by C. J. Sansom
‘Quite large, I’d say.’ He shook his head. ‘That red pool, standing out against the white snow, it was like something from a nightmare. It turned my stomach.’
‘The pool is much larger than the fountain,’ I observed. ‘Yet it was stained red.’
‘You’d be surprised how little blood it takes to turn water red,’ Barak said.
Harsnet looked at him in surprise. ‘That is strange knowledge for a law clerk. But of course, you worked for Lord Cromwell.’
‘So I did,’ Barak answered. I saw old Wheelows narrow his eyes. Cromwell’s name could still bring fear, even now.
‘So he walked here with the body, dumped it and walked back,’ I said.
Wheelows looked frightened. ‘I heard there was another one, similar, over at Lincoln’s Inn.’
‘You must keep your mouth shut about that,’ Harsnet said sternly.
‘I know I must, master,’ Wheelows answered resentfully. ‘Or end in Marshalsea Prison. You told me.’
‘Then carry on with your story.’
‘There was a place beside the pool where all the snow was churned up. There was blood there too,’ Wheelows said. Where he cut the doctor’s throat, I thought. I looked at the pool. The wind made little ripples on the surface.
‘What did you do next?’ I asked the old labourer gently.
‘I went into the pool, turned the body over. I saw it was a gentleman by his clothes. His face was white as bone, was no blood left in him. I saw what had been done to his throat.’
‘What was the expression on his face?’
Wheelows gave me a sharp look. ‘No one’s asked me that before. But it was strange. He looked peaceful, as if he was asleep.’
Dwale, I thought. ‘So, what did you do then?’
‘I ran to Southwark, to find the coroner. I know that’s what you must do if you find a body.’ He glanced at Harsnet. ‘Then ever since I’ve had gentlemen questioning me, pressing me to keep it all a secret.’
‘There is good reason,’ I said.
‘So make sure you do as you’re told.’ Harsnet took a shilling from his pocket and passed it to Wheelows. ‘All right, you can go.’
The old man bowed quickly to us, cast a last frightened look over at the marshes, then clambered grunting through the mud to the path. He walked rapidly off towards Westminster. Harsnet watched him go. ‘I didn’t like locking him up,’ he said. ‘But we had to scare him to keep him silent.’
I nodded, then stared into the tidal pool. ‘It’s just like Roger. The doctor was lured to a meeting with someone, drugged, then carried out here. His throat was slit and he was dumped in the pool. People walk along this path every day, more when the river was frozen and the wherries weren’t running. If the old man hadn’t come on the body early it would have made another—’ I hesitated - ‘spectacle.’
Harsnet looked down the path. ‘But how could he drag the body out here? Dr Gurney wouldn’t have met anyone on this path at night, surely.’
I nodded at the river. ‘People were walking across the ice then. It was very thick. I would guess the killer met Dr Gurney on the far bank, drugged him there and hauled him over here.’ I shook my head. ‘The killings identical, the men so similar in many ways. What is it that links them?’
‘He must have timed it right at low tide,’ Barak said. ‘Like now. When the sea tide rose under the ice the bloodied water would have leaked out underneath and covered the shore, and the pool.’
Sea tide. Water turned to blood. Words snagged at my mind, as had the Treasurer’s about a fountain turned to blood. I knew those phrases. But from where?
Then Barak leaned in close to us. ‘Don’t look round, but there’s someone watching. On a patch of higher ground behind us. I saw a head outlined against the sky, just for a second. The old man was right.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘I’m going after him.’ The light of excitement was back in his eyes.
I put a hand on his arm. ‘It’s all marsh. You don’t know how deep the mud and water are.’
‘I’ll risk that,’ Barak turned, ran across the path and plunged into the reeds. There was a great splashing and the water came up to his thighs, but he ploughed on. Harsnet and I stared. About fifty yards away a green-covered knoll rose from the reeds. For the merest second I saw a head outlined against the grey sky, then it was gone.
‘I’m going to follow,’ Harsnet said. I had to admire the way the coroner threw himself into the reeds after Barak, mud splashing on his fine coat. I followed in his wake, gasping at the chill of the muddy water against my legs.
