by C. J. Sansom
When I turned into Guy’s street I had the uneasy feeling that had come over me once or twice on the journey. As though I were being followed. I turned quickly in the saddle, but could see no one in the narrow street. I told myself that the hunt for Roger’s killer was making me over-anxious. I reminded myself that I was due to go to dinner with Dorothy that evening, a prospect that filled me equally with pleasure and sadness.
I tied Genesis up outside Guy’s shop, and knocked on his door.
He let me in, and I saw he already had another visitor, a tall, stout, rubicund man with a long grey beard. Like Guy he wore a physician’s robe, but his was of the best cut. He had a long wooden wand in his hand, which he was pointing at the apothecary’s jars that lined Guy’s shelves. Young Piers had taken down a couple of the jars and was carefully measuring out quantities in a balance.
The stranger looked at me down a long beak of a nose. ‘Perhaps you will allow me to complete my business before you advise your patient,’ he said haughtily to Guy, who gestured me to take a seat, with an apologetic look.
I sat and watched as the fat physician pointed to another jar. ‘A peck of the wormwood, and I’ll take an ounce of antimony. Have you any ground cockerel’s blood, sir?’
‘I do not keep it.’
‘A pity. It is a wondrous cure for headache.’
‘Such wisdom,’ Piers murmured. The physician stared at him, suspecting insolence, but the boy’s smooth face was impassive. I could see, though, that Guy was repressing a smile as he wrote down the man’s wants on a slate. Evidently his fellow-physician had consulted him in his other capacity, as an apothecary. The big man seemed one of those doctors whose strategy is to awe people with the arrogant confidence that often covers ignorance. I wondered why Guy tolerated him.
‘That is all, sir,’ his customer said. ‘I will have it fetched tomorrow. How much?’
‘A shilling.’
‘You come cheap.’ He brought out a fat purse and handed over the silver coin. Then he deigned to look at me. ‘You are a lawyer, sir?’ he asked. ‘At which Inn?’
‘Lincoln’s Inn,’ I replied curtly.
‘I have a patient there. Master Bealknap, perhaps you know him.’
‘I do. He seems ill and faint these days,’ I added pointedly.
‘Oh, I will have him well soon.’ The physician seemed blind to the implied criticism. ‘He needs more bleeding, that will soon restore him. I am Dr Archer, by the way. I have much experience in treating lawyers’ ills.’ He smiled condescendingly, then with a cursory bow to Guy, he restored his purse to his belt and left the shop.
‘Who was that creature?’ I asked.
Guy smiled wryly. ‘Archer is a senior man in the College of Physicians. My status there is tenuous, I must put up with him. He is a great traditionalist, believes there has been nothing new in medicine since Galen, save for his own quack remedies. I let him come to get the ingredients for them. He is a man of influence, he likes to patronize me, and I am careful to undercharge him.’ His voice was suddenly weary. He waved a hand. ‘Let us forget Archer. Sit down.’ He took a seat at his consulting table. ‘How can I help you, Matthew? I see by your face this is no social call.’
I paused a moment before answering. Close to, I saw he looked tired, drained, and I felt reluctant to draw him again into the terrible affair of the murders; yet I needed his counsel. I fingered the pilgrim badge in my pocket.
Guy turned to Piers. ‘Fetch us some wine, will you, my boy? You should not have mocked Dr Archer,’ he added indulgently. ‘Foolish as he is, he was suspicious.’
‘I am sorry, master, but it was hard to resist.’
‘Yes,’ Guy answered. ‘I know.’
‘What shall I say if those men call again, selling oil from the giant fish caught in the Thames?’ Piers asked. ‘I know many of the apothecaries are buying it.’
‘And claiming all sorts of magical properties for it, no doubt. Tell them to be on their way. And keep them outside, that stuff stinks.’
‘That must have been them earlier,’ Guy said after Piers had gone. ‘I thought it was the local children knocking at my door and running away. They think it a good jest for All Fools’ Day.’
