Lamentation

by C. J. Sansom

  ‘Dear God,’ I said.

  Guy replaced the blanket gently, but the movement disturbed McKendrick, who began muttering aloud. ‘Bertano . . . Antichrist . . . Pope’s incubus . . .’

  Guy looked at me sternly. ‘When I heard some of the things he was saying, I put him in here. Safest for him, and perhaps for others.’

  ‘And he has mentioned my name?’

  ‘Yes. And others. Including, as you just heard, that name Bertano which you asked me about. Generally what he says in his delirium is nonsense, but I have heard him mention Queen Catherine herself. Disconnected talk, about spies and traitors at the English court. Mostly it makes no sense, and his Scotch accent is unfamiliar to me. But I have understood enough to realize he knows dangerous things, and is a religious radical. Once he cursed the Mass, saying it was no more than the bleating of a cow. Another time he spoke of overthrowing all princes.’ Guy hesitated, then added, ‘I see you know him.’

  ‘I saw him only once, though I have been seeking him for weeks.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  I looked him in the eye. ‘I cannot say, Guy, for your safety. I beg you, continue to keep him apart from the other patients; he knows dangerous things. Did he have anything on him when he was brought in?’ I asked urgently. ‘Perhaps – a book?’

  ‘He had a copy of Tyndale’s forbidden New Testament with his name inside, and a purse with a few coins.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  I looked at McKendrick, quiet now, his breathing shallow. ‘I would have prevented this, Guy, I hope you believe me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Guy answered, ‘I believe that. But you are still involved in something deeply dangerous, are you not?’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked again at McKendrick. ‘May I question him?’

  ‘His mind is in a fever most of the time.’

  ‘Would you leave me to try? The only reason I ask you not to stay is in case you hear something that might imperil your safety. I would not drag you into this bog as well.’

  Guy hesitated, then nodded. ‘I will leave you for a little. But do not tax him.’ He went out, closing the door gently. There was a stool in the room, and I dragged it across to McKendrick’s bed. It was getting dark, the sound of voices quieter as Smithfield emptied. I shook him gently. His eyes opened; they were unfocused, feverish.

  ‘Master McKendrick?’ I asked.

  ‘Dominie McKendrick,’ he whispered. ‘I am Dominie. Teacher, preacher.’

  ‘Dominie, who did this to you?’

  I was not sure he had heard my question, but then he said wearily, closing his eyes tight, ‘There were two o’ them, two. They took me by surprise, though I’m careful. Jumped out of the doorway an’ stabbed me. Two o’ them. I got one o’ them in the shoulder, managed to run.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Escaped in the alleys. Got to know the London alleys these last years. Same as the ones in Stirling, always running, running from the lackeys of popes and princes. But I weakened, loss o’ blood.’ He sighed. ‘Running, always running.’

  I bent my head close. ‘Did you know your attackers, Dominie?’

  He shook his head wearily.

  ‘Were they two tall young men, one fair, with a wart on his face, the other almost bald?’

  ‘Ay, that was them.’ He looked at me, his eyes focusing properly for the first time. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘One who would punish those who attacked you.’ Daniels and Cardmaker had underestimated the ex-soldier’s strength and speed, and he had managed to run into the crowd of apprentices. But too late, it seemed, to save his life.

  He reached a hand out from under the blankets, grasping mine. His was hard and callused, the hand of a man who had worked and soldiered, but hot and clammy. ‘Did they kill Master Greening?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, and his apprentice, Elias.’

  His grip tightened and his eyes opened wider, blue and clear. He stared at me. ‘Elias? We thought he was the traitor.’

  ‘No, it was not him.’ Nor you either, I thought.

  McKendrick released my hand and leaned back on the bed with a groan. ‘Then it can only have been Curdy, William Curdy we all thought such a true soul.’ Yes, I thought, and Curdy is dead, unable to say who his master was. Killed by one of Richard Rich’s men.

  He looked at me. ‘Are you one of us?’ he asked.

  ‘One of who?’

  ‘The brethren. The believers in a new heaven and a new earth. Those our enemies call Anabaptists?’

  ‘No. I am not.’

