Dark Fire (68 page)

Barak grunted. ‘The king will never go back to Rome, whatever Norfolk wants. He likes being head of the Church too much. The old arsehole,’ he added quietly. He looked at me with
sudden intensity. ‘Could we have saved Lord Cromwell, do you think? If we’d guessed Grey was a traitor?’

I sighed deeply. ‘That question has tormented me night and day. I think he was so deep in trouble over the Cleves marriage he would have fallen in the end. Unless he’d agreed to
abandon Queen Anne and reform, and he wouldn’t do that.’ I smiled sadly. ‘At least that’s what I tell myself, to comfort myself perhaps.’

‘I think you’re right,’ Barak said. ‘His principles killed him in the end.’

‘He killed many others for those principles.’

Barak shook his head, but did not reply. We leaned there in silence for a moment. Then I saw a boat turning in to the stairs, two faces I recognized. I nudged Barak. ‘I’ve arranged
for some others to meet us here. They wished to see you.’

‘Who?’ Puzzled, he followed my gaze to the wherry. It pulled up and Joseph Wentworth stepped out. He gave his hand to a young woman in a dark dress and hood to help her out of the
boat.

‘Is that—’

I nodded. ‘Elizabeth.’

She walked a little unsteadily, her head bowed low, and Joseph had to help her up the steps. I went to the head of the stairs and Barak followed.

Joseph took my hand warmly and bowed to Barak. ‘Master Barak, I am glad you are here. My niece wished to thank you both.’

Barak shuffled awkwardly. ‘I did nothing, really.’

Elizabeth raised her head. Her hair had grown again too, a few curly strands escaping beneath her hood. For the first time I saw her face properly, clean of dirt and marks. It was pretty but
full of character too. There was none of the indrawn blankness or sudden ferocious anger I had seen before in her eyes, her gaze was full and clear though infinitely sad.

‘Yes, sir, you did.’ Her voice trembled and she clung tightly to her uncle’s hand but she spoke clearly. ‘You went down into that terrible well, you nearly died at my
grandmother’s hands.’ She looked at Barak. ‘And when you spoke to me that day in the gaol, sir, you showed me how my silent suffering did no good, for me or my poor uncle. You
made me begin to see things I had not seen before.’

Barak bowed deeply. ‘If I helped save you, I count it a great honour.’

‘I owe you both so much. You and Uncle Joseph, you never wavered in your support, however wickedly I treated you.’ Her lip trembled and she lowered her head again, still clutching
her uncle’s hand tightly.

‘Suffering does not ennoble people,’ I said. ‘They turn and bite and so, perhaps, they should. Do not become guilty, Elizabeth, for that is only another form of
martyrdom.’ She looked at me and I smiled sadly. ‘It does no good.’

‘No, sir.’ She nodded tremulously. Joseph patted her hand.

‘Elizabeth is still sore tired and troubled,’ he said. ‘The peace of the countryside is a balm to her, she finds London a trial. But she insisted on coming up with me today to
thank you.’

‘And we are grateful.’ I hesitated. ‘How is your brother?’

‘Sore afflicted since Sabine was found guilty of manslaughter and she and Avice imprisoned. Though he has paid for good lodgings for them. He is selling his house to try and buy a royal
pardon. I come up each week. He needs me.’ He hesitated. ‘My mother died, did you know?’

‘I had not heard.’

‘In Newgate, a week after her arrest.’

‘Was it the fall?’

‘No.’ He sighed. ‘It was as though, with the family in total disgrace, she did not want to live any more.’

I nodded sadly. Joseph smiled at Elizabeth. ‘I think we should go on now. But thank you again.’

He and Elizabeth shook our hands. Elizabeth’s felt as delicate as a bird’s. Then Joseph guided her away, up to Temple Walk. Looking after them, I saw how desperately thin she
was.

‘Will she recover, do you think?’ Barak asked.

‘I don’t know. At least now she will have a chance.’

‘Have you seen Lady Honor?’ He looked at me with frank curiosity. ‘I heard she’s left London.’

