by C. J. Sansom
‘I know. I haven’t worked out yet how he does it.’
‘And while we hunt him, he hunts us. And today in the crowd he took an opportunity.’
‘Yes.’
‘How the fuck could he have known we were at Westminster today?’ Barak burst out.
I shook my head. ‘Knew we were due at court, perhaps. But how would he know which court I worked at, the timetable?’ I bit the side of my finger. ‘Unless . . .’
‘What?’
‘Unless someone is helping him, telling him our movements.’
‘Thomas Seymour?’ Barak asked, narrowing his eyes. ‘I don’t trust him.’
‘No. Seymour wants him caught. But I believe someone may be helping him. That makes more sense to me than the devil giving him superhuman powers.’ I sighed. ‘I think he spends his whole life planning, waiting. Endlessly, obsessively, working toward the next time he will break free of all restraints and kill wildly. And make a spectacle, for that is what he likes.’
‘That’s the old Moor talking,’ Barak noted shrewdly. ‘In any case, here’s another question. He’s taking a hell of a risk, attacking you in public. But in that crowd he could have killed you. He could have killed Tamasin too.’ His voice ended on a gulp, and I saw how the whole thing had harrowed him to the core. ‘Why didn’t he?’
‘He wants me to withdraw from the case?’
‘But they’d only appoint someone else.’
‘Yes, they would.’
‘It’s almost as though the arsehole’s taunting us. One thing’s sure, you and I will both have to watch every step we take outside. Be glad we’ve got that man of Harsnet’s in the kitchen.’ He clenched his fists. ‘I spot the bastard who’s doing this and I’ll kill him with my own hands.’
‘No. We need him alive.’ I shook my head. ‘Is it Goddard, Barak?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We are so embroiled in the mystery and terror that it is tempting to clutch at any possibility.’ I sighed. ‘Whoever he is, I pray we catch him before someone else dies horribly.’ I frowned. ‘Before he shows us again how clever he is, for surely that is part of it.’
Barak’s face was still clouded with perplexity and fear. To distract him I said, ‘That crowd looked as though it could get nasty.’
‘Bonner’s after the player companies as well, then,’ he said without much interest.
‘As this morning showed, he could end by stirring up a hornet’s nest. One the size of a city.’
‘Ay. There could come a time when the sectaries fight back. Oh, a plague on both sides,’ he added irritably.
‘Indeed,’ I agreed. ‘Tell me, by the way, what do you think of Guy’s assistant? Young Piers?’
‘Didn’t much like the look of him. Bit of a creeper and crawler, for all his pleasant manner and pretty face. He’s clever, he sewed your arm up well. Trouble was, he looked as though he was quite enjoying it.’
‘Guy would say he was learning the detachment of a medical practitioner.’ I laughed wearily. ‘Remember eighteen months ago, when you were hurt in that fall at York and found yourself an invalid? It is my turn now.’
He smiled.
‘We have seen some troubles.’
‘That we have.’
Barak still looked preoccupied. ‘How is Tamasin?’ I asked tentatively.
‘Sleeping,’ he said. ‘She needs to rest. I—’
We were interrupted by a frantic knocking at the door, then urgent voices, Joan’s and a man’s. Footsteps sounded across the hall. Barak and I looked at each other.
‘He’s struck again,’ I breathed.
But when the door opened it was Daniel Kite who stood there, his hair wild, breathing heavily.
‘Sir!’ he said. ‘You must come! For the love of God, come!’
‘What—’
‘It’s Adam, sir. He has escaped. He’s got himself on top of London Wall, out by Bishopsgate, he’s calling on the crowds to repent, to forsake the priests and come to God! They’ll burn him this time!’
Chapter Twenty
IT WAS A MILE and a half to Bishopsgate, a painful walk through the London throng, my arm in its sling throbbing at every jolt. Daniel and Minnie strode on as fast as possible, Daniel with a set face, Minnie looking as though she would collapse at any moment. A gust of wind brought another squally shower, nearly casting my cap to the ground. I had donned my best robe and cap, for I guessed I might need to exert some authority at Bishopsgate.
