by C. J. Sansom
‘Only Bernard’s lawyer friends. And some of them fear to get involved.’
‘Your constant spirit may save him,’ I said.
She looked at me again with those large, intense eyes. ‘I was sorry to hear how the King treated you on Friday.’
I shifted uncomfortably. ‘Thank you.’
‘I know what it is like to be mocked without just cause. The other women mock what you call my constancy.’
‘That too is cruel.’
‘I am sorry I associated you with Sir William Maleverer. He is known throughout Yorkshire as a dangerous, covetous man.’
‘He is no friend or patron to me.’
‘No. But may I ask, how did you come to be with the Progress?’
‘At the request of Archbishop Cranmer.’
‘Ah, they say he is a good man. He is your patron?’
‘In a sense.’
‘I – I am sorry I misjudged you.’ With that, she curtsied swiftly and walked away to the church, where the warden stood at the door, looking impatient. The door closed behind her. I returned to Barak.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked.
‘She apologized for her behaviour the other evening. She seems to have lost her opposition to your seeing Tamasin.’ I shook my head. ‘She is a strange woman. Under great strain, that much is clear.’
‘Did she say where Tamasin is?’
‘Tamasin told her she was ill and wished to stay in her room. Probably keeping out of the way.’ I looked at the closed door of the church. ‘If what you saw last night comes out, Jennet Marlin will be in a difficult position. Lady Rochford is her employer, Tamasin her servant.’
‘Nothing to the trouble we’ll be in.’
I nodded. ‘Let us go to Master Wrenne’s. Get us out of this damned place.’
We set off for the gate watchfully, past the empty pavilions with their guards, our eyes alert for danger.
Chapter Twenty-three
AS WE PASSED THE FRONT of King’s Manor I saw a man in a grey furred robe with a heavy gold chain round his neck descending the steps, accompanied by a little group of clerks. It was Sir Richard Rich. He caught my eye. My heart sank as he dismissed the clerks and strode rapidly over. I bowed deeply.
‘Master Shardlake.’ Rich smiled coldly. ‘And young Barak again. He is your clerk now?’
‘Yes, Sir Richard.’
Rich flicked Barak an amused look. ‘Has he enough learning?’ He smoothed his robe with his slim hands, and smiled. ‘I have been with the King,’ he said cheerfully. ‘When the spring conspirators were attainted, their lands passed to my department. We have been discussing how they might be best disposed of.’
‘Indeed, Sir Richard.’
‘The King will be generous to those who have been loyal in Yorkshire. Although with the constant dangers of foreign invasion he needs his lands to bring in all the revenue they can.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Which brings me to the other matter. Have you passed on what I told you about the Bealknap case to the Common Council?’
I took a deep breath. ‘That you think the right judge has been chosen? I have told them those who say they have a good hand early in the game are usually bluffing.’ It was a lie; I had not yet written, though I planned to. I wondered how Rich would react; to speak thus to the Chancellor of Augmentations would normally be impertinence, but we were talking now as lawyer to lawyer. Rich gave me an uneasy look. His eyes narrowed, and I saw that I had guessed correctly, he did not have a judge yet.
‘Come over here,’ he said sharply. He grasped my arm and led me out of earshot of Barak. He gave me a hard, fixed look. ‘You know I have been having dealings with your master here, Sir William Maleverer.’ His thin face was tense with anger now. ‘He is interested in buying more lands up here, and Augmentations has lands to sell. Do not forget, Brother Shardlake, that Sir William has many powers here, and that you are alone in York but for your boorish servant. And not liked by the King, it appears. Tread carefully.’ He paused significantly. ‘And do not send that letter about the Bealknap case to London; I know you have not sent it already.’ I looked surprised, and he laughed. ‘Do you think, sir, with the political trouble there has been up here, that the posts from the Progress go unwatched?’ He looked at me with those cold grey eyes. ‘Mark well what I say, and do not trifle with me.’ He turned and walked away with sharp, rapid steps.
Barak came over to me. ‘What did he want?’
I told him what Rich had said. ‘He always threatens much,’ I said. ‘He did last year.’ Yet I felt uneasy. More threats, more danger.
