Dark Fire (29 page)

‘Was it? It had better be.’ I stood away from him. He brushed himself down, recovering himself, and gave me a look of pure venom.

‘I will have my costs for this case, Brother,’ he said, a momentary tremble in his voice. ‘I will send the Common Council a fee note—’

‘Ay, do that.’ I turned my back on him and rejoined Barak and an uncomfortable-looking Vervey. Bealknap slunk away.

‘He promises us a fee note,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘Master Vervey, I will let the council have my recommendations. Once again, I am sorry for this outcome. I suspect the
judge may have been bribed.’

‘It would not surprise me,’ Vervey replied. ‘I know of Bealknap. Will you write to us with your views as soon as may be? I know the Common Council will be worried by the
implications.’

‘Ay.’

Vervey bowed and disappeared into the throng. ‘What did you say to Bealknap?’ Barak asked. ‘I thought you were going to rough him up.’

‘I warned him I still had my eye on him. Told him I’d been looking into his connections with the French.’

‘Bealknap was definitely the arsehole who came to my – my stepfather.’ He spoke the word bitterly.

I set my lips. ‘Do you think you could find more about his running fake compurgators? Find an adult who could give evidence. It would be something to threaten him with—’

I was interrupted. There was a stir in the crowd around us, and I turned to see Rich bearing down on me, a smile on his face but his eyes holding me with the same cold stare as they had in
court.

‘Brother Shardlake again and his ruffled-headed assistant.’ He smiled at Barak. ‘You should have a care to comb your hair, sir, before coming to court.’

Barak returned his stare evenly.

Rich smiled and turned to me. ‘That’s an impertinent fellow you keep, Brother Shardlake. You need to teach him manners. And perhaps learn some yourself.’

Rich’s stare was unnerving, but I held my ground. ‘I am sorry, Sir Richard, I do not know what you mean.’

‘You involve yourself in matters beyond your station. You should stick to helping country farmers with their land disputes.’

‘What matters do you mean, Sir Richard?’

‘You know,’ he said. ‘Don’t play innocent with me. Take care or you’ll suffer for it.’ And with that he turned round and was gone. There was a moment’s
silence.

‘He knows,’ Barak said, his voice low and intense. ‘He knows about Greek Fire.’

‘How? How could he?’

‘I don’t know, but he does. What else could he have meant? Perhaps Gristwood did go to see him after all during those missing six months.’

I frowned. ‘But – if he threatens me, he threatens Cromwell.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t know the earl’s involved.’

I looked after Rich thoughtfully. ‘Bealknap scurries away and a second later Rich appears. And he was doing something that involved Rich that day at Augmentations.’

‘Perhaps he has Rich’s protection.’ Barak set his lips. ‘The earl must know of this.’

I nodded reluctantly. ‘God’s death, Rich involved too.’ I exclaimed crossly as someone jostled me. ‘Come, let’s get out of here. We’re due at
Lothbury.’

T
HE RIVER WAS CROWDED
again and we had to wait at the steps for a boat. Barak leaned on the parapet.

‘Do you think Bealknap bribed that judge?’ he asked.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised. Heslop has a poor reputation for honesty.’

‘Will you win if you take the case to Chancery?’

‘We should do. They’ll look at the merits of the matter. But God knows when we’ll get on. Bealknap’s right about their delays – I named my horse for their slow
ways.’ I looked at Barak seriously. ‘Find one of these compurgators. We can offer a reward and perhaps immunity from prosecution if Cromwell will agree. We need a lever over Bealknap,
especially if he’s got Rich behind him.’

‘Ay, I’ll do it.’ He turned to face me. ‘I’ll not go to my stepfather, though, even if I knew where he and my mother lived. Not even for the earl.’

‘No? I thought there were no limits to your loyalty.’

His eyes flashed. ‘I loved my father, for all he smelt of shit. My mother would have nothing to do with him; he took up his trade after I was born or I’d not be here at all. I was
twelve when he died.’ I nodded, interested. For the first time my difficult companion was showing me something of himself.