Ahead, we saw Barak step on to dry land. He stood outlined against the sky, looking around. ‘Shit!’ he said loudly.
I followed Harsnet up on to the small knoll. Barak was looking out over the marshes. It was dotted with cottars’ cottages in the distance but between us and them lay a wide bare expanse of waving reeds.
‘I thought if I got up here and he ran, I could see where he went,’ Barak said. ‘But he’s vanished.’
‘But where to?’ Harsnet stared out across the wide empty landscape. ‘It’s not been a few minutes, we should see him running.’
‘I’d guess he’s lain down somewhere in those reeds,’ I said.
‘They’re perfect cover.’
‘Then we wait,’ Harsnet said in clipped tones. ‘No man could stand lying out among those reeds for long. The water’s freezing.’
‘Look at this.’ Barak was pointing at something on the ground. A rough pallet of straw. He put his hand to it.
‘It’s still warm,’ he said. ‘He’s been lying here watching us.’
Harsnet frowned. ‘Then he knew we were coming. But how? How?’ His eyes roved over the marshes, looking for movement. But there was nothing. I shivered. Was the killer lying out there in the freezing mud and water, watching us? Harsnet took a deep breath. ‘I will not stir from this spot till dusk. He has to move sooner or later.’ He looked at Barak. ‘Good, you brought your sword.’
Barak looked at the sky, a deeper grey now. ‘I think it will rain.’
‘All the better to drive him out.’
The three of us waited, watching the marshland below. Occasionally a waterbird started up with a clatter of wings, but otherwise we saw no movement, even when a heavy shower came and soaked us all. I was becoming uncomfortable and my back hurt. How much worse the discomfort must be for someone lying down out there.
Harsnet looked at me, probably thinking I would be of little use in a tussle. ‘You go,’ he said. ‘Barak and I can deal with this.’ Barak was sitting down on the pallet, but the coroner stood like a rock.
‘Do you want me to fetch some more men?’ I asked. ‘Search the reeds?’
‘No. He could be anywhere in there. It could take hours. We will wait till he moves. If Barak might stay here.’
‘Of course.’
I left them to their vigil, wading back to the path. A couple of early passers-by stared in astonishment as I appeared, my robe and boots mud-spattered. I cast a look back at the little knoll, where Harsnet stood outlined against the sky, a waiting, avenging angel.
Chapter Twelve
AN HOUR LATER I walked through the Bedlam gates and approached the long building. This time, from somewhere within I heard two people shouting, the words indistinguishable. I did not want to enter. A monstrous killer and a deranged boy; it seemed as though this past fortnight I had left the world of normal behaviour, normal passions, behind, and entered a strange, terrifying new country. I remembered the companionable warmth of that last dinner with Roger and Dorothy. Now Roger was dead and Dorothy a shadow of herself, leaden with grief. I worried about her constantly. I thought of Barak and Harsnet waiting out there in Lambeth marshes, and prayed they would catch Roger’s killer. It had been somehow terrifying, the contrast between the violence of the second identical, horrible death and the still emptiness of the marsh where the killer lay - unless it was some stranger who had chosen to camp on that knoll; but that seemed
implausible.
On the doorstep of the madhouse I took a deep breath, then knocked. Keeper Shawms himself answered; perhaps he had been watching my approach from a window. He had a grim expression on his hard face. The shouting was louder now. ‘Let me go, let me go, you churls.’ There was a clash of chains.
‘Oh, you’re here, then,’ he said. ‘I’ve had notification of a hearing at the Court of Requests, about my care of Adam Kite. It’s next week, the fourth.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘They’ve let you know. It is to ask you to report on him regularly.’
‘I’ve got no time to go running to courts. You’re saying I don’t take care of him.’
I bent close to him, catching an odour of foul breath and drink. ‘Nor do you, rogue. But the court order will ensure you will. Now let me in, I have to see my client.’
He stood back, surprised by the anger in my voice. I stepped past him, feeling the better for snapping. The shouting was louder now.
‘There’s a man who says he’s a doctor waiting for you,’ Shawms said. ‘Skin as dark as coal. As if it’s not enough having that madwag boy upsetting everyone, now you have to bring a blackamoor here to affright Christian folk. The Chained Scholar saw him pass, though, in that robe of his. Thought it was the Cambridge don who denied him a post, burned black in Hell and returned from the grave to torment him.’ He paused, and then said, ‘Come and see, sir, see what I have to contend with!’
