by C. J. Sansom
‘What is down there exactly?’ Harsnet asked.
‘Flasks of wine and barrels of vegetables, and the coal. And there’s another trapdoor there, leading down to the sewer passage.’
‘Part of the Charterhouse system?’
‘Yes, sir. We’re the last house in the system, after the water runs through our sewer it empties out into a stream that runs past the house. There is a large iron grille set into the wall where the water goes out. No one could get in or out that way.’
‘Do you think he could be down there?’ Harsnet asked.
‘I doubt it. He’d be trapped.’ I nodded agreement. ‘No, if he is in the house my guess is it will be somewhere with an escape route.’
‘We should do a thorough search,’ Harsnet said. ‘Two of you men search the house. You other two go down there and search the cellar, and the sewer.’
‘The sewer is dry,’ the cook said. ‘There’s something wrong with the mechanism up at the Charterhouse.’
‘I know.’
Torches were fetched, the hatch was opened and Cranmer’s men climbed down to the cellar. I glimpsed a large chamber full of barrels, a big pile of coal. The men looked behind the barrels, thrusting their swords into the coal lest anyone was hidden there. Then they turned to the trapdoor. ‘It’s bolted on the outside,’ one of them called out. ‘There can’t be anyone down there.’
‘Look nonetheless.’
They opened the trapdoor; cold air and a filthy smell wafted up to us. ‘Go down,’ Harsnet ordered. They descended, and shortly after I heard the sound of booted feet on iron rungs again, and someone called, ‘No one!’
One of the men Harsnet had sent to search the house returned. ‘There’s no one here, sir.’
Harsnet and I looked at each other.
‘Perhaps he got out of the house when Cranmer’s messenger arrived and the search started,’ Barak suggested. ‘Knew something was up.’
Harsnet nodded gravely. ‘If so, Lady Catherine is going to need to be carefully watched for some while. You four men, search the house once again. Please. Every nook and cranny.’
We returned to the hall. ‘I am going to see the steward again,’ Harsnet said. He left Barak and me alone in the hallway. Barak headed for the stairs.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
‘Thought I’d join the search.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Take my mind off other things.’
‘I’ll join you.’
We MOUNTED the wide staircase. Above was another broad corridor, and facing us a pair of wide doors, half open, two guards standing just inside. A blonde young woman in a fine dress of red velvet was looking out nervously. One of Lady Catherine’s ladies, I guessed.
As we approached I saw a pair of inner doors was open. I glimpsed a bed draped with rich hangings and bright tapestries. Beside it, Harsnet and the steward were talking to a woman. I recognized the tall, shapely form and the striking, slightly severe face of Catherine Parr. Then she turned and stared back at me, and her dark eyes widened with fear. I realized she did not remember me from the day I saw her at Westminster. She thought this strange-looking man might even be the killer.
‘You should not be looking in there!’ the lady-in-waiting said, scandalized.
‘I - I am sorry,’ I stuttered. ‘I did not mean—’
She slammed the door in my face.
Barak gave me a look of commiseration.
‘You weren’t to know—’ he began. Then he broke off at a sudden yell from outside the house.
‘Fire! Help! Fire!’
Chapter Forty-five
HARSNET RAN OUT of Lady Catherine’s rooms. He stared at me for a moment, then we all ran to the nearest window, through which the glow of flames could be seen in the darkness. He shouted at Lady Catherine’s steward, hesitating in the doorway to her chambers, to stay with his mistress.
Across the lawn, a large wooden summerhouse was well ablaze, flames at all the windows and smoke drifting across the grass towards the house. Guards and servants ran to and fro, carrying buckets of water. Discipline had vanished in face of the ever-present terror of fire.
‘What is he doing?’ Harsnet breathed.
‘He’s trying to distract us,’ I said urgently. ‘Fetch the sergeant, get those men back in the house!’
The coroner looked at me for a moment, then turned and ran down the stairs. Barak opened the window and leaned out. The summerhouse was blazing from end to end, there was nothing to be done for it and it was far enough from the house for the flames not to spread. As we watched, Harsnet ran outside, calling everyone back. I turned to look at Lady Catherine’s closed doors. ‘If he is trying to get everyone away from her, he has failed. Come!’