‘We’d had this cheating attorney as a lodger for years, Kenney his name was. He had the best part of the house while we had two rooms. He was good with words and my mother liked him,
he was – ’ Barak almost bit off the words – ‘a step up the social chain. She married him a week after father died: the poor old arsehole wasn’t even cold in the
ground. D’you know what she said to me? Same as you did coming from that house in Wolf’s Lane. “A poor widow must look after herself.” ’

‘So she must, I suppose.’

‘After that, I went mad for a while.’ He gave a bark of laughter. ‘Sometimes I think I’m still a bit mad. I ran away from home, left school, though I’d been doing
well. I got in with the gangs. A poor child must look after himself too, you know.’ He stared out over the water. ‘Ended by getting caught stealing a ham. I was put in prison and would
have faced the rope; it was a big ham, worth over a shilling. But the warden was a Putney man and recognized my father’s name. Coming from the same part of the world as Lord Cromwell he had
contacts with him; I ended up going before him and he put me to work, running errands at first and then other things.’ Barak turned to me. ‘So I owe the earl everything. My very
life.’

‘I see.’

He stood up, taking a deep breath. ‘There was a pub by the Tower where my stepfather met Bealknap. I think it was a meeting place for Bealknap’s stable of rogues. I’ll go down
there, try to find it.’

I looked at him. ‘No wonder you have no good opinion of lawyers.’

‘You’re more honest than most,’ he grunted.

‘You never see your mother or stepfather?’

‘I’ve seen them once or twice about the City, but I always turn away. I’m dead for all they know or care.’

W
E TOOK A WHERRY
as far as Three Cranes Stairs, then walked north to Lothbury. I had to hurry to keep up with Barak’s loping pace. By the
Grocers’ Hall a couple of young gentlemen in fine doublets were mocking a beggar who sat in the doorway, displaying a face caked with weeping sores to stir the public’s pity.

‘Come, fellow, you should go for a soldier!’ one was saying. ‘Everyone is needed at muster now, to fight the pope and the king’s enemies.’ He took a sword from a
leather scabbard and waved it. The beggar, who looked hardly fit to rise let alone take up arms, scrabbled back in panic, making the hoarse grunts of a dumb man.

‘He can’t speak the king’s English,’ said the other fellow. ‘Maybe he’s a foreigner.’

Barak walked over, hand on his own sword, and looked the young gallant in the eye. ‘Leave him,’ he said. ‘Unless you’d like to try your luck with me?’

The fellow’s eyes narrowed, but he sheathed his sword and turned away. Barak took a coin from his pocket and laid it by the beggar. ‘Come on,’ he said curtly.

‘That was a brave gesture,’ I said. The words of the motto on the barrel of Greek Fire came back to me.
Lupus est homo homini
: man is wolf to man.

Barak snorted. ‘Those arseholes are only fit to bait those who can’t fight back.’ He spat on the ground. ‘Gentlemen.’

We reached Lothbury Street. Ahead of us stood St Margaret’s church, beside which narrow lanes led off into a warren of little buildings from where a metallic clangour could be heard.
Because of the endless noise virtually no one save the founders lived in Lothbury.

‘Goodwife Gristwood will meet us at her son’s foundry,’ I said. ‘We go up here, Nag’s Lane.’

We turned into a narrow passageway between two-storey houses. Cinders and fragments of charcoal were mixed with the alley dust and there was a harsh smell of hot iron. Nearly all the houses had
workshops attached; their doors were open and I could see men moving within. Spades scraped on stone floors as coal was loaded into furnaces from which a bright red, concentrated glow was
visible.

At length I halted in front of a small house. The workshop door was closed; Barak knocked twice. It opened and a wiry young man wearing a heavy apron over an old smock pitted with burn holes
looked at us suspiciously. He had Goodwife Gristwood’s thin, sharp features.

‘Master Harper?’ I asked.

‘Ay.’

‘I am Master Shardlake.’

‘Come in,’ the founder replied in a less than friendly tone. ‘Mother’s here.’

I followed him into his little foundry. An unlit furnace dominated the room, a pile of charcoal beside it. A collection of pots was stacked by the door. On a stool in one corner Goodwife
Gristwood sat. She gave me a surly nod.