He stumped off down the corridor. I followed him, reluctantly, but thought again that I should know as much as possible about what went on here.
A viewing hatch was open in one of the last rooms in the corridor. Through it I saw Hob Gebons and another keeper struggling to chain a middle-aged man in a dirty white shirt and black hose. He had a long, ascetic face beneath thinning brown hair. He was quiet now, panting with exhaustion. The two keepers had shackled his hands together before him, and one was manacling his ankle to a chain on the floor. I shuddered, for the sight brought back my brief but terrifying experience of the Tower of London.
‘Is this necessary?’ I asked Shawms.
There was a clinking sound as the man turned to look at us. His eyes widened as he saw the lawyer’s robe beneath my coat. In a second his face went wild, and he tried to break free of the warders and fly at me. ‘A lawyer now,’ he yelled. ‘First Pellman’s ghost and now the devil sends a lawyer to torment me!’
‘Stay still,’ Gebons growled. ‘Madwag!’ He turned to the door.
‘Please close the hatch, Master Shawms.’ Shawms nodded, closed the door and turned to me. ‘You see what I have to deal with? He’d scratch your face off if he could. His family pay for him to be kept here, or God knows what he would do. Now, I’ll take you to see Dr Malton. I put him in the parlour so the patients could have a gawp at him. The ones in there are all right,’ he added. ‘They’re not violent.’ I followed him, still shocked by the scholar’s savage lunge.
THE PARLOUR was full today. The old woman Cissy sat in her corner sewing, while a man and two women played cards at a table. It was a normal enough scene. The keeper Ellen, who had been with Cissy before and had said she would never leave the Bedlam, was not there. I was disappointed, for she had intrigued me. Guy sat on a stool by the fire, ignoring the curious looks Cissy and the card-players gave him, his brown hands folded in his lap. He seemed, as he occasionally did in company which might be hostile, to have retreated quietly into himself.
‘Guy,’ I said. ‘Thank you for coming. Have I kept you waiting?’
He stood up. ‘I got here early.’ He smiled gently. ‘The residents seem to find me interesting.’
‘Let us go and see Adam.’ I stepped to the door, keen to get Guy away from those curious eyes. Then one of the card-players, a tall woman in her forties, jumped to her feet, sending her chair crashing over, making me start violently.
‘Jane—’ The other woman grabbed her arm, but she shook herself free, and stood before us. To my amazement she bent, took the hem of her skirt and lifted it up, revealing her privy parts, a bush of greying hair against white skin. She leered at us.
‘Shouldn’t go without seeing this.’ She laughed wildly.
‘Oh, shame, wicked shame,’ Cissy cried from the corner. The other card-players seized Jane’s arms so that her skirt fell back into place. She began laughing hysterically.
Guy laid a hand on my arm. ‘Come,’ he said. We stepped outside.
‘Dear God,’ I said.
From behind us Jane’s wild laughter turned to tears as the others remonstrated with her, calling her wicked, a base whore. Guy shook his head. ‘I could feel the suffering in that room while I waited, behind those people’s curious eyes.’
‘You’re about to see worse. Shawms!’ I called out.
The keeper did not reappear, but the woman Ellen emerged from a nearby room. A bunch of keys dangled from the belt of her grey smock. She stared at Guy for a moment, then turned to me.
‘What is it, sir? What’s that noise in the parlour?’
‘One of the women made—’ I felt myself reddening—‘made an exhibition . . .’
‘Jane, I expect.’ She sighed. ‘Are you here to see Adam Kite? I’ll let you in, then I must go to the parlour.’
She led us to Adam’s cell, opening the viewing hatch and looking in before unlocking and opening the door. I heard the rapid murmur of prayer from within.
‘He’s as usual, sir,’ she said. ‘And now, I must see to the others.’ With a quick curtsy, she turned and walked to the parlour, cutting off a hubbub of noise as she closed the door. The Chained Scholar seemed to have gone quiet.
‘A woman keeper,’ Guy said. ‘Remarkable.’
