by C. J. Sansom
‘How long were you a monk?’
‘I entered the novitiate when I was sixteen. My father got me in, he did carpentry for the abbey. He didn’t want me working for him, said I was clumsy. Though it was my eyes, of course.’ Cantrell’s voice had sunk to a sad monotone.
‘How came you to work in the infirmary?’
He shrugged. ‘Goddard wanted someone to train up and I was the only young monk there. I didn’t mind, I thought it would be better than copying old texts, which is what I did before. They burned them all, when the house went down.’ He laughed bitterly.
‘Do you miss the life?’
He shrugged. ‘I liked the routine, after a while I believed all they said, about our serving God. But - well - it was all wrong, so they say now, ’tis as futile to say Masses for the dead as throw a stone against the wind.’ He paused. ‘The world has gone all crooked. Do you not think so, sir?’
‘Tell me about Dr Goddard,’ I said. ‘What he did that killed his patients.’
‘I won’t get into trouble?’ he asked nervously.
‘You will if you don’t answer,’ Barak said.
Cantrell considered. ‘Dr Goddard was an impatient man. Sometimes he used to prescribe what I thought was too much medicine, and the person would die. There was an old monk, too, he fell down some stairs and smashed his arm badly. It had to come off. Goddard used to do the operations himself, it cost money to bring in the barber-surgeon, and he gave the monk a big dose of some stuff that sends you to sleep; he slept through the operation all right but never woke up afterwards. Goddard said he must have given him too much. He said, at least he’d never have to hear his creaky whining again.’
‘This medicine, was it called dwale?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He looked surprised that we knew.
‘Surely if you thought the doctor was hastening people out of the world, you should have spoken.’
Cantrell shifted uncomfortably. ‘I wasn’t sure, sir, I’m no doctor. He would have talked his way out of it, and I’d just have got into trouble. And you don’t know what he was like.’ He hesitated. ‘He would look at me sometimes as a man will look at a beetle on his table.’ Then he laughed, uneasily. ‘I’d be working away in the infirmary sometimes, not saying anything because he didn’t like conversing with inferiors like me. Then suddenly he’d fly at me for some little mistake, nothing.’ A strained, bitter smile flickered over his thin face. ‘I think he did it just to make me jump.’ He paused. ‘What has he done, sir?’ he asked again.
‘I am afraid I cannot say. Your eyes, they are still weak?’
‘Even with the glasses I can hardly see. They say the King wears glasses now.’ He laughed bitterly again. ‘I’ll wager he can see better than me.’ He seemed to slump further on the stool. ‘When I left the monastery I went back to work for my father, but I was no good. After he died I gave up the business.’ He looked at an inner door. ‘That was his workshop. Do you want to see?’
I looked at Barak. He shrugged. I stood up.
‘Thank you, no. But thank you for your help,’ I said. ‘If you think of anything that might help us, anything at all, I can be reached at Lincoln’s Inn.’ I hesitated, then added, ‘I am sorry for the trouble with your eyes. Have you ever seen a doctor?’
‘There is nothing anyone can do,’ he said flatly. ‘I will go blind eventually.’
‘I know someone—’
‘I have little faith in doctors, sir.’ His mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. ‘After my time with Dr Goddard. You understand.’
OUTSIDE, BARAK shook his head. ‘You’d send every sparrow that falls from a tree to the old Moor.’
I laughed. Then Barak touched my arm. ‘Look, over there, that old woman’s waving to us.’
I followed his gaze. An aged, respectable-looking goodwife in a white coif, carrying a basket in which a pair of dead rabbits lolled, beckoned to us from the other side of the street. We crossed over to her. She fixed us with a pair of sharp eyes.
‘Were you visiting Charlie Cantrell?’ she asked.
‘What’s that to you?’ Barak asked.
‘He’s not in trouble, is he?’
‘No. Helping with some legal enquiries, that is all.’
‘He’s a poor fellow, I don’t think he stirs much from that house. His father died last year and Charlie inherited the house and business. I was a friend of his father. Adrian was that skilled with wood, he was always turning away business. Charlie can’t do carpentry with his poor vision, now all he has is his monk’s pension.’ She looked between us, waiting for a reply, eager for gossip.