Daniel had told me that a friend had arrived at his workshop an hour before to tell him that Adam was standing on top of London Wall, screaming out to the crowds that they must come to God for salvation. He had gone out there and seen his son haranguing a growing crowd; they had come for me because they had nowhere else to turn. I wondered angrily how Adam had escaped from the Bedlam. It struck me that this frantic preaching was something new. I had sent Barak to fetch Guy, with a pang of conscience at disturbing him again; yet he had come nearer than anyone to communicating with Adam, and if the boy could not be got down from that wall it might be the fire this time.
AS WE WALKED up All Hallows Street we heard the murmur of a crowd and shouts of laughter. A moment later Adam came into view. He was standing on top of the ancient, crumbling city wall, shouting down at the crowd which had gathered thirty feet below. Dressed in his filthy rags, his hair matted and his eyes wild, Adam looked like one of the wild country lunatics who escape their families and hide in inaccessible woods until they die of hunger. He was standing above Wormwood Street, perhaps fifty yards out from Bishopsgate Tower; somehow he must have got to the top of the gatehouse and clambered out. It seemed no one had gone out after him. The ancient city wall was wide but it was crumbling away in many places. Even as I watched, Adam dislodged a large stone with his feet, which crashed down to the crowd. ‘Hey, there, look out!’ someone cried. Adam almost slipped but managed somehow to regain his balance.
‘You must come to Christ!’ he bawled at them. ‘You must, you must ensure you are one of the elect! The end is coming, the Antichrist is here! Please, you must pray!’
I saw Reverend Meaphon in the crowd, his face redder than ever. We shouldered our way over to him. Another cleric was standing beside him, a tall thin old fellow with a beaky-nosed face and thick white hair, well combed and clean. How well these radical preachers all seemed to look after their hair, a peacock trait above the sober clothes. Minnie clasped Meaphon’s arm. ‘Oh, sir, you came!’
Meaphon turned to me, and I saw the cleric was frightened. ‘He has to be got down,’ he said urgently. ‘If he’s taken I will be questioned, the whole congregation will!’
‘And mine!’ the other cleric said. ‘I am William Yarington, rector of the next church to Reverend Meaphon’s.’ He spoke to me in tones of portentous seriousness, evidently assuming I was a radical sympathizer. ‘Our truth, our true faith, is under threat from papists and backsliders as never before. That mad boy should have been kept shut away and secure, with someone to pray with him all the time.’ He glared at Meaphon.
‘He manages enough prayers by himself,’ I snapped.
Yarington looked me coldly up and down, then turned away. He muttered something that sounded like, ‘Another unbeliever.’
I turned to Meaphon.
‘Have you tried speaking with him?’ I asked.
‘Yes, yes! I have ordered him down, told him to stop his shouting. I said he could put his parents in danger. But he won’t listen.’
‘If they find us here, if they associate me with him . . .’ the white-haired cleric muttered and cast his eyes around, as though looking for escape, then fixed them again on Adam as the boy cried out that he was suffering for them all, like Jesus on his Cross.
‘Word will get to Bonner soon. He’ll be here!’ Meaphon shook his head.
‘It might be better for everyone if he fell and broke his neck,’ the other cleric said.
Minnie had broken down again and was sobbing on her husband’s breast.
‘Do something, sir,’ Daniel implored me. ‘Please!’
There was a fresh gust of laughter from the crowd. Some wretch had brought a dancing bear to entertain the crowd and the little bruin, chained and muzzled and with strips of coloured cloth sewn into its ears, stared at the crowd in fear. Its keeper thwacked it on the nose, called ‘Dance!’ and the poor creature began to shift from leg to leg. The keeper put his cap on the ground for folk to throw pennies.
‘Here!’ someone called up to Adam. ‘You dance too! Come on, give us a dance!’
Two middle-aged men in the robes of the Cutlers Guild were next to me. ‘This is blasphemy,’ one said angrily. ‘The Common Council should be fetched, he should be imprisoned, punished for this display.’
‘Someone’s gone to Bonner’s palace,’ his fellow said in tones of grim satisfaction. ‘He’ll be punished all right.’
‘You are right, brother!’ someone called to Adam from the crowd. ‘You have the spirit in you!’ The crowd, I saw, was mostly good-natured, seeing this as a spectacle, a joke. But as with the costumiers’ arrests, this could turn nasty.