  The dying man’s shoulders slumped. Then he looked at me fiercely. ‘I see it, among these dreams I have here. The greater vision, a future Commonwealth where all share equally in the bounty of nature, and worship the one Christ in peace. No princes, no warring countries, all men living in harmony. Is it a dream, do you think, or do I see Heaven?’

  ‘I think it a dream, Dominie,’ I answered sadly. ‘But I do not know.’

  A few moments later McKendrick slid back into unconsciousness, his breathing shallow. I stood, my knees creaking. I had learned what I needed to know and returned slowly to the main room, where Guy was writing notes at a desk at the back of the ward.

  ‘He is unconscious again,’ I sighed. ‘Or perhaps in a sleep of wondrous dreams. There is nothing to be done for him?’

  He shook his head. ‘We doctors know the signs of coming death.’

  ‘Yes.’ I remembered Cecil telling me about the King’s doctors saying he could not last long now. ‘Thank you for summoning me, Guy. One thing more. When – when he dies, it would be safer for the hospital if he were buried under a different name. He is wanted in connection with possible treason.’

  Guy looked at me, then spoke with quiet passion. ‘I pray every night that whatever terrible thing you are involved in, it may end soon.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I left the hospital. At home I sent a note to Lord Parr, telling him the Scotchman was found, and that he was not the spy. Very early next morning, Brocket woke me with two notes that had arrived with the dawn: one on expensive paper with the seal of the Queen in red wax, the other a second folded scrap from Guy. The first told me that I was required at Whitehall Palace again that morning, the second that McKendrick had died in the night. Again, Guy had signed his note only with his name.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  AND SO I TOOK A BOAT to Whitehall Palace. I had no more information to bring Lord Parr about what might have happened to the Queen’s book; and I realized that, with all Greening’s group gone, its fate might remain unknown.

  On the way to Temple Stairs I called in at chambers to tell Barak I would be away that day, I did not know for how long. He was alone – Nicholas and Skelly had not yet come in – and I summoned him to my room.

  ‘Whitehall?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. I found McKendrick last night.’ I told him what had happened at the hospital.

  ‘So the late Master Curdy was the spy.’

  ‘So it seems.’ I sighed. ‘I have reached a dead end.’

  ‘Then leave it to the politicians now,’ he said roughly. ‘You’ve done all you can.’

  ‘I cannot but feel I have failed the Queen.’

  ‘You’ve done all you can,’ he repeated impatiently. ‘Risked your life.’

  ‘I know. And yours, and Nicholas’s.’

  ‘Then have done with it. If Queen Catherine falls, it will be through her own foolishness.’

  I ENTERED THE PALACE by the Common Stairs again, the wherry jostling for space at the pier along with boats carrying newly slaughtered swans for the royal table and bolts of fine silk. The pier ran a long way out into the water, so that unloading could take place even at low tide. The tide was almost full now, though, just starting to ebb. Dirty grey water washed round the lowest of the stone steps. I thought for a moment of poor Peter Cotterstoke, tumbling into the river on a cold autumn day. As I left the boat, gathering my robe around me and straightening my cap, I looked upriver to the Royal Stairs
. There, a narrow, brightly painted building two storeys high jutted out of the long redbrick facade of the palace. It ended at a magnificent stone boathouse, built over the water. A barge was heading towards it, oarsmen pulling hard against the tide. A man in a dark robe and cap sat in the stern. I recognized the slab face and forked beard: Secretary Paget, master of spies, and one of those who knew whether an emissary of the Pope called Bertano was truly in London.

  I went into the maze of buildings, tight-packed around their little inner courts. Some of the guards recognized me by sight now, though as always at strategic points my name had to be checked against a list. All the magnificence within had become familiar, almost routine. I was accustomed now to avoid looking at all the great works of art and statuary as I passed along, lest they delay me. I saw two stonemasons creating a new and elaborate cornice in a corridor, and remembered Leeman saying how every stone in the palace was built on common people’s sweat. I recalled that craftsmen were paid a lower rate for royal work, justified by the status that accrued from working for the King.