‘We need to get home,’ Barak said emphatically. ‘We and Tamasin.’
‘We can none of us go till we are ordered. For now we are trapped here like flies in jam.’
‘In shit, more like,’ Barak muttered as we headed for the gate.
WE WENT THROUGH TO the Minster precinct and down to Giles’s house. He answered the door himself. He looked much better; there was colour in his cheeks again. He welcomed us into the solar where Madge sat by the fire ticking at some plain beads. Madge rose and bowed, then went to fetch some wine for us. Master Wrenne urged us to sit. The greyfalcon on its perch inclined its head at us.
‘You look much better, sir,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Thank you. My rest did me much good. And Dr Jibson’s prescription eases my pain. How do you fare, Master Barak, did you see the King yesterday?’ His manner was easy, he mentioned the King’s name in a light tone.
‘Yes, sir. When he entered the city. He is a man of great presence.’ Barak looked at Giles a little uneasily; I guessed he had never encountered a man who was dying slowly before. But if Giles noticed he did not show it.
‘Let none doubt the King has presence,’ he agreed, nodding wisely.
Madge brought in the wine and a plate of little cakes. She seemed to avoid my eye, I wondered why. Giles took an appreciative swig from his goblet. ‘Ah, good French wine, nothing better on a fine morning. And jumble cakes, help yourselves.’ He smiled at us. ‘Now, I have had a list from the steward’s office of the petitioners who will present themselves at the castle tomorrow. It will be the first of two hearings.’
‘You are sure you feel well enough to preside?’ I asked him.
‘Quite sure.’ He nodded emphatically. ‘They are mostly simple enough matters.’
‘What if the parties refuse to accept our arbitration?’
He smiled. ‘Then they may try their luck in the London courts. I doubt many will want to do that.’
‘Then we must be sure we do justice.’
‘Indeed. I have left the list in my little study next door, together with the knapsacks containing the petitions. I wonder if Master Barak might be set to marrying up the papers with the names, and our summary, then we can have a quick look through them together.’
‘A good idea. Do that, would you, Barak?’
‘And take your wine,’ Giles added. ‘Do not go dry to your task.’
When the door was closed Giles turned and gave me a wry smile. ‘Madge tells me she committed a small indiscretion when you were here yesterday. She told you a little of my quarrel with my nephew.’
‘Only that it was a quarrel over politics.’
‘She felt she had to tell me.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Well, Matthew, if you are to help me in London, you should know. Only – it was a little difficult for me to speak of.’
‘I understand. But – Giles, are you sure you are well enough to travel? After Fulford -’
He waved a large hand, his emerald ring catching the light. ‘I am going,’ he said with sudden sharpness. ‘That is decided. But let me tell you about my nephew.’
‘If you wish.’
Giles began. ‘It was a great sorrow to me that my wife and I had no children that lived. My wife had a sister, Elizabeth, and she married a man called Dakin. A law-clerk, a mousy little fellow without ambition. I always thought him a poor creature, and – well, if I am honest, I was jealous they had a son who
grew up tall and strong, never had a day’s illness. He went to read for the bar at Gray’s Inn when he grew to manhood. With a letter of recommendation from me.’ He smiled tightly. ‘An affection for the boy had grown in me by then. Martin was clever, he liked to think for himself and I admired that. It is an uncommon quality. You have it,’ he added, pointing at me with his goblet.
I laughed. ‘Thank you.’
‘And yet that quality can be carried too far, it can take one into dangerous waters.’
‘It can,’ I agreed.
‘Martin would return to York to visit his parents every year.’ He looked at the table on its dais. ‘We had some merry evenings here, Martin and his parents, me and my wife. All dead now, apart from Martin and me.’ His mouth hardened. ‘And yet he never spoke to me of something that must have been working secretly in his mind for a long time. Not till he came home in the summer of 1532, nine years ago. The King was still married to Catherine of Aragon then, though he had been trying to get a divorce out of the Pope for years so he could marry Anne Boleyn. He was coming to the end of that road, soon he would break with Rome, appoint Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury and get him to declare his first marriage invalid.’