I stepped to the front of the crowd, directly underneath Adam, and looked up at him. He had paused and was taking deep whooping breaths. He was, I saw, shivering. If he fainted . . .
‘Adam,’ I called. ‘Please come down! Your mother is sore upset!’
He looked down at me, then shifted his gaze to the crowd. ‘The world is ending!’ he yelled. ‘The Antichrist is here! If you do not deny Satan and come to Jesus you will all burn! Burn!’
‘Speak, parrot, speak!’ someone called out mockingly.
‘Cure the hunchback’s arm, like Jesus healed the sick! Give us a miracle!’
I felt an angry despair. There was no communicating with Adam, one might as well try talking to a brick wall. None of the hot-gospellers listened, they only ranted, and either you took what they said for God’s word or in God’s name they casually condemned you to eternal torment. Adam was mad but that was where his madness had grown from. The killer’s, too, perhaps, not only declaring God’s bloody verdict but implementing it too. I clutched my throbbing arm, feeling utterly helpless.
There was a murmur behind me. Some men were shouldering their way through the crowd. With a sinking heart I caught a glimpse of raised pikes. A moment later Bishop Bonner, in black robes and cap and surrounded by his guards, appeared. The crowd stepped away and he moved through, short and stocky and powerful, leaving me, the Kites and Meaphon exposed. The other minister melted into the crowd. Above us, Adam had started declaiming scripture, and I recognized a garbled paraphrase of Revelation: ‘The fearful, and unbelieving, and whoremongers and sorcerers, shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone . . .’
‘Cease that blasphemy!’ Bonner’s thunderous roar silenced the crowd and made even Adam pause and blink. Close to, the face under the dark cap was round and jowly, the large dark eyes alive with anger.
‘Papist!’ someone in the crowd shouted out. Bonner stared round furiously, but in the close-packed crowd there was no way of telling who had spoken. The bishop turned his furious eyes on me. ‘Who are you, lawyer? Are you of his family? And you—’ His gaze turned to Meaphon, who quailed. ‘Oh, I know you, sir, you are a leader of the mad giddy company of schismatics.’
I had heard of Bonner’s rages; his anger was fierce and once roused did not abate. ‘Heretic!’ he shouted in Meaphon’s face. The cleric flinched, his courage visibly draining. ‘It’s not his fault, sir.’ Daniel Kite spoke up bravely. ‘He was trying to talk Adam down. Our son. He is mad, sir, stark mad—’
‘God is the judge of all, Jesus will come with sword in hand.’ Adam had begun again. Bonner turned to the soldiers. ‘You! Go up through the gatehouse, bring him down. If he falls, it’ll be no loss.’
The soldiers approached the wall, but then paused, staring upward. There was a murmur from the crowd as three figures stepped through an upper window of the gatehouse on to the wall. Guy and Barak and Piers. They moved slowly along the wall towards Adam, Barak and Piers holding their arms out for balance but Guy, behind, walking straight, his robe hitched up so his feet would not stumble on the hem. The crowd fell silent; even the furious Bonner was quiet.
‘Come, Adam,’ Guy called. ‘Remember me. Remember we talked?’
The boy stared at him foolishly, as though wondering how he had appeared there. Barak and Piers were almost next to Adam. They looked at him dubiously, I saw fear in both their set faces. If they tried to grasp Adam he could bring all three down. ‘Why are you doing this?’ Guy asked.
To my surprise, Adam answered him. ‘I thought I could bring others to God, it would prove I was saved.’
‘But not all who are saved can be messengers to the world.’ Guy waved at the crowd. ‘See, look at those people, you are not strong enough to convert that heathen crowd. It is no shame.’
Adam began to cry then, and sank slowly to his knees. Some lumps of old mortar, dislodged, pattered down on the crowd. Barak and Piers knelt carefully beside him, eased him to his feet and with difficulty led him back along the wall. They helped get the boy through the window of the gatehouse. Guy stepped in after them.
Bonner clicked his fingers and walked toward the gatehouse, the guard following. Daniel and Minnie stepped hesitantly after him. Meaphon hesitated a moment, then stepped backwards and disappeared into the crowd. I watched him go. Cowardice, or the realization that his presence now would only anger Bonner? Then I tensed. I felt someone watching me, caught the merest glimpse out of the corner of my eye. Someone with a beard. I whirled round. I saw a figure turn away into the crowd, a glimpse of a brown doublet. My heart thumped. Was it him, following again? I stood rooted to the spot, realizing my anxiety for Adam had made me careless.
