ I smiled sadly. ‘From my teens to my thirties I was an earnest seeker after reform.’