Revelation: A Matthew Shardlake Mystery (Matthew Shardlake Mysteries)

by C. J. Sansom

Mekins was a fifteen-year-old apprentice who eighteen months before had been burned alive at Smithfield for denying the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The case of John Collins had been worse still, a youth who had shot an arrow at a statue of Christ inside a church. Many had also thought him insane; but the previous year the King had passed an act to allow insane persons to be executed, and Collins too was burned to death. The cruelty of these cases had turned the populace against Bishop Bonner’s harsh religious rule of the city. There had been no burnings since.

  ‘They say Bonner’s after the radicals again,’ Barak observed.

  ‘So people were saying at dinner last night. What do you think’s going on, Jack?’ Barak still had friends among those who worked on the more shady fringes of the King’s court, those who frequented the taverns and alehouses and reported back on the state of public opinion. I had gained the impression that recently he had spent a lot of time drinking with these disreputable old friends.

  He looked at me seriously again. ‘The word is that now Scotland has been removed as a threat, the King wants to make an alliance with Spain and go to war against France. But to be acceptable to the Emperor Charles he’ll have to be seen to be hard on heretics. They say he’s going to try and get a law through this Parliament banning women and common folk from reading the Bible, and give Bishop Bonner encouragement to crack down on the London Bible-men. That’s what they’re saying at Whitehall, anyway. So I’d be careful in handling this one.’

  ‘I see. Thank you.’ This only made matters more delicate. I essayed a smile. ‘The other thing they were gossiping about last night is that the King is after a new wife. Lady Latimer.’

  ‘That’s true as well, from what I’m told. But he’s having trouble this time. The lady doesn’t want him.’

  ‘She has refused him?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘So they say. Can’t blame her. The King’s got ulcers on both legs now, they have to carry him around Whitehall in a cart half the time. They say he gets fatter every month, and worse tempered. They say she is interested in someone else too.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That’s not spoken of.’ He hesitated. ‘This Adam Kite looby might be better off if he stays in the Bedlam. So might you, rather than tangle with the Privy Council again.’

  I sighed. ‘I’m only acting as a lawyer.’

  ‘You can’t hide behind the law once these people get involved. You know that.’ I could see Barak was as worried as I of going near some of the mighty enemies we had made in the past. The Duke of Norfolk and Richard Rich both sat on the Privy Council.

  ‘It’s ill luck they passed this to me instead of Herriott to deal with,’ I said. ‘But I’ve got it now, so I’ll just have to handle it with care. I’ll take tomorrow’s papers through. Send the Kites in directly when they arrive.’

  I went to my inner office and closed the door. Barak’s words had unsettled me. I crossed to the mullioned window. The rain was coming down harder, splashing on the pane and distorting my view of Gatehouse Court. I shivered a little, for the sound of hard rain always brought back the terrible night eighteen months before, when for the first and only time I had killed a man. If I had not he would certainly have murdered me, yet even now his awful drowning gasps haunted me. I sighed deeply, ruefully recalling my good mood the evening before. Had my acknowledgement that I felt happy tempted a malign fate?

  Bedlam, I thought. The very name brought fear and disgust in London. For a long time the Bethlehem Hospital had been the only hospital in London that treated the insane, and although mad folks were a common enough sight begging in the streets, and many people knew some friend or family member who had been touched by sickness of the mind, people avoided the mad. For not only were they feared as dangerous or even possessed, but they reminded folk that madness could strike anyone suddenly, and in a variety of terrible forms. That was why Roger feared the falling sickness so, for the fits that attended it were a fearful sight. The Bedlam, I knew, housed only severe cases of lunacy, some of them patients from rich families, others supported by charity. Occasionally, some like Adam Kite who were a nuisance to the powers that be were deposited there out of the way.

  There was a knock on the door, and Barak ushered in a middle-aged couple. I was disconcerted to see that a third person accompanied them, a clergyman in a long cassock. He was tall and spare, with bushy eyebrows, thick, iron-grey hair and a red, choleric face. The middle-aged couple were dressed in sober black, and both looked deeply dejected; the woman close to tears. She was small and thin, birdlike; her husband tall and broad with a craggy face. He bowed, and his wife curtsied deeply. The cleric gave me a bold, appraising stare, not at all intimidated by being in Lincoln’s Inn, or by the sight of me in my robe, in my office full of law books.

