by C. J. Sansom
‘I’ll start where I like in my own house. Is this how you keep your promise to make things up with Tamasin?’
‘None of your business,’ he muttered.
‘It is my business if you upset her. Where have you been?’
‘Drinking with some old mates. In town.’
‘You never used to get drunk like this. Why now? Still because of the lost child?’ I added more gently.
He did not reply.
‘Well?’
‘I am sick of this business,’ he said. ‘Sick to the heart, if you must know. He could strike again tonight. We have nothing, nothing but bits and pieces of information.’
‘I know,’ I replied, more quietly. ‘I feel the same. But you have no right to take it out on Tamasin.’
‘I didn’t.’ His voice became truculent again. ‘I came in here and she started going on at me for being drunk. I told her to let me be and when she didn’t I called her some names. She doesn’t know when to let me alone.’
‘You could have told her what ails you.’
He looked at me. ‘What? Tell her the man who attacked her is still free, we know fuck all and are waiting for him to kill again? Perhaps attack us again? I hate being so powerless. I wish we could get at him.’ He shook his head.
‘I think you should sleep this off,’ I said. ‘And when you wake up, apologize to Tamasin. Or you will lose her.’
‘Maybe one of Harsnet’s devils has entered me,’ he said bitterly.
‘Ay, from out of a bottle.’ I closed the door, leaving him.
STRANGELY, I SLEPT Well that night, as though my expression of anger and frustration at Barak had released something within me. It began raining heavily as I prepared for bed, drops pattering against the window the last thing I heard. I woke early; the sky was still cloudy, but the rain had stopped for now. It must have gone on all night, for there were large puddles on the garden path beneath my window.
The rest of the house was still quiet; Barak and Tamasin did not seem to be up and I wondered if they had managed to mend things between them at all. From Barak’s frame of mind last night, I doubted it. It had felt strange to berate him, for a long time now I had looked on him as a friend rather than a subordinate.
Until some news came from Harsnet’s enquiries, and his efforts to put pressure on Dean Benson, there was plenty of work awaiting me at Chancery Lane. First, though, I would visit Dorothy. I wondered how she was faring without Samuel. I wished I had some news of Roger’s killer for her. I heard Joan’s voice in the kitchen, talking to Orr, but I did not wish to become embroiled in a discussion with her about Tamasin and Barak, and I did not feel like breakfast either, so I left the house quietly. I walked the short distance up Chancery Lane to Lincoln’s Inn. The road had turned to mud and I was glad I had put on my riding boots.
At Lincoln’s Inn the working day had begun, black-robed lawyers stepping to and fro across Gatehouse Court with papers under their arms, the fountain splashing under the grey sky.
Margaret answered the door to Dorothy’s rooms. She told me her mistress was at home, going through papers. ‘How is she?’ I asked.
‘Trying to get back to a normal life, I think, sir. But she finds it hard.’
Dorothy was in the parlour. She still looked wan and pale, but greeted me with a smile. ‘You look tired,’ she said.
‘This hunt.’ I paused. ‘He is still at large. It has been nearly two weeks now, I know.’
‘I know you will be doing all you can.’ She rose from the table, wiping her quill and setting it by the papers. ‘Come, this wretched rain has stopped. Will you take me for a walk in Coney Garth? I need some air.’
‘Gladly.’ I was pleased to see she could give mind now to such ordinary things. ‘You will need boots, the ground is wet.’
‘I will get them.’
She left me in the parlour. I stood by the fire, the animals peering at me from the undergrowth on the wooden frieze. Dorothy returned, dressed in a black cloak with a hood and high walking boots, and we went out of doors and crossed Gatehouse Court. Lawyers nodded to us, their stares a mixture of curiosity and discomfort. I noticed Dorothy still resolutely avoided looking at the fountain.
We walked into the bare heathland of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The murderer had escaped this way after killing Roger. Nearby was a long hillock, the sides dotted with rabbit holes, where students would come to hunt their dinner later in the season. We followed a path that led to the top of the hillock, the ground drier there. Dorothy was silent, thoughtful-looking.