‘I remember it well.’
‘Virtually everyone in the north viewed the prospect of a break with Rome with horror. We knew Anne Boleyn was a reformer, we feared this would mean heretics like Cromwell coming to power, as indeed it did.’
‘I was a reformer then, Giles,’ I said quickly. ‘I knew Cromwell well in the days before he came into his great power.’
Giles gave me an interrogative look. His eyes could be very sharp. ‘From what you have said, I think you are no longer an enthusiast?’
‘I am not. For neither side.’
Giles nodded. ‘Martin was. He was as much of an enthusiast as it was possible to be.’
‘For reform?’
‘No. For the Pope. For Queen Catherine. That was the problem. Oh, it was – and is – easy to be sentimental about the King’s first wife. How she had been married to him for twenty years, always been loyal, how wicked the King was to cast her aside for Anne Boleyn. Yet there was more to it than that, as we both know. Queen Catherine was in her forties, past child-bearing, and she had not given the King a male heir. Unless he could marry a younger woman who might provide an heir, the Tudor dynasty would die with him.’
‘All that is true.’
‘And there were many of us who thought the only way to preserve true religion in England was for Queen Catherine to do what the Pope himself had suggested to her: go into a nunnery, allow the King to marry again.’ He shook his head. ‘Foolish, obstinate woman. By insisting God intended her to be married to the King until death, she brought about the very revolution in religion she hated and feared.’
I nodded. ‘It is a paradox.’
‘A paradox Martin could not see. He stood stiff in the view that the King must stay married to Catherine of Aragon. So he told us over the dinner-table that day, in no uncertain terms.’ Giles looked over at the table. ‘It made me wroth, furious. I saw, if he did not, that unless Catherine of Aragon agreed to a divorce, or to go to a nunnery, the King would break with Rome. As in the end he did. It may seem strange, now both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn are dead, to think we argued so fiercely, but we who supported the old religion were split: the realists like me, and those like Martin who urged Queen Catherine should not give an inch. I was angry, Matthew.’ He shook his leonine head. ‘Angry too to hear Martin’s parents support him, and realize he must have discussed his beliefs with them, though not with me that had done everything to smooth and aid his path into the law.’ A heavy bitterness came into Giles’s voice.
‘Perhaps he had not told them. His parents might only have felt they must stand in their child’s corner in argument.’
Giles sighed. ‘Perhaps. And perhaps the old sourness at my childless state was part of my anger, especially when my wife began to argue Martin’s side too. She should not have, that was disloyal of her. Anyway, in the end I ordered Martin Dakin and his parents from my table.’
I looked at Giles in surprise. It was hard to imagine him full of such fierceness. But before his illness he must have been formidable.
‘I never spoke with Martin or his parents again. My wife was sore upset when I forbade her sister our table. She never really forgave me.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘My poor Sarah, her sister’s family forbidden the house. And then three years ago the plague came to York and they all died, my wife, and both Martin’s parents, a few weeks later. Martin came up and arranged his parents’ funerals, but I could not bring myself to contact him, or attend. I do not even know whether he is married now; he was single at the time we quarrelled.’ I saw shame on his lined face.
‘That is a story to pity a man’s heart, Giles. Yet one that has been all too common these last few years, families split apart over religious differences.’
‘Pride and obstinacy are great sins,’ he said. ‘I see that now. I would be reconciled with Martin if I can.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘In the end we both lost, and Cromwell and the reformers won.’
‘You should know, Giles,’ I said, ‘I may have become disillusioned with the reformers but I hold the old regime to be no better. No less ruthless, no less fanatical.’ I paused. ‘No less cruel.’
‘For all I may have grown sadder and mellower these last few years, at the end I cleave to my faith.’ He looked at me. ‘As all men must at the end. They say the King himself is disillusioned with reform,’ he added. ‘Yet I am not so sure. Cranmer is still in charge of the church.’
I shrugged. ‘The King plays one faction off against the other. He trusts neither now.’
‘So with him it is all politics?’
‘Perhaps he believes every twist and turn he makes inspired by God himself working in his mind.’