  ‘I am Serjeant Shardlake. You must be Master and Mistress Kite.’ I smiled at the nervous couple to put them at their ease, concentrating my attention on them. I knew from long experience that when clients are accompanied by a third party, the supporter is usually far more aggressive than the client. I guessed the clergyman was their vicar, and that he would be a problem.

  ‘Daniel Kite, at your service,’ the man said, bowing. ‘This is my wife, Minnie.’ The woman curtsied again, and smiled uncertainly. ‘It is good of you to see us on a Sunday,’ Daniel Kite added.

  ‘Palm Sunday,’ the clergyman said with distaste. ‘At least if we are here, we do not have to see those papist ceremonies.’ He gave me a challenging look. ‘I am Samuel Meaphon. This afflicted family are of my congregation.’

  ‘Please sit,’ I said. They sat in a row on a bench, Meaphon in the middle. Minnie fiddled nervously with the folds of her dress. ‘I have seen the papers the court forwarded,’ I told them, ‘but they tell only a bare story. I would like you to tell me what happened to your son, from the beginning.’

  Daniel Kite cast a nervous look at Meaphon.

  ‘I would prefer to hear it from you and your wife, sir,’ I added quickly. ‘No disrespect to the good reverend, but first-hand evidence is best.’ Meaphon frowned slightly, but nodded for Master Kite to continue.

  ‘Our son Adam was a good boy until six months ago,’ the father began in a sad, heavy voice. ‘A lively, strapping lad. Our blessing from the Lord, for we have no other children. I had him as apprentice in my workshop, out by Billingsgate.’

  ‘You are a stonemason?’

  ‘Master stonemason, sir.’ Despite his distress, there was a note of pride in his voice. I looked at his hands: big, callused, a mass of little scars. ‘I hoped Adam might follow me into the business. He was a hard worker; and a faithful attender at our church.’

  ‘That he was.’ Reverend Meaphon nodded emphatically.

  ‘We are true Bible folk, sir.’ A slight note of challenge crept into Kite’s voice.

  ‘However the sinful world may look on us,’ Meaphon added, looking at me with fierce eyes under those bushy brows.

  ‘Whatever you tell me of your beliefs will be held in confidence,’ I said.

  ‘You do not believe as we do, I see.’ There was sorrow rather than anger in Daniel Kite’s voice.

  ‘It is not my beliefs that are at issue,’ I replied with what I knew was a strained smile.

  Meaphon’s eyes swept over me. ‘I see that God has seen fit to afflict you, sir. But he has done so only that you may turn to Him for succour.’

  I felt myself flush with anger that this stranger should take it on himself to refer thus to my hunched back. Minnie Kite interrupted hastily. ‘We only want you to help our poor boy, sir, to tell us if the law may help us.’

  ‘Then tell me what happened, from the beginning, straight and simple.’

  Minnie quailed at the sharp note in my voice. Her husband hesitated, then continued his story.

  ‘I told you Adam was a fine boy. But about six months ago he started to become very quiet, withdrawn into himself, sad-seeming. It worried us both. Then one day I had to leave him in the shop; I came back and found him crouc
hed on his knees in a corner. He was praying, begging the Lord to forgive him for his sins. I said, “How now, Adam. God has ordained a time for prayer and a time for work.” He obeyed me then, though I remember he rose to his feet with a great sigh like I’d never heard.’

  ‘We’ve heard it often enough since,’ Minnie added.

  ‘That was the start of it. We’ve always encouraged Adam to pray, but from then on he - he wouldn’t stop.’ Kite’s voice broke, and I sensed the fear in him. ‘Any time of day, in the workshop or even in company, he’d just drop to his knees and start praying, frantically, for God to forgive his sins and let him know he was saved. It got so he wouldn’t eat, he’d lie crouched in the corner and we’d have to pull him to his feet while he resisted, made himself a dead weight. And when we made him stand, always that terrible sigh.’

  ‘The despair in it,’ Minnie added quietly. She lowered her head, but not before I saw tears in her eyes. Kite looked at me. ‘He is certain that he is damned, sir.’