‘You are too soft with that boy, you know. Surely it is a dangerous thing to mock a man like Dr Archer.’
‘Ah, but he is a droll lad.’ Guy smiled again, then his face resumed its serious expression. ‘What has happened, Matthew? Is it to do with Master Elliard?’
‘Yes.’ I hesitated again. What right had I to involve him in this? Then I thought, because he may help us. I met his gaze. ‘It turns out that Roger was the third person to be murdered recently in a terrible, elaborate and apparently pointless way. But I think I know the reason, if you can call it a reason.’ I told him about Tupholme and Dr Gurney, the link to the Book of Revelation, the possibility that the killer was seeking out apostates from radical religion. Guy’s dark features seemed almost to lengthen and sag as I told him.
‘I knew Paul Gurney,’ he said when I had ended my narrative and sworn him to secrecy. ‘Not well, but we met at a few functions. He seemed a quiet, scholarly man. No swagger to him, unlike Archer.’ He shook his head. ‘I can imagine him starting as a reformer, but disliking these ill-educated, self-righteous radicals now.’
There was a knock at the door, and Piers entered with a tray of wine. His handsome face was again impassive, but there was something intent in the expression in those large blue eyes that made me wonder if he had been listening at the door. I watched him as he laid down the tray and left the room, and let him see that I was watching.
‘We found this at the site of Tupholme’s murder,’ I said when Piers had gone. I produced the badge. Guy turned it over in his long fingers, then gave me a keen look. ‘You still think the killer is a Benedictine infirmarian? Because of this, and the dwale?’
‘I think it possible.’
He studied the badge, then handed it back. He sighed deeply. ‘You could be right. We do not know what has made this man what he is.’
‘Barak and I spent yesterday at the Court of Augmentations, tracing Benedictine infirmarians in London at the time of the Dissolution. The infirmarian who attended the nuns at St Helens is dead, and the St Saviours man went to his family in Northumberland and collects his pension there. But the Westminster infirmarian and both his assistants are still in London. They collect their pensions at Westminster. We won’t have the addresses until Monday, but we have names. The infirmarian is called Goddard, Lancelot Goddard. He had two assistants, Charles Cantrell, a monk, and Francis Lockley, a lay brother not in orders. Guy, have you ever heard those names?’
‘I told you, I did not know them. When I came to London I was no longer a monk. And, Matthew, many ex-Benedictine monks from elsewhere came to London after the Dissolution. What was done to the monks was enough to drive men mad,’ he added with sudden bitterness. ‘Torn from their homes and their lives. Thrown into a different world, where the Bible is interpreted as literal fact, its symbols and metaphors forgotten, and fanatics react with equanimity to the blood and cruelty of Revelation. Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in that book? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought.’
‘Bishop Bonner would destroy them just as cruelly.’
‘Do you think I do not know that?’ he answered angrily. ‘I, whose family was made to leave Spain by the Inquisition, loyal Catholics though we were, because we had the taint of an Islamic past?’
‘I know. I am sorry.’
‘So am I. Sorry for what the world has come to.’ He leaned forward, supporting his head with his hand for a moment, then looked up. ‘I am sorry, Matthew,’ he said wearily. ‘You came here for my help.’
‘No, I spoke insensitively. It is this matter - Guy, we spoke of madness the other day. Harsnet thinks the killer is possessed, thinks someone who was mad could not organize the
se murders so carefully, so patiently. We think he lay out there in the Lambeth marshes for most of a cold, wet day.’
‘What do you think, Matthew?’
‘Possession is an easy cry to raise against the inexplicable. But these murders are so strange and terrible I do not know what to think. Even Barak is afraid. He has never heard of anything like them either.’
‘I have,’ he said quietly.
I stared at him.