‘Samuel will have arrived in Bristol by now,’ I said.
‘Yes. He very much wanted me to go back with him.’
‘He also said you would not be driven away from your home.’
‘No, I will not. I will stay here until the killer is caught. And there is business I must finish here. Master Bartlett has kindly made a summary of monies due to Roger for his cases. And I am not lonely. Many kind people have visited.’ She smiled sadly. ‘You remember Madam Loder, who was at the dinner last month. She called to see me two days ago. I had no sooner sat her down on some cushions and handed her a glass of wine then she leaned forward and those false teeth of hers fell out on her lap.’ She laughed. ‘Poor woman, she was very embarrassed. She is going to have some firm words with the tooth-drawer who prepared the denture.’
Her words reminded me of Tamasin’s experience. I wondered whether Mrs Loder ever thought to wonder where those teeth of hers came from.
‘Are you still taking care not to go out unaccompanied?’ I asked. ‘It is only a precaution, but I think it is as well.’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you stay in London, do you think, or go to Bristol? In the long run?’
She sighed. ‘I think it would be hard for me to buy a house in London. But perhaps in Bristol I could.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Treasurer Rowland has sent a message; kindly worded, but he made it clear he wants me out of our rooms as soon as possible now.’
‘He is a heartless man.’
She shrugged. ‘There is a vacancy at the Inn now, he will want to fill it.’ She gave me a searching look. ‘Samuel would like me to move back to Bristol permanently. But it is not just obstinacy that makes me stay. It is too early to decide on something like that.’ She sighed. ‘It is hard to think clearly. Everywhere the empty space of Roger’s absence follows me. It is like a hole in the world. Yet do you know, I realized this morning that I had worked for half an hour without thinking of him. I felt guilty, as though I had betrayed him.’
‘I think that is how grief is. The hole in the world will always be there, but you begin to notice the other things. You should not feel guilt.’
Dorothy looked at me curiously. ‘You have known grief too?’
‘There was a woman I knew who died. In the plague of 1534. Nine years, but I still think of her. I used to wear a mourning ring for her.’
‘I did not know.’
‘It was after you and Roger went to Bristol.’ I looked at her. ‘Dorothy, may I ask you something?’
‘Anything.’
‘The business you feel you must stay for. Is part of it waiting for the killer to be caught? Because I do not know when that will be.’
She came to a halt, turned and laid a hand on my arm. Her pale face, outlined by the black hood, was full of concern. ‘Matthew,’ she said quietly. ‘I can see this dreadful thing is burning you up. I am sorry it was me that set you on this hunt. I thought officialdom did not care. But now I know they are seeking this man, I want you to leave the matter to them. This is having a bad effect on you.’
I shook my head sadly. ‘I am bound tightly into the hunt for him now, bound into those official chains. He - he has killed again.’
‘Oh no.’
‘You are right, Dorothy, the horror eats into me, but I have to see it through now. And I have involved others too. Guy, Barak.’ And even if I was willing to leave the killer alone, I thought but did not say, would he leave me? ‘
Do not be sorry,’ I continued. ‘We think we may know who the killer is. We will catch him. And one thing we are certain of now is that Roger was a chance victim, in the sense that the killer could equally have chosen someone else.’
‘That is little comfort, somehow it makes it worse. But it has happened, I must bear it. Nothing will bring Roger back.’
I smiled at her. ‘You are so much calmer now. Your strength is helping you.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Do you feel God helps you in your grief?’ I asked impulsively. ‘Succours you?’
‘I pray. For help in dealing with what has happened. Yet I would not ask God to take away my grief. It must be borne. Though I cannot understand how God would allow a good man to be destroyed like that. That is what I mean by his being a chance victim making it worse.’
‘I suppose one could answer the killer is an evil man, who has turned from God and all that is good. And God allows us the free will to do that.’
She shook her head. ‘I have not the heart for such speculation these days.’