  I looked at the three of them. I knew that the religious radicals believed with Luther that God had divided humanity into the saved and the damned, that only those who came to Him through the Bible would be saved at the Day of Judgement. The rest of humanity were condemned to burn in Hell, for ever. And they believed that the Day of Judgement, the end of the world foretold in the Book of Revelation, would soon be upon us all. I did not know how to reply. I was almost grateful to Meaphon for ending the silence.

  ‘These good people brought their son to me,’ he said. ‘I spoke with Adam, tried to reassure him, told him God sometimes sends doubt to those he loves most, to try their spirits. I stayed for two whole days with him, fasting and praying, but I could not break through to him.’ He shook his head. ‘He resisted me sorely.’

  Minnie looked up at me. Her face was bleak, bereft. ‘By then, Adam was naught but skin and bone. I had to feed him with a spoon while my husband held on to him to prevent him sinking to the floor. “I must pray,” he kept on. “I am not saved!” To think I should dread to hear prayer or salvation mentioned.’

  ‘What sins does Adam believe he has committed?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘He does not say. He seems to think he has committed every sin there is. Before this he was just an ordinary cheerful boy, sometimes noisy and thoughtless, but no more than that. He has never done anything wicked.’

  ‘Then he started leaving the house,’ Daniel Kite said. ‘Running away to alleyways and corners where he could pray unhindered. We had to go chasing after him.’

  ‘We feared he would die in the cold,’ Minnie added. ‘He would slip away without putting on his coat and we would follow his footprints in the snow.’ She banged a little fist into her lap with sudden anger. ‘Oh, that he should treat his parents so. That is a sin.’

  Her husband laid a work-roughened hand on hers. ‘Now, Minnie, have faith. God will send an answer.’ He turned back to me. ‘Ten days ago, in that snowy weather when no one was going abroad unless they had to, Adam disappeared. I had him in my workshop where I could keep an eye on him, but he’s become crafty as a monkey and when my back was turned he sneaked off, unlocked the door and disappeared. We went searching up and down but could not find him. Then that afternoon an official from Bishop Bonner came to see us. He said Adam had been found on his knees in the snow before the Preaching Cross in St Paul’s churchyard, begging God for a sign he was saved, that he would be allowed into heaven as one of the elect. He screamed that the end of the world was coming, begged God and Jesus not to take him down to Hell at the Last Judgement.’

  Minnie began to cry, and her husband stopped and bowed his head, overcome with emotion as well. The depth of the simple couple’s suffering was terrible to contemplate. And what their son had done was deeply dangerous. Only licensed preachers were allowed at St Paul’s, and the King’s doctrine was firm that faith alone, sola fide, did not suffice to bring a man to heaven. Even less orthodox was the doctrine of mankind divided between God’s elect and the damned. I looked at Meaphon. He was frowning, running his hand over the top of his thick hair.

  ‘So then Adam was brought before the Council,’ I prompted Daniel gently.

  ‘Yes. From the bishop’s jail where they put him. I was summoned to appear. I went to Whitehall Palace, to a room where four men all dressed in rich robes sat at a table in a great room.’ His voice shook and a sheen of sweat appeared on his forehead at the memory. ‘Adam was there, chained and with a gaoler.’ He glanced at his vicar. ‘Reverend Meaphon came too but they wouldn’t let him speak.’

  ‘No, they would not hear me,’ Meaphon said. ‘I did not expect them to,’ he added with scorn.

  That was probably just as well, I thought. ‘Who were the men?’

  ‘One in white robes was Archbishop Cranmer; I’ve seen him preach at St Paul’s. There was another cleric, a big angry-looking man with brown hair. I think the two others wore robes with fur and jewels. One was a little pale man, he had a sharp voice. The other had a long brown beard and a thin face.’

  I nodded slowly. The little pale man would be Sir Richard Rich, Thomas Cromwell’s former protégé who had joined the conservatives when Cromwell fell; a ruthless, vicious opportunist. The other man resembled descriptions I had heard of Lord Hertford, brother of the late Queen Jane and a reformer. And the angry-looking cleric was almost certainly Bishop Bonner of London.

  ‘What did they say to you?’