‘Master Shardlake, please, help us!’ It was Minnie Kite’s voice. I turned back to her.
ADAM HAD emerged from the gatehouse on to the street. Guy and Barak each held one of his arms, for he was trying to drop to the ground again, his eyes were closed and his lips moved in silent prayer. The gatekeeper followed, looking anxiously at the bishop. Bonner planted himself in front of Adam, arms akimbo.
‘This is a fine sight,’ he thundered. ‘What did you think you were doing, boy?’ Adam ignored him, his eyes on the ground, praying even now. Bonner reddened. ‘You had better answer, boy preacher, or you will find yourself in the fire like Mekins.’
‘I don’t know how he got up there,’ the gatekeeper said. ‘He must have sneaked up through the house. On my oath, sir, I don’t know how he did it unless he’s a sorcerer and can make himself invisible.’ Bonner snorted.
‘Slave of the Roman harlot!’ someone shouted out from the crowd. Bonner turned again, frowning mightily. ‘Traitor!’ someone else called out. This time there was a murmur of approval from the crowd. The soldiers took a firm hold on their pikes. The mood was beginning to turn.
Daniel and Minnie had been looking on helplessly, an expression of mingled fear and distaste in Daniel’s eyes as he stared at Bonner. Minnie, though, stepped forward. She fell on her knees before Bonner, grasped the hem of his robe. ‘Please, sir,’ she said. ‘My son is mad. Sick in his mind. The Privy Council sent him to the Bedlam. He must have escaped. He can be sore cunning despite his scattered wits.’
Bonner was quite unmoved. ‘I heard of that decision, Bishop Gardiner told me. The Privy Council was wrong. This display shows your son to be a wild heretic.’ He glared round at us. ‘I will shortly make matters so hot for you people, you will wish yourselves gathered into God.’ He stared at Adam, his expression twisted with distaste. ‘I shall begin with this slavering creature.’ He looked round defiantly at the crowd; whatever else, Bishop Bonner did not lack courage.
I took a deep breath and stepped forward. ‘Sir, he is mad,’ I said urgently. I waved at Guy. ‘This man is his doctor, he will certify it. I have been unhappy with the boy’s security, his care at the Bedlam. The matter is before the Court of Request
s.’ I spoke loudly enough for the crowd to hear it; there was a constant murmuring now.
Bonner looked curiously at Guy. ‘So you are Dr Malton,’ he said. ‘I have heard of you. The ex-monk.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘I heard you were a sound man among the physicians,’ Bonner said. ‘Why are you working with these heretics?’
Guy was at his diplomatic best. ‘The Privy Council decided he was mad, my lord, not a heretic. I believe he is indeed mad and I hope he may be cured. Brought to his right thinking,’ he added meaningfully.
One of the guards looked over the murmuring crowd, then leaned forward and whispered something to Bonner. He looked over at the crowd, then back at Guy and me. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But I shall keep myself informed on his progress.’ He turned to me. ‘As for you, lawyer, make sure he is kept safely locked up. I might not be so accommodating next time.’ He gave me a stern nod and walked away. The soldiers followed.
‘Well done,’ I breathed to Guy. He gave me a sombre look.
‘I think he realized that if he were to burn a boy a doctor had certified mad, London would be even more against him than it was with Mekins. But he will not forget. Matthew, Adam must be kept secure.’
‘Are we taking him back to the Bedlam?’ Barak asked.
‘Yes. Come on. It is a short walk. Let’s see what Keeper Shawms has to say,’ I added grimly.
Piers, who had hung back during the conversation with Bonner, now stepped forward and took Adam’s arm, Barak taking the other.
We set off, the crowd staring after us, sorry to be deprived of their entertainment. Daniel and Minnie followed behind. They made no effort to talk to their son; they knew it would be useless.
THE LONG LOW building that housed the Bedlam presented its usual bland face to the world. I knocked on the door and it was opened by the woman Ellen. She had cast off her coif and her dark hair was wild, her expression frightened. When she saw Adam her face flooded with relief.
‘Oh God’s mercy, you have him! Where was he?’