We walked on in silence for a little. Then she said, ‘You have much courage, Matthew, to do this hateful work.’ She smiled at me. ‘For anyone it would be bad, but you - you are affected by things.’
‘It has affected Barak too. And Guy, I think.’
‘Are you sure you cannot give it up?’
‘No. Not now.’
We had reached the edge of the little escarpment and stood looking out over Lincoln’s Inn Fields, towards the more distant fields of Long Acre. Clouds in varying shades of grey raced across the sky, promising more rain.
‘Do you remember when we first met?’ Dorothy asked suddenly. ‘That business of Master Thornley’s paper?’
I smiled. ‘I recall it as though it were yesterday.’ Thornley had been a fellow student who studied with Roger and me twenty years before. The three of us shared a little cubby-hole of an office at the Inn. It had been a summer evening. I had been sitting working with Roger when Dorothy had called, with a message from her father, my principal, about a case the following day where he required my assistance. Scarcely had she told me when Thornley had burst in. ‘He was such a fat little fellow,’ Dorothy recalled. ‘Do you remember? He had a round red face, but that evening it was white.’
I remembered. Thornley had been set a fiendishly complicated problem in land law, one on which he had to present a paper on the morrow. ‘The story he told us.’ I laughed aloud at the memory. ‘He would be unable to present his paper because his dog had eaten it. The lamest excuse in the world, yet that time it was true. Did you ever see that dog?’
‘No. It lived in his lodgings, did it not?’
‘A great big lurcher he brought up from the country. He kept it in that tiny lodging room of his in Nuns Alley. The beast chewed all the furniture to shreds, then started on the contents of his open workcase. Those chewed-up fragments of paper he pulled from it. Some of them still wet with dog-spittle, the ink all run.’
‘And we helped him. You sorted out all those torn bits of paper, as Thornley and Roger and I copied out the exercise again. Some of it was illegible and Thornley had to cudgel his brains to remember what he had said.’
‘Roger filled in some of the blanks for him.’
‘And next day Thornley presented it, and was praised for the precision of his answer.’
‘What became of Thornley? I never saw him again after we qualified.’ I looked at her. ‘Was that the first time you and Roger met?’
‘Yes, it was. But it was you I came to see that day.’
‘Me?’
She smiled gently. ‘Do you not think my father could have got a servant to deliver his message? I offered to bring it round so that I could see you.’
‘I did not realize,’ I said. ‘But I remember noting that you and Roger got on very well, and feeling jealous.’
‘I thought you were not interested in me. So when I met Roger—’
‘So you came to see me,’ I said quietly. Something seemed to pull at my heart. I looked out over the greens and browns of the flat landscape ‘How little we know each other,’ I said at length. ‘How easy it is to make mistakes.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed with a sad smile.
‘Recently - I am not even sure I know Guy as well as I thought.’ I hesitated, full of confused emotion, then looked at her. ‘I hope you do not go to Bristol, Dorothy. I will miss you. But you must decide.’
She lowered her eyes. ‘I feel I am a burden to my friends.’
‘Never to me.’
She stared out over the fields. There was an awkward moment of silence. ‘We should go back,’ she said quietly. She turned and led the way, her skirts rustling on the wet grass. I feared I had embarrassed her. But I knew then, amidst all my trouble, that if she stayed, then after a decent period I would seek to gain her hand. I felt in time her old feelings for me might be resurrected. Perhaps they were budding already, or why had she recalled that story? And I had a sudden certainty that Roger would have approved.
RECOGNITION OF my feelings for Dorothy, which perhaps had never really gone away in the intervening years, and the thought that there might be some hope for me in the future, cheered me. Amidst all the danger and confusion it was something optimistic to hold on to. And then, going across the courtyard from Dorothy’s to my chambers, I saw Bealknap again. He was walking across Gatehouse Court, stooped and bent, and I saw that now he needed the aid of a stick. His head was cast down and I could have avoided him, but I did not do so. I remembered my meeting with his physician in Guy’s shop, the man’s confident talk of bleeding and purging.