We hurried down the stairs. The movement jarred my back again, and I clamped my mouth shut against the pain. Through the open front door we saw guards running, the sergeant bawling at them to watch the doors and windows. The acrid stink of smoke drifted into the building.
‘This is chaos,’ I said. ‘There is always panic when there is a fire. As Cantrell knows.’
‘Is he still outside?’ Barak asked.
‘He may have come back in after starting the fire.’
Barak did not answer. I turned to him. He raised a finger to his lips, pointing to the half-open door of a room behind us.
‘There’s an open window in there,’ he whispered. ‘I can feel a breeze.’
He drew his sword; I did the same with my dagger. Barak stepped back, waited a second, then kicked the door wide open. We lunged inside.
We were in a storeroom, stacked chairs and tables and a heap of large cushions lying against the walls. The room was empty, but one of the three windows giving on to the lawn was half open. Barak jerked back the door lest anyone be hiding behind it, but there was only the blank wall. He slammed it shut again, then started thrusting with his sword under the stacked chairs and tables. I crossed to the window, coughing in the smoke-filled air. In the moonlight I saw the summerhouse collapse in a great flurry of sparks, the few men still on the lawn jumping back. I remembered the smoke at Goddard’s house, that terrible impact on my back. Then I heard, behind me, a metallic clatter and a thud.
I whirled round. Barak was lying on the floor, his forehead red with blood, his sword beside him. Standing over him, the pile of cushions he had been lying under scattered around him, was Cantrell, in one of his old shabby smocks. He was carrying the piece of wood he had shown me at his house. He wore no glasses, and now I realized what the old woman had meant about his strange eyes. They were large, pale blue, with a dark heaviness in them such as I had never seen in human eyes before. It was as though, while he looked at me, he was also looking inward, at a terrible, exhausting vision. But he did not squint or peer; there was little wrong with his vision. He had been exaggerating his shortsightedness to deceive us, and his acting had been good.
I reached for my dagger; but Cantrell was quicker. In a single fluid movement he bent, picked up Barak’s sword and thrust it at my throat. His clumsiness had been another act. I glanced frantically down at Barak; but he was unconscious, or worse.
‘The Jew cannot help you.’ Cantrell’s voice was low, thick with gloating pleasure, quite different from his previous dull tones. He threw his club down on a cushion, keeping Barak’s sword in his other hand held at my throat, the sharp point pricking at my skin.
‘Now I have you,’ he said. ‘God has delivered you to me. I knew setting the summerhouse on fire would make everyone run about like ants!’ He laughed, a childlike giggle that somehow chilled me to the bone.
‘Catherine Parr is well guarded,’ I said, trying to keep my breathing steady.
‘I thought you would all think it had ended with Goddard, the pouring of the last vial.’ He shook his head, his expression serious now. ‘But of course the devil knows Catherine Parr is the Great Whore that was foretold. The devil told you the truth, didn’t he? She will be well guarded now.’ He frowned, looking for a moment like a thwarted child
, then smiled again. ‘But the Lord has delivered you to me. To remove an enemy and strengthen my hand.’ He looked down at Barak’s prone form a moment, stirred him with his toe and smiled at his own cleverness. Barak’s face was white. I prayed he was still alive. I could hear voices outside, but dared not call, for Cantrell would slash my throat in a moment.
‘Kneel down,’ he hissed releasing the pressure of the sword a little. I hesitated, then knelt on the wooden floor. The burned skin of my back stretched agonizingly with the movement. A splinter dug into my knee. Cantrell pulled something from his pocket. A small glass vial, half-filled with yellowish liquid. Still holding the sword to my throat, he unstoppered it and held it out. ‘Drink this,’ he said.
I looked at it fearfully, knowing what it was. Dwale. His prelude to torture and death. ‘You will never get us out of this room,’ I said. ‘The whole house is in uproar.’
‘Drink it! Or I cut your throat and then the Jew’s.’ He pressed the sword to my neck, I felt a sharp pain, then blood trickling down my neck.