‘Obsession,’ he said. ‘It is a type of madness we did not discuss at the Bedlam. A man may have a strange, bizarre obsession in one part of his life. And yet seem normal, or pass for normal, in others. Obsessions have been known since Greek and Roman times. I had a case myself last year of a merchant who from his youth had had an obsession with collecting shoes. Men’s shoes, women’s shoes, old shoes past repair he plucked from dungheaps. He filled his house with them. Only his wife knew, and when she challenged him, he would say only that shoes came in useful. By the time she consulted me he was travelling all over London looking for them, neglecting his business.’
‘But what has this strange story to do with this killer?’
‘Bear with me, Matthew. I met with the merchant, and eventually he told me that when he was a child he had had no shoes. Somewhere in his mind he was frightened of that happening again. He had had his obsession so long he had almost forgotten how it started.’
‘Did the knowledge help him?’
Guy shook his head sadly. ‘No. He would not let it go, or could not. He was made bankrupt and ended penniless, where he began. He is probably dead now, he could not have borne the hard life of a beggar. And so, because of his obsession, that which he most feared came true.’
‘A sad story.’
‘And obsessions can take many forms. Love is the commonest. Someone convinces themselves that they must have the beloved, even if that person is utterly unsuitable, does not care for the lover at all.’
‘Everyone has heard of cases like that.’
‘And if a life can be dominated by fierce, twisted love, may it not equally be ruled by fierce, twisted hate?’ He leaned back in his chair, fingering his cup, which he had emptied. ‘It has happened before,’ he added bleakly.
‘Where? When?’
Guy hesitated again, then spoke very quietly. ‘You should know why my studies once took a certain direction. When I was a young man in Paris, studying to be a physician, I fell in love.’ He smiled. ‘Oh yes, this brown, twisted old stick. I loved the daughter of a wine merchant, she was beautiful and clever, of Spanish origin, like me. The kindest person I ever knew. We were in love, and I wanted to marry her, but at the same time felt drawn to becoming a monk.’ He looked at me, bleakly. ‘And God decided the matter, or so I felt at the time. She was sitting by her fire one winter’s night when a spark flew out and set her dress alight. She died of burns and shock the next day.’
‘I never knew,’ I said. ‘I am sorry—’
‘It was long ago. But for a while it made me deny God, deny any goodness working in the world. I raged. I had been studying diseases of the mind, and now I probed the darkest regions of that study with a sort of angry relish. That was my time of despair, but, as Aquinas tells us, that can be a step on the ladder of mystical love; in time, I felt God’s love again, came back to the Church. Though in truth part of me still finds it hard to forgive Him, sinner that I am.’ For the first time ever I saw tears in his eyes, and I realized that Guy was troubled, deeply troubled, by something. I opened my mouth, but he spoke over me.
‘There was one case that was talked about in Paris when I was young. Though he had been dead then for sixty years, people still spoke of the Marshal Gilles de Rais when they wanted to curdle their blood.’
‘Who?’
‘He was a French knight and landowner. A successful military commander, who served with Joan of Arc against the English, to all appearances a normal man. But when he retired to his estates in Brittany he began abducting and murdering children in the most terrible and sadistic manner.’
‘Children?’
‘Yes. He did things I would not wish even to speak of. The local people knew what he did but he was a powerful man, beyond the law.’ He fixed me with a bleak gaze. ‘De Rais would get the local barber to come and style the hair on the heads of murdered boys that he had placed on stakes in his hall, and invite him to judge which looked the best. That is the type of thing he did.’
‘Jesu.’
‘Eventually, after five years, de Rais made the mistake of annoying the church in some dispute, and the local bishop stepped in at last. De Rais was tried and hanged for his crimes, which sent a wave of horror throughout the land when they were known. At his trial he said he had committed his crimes purely because they pleased him.’
‘Dear God.’ I remembered three years before, the case of a young boy I had encountered who had tortured animals and killed a beggar-boy shortly before his own violent death. I actually felt my skin crawl, as though some insect were on it.
Guy’s look at me was bleak. ‘I think there have been more monsters like this creature than we know.’
‘Someone brutally killing people for no reason. Yet I have never heard . . .’ I hesitated, frowning, as I recollected something from a long time ago. ‘No, wait. I think there was a case . . .’