Bealknap looked up as I approached. His face, always thin, was skeletal now. He glared at me, an expression full of spite and malice. I remembered how in the days of his health he would never look you straight in the face.
‘I am sorry to see you with a stick,’ I said.
‘Leave me, get out of my way.’ Bealknap grasped the stick tighter, as though he would have liked to strike me with it. ‘You will end by regretting the way you have treated me.’
‘At the Court of Requests? I had to do that. But believe it or not, I do not like to see anyone ill.’ I hesitated, fought a sudden urge to walk away. ‘I met your doctor some days ago,’ I said. ‘Dr Archer.’
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘What has my physician to do with you?’
‘He was at my friend Dr Malton’s premises when I called there. He mentioned you as a patient he had at Lincoln’s Inn. He sounded like a great old purger.’
‘So he is. He bleeds and purges me constantly, he says my body is badly disordered and keeps producing bad humours which must be forced out.’ He put a hand to his stomach and winced. ‘He has given me a new purge to take now. The lax comes on so quick it plucks my stomach away.’
‘Some doctors think of nothing but purging. Have you thought of getting a second opinion?’
‘Dr Archer was my father’s doctor. What would going to a second doctor serve except - confusion? And expense. Archer will get me right in the end.’ He looked at me defiantly. It surprised me that Bealknap, of all people, should place his trust in a physician who was clearly making him worse. But a man may be as cunning as a serpent in one sphere of life, and naive as a schoolboy in another. I took a deep breath, then said, ‘Bealknap, why do you not go and see my friend Dr Malton? Get another opinion?’
‘That brown Moor? And what if Dr Archer found out? He would stop treating me.’
‘Dr Archer need not know.’
‘Dr Malton would want paying in advance, I imagine. A new fee for him.’
‘No,’ I said evenly. But if Bealknap went to Guy, I would pay him myself rather than leave Guy to chase him for payment.
Bealknap’s eyes narrowed into a calculating look. I could see he was wondering whether he could get a free appointment out of this, and thus to his strange way of thinking score a point against me.
‘Very well.’ He spoke aggressively, as though acce
pting a challenge. ‘I will go. I will hear what he has to say.’
‘Good. You will find him down at Bucklersbury. I am seeing him tomorrow, shall I make an appointment for you?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you doing this? To find some profit for your friend?’
‘I do not like to see anyone brought low by bad medical treatment. Even you, Bealknap.’
‘How can laymen know what is good or bad treatment?’ he muttered, then turned and walked away without thanks.
I watched him go, his stick tapping on the stone flags. Why had I done this, I asked myself. I realized that if Guy was able to help Bealknap, which was at least possible, it would be me who in a way would have scored a point against my old enemy. And given myself a sense of virtue, too. I wondered if that was partly why I had offered to help him. But if we never acted except when we were certain our motives were pure, we would never act at all.
Chapter Thirty
FOR THE REST of the day I worked steadily in my office. The rain began again, coming down heavily all afternoon. Barak was there too; in no mood for conversation, occasionally wincing, probably at the pains in his head after his drinking bout; so far as I was concerned, he deserved them. Towards evening a rider came from Cranmer’s office summoning me to a conference at Lambeth the following afternoon. I reflected there could have been no dramatic developments or he would have wanted to see me at once. It must be our lack of progress he wished to discuss. I went to bed early; it rained heavily again in the night and I woke a couple of times to hear it pattering on the roof. I thought of the killer, out there somewhere. He could be watching the house now, for rain and cold meant little to him. Or he could be sitting in some room, somewhere in the vast city, listening to the rain as I was, while heaven knew what thoughts went through his mind.
Next morning was fine and sunny again, the warmest day so far. The spring was moving on. Sitting at breakfast I saw Tamasin walking on her own around the garden, pausing to look at the crocuses and the daffodils. She walked back towards the house and sat on the bench next to the kitchen door. I went outside to join her. Her bruises were quite gone now, her face strikingly pretty once again. But she looked preoccupied. She half rose as I approached, and I waved her to stay seated.
