Dark Fire (20 page)

‘We’ve had more new leads than answers so far. But that’s what I’d expect at the start of an investigation as complicated as this. We must visit that whore. And I think
the goodwife is still holding something back. Is your man Smith staying with her?’

‘Till otherwise instructed.’ He retrieved his orange and sucked it noisily. ‘I told you she was a nasty old crow.’

‘It’s something to do with the apparatus. I don’t think they kept it the house.’

‘Then where?’

‘I don’t know. Some warehouse? But there was nothing about any other property among their papers.’

‘You looked?’

‘Yes.’

I took the bottle from my pocket and handed it carefully to Barak. ‘There was a pool of this stuff on the floor. It’s almost colourless, has no smell, but if you taste it you get a
kick like a mule.’

He unstoppered the bottle and sniffed the contents carefully, then put a little on his fingers. He touched it to his tongue and made a grimace, as I had. ‘Jesu, you’re right!’
he said. ‘It’s not Greek Fire, though. I told you, that had a fearsome stink.’

I took the bottle back, stoppered it and shook it gently, watching the colourless liquid swirl within. ‘I want to take this to Guy.’

‘So long as you’re careful what you tell him.’

‘God’s wounds, how many times do I have to tell you I will be?’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘As you will.’

‘What exactly did you get out of the two lawyers?’

‘Marchamount and Bealknap both insist they were just middlemen. I’m not sure about Bealknap. He’s involved with Richard Rich in some way, though I don’t know whether it
relates to Greek Fire. Incidentally, he has dealings with foreign merchants, says he represents them in negotiations with the Custom House. I saw some papers on his desk. Lord Cromwell will have
access to the records of trade. Could someone in his office check them? I’ve too little time.’

Barak nodded. ‘I’ll send a note. I’ve been trying to remember where I’ve seen that arsehole Bealknap’s face before, but it hasn’t come to me. It was a long
time ago, I’m sure.’

There was a knock and Joan entered with a tray. She clucked at the dusty state of our clothes and I asked her to lay out new ones upstairs. I winced at a spasm from my back as I bent to pour
some beer.

‘You shouldn’t overtire yourself, sir,’ she said.

‘I’ll be all right when I’ve had some rest.’

As she left us, we both took welcome draughts of beer.

‘The Duke of Norfolk was in a confident mood today,’ I said. ‘Baiting reformers at the lunch. A friend of mine baited him back, he’ll be in trouble now.’

‘I thought lawyers were all reformers.’

‘Not all. And they’ll turn to follow the wind, just like everyone else in London, if Cromwell falls. From fear and hope of advancement.’

‘We’ve so little time,’ Barak said. ‘Are you sure we need to go to Barty’s with that librarian tomorrow? I agree you need to talk to him, but you could see him at
his chantry.’

‘No. I need to see the roots of this, to go back to where it all started. Tomorrow we’ll go to Barty’s, then to see Guy and to the whorehouse in Southwark to see if that girl
has anything to say. I’ve my interview with the Wentworths as well.’ I sighed.

‘Ten days.’ He shook his head.

‘Barak,’ I said, ‘I may be a melancholy man, but you have all the marks of a sanguine humour. You would rush at things too much if it was left to you.’

‘We need this finished. And don’t forget how we were followed yesterday,’ he added gloomily. ‘We might be in danger too.’

‘I know that only too well.’ I stood up. ‘And now I am going to look at more of those old papers.’

I left him and went up to my bedroom, reflecting how I had felt afraid when I walked alone to the Inn earlier. I had to admit that when I was out I felt safer with Barak, the man of the streets,
around. But I wished I did not have the necessity.

N
EXT MORNING
, the thirty-first of May, was hotter than ever. Again we left early on horseback; the way to St
Bartholomew’s lay due northward so we could not use the river. The sun was still low in the sky, turning a bank of thin cloud on the horizon to bright pink. Barak had gone out again the
evening before and I had been asleep when he returned. At breakfast he seemed in a surly mood; perhaps he had a hangover, or a girl had sent him packing and dented his vanity. I packed a couple of
the alchemical books into the battered old leather satchel my father had given me when first I came to London. I wanted Guy to look at them later.