‘Well, master lawyer,’ she said. ‘Here he is.’

Harper nodded at Barak. ‘Who’s that?’

‘My assistant.’

‘We founders stick together,’ he said warningly. ‘I’ve only to call out for half Lothbury to be here.’

‘We mean you no harm – it is only information I want. Your mother has told you we seek information about Michael and Sepultus’s experiments?’

‘Ay.’ He sat down beside his mother and looked at me. ‘They told me they wanted to build something, an arrangement of pumps and tanks. That’s beyond my capacity, but I do
a lot of casting for a man who works for the City repairing the conduits.’

‘Peter Leighton.’

‘Ay. I helped Master Leighton cast the iron for the pipes and the tank.’ He looked at me keenly. ‘Mother says there could be danger for those who know about this.’

‘Perhaps. We may be able to help there.’ I paused. ‘The liquid that was to be put in the tank? Did you see anything of that?’

Harper shook his head. ‘Michael said it was a secret, it was better I didn’t know. They did some tests in Master Leighton’s yard. They leased the whole yard from him and
wouldn’t let him near. It has a high wall; he keeps lead pipes there for work on the conduits.’

I wondered what Harper’s relationship had been with Gristwood, who was, after all, his stepfather. I guessed it had not been one of affection, but that the nature of his employment made
him useful.

‘What was this apparatus like?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Complicated. A big watertight tank with a pump attached and a pipe leading off. It took weeks to make, then Master Leighton said I’d have to have another try –
the pipe was too broad.’

‘When did the brothers first employ you?’

‘November. It took till January to get the apparatus right.’

Two months before they went to Cromwell. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘And where was it kept? In Master Leighton’s yard?’

‘I believe so. They paid him well for its use.’

Goodwife Gristwood laughed mirthlessly. ‘Did Master Leighton get his money?’

‘Ay, Mother, he did. He insisted on payment in advance.’

She frowned. ‘Then where did Michael get the money? Neither he nor Sepultus had any.’

‘Perhaps someone else paid,’ I suggested.

‘They’d have had to,’ the goodwife answered bitterly. ‘I spent fifteen years dealing with Michael’s mad schemes. Sometimes I had hardly any bread for the table. And
it’s all ended with him dead and David in danger.’ She looked at her son with a tenderness that softened her face.

‘I can make sure you are both kept safe,’ I said. ‘But I would like to speak to Master Leighton.’ I looked at David Harper. ‘Have you told him I was
coming?’

‘No, sir. We thought it better not.’

‘Will he be at his foundry?’

‘Ay, he has a new contract to repair the Fleet Street conduit. He said last Friday he’d have some casting for me. Pleased with himself, he was.’

‘Can you take us there?’

‘And will that be the end of this business?’ Goodwife Gristwood asked.

‘You need be involved no further, madam.’

She nodded at her son. He rose and led the way outside. His mother scuttled after him.

We walked up the lane, further into Lothbury. Through open doors we saw sweat-soaked founders, stripped to the waist, labouring over their fires. People looked out at us curiously as we passed
by. At the bottom of a winding lane David stopped before a corner house, larger than most, with a workshop next to it and a high wall beside that.

‘If there were sounds and signs of fire,’ Barak muttered to me, ‘they wouldn’t attract attention here.’

‘No. This was a clever place to choose.’

David knocked at the door of the house. It was shuttered, as were the windows of the workshop. Harper tried the workshop doors too, but they were locked.

‘Master Leighton,’ he called. ‘Master Leighton, it’s David.’ He turned to us apologetically. ‘Many founders grow deaf in their later years. But it’s odd
his furnace isn’t lit.’

I had a sense of foreboding. ‘When did you last see him?’

‘Friday, sir, when he told me about his new contract.’

Barak looked at the lock. ‘I could have that open.’

‘No,’ Harper said. ‘I know who has a key. Everyone has a neighbour’s key in case of fire. Wait here.’ He went off down the lane. All around us the banging and
clanging resounded in our ears. Goodwife Gristwood began twisting her hands together nervously.