  ‘They asked me how Adam had got into the state he was and I answered them honestly. The pale man said it sounded like heresy and the boy should be burned. But just then Adam slipped off his chair and before his guard could grab him he was down on the floor frantically asking God to save him. The councillors ordered him to rise but he took no more notice of them than if they were flies. Then the Archbishop said Adam was clearly out of his wits and he should be sent to the Bedlam to see if they could find a cure. The pale man still wanted him accused as a heretic but the other two wouldn’t agree.’

  ‘I see.’ Rich, I guessed, would think having another radical Protestant burned would raise him in the favour of the traditionalists. But Cranmer, as well as being naturally merciful, would not want to further inflame London. Having Adam shut away in the Bedlam would dispose of the problem, for a while at least.

  I nodded slowly. ‘That raises the crucial issue.’ I looked at them. ‘Is Adam in fact mad?’

  ‘I think he must be,’ Minnie replied.

  ‘If he is not mad, sir,’ Daniel Kite said, ‘we fear the case may be something even worse.’

  ‘Worse?’ I asked.

  ‘Possession,’ Meaphon said starkly. ‘That is my fear. That a demon has hold of him and is urging him to mock God’s mercy in public. And if that is so, then only by praying with Adam mightily, wrestling with the devil, can I save him.’

  ‘Is that what you believe?’ I asked the stonemason.

  He looked at Meaphon, then buried his head in his big hands. ‘I do not know, sir. God save my son if that should be true.’

  ‘I think Adam is only in great confusion and fear.’ Minnie looked up and met Meaphon’s eye, and I realized that she was the stronger of the pair. She turned to me. ‘But whatever the truth, being in the Bedlam will kill him. Adam lies in the chamber they have locked him in. It is cold, no fire. He will do nothing for himself, he just crouches there, praying, praying. And they only allow us to visit for an hour a day. They ask us for three shillings a month in fees, more than we can afford, yet they will not make him eat nor take care of himself. The keeper will be happy if he dies.’ She looked at me imploringly. ‘They are afraid of him.’

  ‘Because of the fear he is possessed?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And you doubt he is?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. But if he stays in the Bedlam he will die.’

  ‘He should be released to my care,’ Meaphon said. ‘But they will not do that. Not the backsliders and papists on the Council.’

  ‘Then on one thi
ng you are all agreed,’ I said. ‘That he should not be in the Bedlam.’

  ‘Ay, ay.’ The boy’s father nodded eagerly, relieved to find some common ground.

  I thought hard a moment, then spoke quietly. ‘There are two problems with this case. One is jurisdiction. Anyone who cannot afford a lawyer may bring his case before the Court of Requests, but the judge may say the matter is one of state, and should go back before the Privy Council. However, if you cannot afford the fees they charge in the Bedlam, the court may ask the Council to pay. And the court may intervene to stop poor treatment. But the matter of releasing Adam is much more difficult.’ I took a deep breath. ‘And what if he were released? If he were to escape again, if there were a repeat of what happened at St Paul’s, he might find himself accused of heresy after all. If we could get his conditions improved, in all honesty the Bedlam may be the safest place for him, unless he can be brought to his right mind. To tangle with the Privy Council could be very dangerous.’ I had not mentioned poor John Collins, but I could tell from their faces that they remembered the horror of what had happened to him.

  ‘He must be released from that place,’ Meaphon said. ‘The only cure is for Adam to understand that God has sent him this trial, and he must not doubt His grace. Whether a devil has entered into him or his mind is stricken from some other cause, only I can help him, with aid from fellow ministers.’ The minister looked at Adam’s parents. Daniel Kite said ‘Amen,’ but Minnie looked down at her lap.

  ‘His release will not happen unless the Council become convinced that he is sane,’ I said. ‘But there is one thing we can do. I know a physician, a clever man, who would be able to assess Adam, might even be able to help him.’

  Daniel Kite shook his head firmly. ‘Physicians are godless men.’

  ‘This physician is most godly.’ I thought it better not to tell them my friend Guy was a former monk, still at heart a Catholic.

  Kite still looked dubious, but Minnie grasped eagerly at the straw. ‘Bring him in, sir, we will try anything. But we have no money to pay him . . .’