by C. J. Sansom
Mylling came over. ‘All done, sir?’
I nodded. ‘I wonder whether Master Hobbey will come to the hearing.’
‘His barrister going to the initial hearing would suffice. Though I would go if I was the subject of an accusation like that.’
‘Indeed yes.’ I gave him a friendly smile. I needed Mylling for one thing more. ‘There is a separate matter I seek information on. Not connected to this case. The record of a lunatico inquirendo, a finding of lunacy on a young woman. It would have been nineteen years ago. I wondered if you could help me find it.’
He looked dubious. ‘Do you represent the guardian?’
‘No. I want to find who the guardian is.’ I tapped my purse.
Mylling cheered up. ‘It’s not strictly my department. But I know where the records are.’ He took a deep breath, then turned to the young clerk. ‘Alabaster, we’re going to have to go to the Stinkroom. Go to the kitchens, fetch lanterns and meet us there.’
THE PEOPLE waiting on the bench had all gone. Mylling led me through a warren of tiny rooms with a quick, bustling step. In one a clerk sat with two piles of gold coins on his desk, transferring angels and sovereigns from one pile to another and marking up a fat ledger.
We descended a flight of stone stairs. There was a landing and then another flight, leading down into darkness. We were below street level. Alabaster was waiting on the landing, holding two horn lanterns with beeswax candles inside, which gave off a rich yellow light. I wondered how he had got there before us.
‘Thank you, Alabaster,’ Mylling said. ‘We won’t be long.’ He turned to me. ‘This is not a place you’d want to spend too much time in.’
The young clerk bowed, then walked away with quick, loping strides. Mylling took the lantern and handed one to me. ‘If you please, sir.’
I followed him down ancient steps, carefully, for they were so old they were worn in the centre. At the bottom was an ancient Norman door set with studs of iron. ‘This was once where part of the royal treasure was kept,’ Mylling told me. ‘These parts date back to Norman times.’ He put his lantern on the floor, turned his key in the lock and heaved at the door. It creaked open loudly. It was enormously thick and heavy, and he needed both hands. Next to the door was half a flagstone. He nudged it into the doorway with his foot. ‘Just to be safe, sir. Careful of the steps inside.’
As I descended after him into the pitch-black room, the smell of rot and damp made me gasp and almost retch. Mylling’s lantern showed a small, dimly lit chamber with a stone-flagged floor. Water dripped somewhere. The walls were furred with mould. Piles of ancient papers, some with red seals dangling from strips of coloured linen, were stacked on damp-looking shelves and on the old wooden chests that stood piled on top of each other.
‘The old records room,’ Mylling said. ‘The work at Wards grows so fast, the storage space is all taken up so we have put papers about wards who have died, or grown up and sued out their livery, down here. And all the lunatic cases.’ He turned and looked at me, his face more lined and seamed than ever in the lamplight. ‘There’s no money in lunatics, you see.’
I coughed at the foul air. ‘I see why you call it the Stinkroom.’
‘No one can stay here for long – they start coughing and can’t breathe. I don’t like coming down here; I start to wheeze even in my own house in a damp winter. In a few years all these papers will be stuck together with mould. I tell them, but they don’t listen. Let’s get on, if we may. What date would this lunacy enquiry be, sir?’
‘Fifteen twenty-six, I believe. The name is Ellen Fettiplace. From Sussex.’
He looked at me keenly. ‘Is this another matter the Queen has an interest in?’
‘No.’
‘Fifteen twenty-six. The King was still married to Catherine the Spaniard then. That caused some stir, his divorcing her to marry Anne Boleyn.’ He chuckled wheezily. ‘A few more divorces and executions since then, eh?’ He weaved his way through the chests to a far corner. ‘This is where the lunatics are kept,’ he said, stopping at a row of shelves piled with more damp-looking paper. He raised his lantern, and pulled out a stack. ‘Fifteen twenty-six.’ He laid them on the stone floor, bent down and riffled through them. After a while he looked up. ‘Nothing here for Fettiplace, sir.’
