by C. J. Sansom
‘I wonder where the King and Queen will be hearing Mass,’ Barak said.
‘Privately at King’s Manor, I should think.’ ‘For security? Keeping safe from the Yorkers?’ ‘Maybe.’ I sighed. ‘I don’t wonder they rebelled.’ Barak looked at me askance. ‘You’re not turning papist, are you?’
‘No. I mean, the way they’ve been treated for years. Like second-rate Englishmen.’ I saw Master Craike passing with a group of richly robed officials, and raised a hand in a wave. He hesitated, then came over to us.
‘Are you going into church, Master Shardlake?’ ‘Perhaps a later service.’
He smiled. ‘We have just been up the belltower. Priests are holding open-air Masses all over the camp, ’tis quite a spectacle. Well, I must go, or I shall be late.’ He bowed and hurried off.
‘That man has an uneasy air for all his pleasant words,’ Barak observed.
‘Ay, he does.’
‘We should find out what goes on at this tavern I saw him at.’
I nodded. ‘Ay. Let’s do that. There’s something Tamasin might find out, too.’
He looked at me askance. ‘I’ll not have her in danger.’
emong
‘It might be useful if we could find out Master Culpeper’s antecedents. Who his friends and family are. Does he have northern connections, I wonder.’
‘I’ll see.’ He frowned. ‘I feel responsible for Tamasin. Involving her in this.’
I nodded. It was the first time Barak had ever seemed really to care for a girl. ‘I fear she is involved anyhow.’
‘I pray this may all be a mare’s nest and Oldroyd’s words meant something different.’ He put his hand inside his shirt, fingering his father’s old mezuzah. ‘If this is about an affair between these two, do you think Maleverer and the King’s men even suspect it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is the King impotent, I wonder?’ Barak pondered. ‘All know he has been ill with his leg for years.’
‘God knows.’
‘Perhaps his seed is thin and weak, old and ill as he is, while Culpeper’s flows thick and strong.’
I shuddered slightly. ‘I’d rather not think too much on that.’
‘Talking of illness, how is old Wrenne?’
‘Not good. He was in bed, though he insists he’ll be fit to hear the petitions tomorrow. I said I would go and see him again today. Come with me, at least his house is a place of safety.’
‘All right. Here. Look who is coming now.’
Latecomers were still heading for the church, and among them I saw Jennet Marlin, walking with a couple of ladies I did not recognize.
‘Where’s Tammy?’ Barak asked anxiously. ‘Mistress Marlin likes to keep her round her.’ He bit his lip. ‘Could you ask her? My rank forbids it.’
I stood up and bowed. Mistress Marlin, in a grey damask dress, the tails of an old-fashioned box hood streaming behind her head, signalled to the other ladies to walk on. She halted and, to my surprise, smiled at me a little nervously.
‘Master Shardlake. Are you on your way to church?’
‘Ah – no. But I wondered if I might trouble you with a query. Mistress Reedbourne is not with you?’
‘No. She is a little ill and has kept to her room.’ She gave that uncertain smile again, then took a deep breath. ‘I spoke harshly to you the other night, sir,’ she said. ‘I wish to apologize. Only, Tamasin has been a good companion to me. But –’ she looked at Barak – ‘I think perhaps she and your man do care for each other, and one should not stand in the way of love, should one?’
‘No,’ I said, a little taken aback. This was a change of mind indeed, yet not that dissimilar from my own. Perhaps Tamasin had appealed to her too, charmed her, for all that Mistress Marlin did not seem a woman susceptible to charm. She looked at me seriously with her large brown eyes. ‘I spoke bitterly to you, sir, only because my own fiancé is unjustly in the Tower.’
‘I understand.’
‘Have you heard any news, sir, of how long the King may be in York?’ She grasped her engagement ring, turning it round and round on her finger.
‘No, mistress. No one seems to know. I imagine it all depends on the Scotch King.’
She shook her head. ‘There is no word of him even being on the road. And there was talk at the manor last night of new raids by the border reivers.’ She looked around her. ‘Oh, I wish I were gone from here.’
‘I too.’
‘Bernard has still been neither accused nor released. Sir, you are a lawyer, how long can they hold him in the Tower?’
‘On the King’s authority, indefinitely. But representations can be made. What contacts do you have in London?’
‘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 Chan
cellor 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 arg
ued 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.’