‘You live nearby, goodwife?’ I asked.
‘Five houses down. I’ve asked Charlie if he’d like some help with cleaning, his house is filthy and he could afford someone else to do it out of that pension, but he won’t have anyone there. I reckon he’s ashamed.’
‘Poor young fellow.’ I looked at her stolidly, and seeing she was not going to get anything out of us she wrinkled her face at me then turned and walked off, the rabbits’ heads hanging out of her basket, bobbing up and down.
‘Nosy old bitch,’ Barak said.
‘Young Cantrell is not one of those who went from the Dissolution to a better life.’
‘Poor arsehole. Shouldn’t think there was ever much go in him, even if he could see properly.’
‘No. But he damns Goddard, more than ever.’
‘Yes. Now all we have to do is find him.’
I sighed. ‘Let’s see what the other assistant can tell us.’
Chapter Twenty-two
WE RODE UP TO Smithfield through a countryside coming to life again after the winter, the cattle out in the meadows again after months indoors. In the fields men were ploughing while women walked behind pairs of shaggy-hoofed horses, casting grain from bags at their waists. I wondered what Lockley would be like. An ex-monk living at, perhaps running, a tavern was unusual, but with thousands thrown out of the monasteries there were many stories stranger than that.
We reached the great square of Smithfield. It was not a market day, and the big cattle pens were dismantled, stacked against the walls at the north end. To one side stood the great church of St Bartholomew’s where, three years before, Barak had saved my life in the course of our first assignment together. Behind the high walls I saw all the monastic buildings had come down now. Nearby stood the great empty hospital, reminding me again of my promise to Roger. Only a few hours now to his funeral.
Barak turned to me, nodding at the church. ‘Remember?’ he asked.
‘Ay.’ I sighed. ‘That was as dangerous a time as this.’
He shook his head. ‘No. Then we were dealing with politicians. When they do villainy they have reasons. They don’t kill in a mad frenzy.’
‘As often as not it is only for their own power and wealth.’
‘At least that’s something comprehensible.’
We rode on, up Charterhouse Lane and under the stone arch leading into Charterhouse Square. This was a wide grassy area dotted with trees that covered the burial pits from the Great Plague of two hundred years ago. An old chapel stood at its centre. A ragged little group of beggars sat huddled outside. To the north, beyond a low redbrick wall, lay the buildings of the Charterhouse, whose monks had defied the King over the break from Rome. Most had been brutally executed as a result; Cromwell had masterminded that, along with so much else. These days the buildings were used for storage, apart from those which I had heard had been made into lodgings for the King’s Italian musicians, whom he had recently brought over at great expense.
As with all the monastic houses, the monks had rented out land in their precinct. On this side of the square the dwellings were small and poor-looking, one- and two-storey wooden affairs, but opposite was a row of fine stone and brick houses. I had heard that the best one belonged to Lord Latimer, and now therefore to his widow Catherine Parr. I studied a large redbrick mansion with tall chimneys, the only house standing in its own drive. As I watched,
a horseman in red livery galloped down the road fronting the houses and turned in at the drive, raising clouds of dust. More pressure from the King?
Barak brought me back to earth, pointing to a sign dangling over a narrow, ramshackle old building nearby. ‘There’s our place. The Green Man.’ The sign showed a man clothed in vines, painted bright green.
As we dismounted outside the tavern the beggars came over to us. Maybe the chapel had been abandoned when the Charterhouse was dissolved, and they had taken refuge there. Thin, dirty hands clutched at us as we tied the horses to the rail outside the tavern.
‘Piss off,’ Barak said, waving a couple of the hands away as he tied up. After what had happened in the Westminster crowd we both looked warily at the pinched faces, the ragged, stinking clothes. There were several children. ‘Here,’ I called to a starveling lad of about ten whose head was half bald and red raw, his hair eaten away by some disease. ‘Mind the horses and I’ll give you a groat when I come out.’