The City was coming to life after the Sunday rest; shutters and shelves clattered as the shopkeepers made ready for the new week, shifting beggars from their doorways with curses. The homeless
ones stumbled into the street, faces red and chapped with constant exposure to the sun. One, a little girl, almost stumbled into Chancery.

‘Careful there,’ I called.

‘Careful yourself, shitting hunchback bastard!’ Furious eyes stared at me from a filthy face, and I recognized the girl who had caused the commotion at the baker’s shop. I
watched her limp away, dragging one leg. ‘Poor creature,’ I said. ‘When people say that beggars lick the sweat from the true labourers’ brows, I wonder if they think of
waifs like that?’

‘Ay.’ Barak paused. ‘Did you manage to ferret any more out of those old papers last night?’

‘There is a lot about the Greek wars in those manuscripts. There was much trickery in them. Once, to deceive their opponents into thinking they had more troops than they did, Alexander
tied torches to the tails of a flock of sheep. The Persians, looking at his camp at night, thought he had far more men than was true.’

Barak grunted. ‘Sounds like balls. The sheep would have bolted. Anyway, what’s that to do with our business?’

‘The story stuck in my head for some reason. There is reference as well to some sort of liquid being used in Rome’s wars in Babylonia. There are a few books on the Roman wars at
Lincoln’s Inn; I’ll try to find them.’

‘So long as it doesn’t take too much time.’

‘Did you write to Lord Cromwell about Bealknap and the customs?’

‘Ay. And last night I tried to find some more about that man who followed us. No luck.’

‘We haven’t seen him again. Perhaps he’s given up.’

‘Maybe, but I’ll keep my eyes open.’

We passed a dead mastiff in an alleyway, its bloated carcass stinking to heaven. Why did people flock to the City, I wondered, to the ratlike scrabble for subsistence that so often ended in
begging on the streets? The lure of money, I supposed; hopes of scraping a living and dreams of becoming rich.

St Sepulchre’s was one of a number of streets giving onto the wide open space of Smithfield. It was quiet this morning, for it was not one of the fair days when drovers brought hundreds of
cattle in to market. To one side the hospital of St Bartholomew’s stood silent and empty behind its high wall, an Augmentations guard at the gate. When the monastery went down the year
before, the patients had been turned out to fend for themselves as best they could; talk of a new hospital paid for by subscriptions from the rich had come to nothing yet.

The monastery itself stood at right angles to the hospital, its high buildings dominating the square, although some of those had gone now. Here too a guard stood outside the gatehouse. I saw
workmen were bringing out boxes and stacking them against the wall, where a group of blue-robed apprentices buzzed around them.

‘Can’t see Kytchyn anywhere,’ Barak said. ‘We’ll have to ask the guard.’

We rode across the open space, where paths led between clumps of scrubby grass. There was one large patch of earth where no grass grew and the earth was mixed with blackened cinders; the site
where heretics were burned. I remembered Lord Cromwell once telling me he longed to burn a papist using his own images for fuel and two years ago he had: a wooden saint had fed the pyre when Father
Forest was burned there, suspended above the fire in chains to prolong his agony before ten thousand spectators. Forest had denied the king’s supremacy over the Church, so legally he should
have been executed as a traitor, not burned, but Cromwell could afford to ignore such niceties. I had not been there, but as I averted my eyes from the spot I could not help reflecting on that
terrible death; the flames making the skin shrivel away, the blood beneath hissing as it dropped into the fire. I shook my head to clear it as I pulled Chancery to a halt before the gatehouse and
dismounted.

I saw the boxes were full of bones, brown and ancient. A group of apprentices was delving inside them, casting pieces of tattered winding sheets onto the pavement, hauling out skulls and
carefully scraping away the greenish moss that clung to some of them. The watchman, a huge fat fellow, watched indifferently. We tied the horses to a post. Barak went over to the watchman and
nodded at the apprentices. ‘God’s teeth, what are they at?’

‘Scraping off the grave moss. Sir Richard is clearing out the monks’ graveyard.’ The big man shrugged. ‘The apothecaries say the moss on the skulls of the dead is good
for the liver and they’ve sent their apprentices up here.’ He delved in his pocket and pulled out a little golden trinket in the shape of a crescent. ‘There’s some strange
things buried with them – this monk had been on the Crusades.’ He winked. ‘My little bonus for letting the boys scavenge.’

‘We have business here,’ I said. ‘We are due to meet a Master Kytchyn.’