  I was admitted again at the Queen’s Presence Chamber. A young man, one of the endless petitioners, stood arguing with a bored-looking guard in his black-and-gold livery. ‘But my father has sent to Lord Parr saying I was arriving from Cambridge today. I have a degree in canon law. I know there is a position on the Queen’s Learned Council come vacant.’

  ‘You are not on the list,’ the guard answered stolidly. I thought, who was leaving? Was it me, now my work was done?

  In the bay window overlooking the river some of the Queen’s ladies sat as usual, needlework on their laps, watching a dance performed with surprising skill by Jane Fool. I saw Mary Odell sitting with the highborn ladies despite her lack of rank. The pretty young Duchess of Suffolk, her lapdog Gardiner on her knee, sat between her and the Queen’s sister Lady Anne Herbert, whom I had seen at Baynard’s Castle. A tall thin young man with a narrow, beaky face and wispy beard stood behind them, watching with a supercilious expression.

  Jane came to a halt in front of the gentleman and bowed. ‘There, my Lord of Surrey,’ she said to the man. ‘Am I not fit to be your partner at the dancing at Hampton Court for the admiral?’ So this was Surrey, the Duke of Norfolk’s oldest son, but reportedly a reformer, said to be a skilled poet, who last winter had been in trouble for leading a drunken spree in the city.

  He answered curtly, ‘I dance only with ladies of rank, Mistress Fool. And now you must excuse me. I have to meet my father.’

  ‘Do not be harsh with Jane,’ the Duchess of Suffolk said reprovingly; for the fool’s moon face had reddened. But then Jane saw me standing a little way off, and pointed at me. ‘There is the reason the Queen has gone to Lord Parr’s chamber! The lawyer has come again to bother her with business! See, he has a back as hunched as Will Somers’!’

  The company turned to look at me as she continued. ‘He would have had Ducky taken from me. But the Lady Mary would not let him! She knows who her true friends are!’ There was a glimmer in her eyes that told me Jane was indeed no halfwit; all this nonsense was deliberate, to humiliate me.

  Mary Odell stood up hastily and came to my side. ‘Her majesty and Lord Parr are waiting for you, Master Shardlake.’

  I was glad to walk away with her to the Queen’s inner sanctum.

  AGAIN THE QUEEN was seated on a high chair under her red cloth of estate; today she wore a bright green dress on which flowers, leaves, even peapods on a bush, were sewn to scale. Under her French hood I thought I caught the glint of grey strands in her auburn hair. Lord Parr stood to one side of her in his usual black robe and gold chain, and Archbishop Cranmer on the other, in his white cassock. As I bowed deeply I saw the Queen’s chess set on a table nearby and thought: a black piece and a white.

  All three had been studying a life-size portrait set before them on an easel, the newly painted colours so bright they drew the eye even amid the magnificence of Whitehall Palace. The background showed the dark red curtains of a four-poster bed, the foreground an open bible on a lectern and next to it the Lady Elizabeth, whom I recognized at once. She was wearing the same red dress as the day I saw her, when she had complained at having to stand so long, and being painted beside her bed.

  Her trouble had been worthwhile, for the portrait was truly lifelike. Elizabeth’s budding breasts contrasted with the vulnerability of her thin, childlike shoulders. She held a small book in her hands and her expression was composed, with a sense of watchful authority despite her youth. I read the meaning of the painting: here was a girl on the brink of womanhood, scholarly, serious, regal, and in the background the bed as a reminder of her coming marriageability.

  The Queen, who had been looking at the portrait intently, sat back in her chair. ‘It is excellent,’ she said.

  ‘It says everything that is needed,’ Cranmer agreed. He turned to me. ‘I have heard your latest news, Matthew,’ he said quietly. ‘That there was a spy in this group, and he is dead. His master is likely someone senior, a Privy Councillor, but we do not know who.’

  ‘Yes, my Lord,’ I added. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘You did all you could,’ he said, echoing Barak. I glanced at the Queen. She looked troubled now, her body held with that air of slight stiffness I had come to recognize as denoting strain. She did not speak.

  ‘At least this group of Anabaptists is gone,’ Lord Parr said. ‘I’d have seen them burned!’

  Cranmer said firmly, ‘The guard who Leeman suborned at the palace, and the gaoler Myldmore, must be sent abroad. For all our safety.’