‘Are you sure? No similar names?’
‘No, sir. Are you sure you have the year right?’
‘Try the years before and after.’
Mylling rose slowly, wet marks from the floor on his hose, and returned to the stacks. As he ferreted through more papers, my nose and throat began to tingle. It was as though the furry, damp coating on the walls was starting to grow inside me. At least the clerk was thorough. He pulled out two more stacks and laid them on the floor, flicking through them with experienced fingers. I noticed a huge glistening mushroom growing between the stone flags next to him. At length he got up and shook his head. ‘There’s nothing there, sir. No one named Fettiplace. I’ve been a year back and a year forward. If it was here I’d find it.’
This was unexpected. How could Ellen be held in the Bedlam if there was no order of lunacy? Mylling rose, his knees creaking. Then we both jumped at the sound of a clap of thunder through the half-open door. Underground as we were, it was still loud.
‘Listen to that,’ Mylling said. ‘What a noise. As though God himself were sending his fury crashing down on us.’
‘He’d have cause, given what goes on in this place,’ I said with sudden bitterness.
Mylling raised his lantern and looked at me. ‘It’s the King’s wish, sir, everything that happens here. He is our Sovereign Lord and Head of the Church, too. What he orders must be enough to satisfy our consciences.’ I thought, perhaps he believes what he is saying, perhaps that is how he is able to do this.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t find your lunatic,’ Mylling said.
‘Well, sometimes knowing what is not on record can be useful.’
Mylling looked at me, eyes bright with curiosity and maybe some deeper emotion. ‘I hope you find your witnesses for the Curteys case, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘What happened to Michael Calfhill? I can see nothing good, though Master Sewster wouldn’t say.’
I looked at him. ‘He killed himself.’
Mylling looked at me with his sharp dark eyes. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he’d have done that. He seemed so relieved to have made the application.’ He shook his grey head, then led the way back into the corridors. I heard the chink of gold again.
Chapter Six
STEPPING OUTSIDE, I blinked in unexpectedly clear light. The flagstones of the passageway were covered with hailstones, shining under a sky that was bright blue again. The air was fresher, suddenly cool. I walked away carefully, crunchy slipperiness under my feet. In Palace Yard people who had taken shelter from the storm in doorways were emerging again.
I decided to walk to Barak’s house, which lay on my way home, and see if he was back. By the time I reached the great Charing Cross the hailstones had melted away, the ground only a little damp underfoot. As I passed the fine new houses of the rich lining the Strand, my thoughts were on Ellen. How could she have been placed in the Bedlam without a certificate of lunacy? Someone had been paid well to take her in and was still being paid. I realized she was at liberty to walk out of the place tomorrow; but there was the paradox, for that was the last thing she could do.
I turned into Butcher Lane, a short street of two-storey houses. Barak and Tamasin rented the ground floor of a neat little house, painted in pleasing colours of yellow and green. I knocked at the door, and it was answered by Goodwife Marris; a stout woman in her forties, Jane Marris normally had an air of cheerful competence. Today, however, she looked worried.
‘Is Mistress Tamasin all right?’ I asked anxiously.
‘She’s all right,’ Jane replied with a touch of asperity. ‘It’s the master that isn’t.’
She showed me into the tidy little parlour with its view on a small garden bright with flo
wers. Tamasin sat on a heap of cushions, hands cradling her belly. Her face was streaked with tears, her expression angry. Barak sat on a hard chair against the wall, shamefaced. I looked from one to the other. ‘What’s amiss?’
Tamasin cast a glare at her husband. ‘We’ve had that officer back. Jack’s only got himself conscripted into the army, the fool.’
‘What? But they’re looking for single men.’
‘It’s because he flipped his fingers at the man. And he answered him back today. Jack thinks he can do as he likes. Thinks he’s still Thomas Cromwell’s favoured servant, not just a law clerk.’
Barak winced. ‘Tammy—’
‘Don’t Tammy me. Sir, can you help us? He’s been told to go to Cheapside Cross in three days’ time to be sworn in.’