‘I’ll do it better!’ Other hands plucked at my sleeve. ‘He’s fucking useless,’ another boy called out. ‘Hairless Harry!’
‘No,’ I said, shaking them off. ‘Him.’
We knocked on the tavern door and waited, ignoring fresh entreaties from the beggars. Footsteps sounded, and a woman opened it. She wore a stained apron over a creased dress and a white coif from which tendrils of black hair escaped. She was powerfully built, short and square, but her face showed the remnants of past beauty. Her grey eyes were sharp and intelligent.
‘We’re not open till five,’ she said.
‘We don’t want a drink,’ I answered. ‘We are looking for Francis Lockley.’
She gave us a sharp, suspicious look. ‘What do you want with him?’
‘Some private business.’ I smiled. ‘He is not in any trouble.’
She hesitated, then said, ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’ She looked at our boots, messy with the mud of the southern precinct. ‘Wipe your feet, I don’t want that mess all over the floor. I’ve just cleaned it.’
We found ourselves in a medium-sized tavern, with whitewashed walls and tables and chairs scattered round a rush-strewn floor. The woman put her hands on her hips and faced us. ‘Did you give money to those beggars?’ she asked. ‘They’ll be hanging round half the day. They usually piss off to Smithfield about this time. I don’t grudge the poor caitiffs the shelter of the old chapel but I don’t want them pestering my customers.’
I had had enough of her scolding. ‘Do you work here?’ I asked pointedly.
‘I own the place. Ethel Bunce, widow and licencee of this parish, at your service,’ she added sardonically.
‘Oh.’
‘Francis!’ she called loudly. A serving hatch in the wall opened, and a short, fat man with a bald head and a round piggy face peered out. He too wore an apron, and behind him I saw a large bucket where wooden mugs floated in scummy water.
‘Yes, chick?’ He caught sight of us, and immediately his eyes narrowed and he looked worried.
‘These gents want a word. What have you been up to?’ She laughed as she said this, but her look at us was as uneasy as the fat man’s.
Lockley emerged through a side door. He was a little barrel of a man, a powerful physique run to seed, but still strong-looking. I wondered if that was why Mistress Bunce had taken him in. A widow might inherit a tavern licence, but would need a man to deal with difficult customers. Yet there was something loving in the look she gave Lockley as he sat on a stool beside her. I made a guess at why they seemed worried; they were living in sin.
‘We are not interested in the domestic arrangements between you,’ I said gently. ‘We have come from the King’s assistant coroner. We seek the whereabouts of the former Brother Goddard of Westminster Abbey.’
The reactions of the pair to the news were quite different. Mistress Bunce looked relieved that no one was after them over their sleeping arrangements. Lockley, though, narrowed his eyes again and pressed his lips together. I saw from the rise and fall of his chest that he was breathing hard. ‘That old shit Goddard?’ he asked.
‘You did not like him?’
‘Treated me like dirt. Because my father was a potman. As I am now,’ he added, glancing up at the widow with a look that was hard to read. She laid a strong hand over his.
‘You’re more to me than that, sweet.’
I wondered whether to ask her to leave but guessed that anything Lockley told us she would get out of him later. ‘You worked under Goddard in the lay infirmary, I believe,’ I asked him. ‘Helping him with sick people who came from Westminster town seeking help.’
Mistress Bunce’s eyes narrowed. ‘You seem to know a lot about Francis.’
‘We are questioning the former monks who worked with Goddard. We have spoken with young Master Cantrell, and with the dean.’
He looked suddenly worried. ‘What did they have to say?’ he asked.
‘That is confidential,’ I said.
Lockley laughed, nervously. ‘Young Charlie, eh? He had a bad time with Goddard.’
‘Have you any idea where Dr Goddard may be now?’
Lockley shook his head. ‘Haven’t seen him since the day we all left the abbey. Nor wanted to.’
‘You cannot remember where he went?’
‘Didn’t even say goodbye. Just told me to clear out the last patients and hand the key to the Treasurer as I was bid.’ He hesitated. ‘May I ask why you are seeking him?’
‘We are investigating a death.’
‘Whose?’ he asked. His whole body seemed to tense again.