I laughed. ‘You hear everything. No, I shall not see Lady Honor again.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘It was a matter of status,’ I said heavily. ‘That means everything to her, you know. As it did to old Madam Wentworth.’ I frowned. ‘No, that was bitterness
talking. But all those formal banquets and receptions would have bored me; I am better off as a mere jobbing lawyer.’ I sighed. ‘I shall go back to the Inns and pick up my cases; burrow
into my books again.’ I stood up. ‘Get Bealknap into Chancery.’

‘Watch out for Richard Rich. You’ve made an enemy there.’

‘I can deal with that. In fact,’ I took a deep breath, ‘I rather enjoy that side of things, using the law to right wrongs. Where one can.’

‘How is Master Skelly?’

‘I saw him this morning. Fine with his glasses. Though still rather slow.’ I looked out over the water. ‘How easy it is to make victims of people,’ I said quietly.
‘How humanity is addicted to that sin. I made a victim of Skelly, Elizabeth’s family made a far worse victim of her. Reformers have made victims of papists, and now the reformers are
being victimized in their turn. Will it never end?’ I stared north, towards Smithfield, where the fires would be lit now. The smoke would be visible from Chancery Lane; it takes much fuel to
burn a living man to ashes. How they would suffer.

‘People shouldn’t let themselves be made victims,’ Barak said.

‘They cannot always help themselves. Not if they are ground down too far, or too often.’

‘Perhaps.’

I looked at him. There was an idea I had been turning over in my mind for several days. I was not at all sure it was a good one.

‘I have Godfrey’s cases now as well as my own. I have a great deal of work to catch up on and more will come in. The population of London grows increasingly litigious by the day. I
need more help than Skelly can give; I need an assistant, someone to exchange ideas with, do some of the investigative work. I suppose you are unemployed now?’

He looked at me in surprise. I was not taken in; I had guessed from the beginning he had not suggested this meeting entirely out of good will.

‘I’ll not get work with the government again. I’m known too well as Lord Cromwell’s man.’

‘Do you think you could work for me? Is that dog Latin of yours up to it?’

‘I should think so.’

‘Are you sure you want to stay in London? There are rumours of plague out at Islington.’

He shrugged contemptuously. ‘There’s always plague.’

‘The work will be boring sometimes. You will have to get used to legal language, learn to understand it rather than mock it. You’ll have to knock off some of your rough edges, learn
to address barristers and judges with respect. And stop calling everyone you don’t like arseholes.’

‘Even Bealknap?’

‘I’ll make an exception there. And you’ll have to call me sir.’

Barak bit his lip and wrinkled his nose, as though in an agony of indecision. It was all pretence, of course; I had come to know his ways too well to be taken in. I had to prevent myself from
laughing.

‘I will be happy to serve you, sir,’ he said at last. And then he did something he had never done before. He bowed.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Come, then, let’s go to Chancery Lane. See if we can bring a little order into this wicked world. A tiny bit.’

We walked through Temple Gardens. Ahead lay Chancery Lane. Beyond that Smithfield, where the fires would be lit now. Behind us the river, flowing to London Bridge where Cromwell’s head
stood fixed on its stake. Between Smithfield and the river the roiling city, ever in need of justice and absolution.

H
ISTORICAL
N
OTE

By the summer of 1540, the hottest of the sixteenth century, Thomas Cromwell’s position as Henry VIII’s chief minister was under threat. The king had repudiated
Rome and declared himself head of the Church eight years before and had at first welcomed reformist measures. The dissolution of the monasteries, masterminded by Cromwell, had brought him vast
wealth and Henry had allowed Cromwell and Archbishop Cranmer much latitude in ending Latin ceremonies and printing the Bible in English for the first time.

By the late 1530s, however, the tide was turning. Henry’s innate religious conservatism was reasserting itself and he was afraid that the overturning of the old religious hierarchy might
turn into a challenge to the secular class structure, as had happened in parts of Germany. The religious edicts of 1539 began a process of doctrinal backpedalling.

England, moreover, was now isolated in Europe and the pope was urging the main Catholic powers, France and Spain, to unite and reconquer the heretical island for Roman Catholicism. There was
genuine fear of invasion and huge sums were spent in training young men in arms, fortifying the south coast, and building up the navy.