‘Sworn straight in? Not even sent to a View of Arms?’
Barak looked at me. ‘He said he could see I was fit – lusty in body and able to keep the weather, he said. And he wouldn’t listen to argument, just started shouting. Said I’d been chosen and that was that.’ He sighed. ‘Tammy’s right, it’s because I was insolent.’
‘Recruiters are supposed to pick the best men, not indulge their disfavours.’ I sighed. ‘What was his name?’
‘Goodryke.’
‘All right, I will go to Alderman Carver tomorrow.’ I looked at Barak seriously. ‘The officer will probably want paying off, you realize that.’
‘We’ve some money set aside,’ he said quietly.
‘Yes,’ Tamasin shot back. ‘For the baby.’ Her eyes filled with tears.
Barak shrugged. ‘Might as well spend it now. Its value’s going down every day. Oh, God’s death, Tammy, don’t start throwing snot around again.’
I expected Tamasin to shout back at him, but she only sighed and spoke quietly. ‘Jack, I wish you’d accept your status in life, live quietly. Why must you always fight with people? Why can’t you be at peace?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he answered humbly. ‘I should have thought. We’ll be all right, Master Shardlake will help us.’
She closed her eyes. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘Leave me for a while.’
‘Jack,’ I said quickly, ‘let’s go out and discuss this case. I’ve some interesting news. I know where we can get a pie – ’ Barak hesitated, but I could see Tamasin was best left alone for a while.
Outside the door, he shook his head. ‘That was some storm,’ he said.
‘Ay. The hailstones were thick on the ground at Westminster.’
He nodded back at the house. ‘I meant in there.’
I laughed. ‘She’s right. You are incorrigible.’
WE WENT TO a tavern near Newgate jail frequented by law students and jobbing solicitors. It was busy already. A group of students sat drinking with half a dozen apprentices round a large table. The barriers of class, I had noticed, were becoming blurred among young men of military age. They were well on in their cups, singing the song that had become popular after our defeat of the Scots at Solway Moss three years before.
‘King Jamey, Jemmy, Jocky my Jo;
Ye summoned our King, why did ye so – ’
And now apparently the Scots are waiting to fall on us, I thought, reinforced by thousands of French troops. Hardly surprising since the King had been chivalrously waging war on their infant Queen Mary for three years. Looking at the group, I saw an older man among them, and recognized the scarred face and eyepatch of my steward. Coldiron, his face flushed, was singing along lustily. I remembered it was his night off.
‘Go to the hatch and get me a beer and a pie,’ I told Barak. ‘I’m going to sit there.’ I nodded to a table screened from the body of the tavern by a partition.
Barak returned with two mugs of beer and two mutton pies. He sat down heavily, and looked at me apologetically. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Tamasin is in a great chafe.’
‘She’s right, I know. I shouldn’t have given that arsehole a flea in his ear. Soldiers are touchy. Did you hear – a band of German mercenaries made a riot up at Islington this morning? Wanted more pay to go to Scotland.’
‘The English troops are going quietly enough.’
‘Can you get me out of it?’ he asked seriously.
‘I hope so. You know I’ll do what I can.’ I shook my head. ‘I saw a hundred men from the Trained Bands setting out from Westminster Stairs earlier. And at Lincoln’s Inn I heard there are twelve thousand men in the navy. Sixty thousand militia on the Channel coast, thirty thousand in Essex. Twenty thousand on the Scottish border. Dear God.’
Beyond the partition, one of the carousing youngsters shouted, ‘We’ll find every last damned French spy in London! Slimy gamecock swine, they’re no match for plain Englishmen!’
‘He’d feel different if he had a wife and child.’ Barak took a bite of his pie and a long swig of beer.
‘If you were their age again and single, would you not be singing along with them?’
‘No. I’ve never run with the crowd, particularly if it’s heading over a cliff.’ Barak wiped his mouth, took another swig.
I looked at his near-empty tankard. ‘Slow down.’