‘Lord Cromwell’s business,’ Barak added.

The doorman nodded. ‘The fellow you want is here already, I allowed him into the church.’ He studied us closely, eyes alert with curiosity.

I walked up to to the gateway. The guard hesitated a moment, then stepped aside and let us through.

The scene that met my eyes on the other side of the gatehouse made me stop dead. The nave of the great church had been pulled down, leaving only a gigantic pile of rubble from which spars of
wood protruded. The north end of the church still stood and a huge wooden wall had been erected to seal it from the elements. Most of the neighbouring cloisters had been pulled down too, and the
chapter house stripped of its lead. I could see beyond to the prior’s house, the fine dwelling Sir Richard Rich had bought. Washing hung from lines in the back garden and three little girls
ran and played among the flapping sheets, oddly incongruous amid the destruction. I had seen monastic houses brought down before – who had not in those days? – but not on this scale. A
sinister quietness hung over the wreckage.

Barak laughed and scratched his head. ‘Not much left, is there?’

‘Where are the workmen?’ I asked.

‘They start late if it’s Augmentations work. They know it’s a good screw.’

I followed Barak as he picked his way through the rubble towards a door in the wooden barrier. I had a lifetime’s contempt for these huge, rich monastic churches kept for the enjoyment of
perhaps a dozen monks; when the purpose of the foundation was to serve a hospital the waste of resources seemed even more obscene. Yet as I followed Barak through the door, I had to admit that what
was left of the interior of St Bartholomew’s Church was magnificent. The walls soared a hundred and fifty feet in a series of pillared arches, richly painted in greens and ochres, up to a row
of stained-glass windows. Because of the wooden barrier at the south end, what remained of the interior was gloomy, but I could see that the niches where saints’ shrines had stood were empty
now and that the side chapels had been stripped of all their images. Near the top of the church, however, one large canopied tomb remained. A candle burned before it, the only one in that building,
which once would have been lit by thousands. A figure stood before the tomb, head bent. We walked towards him, our footsteps ringing on the tiled floor. I caught a faint tang in the air; the
incense of centuries.

The figure turned as we drew near. A tall, thin man of about fifty in a white clerical cassock, a tangle of grey hair framing a long, anxious face. The look he gave us was wary and fearful. He
leaned back as though wishing he might melt into the shadowed wall.

‘Master Kytchyn?’ I called.

‘Ay. Master Shardlake?’ His voice was unexpectedly high. He cast a nervous look at Barak, making me wonder if he had been rough with Kytchyn the day before.

‘I’m sorry about the candle, sir,’ he said quickly. ‘I – it was a moment of weakness, sir, when I saw our old founder’s tomb.’ He leaned forward quickly
and pinched out the flame, wincing as the hot wax burned his fingers.

‘No matter,’ I said. I glanced at the tomb, where a remarkably lifelike effigy of a friar in Dominican black lay in the dimness, arms folded in prayer.

‘Prior Rahere,’ Kytchyn mumbled. ‘Our founder.’

‘Yes. Well, never mind that. I wanted to see the place where a certain Master Gristwood discovered something last year.’

‘Yes, sir.’ He swallowed, still looking frightened. ‘Master Gristwood said to say no word of what we found, on pain of death, and I haven’t, I swear. Sir, is it true what
this man told me? Master Gristwood has been murdered?’

‘It is, Brother.’

‘I am not brother,’ Kytchyn mumbled. ‘I am not a friar any more. No one is.’

‘Of course. I am sorry – a slip of the tongue.’ I looked around the church. ‘Are they to bring the rest of this place down?’

‘No.’ His face cheered a little. ‘The local people have asked to keep what is left as their own church. They are fond of the place. Sir Richard has agreed.’

And their support will be useful to Rich when the prior dies, I thought. I looked around. ‘I gather all this began when the Augmentations men found something in the church crypt, last
autumn.’

Kytchyn nodded. ‘Yes. When the priory surrendered, the Augmentations men came to take an inventory. I was in the library when Master Gristwood came in. He asked if there was any record
that might help with something strange they had found down in the crypt.’

‘The crypt was used for storage?’

‘Yes, sir. It’s a big place, there’s stuff that’s been there hundreds of years. I knew of nothing kept there apart from old lumber, though I’d been librarian twenty
years. I swear it, sir.’