‘She at least seems to be kind to the patients. She warned me against Shawms. But now, we must go inside. I warn you, this is - bad.’
‘I am ready,’ he answered quietly.
I led the way in. The notice from the court had had an effect: the room smelt better, there was a small fire in the grate, fresh rushes were on the floor, and Adam wore clean clothes. But he was as before, a creature of skin and bone crouched in a corner, his back to us, praying quickly, desperately. ‘God, please tell me I am saved, saved by Your grace . . .’
Guy looked at Adam for a second, then hitched up his robe and crouched down beside him with a litheness remarkable in a man of his age. He looked into Adam’s face. Adam gave him a quick sidelong look. His eyes widened a little as he registered Guy’s unusual colour, but only for a moment, then he turned his head away and began praying again.
Guy twisted his head to try and look into the boy’s eyes. He waited till Adam paused for breath, and asked softly, ‘Adam, why do you believe God has abandoned you?’
Something flickered in Adam’s eyes, and I saw that a connection had been made. ‘No,’ he whispered fiercely. ‘If I pray, abase myself before Him, He will show me I am saved!’
‘Will you not rise? I would like to talk to you and I am too old to squat on a stone floor.’ Gently, he reached out to take Adam’s arm. At once the boy’s face set hard, he clenched his teeth and curled his body tighter. Guy released him. ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘The poor old man will just have to crouch.’
‘Who are you?’ A whisper from Adam, the first words I had heard from him that were not frantic entreaties to the Deity.
‘I am a doctor. I want to find out why you think God has abandoned you.’
‘He has not,’ Adam said fiercely.
‘But He will not give you assurance you are saved?’
‘Not yet. I have read the Bible and I pray, I pray.’ Tears came to his eyes. ‘But his assurance will not come.’
‘That is hard.’
‘Reverend Meaphon prayed with me for days, he fasted me as the Book prescribes. But I only fainted.’
‘You pray so hard,’ Guy asked gently, ‘would you hear God if He answered you?’
Adam frowned, looked at Guy suspiciously. ‘How could I not hear Him?’
‘Beca
use of your fear that is so strong it drowns everything. Is it Hell you fear?’
‘The eternal burning,’ Adam whispered, so low Guy had to bend close to him. ‘Last night I had a dream.’
‘What was it?’
‘I was in a coach, such as rich persons are driven in. A black coach, four black horses pulling it. We were driving along a country lane, the fields brown and the trees bare. I wondered where I was being taken. Then we passed through a village and the people came out to their doorsteps and said, “He is being driven deeper into Hell. Deeper and deeper. Woe for the pains he will suffer, he is so bad he must be taken to the very depths!” I looked ahead and I saw a red glow on the horizon, felt a sulphurous heat.’
‘Who was driving the coach?’ Guy asked.
‘I cannot remember.’ Suddenly Adam broke down, sobbing desperately, tears running down his dirty face. Guy laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Cry,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ And I saw deep sadness in his own eyes, Guy who had been so coldly rational about Roger, who had discussed his corpse’s innards with his apprentice. I felt an unreasoning stab of anger.
At length Adam’s tears subsided. Again Guy tried to coax him to his feet, but still the boy resisted. ‘I must pray,’ he said, in tones of desperate exhaustion. ‘Please, I have wasted time talking, I have to pray.’
‘Very well. But let me ask you a question. Why do you think God visits this suffering upon you? Do you think He has singled you out?’
‘No.’ Adam shook his head vigorously, though he looked at the wall, not at Guy. ‘All should fear the pains of Hell as I do. Burning, in agony, for ever and ever. In our church we know the truth, that is what awaits those who are not saved, who sin.’
‘And the other believers, Reverend Meaphon’s congregation, are they sinners too?’
‘Yes, but they have all received God’s assurance that they are forgiven, they are among the elect, the saved.’
‘But not you?’
‘No.’ He turned full-face to Guy. ‘I know I am not saved. Reverend Meaphon says it is a devil inside me. I must ask God, beg Him to release me from it. Save me. Now leave me. Leave me!’ His sudden shriek made me jump. Adam turned back to the wall, began his dreadful intoning again. ‘God hear my prayer I beseech You hear me . . .’