‘I don’t drink much now. You know that. It was that which parted me from Tamasin. Not that it’s always easy. It’s all right for you to lecture that never drinks enough to drown a mouse.’
I smiled sadly. It was true I drank little. Even now I remembered my father, after my mother died, spending his evenings in the tavern. I would be in bed and would hear him being helped upstairs by the servants, stumbling on the steps, mumbling nonsense. I had sworn never to end like that. I shook my head. ‘What did you find out today?’
‘I think there’s something odd about Michael Calfhill’s death,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I talked to Michael’s neighbours, saw the local constable. He’s an old gabblemouth, so I took him for a drink. He said Michael had a spot of trouble with some local apprentices. Corner boys, standing around looking tough, with eyes peeled for French spies.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘The constable heard them shouting after Michael as he passed. Apparently the lads didn’t like the way Michael looked at them.’
‘What way?’
‘As though he’d have liked to get into their codpieces.’
My eyes widened. ‘There mustn’t be a word of that at the hearing. What did the neighbours say?’
‘There’s a young couple in the room below Michael’s. They didn’t see him much, just heard him on the stairs, sometimes pacing in his room. The night he died they were woken by a crash. The husband went upstairs but couldn’t get an answer, so he called the constable. He barged the door open and found Michael swinging from the roof-beam. Michael had cut a strip from the bedsheet and made a noose, then stood on a chair and kicked it away. That was what made the bang.’ Barak leaned forward, animated now. ‘I asked the young couple if they heard any footsteps going up or down the stairs. They didn’t, but the room’s only one storey up. And the constable said the window was open.’
‘It’s summer, that’s no surprise.’
‘I’m just saying someone could have got in while Michael was asleep, strangled him, then strung him up.’ Barak smiled, his old conspiratorial smile. ‘We can get into the room tomorrow if you like, take a look. It hasn’t been let. The constable left the key with the young couple. I told them I might be back with someone.’
‘I’ll think about it. What about that vicar?’
‘He’s still at the same church, St Evelyn’s in Fall Lane. Master Broughton. He wasn’t there, the verger said to come back tomorrow at eleven.’
I smiled. ‘Well done. We might have a witness after all. And we need one.’ I told him about my visit to the Court of Wards. ‘You got off lightly if you only had to pay out some some beer money. It cost me three shillings in good silver to get Mylling’s help. We’ll go and see the vicar tomorrow. And, yes, I’ll have a look at Michael’s lodging. Though his mother said the note was definitely in his
hand.’ I frowned. ‘I wonder if whatever he found in Hampshire might have sent him out of his wits.’
The voices of the gang beyond the partition had grown louder, and now I heard Coldiron’s voice, a grating shout. ‘Men nowadays are too womanly! Sleeping out’s all right! Get some branches and put blankets over them and you’re as snug as a pig!’
‘I’d rather huggle with my pretty pussy!’
Coldiron shouted above the laughter. ‘Plenty of pussy in the army! Camp followers! Dirty girls, but they know what they’re doing! Come lads, who’s going to get me another drink?’
‘You made a bad choice there,’ Barak said.
‘I know. I’m going to get rid of him as soon as I can find someone else.’
Barak drained his mug. ‘D’you want another beer? Don’t worry, this’ll be my last.’
‘All right. But don’t catch Coldiron’s eye.’
While Barak fetched the drinks I sat thinking. When he returned I said, ‘I found out something about Ellen at the Court of Wards. She has never been registered as a lunatic.’
‘Then how did she get to the Bedlam?’
‘That’s what I intend to find out. Someone has been paying. Warden Metwys is in it, he has to be. And all the Bedlam wardens back nineteen years. The wardenship is an office of profit, sold to courtiers.’
Barak said, ‘You’ll end up more involved with her than ever.’
I shook my head. ‘I won’t. I can’t.’
‘Look, at the moment Ellen’s got somewhere to live, a job of sorts. If you delve into family secrets, whoever’s been paying the Bedlam might stop. Then the warden might kick her out. Where does she go then – your house?’