Cromwell sought to strengthen both reform at home and England’s military position abroad by marrying the king (a widower since his third wife Jane Seymour’s death in childbirth in
1537) to a princess from one of the states associated with the German Protestant League. However, his choice, Anne of Cleves, was a disaster. The king disliked her on sight and declared himself
unable to have carnal relations with her. Although he had approved the match, Henry VIII always sought someone else to blame for his problems and now he blamed Cromwell. To make matters worse for
the chief minister, an incipient Franco-Spanish alliance broke down as the two Catholic powers resumed their traditional hostilities and the threat of invasion receded.

Meanwhile the king, aged nearly fifty, had become infatuated with Catherine Howard, the teenage niece of the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk headed the religious conservatives at court and had long
been Cromwell’s most dangerous enemy. When the king sought to divorce the newly married Anne of Cleves and take Catherine for a fifth wife, Cromwell was caught in a trap. He had previously
helped the king rid himself of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, but a Howard queen would inevitably mean a challenge both to his power and to reform. Perhaps, as Shardlake speculates, if
Cromwell had helped the king to a divorce he might, just, have saved himself – he had escaped from tight corners before – but he tried to keep the Cleves marriage alive and this was
probably the final straw for the king.

Nonetheless, the dramatic suddenness of his arrest at the council table on 10 June 1540 on obviously trumped-up charges of treason surprised contemporaries and has puzzled historians. My story
of the Greek Fire fraud as a final nail in Cromwell’s coffin is, of course, entirely imaginary, but it fills a gap. Everybody, including Sir Richard Rich, turned their coats; Secretary Grey
is a fictitious character, but there must have been many like him.

Thomas Cromwell was executed on 28 July 1540. Henry divorced Anne of Cleves, who was happy enough to escape marriage to her terrifying husband, and married Catherine Howard in secret the day
after Cromwell’s execution – a marriage that only a year later was to end in yet another gruesome tragedy.

The return to Rome, however, did not happen. For the rest of his reign Henry governed without a chief minister, playing one faction off against another. A year after Cromwell’s execution
he was complaining that he had been tricked into sacrificing ‘the most faithful councillor I ever had’. In time the Duke of Norfolk too fell from grace.

*

Greek Fire was, it is believed, a compound of petroleum and certain wood resins. This primitive flame-thrower was discovered, as related in the book, in seventh-century
Constantinople and was used to great effect by the Byzantines against the Arab navies. The secret of its construction was passed down from one Byzantine emperor to another and in due course was
lost, though the memory of this astounding weapon lingered on among scholars.

Of course, even if the method of construction and propulsion had been rediscovered in Renaissance Europe, it is unlikely it could ever have been used since petroleum was an unknown substance
there and all potential sources, from the Black Sea to the Middle East and North Africa, were under the control of the expanding Ottoman empire, with which Europe, weakened by political and now
religious disunity, was in a state of internecine warfare throughout the sixteenth century. In time Western Europe recovered and rose to a new pre-eminence; together with America it developed
weapons compared to which Greek Fire is a mere plaything.

Praise for
D
ARK
F
IRE

‘Historical crime fiction is sometimes little more than a modern adventure in fancy dress. Not so the novels of C. J. Sansom, whose magnificent books
set in the reign of Henry VIII bring to life the sounds and smells of Tudor England . . .
Dark Fire
is a creation of real brilliance’
Sunday Times

‘I’ve discovered a new crime writer who’s going to be a star. He’s C. J. Sansom, whose just-published second novel,
Dark
Fire
, is wonderful stuff, featuring a sort of Tudor Rebus who moves through the religious and political chaos of the 1540s with sinister élan. You will hear more of him’
J
AMES
N
AUGHTIE
,
Glasgow Herald

‘Sansom gives us a broad view of politics – Tudor housing to rival Rachman, Dickensian prisons, a sewage-glutted Thames, beggars in gutters,
conspiracies at court and a political system predicated on birth not merit, intrigue not intelligence . . . like many before him, he offers an enjoyable history; but this is also an ethically
informed one . . . a strong and intelligent novel’
Guardian

‘One of the author’s greatest gifts is the immediacy of his descriptions, for he writes about the past as if it were the living present . . .
But again it is our clever, unlikely hero, Shardlake himself, who steals the show . . . His honesty and humility shine out in a dark world where murder and mayhem are the order of the
day’
C
OLIN
D
EXTER