Guy leaned forward. ‘Yes?’
‘When we were students, we were given legal problems to solve, which involved looking up cases in the law books. We spent half our time delving through the dusty old books in the Lincoln’s Inn library. I remember one of the students coming across a murder case from - oh, it must have been a hundred years ago - about a man who was executed for killing several young women. Where was it - in Norwich, I think.’ I smiled wryly. ‘There was nothing about the trial to create a legal precedent, but some lads passed it round because the trial report was full of gruesome detail. You know what students can be like.’
Guy smiled. ‘But not you?’
‘No. Coming to London from Lichfield, I thought there were more than enough gruesome things to see in the city, even then. I was more interested in finding new precedents to dazzle the benchers with. I will look for the case in the library.’ I frowned. ‘But I am not sure this man was such a killer as you describe. And even if he was, they must be rare indeed. How could anyone get away with it? How would the whole region where such a thing happened not turn all their energies to finding such a killer? From what you say, De Rais was a powerful man. Surely an ordinary person would be swiftly hunted down, even in a large city.’
‘You know how difficult the detection of crime is, Matthew. In England, more than most of Europe. Each city and parish enforcing the law through Justices of the Peace and coroners who are often corrupt, with the aid of a few constables who are usually stupid men.’
‘And who investigate killings with little or no reference to what may be happening in neighbouring districts. Yes. I have been talking about these things with Harsnet and Barak. And how most killers who are caught are impulsive and stupid—’
‘Whereas this one plans, obsessive as a lover, careful, meticulous, patient. He puts his whole self into his terrible work - the expression perhaps of a limitless rage.’
‘And this man has chosen apostates from radical reformism.’
He must have an utter devotion to his twisted passions, above anything else in the world. He can have no conscience. In his world only he matters. And it is perhaps not so large a step from there to persuading yourself that God himself has set you the task you so enjoy. Bringing forward the good and holy work outlined in the Book of Revelation.’ Guy’s face was drawn. ‘Obsession,’ he said quietly. ‘It is a wicked, wicked thing.’
‘He is mad, then?’
‘He cannot be sane as we understand the word. But it may be that his cleverness means he is able to pass himself off as normal, perhaps even work. Although I would have thought there must be signs. Such a gross distortion of the soul must leave outward signs . . .’
He shook his head again, then fixed me with intense brown eyes full of pain. ‘That pilgrim badge,’ he said.
I took it out. ‘What of it?’
‘If we have learned anything about this man, it is how careful he is. He would not have simply dropped something as rare and controversial as a pilgrim badge from the Westminster Abbey shrine.’
‘As Barak said, it may not have been him. One of the constables—’
‘Would hardly be likely to carry a pilgrim badge.’
‘So if the killer dropped it, he may have done so deliberately to mislead us?’
‘Or to give you a clue. Perhaps that is part of his madness. But from the study of obsession, Matthew, a study I regretted making and which has haunted me ever since, there is one thing I am sure of. This man will not stop at seven. How could he, if killing has become the centre of his universe, the centre of a mind collapsed in upon itself?’
‘But there are only seven vials of wrath—’
Guy nodded. ‘But Revelation is a whole sequence of violent stories, one after another, layers of them. When this cycle is finished, he has many more to choose from.’
‘Jesu.’ I sat there feeling utterly drained, staring at Guy. A terrible thought occurred to me. Dorothy, like Roger, like me, was a lapsed radical. I told myself not to be so foolish; none of those murdered had been connected to each other and there was surely no reason why he should change his pattern and go after Dorothy. And she was a woman, whose opinions counted for less. Then my eyes widened, for I saw that behind Guy the door to his inner chambers was open, just a crack. Something glinting in the crack had caught my eye and now I saw it was another eye, staring back at me. For a second I was filled with terror. Had I been followed after all? Wordlessly, I pointed at the open door.
Guy turned, then before I could stop him he jumped up and threw it open. The boy Piers stood there, a large bowl in his hands.