‘I may not say. But tell me, do you know anything about Dr Goddard using a drug called dwale?’ One of Lockley’s hands was resting on the table and he clenched it.
‘I knew Dr Goddard used something to make his patients sleep if he had to operate on them in the monks’ infirmary. But he wouldn’t have wasted anything like that on the patients in the lay infirmary.’ He shrugged. ‘He wasn’t much interested in what went on there. He’d come in and look at people, give them a bit of advice or some herbs, set the odd broken bone. But mostly he left their care to me.’ He looked me in the eye as he told the story, he had himself under control now.
I nodded slowly. ‘Tell me more about what you thought of Dr Goddard.’
‘He had a high opinion of himself. Though I daresay doctors are all alike in that. He could be very sharp and rude.’ He leaned forward, smiling confidentially. ‘He had a huge great mole on one side of his nose. Biggest I’ve ever seen. If anyone looked at it, he’d go red and try to cover it with his hand. It was a way to get a rise out of him if you dared, but he’d always be in a foul mood afterwards.’ He looked at Barak and grinned anxiously. I knew he was keeping something back, but I had no evidence, nothing to confront him with.
‘What was your background?’ Barak asked.
‘I was an apprentice to a barber-surgeon before I went to Westminster. Ten years I was there, then I worked with a barber-surgeon again afterwards.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Young Cantrell did not like Goddard either.’ I looked at him, remembering his worried look when I said we had spoken to Cantrell and Dean Benson. But he had regained some confidence now. ‘Ay, Goddard gave that boy a hard time. He had a nasty sharp tongue. But Charlie Cantrell was always a wet fart.’
‘I saw the infirmary yesterday. Empty now, of course. It looked a gloomy place.’
‘It was. Conditions got steadily worse all the time I was there. Abbot Benson wanted the abbey to go to seed, to be closed. Cromwell paid him well. The old papist church was rotten,’ he said with sudden fierceness.
‘You are not one of those who still cleave to the old faith, then?’
‘No.’ Lockley frowned. ‘But the barber-surgeon I worked for when I left was one of those hot-gospellers. They’re even worse, puffed up because they think they have the keys to Hell and death.’
‘So you came here, to me,’ Mistress Bunce said, squeezing his hand. ‘To find r
est.’
Lockley did not respond to her gesture; instead he gave me an angry look. ‘Maybe neither the radicals nor the papists have it right, maybe the heathen Turks do.’ He laughed bitterly. I sensed something desperate, almost wild, about him then. He was not a man at ease in his mind.
Mistress Bunce laid her hand on his again. ‘Now, chick,’ she said warningly, casting us a nervous glance. ‘He says things without thinking. You don’t mean it, do you?’
A sudden rumbling came from under the tavern, and I felt the stone flags tremble. I looked up, startled. From somewhere far below came the sound of rushing water. ‘What’s that?’ Barak asked.
Lockley smiled faintly. ‘It makes new customers jump. They think the devil’s coming up from Hell to get them. We’re connected to the old sewer that was built to drain the Charterhouse. It runs under the cellar. The monks always did themselves well with their plumbing. Most of the buildings round the precinct are connected to their old sewer system, water flushes down from springs up at Islington fields.’
‘Yes.’ The widow took the chance to move the conversation away from religion. ‘We have our own little room of easement that drains down there, and all the tavern’s waste goes through a cellar hatch into the sewer. The only thing is, the watchman of the Charterhouse has to be reminded to open the lock gates under the old monastery, or the water builds up then rushes through, like just now. He’s a drunk. But there’s no one else lives there now, except those Italian musicians of the King’s, and they’re just stupid foreigners.’
Lockley gave me another challenging look. ‘Ethel was here when the Charterhouse defied Cromwell, refused to accept the royal supremacy. Prior Houghton was taken out, hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, his arm nailed to the door of the gate. You remember that, Ethel, don’t you?’
‘It was a long time ago,’ Mistress Bunce said uneasily.
‘Religious folks.’ His face twisted with contempt and something more than that, pain. In his own way, like Cantrell, he was one of those who had suffered from the changes. He got up.