‘All right!’ I took the vial. It smelt of honey, he had mixed the evil stuff with nectar. I looked at it. My hand trembled. I thought, if I refuse and he kills me now, at least my death will be quick. But Barak would certainly die too. By drinking it I could live a little longer, and the instinct to do so is always powerful. I lifted it to my mouth. My throat seemed to constrict, I feared I would not be able to swallow it down, but I gulped once and it was gone. I wondered how long the dwale would take to have effect. Perhaps someone would come before it did. But immediately I felt strange, as though my body was enormously heavy. I tried to take a breath, but could not. Then everything slipped away.
I Woke in darkness, to a cesspit smell that made me retch and gasp. My body felt thick and heavy. A stab of pain shot down my back. I realized my wrists were bound in front of me, my ankles tied as well. I was propped up in a sitting position, my back against a brick wall, my legs on a rough, slimy floor. There was a light to one side. I turned painfully towards it. A lantern containing a fat beeswax candle showed the ordure-smeared floor of a low, narrow brick passage. Cantrell sat cross-legged beside it, looking at me with a brooding gaze, his eyes glinting as they caught the light. He was near, four feet or so away. Barak’s sword lay at his side.
I realized I was very cold, and shivered. The motion made the little wound at my neck sting.
‘You are awake?’ Cantrell asked in a neutral tone.
‘Where are we?’ I asked. My mouth was terribly dry, my voice came as a croak.
‘In the sewer. Under the house.’
I looked round. There were long, narrow alcoves in the brickwork; they must connect to the lavatories above. Behind me, the passage stretched away into darkness. Ahead, as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I made out the shape of a large metal grille, a patch of moonlit sky beyond. The thick iron mesh was broken in a few places, metal spikes sticking out at odd angles, but leaving barely space to put an arm though. We were trapped. Beyond the grille I heard the sound of running water; it must be the stream into which the sewer drained.
‘I hid us under those cushions,’ Cantrell said quietly, almost conversationally. He smiled. ‘People came in, but they thought we were gone out of the window. They were all in such a panic, thinking of nothing but protecting the Whore. I got you down here when the house was quiet.’
‘And Barak?’
‘Still hidden under the cushions. They’ll find him.’
‘Is he dead?’
Cantrell shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.’ He frowned then, lapsed into his own thoughts.
‘Why am I still alive?’ I ventured after a few minutes.
He frowned. ‘Don’t distract me,’ he said angrily. ‘You distract me, damn you.’
I was silent again. The candle burned slowly down. Cantrell sat brooding. After a while he sighed, and turned to look at me again with his heavy, merciless gaze. ‘You stopped God’s plan,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t complete the sequence, that is why I failed.’
‘I don’t understand.’
He put a hand to each side of his face. ‘My head spins. Ever since God first spoke to me, so many messages, so many thoughts.’ He sighed, a long groaning sound. ‘God told me to set that fuse to give you time to escape, so you would think Goddard had done it all, but Goddard was not an apostate from true religion so the prophecies were not fulfilled - you are the apostate the seventh vial must be poured out on, the devil’s agent too, you have to die, still, in a great earthquake.’ He was talking fast now, gabbling to himself rather than to me. ‘For the prophecies to be fulfilled, for me to be able to kill the Great Whore. I see it now.’ He looked at me. ‘But I cannot think how to do it, down here, and I cannot get you out alive.’ He turned and pointed a skinny finger at me. ‘I knew you were the devil’s man when you came to where I left Dr Gurney. I marked your bent back, which is a sign of a twisted soul, I learned you were an apostate from true reform. You looked sad, lost. I recognized that in your face when I first saw you by the river. And I thought, yes, that is how a man possessed would look.’
I wondered with a shudder if he had rambled on like this to Tupholme, or Mistress Bunce, as they died in slow agony. The shudder turned into a bout of shivering, for I was cold, frozen. I had felt cold for weeks but nothing like this. Cantrell did not seem to care how cold it was.
‘I’ll have to get you out alive, later,’ he said. ‘Find some way to kill you.’ I felt a wave of relief. So there was to be no torture and death down here at least, unless something in his buzzing, burning mind told him to kill me. I flinched as Cantrell reached into a pocket and pulled out a large, narrow pair of tweezers. He held them up and smiled.