He grunted. ‘I think we are agreed at least that the notion God works the King’s mind for him is nonsense.’
‘We old reformers never sought to put the King in the Pope’s place.’ I looked at him. I was not surprised he was a religious conservative, I had gathered as much. Yet the obstinate bitterness he had shown towards his family had shown me a new side to his character. But we all have darker sides to our natures, I thought.
‘Well,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Let us leave these sad topics. We should go and see how young Barak is doing.’
I hesitated, then said, ‘Giles. Before we do, there is something I ought to tell you in my turn.’
He looked at me curiously. ‘What is that?’
‘Yesterday, when I was in your library, looking at your maps-’
‘Ah, yes. Did you find what you wanted? Madge said you stayed a long time.’
‘I did, and thank you. Your collection is truly remarkable.’
He smiled with pleasure. ‘It has been my pastime for fifty years.’
‘Did you know you have some lawbooks there that I think no one else has, that have been lost?’
He gave a childlike smile of pleasure. ‘Really?’
‘Lincoln’s Inn would pay well for copies. But I found something else.’ I took a deep breath. ‘An Act of Parliament, that I think has been excised from the records. Called the Titulus Regulus.’
He sat very still then, looked at me from narrowed eyes. ‘Ah,’ he said.
‘I wondered if you knew you had it.’
‘Yes, I did. You read it? What did you think?’
I shrugged. ‘It repeats the old rumours that King Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was invalid because of a precontract. Impossible to prove one way or the other now. It seemed to me King Richard was cobbling together all the arguments he could to justify his seizure of power.’
He nodded judiciously. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Yet if it came to light now, it could cause trouble.’
To my surprise he smiled. ‘Matthew, for those of us past seventy, especially lawyers, the suppression of the Titulus is an
old story. I was a student at Gray’s Inn when it was published for all the world to see, and also when next year the new King’s men came to the Inns to seize all copies. There is nothing new there.’
‘Forgive me speaking bluntly, Giles, but there will be few left alive now who remember. And that Act could cause embarrassment if it came to light.’
He continued to smile. ‘I found the Titulus ten years ago, when they were clearing old lawbooks from the Minster library. I kept it. But few have any interest in my collection. Martin used to go and look at the books, he was interested, and occasionally one of my fellow lawyers, but I think you are the first person other than me to have spent much time up there in years. And the Act is well hidden in its way, unmarked among the dusty shelves, for I keep the index in my head. And you would not tell Maleverer.’
‘Of course not. But you should know, there is a hunt on for subversive documents at King’s Manor -’
‘A hunt? What documents?’ He looked at me with interest.
‘I cannot say more. But believe me when I say you should get rid of the Titulus.’
He pondered a moment. ‘You speak true, Matthew?’
‘Yes. I care little for any embarrassment disclosure of the Titulus might cause the King. But I would not have you, or anyone, in danger because of that wretched Act. This is not a good time to have a copy in your possession.’
He looked into the fire, considering, then sighed. ‘Perhaps you are right. I have been too vain of my collection. Pride, again.’
‘I hope you have no other dangerous materials in those rooms.’
‘No. Only the Titulus. When I am gone, if the Titulus were found I suppose it could be a problem for my executors.’
‘Yes,’ I said uncomfortably. ‘It could. Madge could end up being questioned too.’
‘Danger to Madge. By Jesu, what has England come to, eh? Very well. Wait here, Matthew.’ He rose slowly from his chair, holding the arm a moment when he stood to get his balance.
‘Do you need help?’ I asked, getting up.
‘No, I am a little wembly after being in bed so long, that is all.’ He walked steadily enough to the door, and left the room. I stood looking into the fire. I wondered if he had made a will, who the library would go to. His nephew, perhaps. And then I thought, if Martin Dakin was a strong political conservative and a lawyer at Gray’s Inn, he was a prime candidate to have been involved with Robert Aske’s group of conservative lawyers there in 1536. And a man likely to be a suspect in the present rebellion; for all I knew Martin Dakin could be in the Tower, like Jennet Marlin’s fiancé, that other Gray’s Inn lawyer.