  ‘You would have had them burned too, my Lord Archbishop,’ Lord Parr growled, ‘were moving them not necessary.’

  ‘Only if earnest preaching could not bring them from their heresy,’ Cranmer said, anger in his voice. ‘I wish no man burned.’

  ‘You have helped us greatly, Matthew,’ the Queen said gently, ‘with Leeman’s information about Bertano.’

  I asked, ‘It is true, then, about him?’

  Lord Parr glanced at Cranmer and then the Queen, who nodded. He spoke sternly. ‘This is for your ears only, Shardlake, and we tell you only because you first brought us that name and would welcome your view. Only we four know about Bertano. We have not even told the Queen’s brother or sister. And that man and boy who work for you must say nothing,’ he added in a threatening tone.

  ‘We know you have absolute trust in them,’ Cranmer said mildly.

  ‘Tell him, niece,’ Lord Parr said.

  The Queen spoke: heavily, reluctantly. ‘A week ago, his majesty had a visitor brought to his privy quarters during the day. All the servants in the Privy Chamber were cleared out. Normally he tells me if a visitor from abroad is coming,’ she added, ‘but the night before this visit he said that it was for him alone to know about, and I was to stay on my side of the palace.’ She lowered her eyes.

  Her uncle prompted her gently, ‘And then?’

  ‘I know the meeting did not go well. His majesty sent for me to play music for him afterwards, as he does sometimes when he is sad and low in spirits. He was in an angry humour, he even hit his fool Will Somers on the pate and told him to get out; he had no patience for idle jest. I dared to look at him questioningly, for poor Somers had done nothing to warrant being struck. The King said, “Someone wants the powers granted me by God, Kate, and dares send to ask for them. I have sent back such answer as he deserves.” Then he struck the arm of his chair so fiercely with his fist that it jarred his whole body and caused a fearful pain in his leg.’ The Queen took a deep breath. ‘He did not make me swear to keep his words confidential. So, though strictly it goes against the honour due my husband, because of the dire straits we have all found ourselves in, I confided in my uncle and the Archbishop.’

  ‘And now we have told you,’ Lord Parr said brusquely. ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘It adds weight to the suspicion that what Vandersteyn learned on the Continent was true. Someone asking the King for the powers granted him by
God. That can only mean the Supreme Headship, and only the Pope would demand that.’

  He nodded agreement. ‘That is what we think. If Bertano was an emissary from the Pope it sounds as though the price for a reconciliation was the King’s renunciation of his Headship of the Church in England.’

  ‘And from all the King said, a message was to be sent back to the Pope?’

  Cranmer answered. ‘I think it has already gone. And if it has, it would be through Paget.’ He smiled humourlessly. ‘And yesterday Paget told the Privy Council that after d’Annebault’s visit, the King and Queen will be going on a short Progress – only as far as Guildford – and announced those of the council he has chosen to accompany him, all sympathizers with reform. Gardiner, Norfolk, Rich, all our enemies, remain in London, kicking their heels and keeping the wheels of government turning. Those who will be about the King’s person, and have his ear, will be our allies.’

  Lord Parr raised his hands. ‘The pieces all fit.’

  Cranmer smiled, more warmly this time. ‘Those left behind did not look pleased to hear the news at the council table. I think Bertano’s mission has failed at the start.’ There was satisfaction in his voice, relief too.

  I said, ‘But there remains the Lamentation.’

  ‘There is nothing more to be done about that,’ Lord Parr said bluntly. ‘Except hope that whoever stole it realizes they have squandered their chance, that the Catholic cause is lost, and – forgive me, Kate – that they dispose of it.’ He added, ‘The King will not turn his policy again.’

  Cranmer shook his head emphatically. ‘With the King, that can never be ruled out. But I agree, the trail on the book is quite cold.’

  I looked at the Queen. ‘Believe me, your majesty, I wish I had been able to recover it. I am sorry.’

  ‘God’s wounds,’ Lord Parr said abruptly. ‘You did your best, even if it wasn’t good enough. And now, all that remains is for you to keep quiet.’

  ‘I swear I will, my Lord.’