‘Don’t think of rescue. They’ve no idea we are down here. After I hauled you down I used these to move the bolt back into position from below. There was just enough space, the hatch is a poor fit. I studied it when I came last week, the first time I acted as the coalman’s boy.’ He looked at his hand, where a piece of ordure from the floor adhered. He wiped it on his tunic, wrinkling his nose. ‘This is a disgusting place.’ He gave me a look that chilled me to the bone. ‘It’s your fault I’m stuck down here.’
He was silent for a while then, frowning with concentrated thought. He was mad, I knew. There was something in his complete self-obsession that reminded me of Adam Kite in his worst phase, but there was something very different too, something wild and savage that I did not begin to understand. I knew that at any moment he might jump up and kill me. But he stayed quiet, thoughtful. After a while he spoke suddenly. ‘Goddard treated me badly. That hard tongue of his. He regretted it when I hammered nails into his jaw before I drugged him.’ He smiled. ‘How surprised he looked when he woke up, after I broke in and knocked him unconscious. He was another that thought I was stupid. He learned different.’
My back burned and the ropes chafed at my wrists and ankles as I listened to him. He was talking without even looking at me now. ‘When they closed the monastery, put me out in the world, it made my head spin. Helpless, like a tiny boat in a great storm. Yet it was all meant by God. The day came when I heard his voice, and knew that it was his, that he had chosen me.’ He looked at me then and smiled transparently. He seemed to notice how uncomfortable I was for the first time, and cocked his head slightly. ‘Are you in pain?’ he asked. ‘Does your back hurt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Think what it will be like for you in Hell. They are all there already, your friend Elliard and the others. Perhaps the devil will choose to make you wield a pickaxe for ever and ever among the flames, breaking up stones, your bent back an agony of pain. For ever and ever.’ He smiled. ‘To purge the enemies of the Lord.’
I thought I caught a sound, back up the passage. I strained to hear. If they came quietly and took him by surprise I might be saved. But it was nothing. The silence that followed seemed to go on for ever, broken only by disjointed remar
ks from the madman facing me.
‘The solicitor Felday said you knew Elliard,’ Cantrell said at length.
‘Yes. He was my friend.’ I took a deep breath. ‘That was when I decided I would find you.’
‘No, no. That was the devil.’ Cantrell shook his head vigorously, then suddenly was on his feet, grasping the sword. ‘Do not deceive me!’ He knelt before me, and again the sword touched my throat.
‘Admit the truth,’ he demanded. ‘Say you are possessed by the devil. Say he is in you.’
And then I heard it. Far away. A metallic clunk. A creak. A faint rushing sound. I understood and my heart sank. They were opening the doors up at the Charterhouse that held the water back. They knew or suspected that we were down here, and they were going to drown us both like rats. I remembered Harsnet saying he would do anything to protect the Archbishop.
‘Admit the devil is in you.’ Cantrell’s face was full of rage now. I did not know what to say. Would admitting or denying the accusation make him more likely to kill me?
‘I cannot think,’ I said. ‘I am confused . . .’ I thought feverishly, if I could get to the nearest alcove when the water came, wedge myself in somehow . . .
‘The devil struggles inside you. Come, admit it. I command you in Jesus’ name.’ He twisted the sword point, opening a new cut in my neck.
Then came a violent blast of cold air and a roaring, crashing sound. Cantrell whirled round. In the light from his candle I saw a wall of water and foam filling the entire tunnel, rushing down on us. I thrust myself sideways, into the alcove. Cantrell had no time to make a sound before the flood sent him spinning away. I saw him go, arms outspread, as though he was flying.
THE VERY FORCE of the flood saved me, for I had rolled far enough into the alcove for the backwash to slam me up against the far end. I twisted amid the rush of water, thrust out my bound legs and made contact with a side wall, pressing my back into the other wall at the same time. The pain was excruciating but I knew I must not slip or I too would be swept away. The water swirled around me, tugging at my clothes, nearly pulling me from my lodgement. My legs shook, the lump at my back scraped agonizingly against the bricks, burned skin peeling away. But I held on. The rushing water rose over my neck, over my face. My hair streamed out as some nameless stinking thing slid past my nose. My lungs burned and I felt my head swim. Is this the end? I thought. Does it end like this?