by C. J. Sansom
‘Bealknap wants a second opinion. He begins to realize Archer is doing him harm. He started with fainting and a bad stomach; I think he is quite ill now.’
‘Bealknap. I remember that name. He has done you harm in the past, has he not?’
‘Yes. He is the greatest rogue in Lincoln’s Inn. In fact, I will pay your fee, otherwise you will have to battle for it. I imagine he is making Archer wait for his money.’
‘You would help an enemy?’
I smiled. ‘Then he will owe me a moral debt. I would like to see how he deals with that. Do not think my motives are of unalloyed purity.’
‘Whose are?’ He looked sad, then smiled at me. ‘I think also you do not like to see suffering.’
‘Perhaps.’
The smile faded from my face as the door opened and Piers entered, neat in his blue apprentice’s robe, the usual bland respectful expression on his handsome face. Guy stood and touched his arm.
‘Piers. Your patient is here. Take him through to the other room, would you?’
Piers bowed. ‘Good morning, Master Shardlake.’
I rose reluctantly and followed him out. I had hoped Guy might come to supervise, but he stayed with his book. In the treatment room, with its shelves lined with more apothecary’s jars, its long table and its racks of fearsome-looking instruments, Piers smiled and gestured to a stool beside the table. ‘Would you bare your arm, sir, then sit there?’
I rolled up my shirtsleeve again. Piers turned and looked over Guy’s instruments. I stared at his broad, blue-robed back. When Guy had praised him just now I had seen a haunted look in his eyes, almost as though he were trying to console himself with the boy’s skill. But what was he hiding?
Piers selected a small pair of scissors, opened and closed them experimentally, then turned to me with a deferential smile, though I thought I saw cold amusement in his eyes. I watched apprehensively as he bent and snipped the black stitches. He did it gently, though, then took a pair of tweezers and slowly pulled out the broken threads. I sighed with relief when it was over, the constant pulling sensation of the last few days gone. Piers looked at my arm.
‘There. All is healed. It is wonderful how Dr Malton’s poultices prevent wounds from becoming infected.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘There will be a scar of course, it was a nasty gash.’
‘You are learning a lot from Dr Malton?’
‘Far more than from my old master.’ Piers smiled. ‘He was one of those apothecaries who believed in exotic herbs prepared in consultation with astrological charts.’
‘A traditionalist?’
‘If I might dare to say it, sir, I think he was not quite honest. He had the dried-up body of some strange, large lizard with a long tail in his shop. He would cut bits off, powder them up and get people to take the powder. Because the lizard was so strange, patients thought it had some great power.’ He gave a cynical smile that made him look older than his years. ‘People always believe in the power of the strange and unfamiliar. It is good to be working with Dr Malton now. An honest man, a man of reason.’
‘Your old master died, I believe.’
‘Yes.’ Piers fetched down one of the jars. He opened it, and I caught the sickly smell of the ointment Guy had used before. Piers put some on the end of a spatula and touched it to my arm, spreading it gently. ‘It was the smallpox killed him. The strange thing was, he did not dose himself with any of his own remedies. I think he did not believe in them himself. He simply took to his bed and waited to see if the pox would kill him. Which it did. There, that is done, sir.’
I found Piers’ even, unemotional tone in talking of his master’s death distasteful.
‘Had he family?’
‘No. There was just him and me. Dr Malton came and did what he could for him, but the smallpox takes its own path, does it not? Sometimes it kills, sometimes it disfigures. My parents died of it when I was small.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Dr Malton has been father and mother to me to since I came here.’
‘He said he is going to help you train to become a physician.’
Piers looked up sharply, perhaps wondering why I was asking taking such an interest. He knew I did not like him.
‘Yes.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘I do appreciate all the kindness he has shown me.’
‘Yes, his kindness is of a rare sort.’ I stood up. ‘Thank you for seeing to my arm.’
Piers bowed. ‘I am glad it is better.’
I left the room. He did not follow me. I remembered him listening at the door when we were talking of the murders. I thought, Guy might be kind, but you are not. You are cold and calculating, like a predatory animal. You have some hold over my friend, and I will discover what it is.
NEXT door, Guy was still reading his book. He offered me a glass of wine and asked to look at my arm. He nodded with satisfaction. ‘Piers has done a good job.’
‘I do wonder if he possesses the human sympathy one would hope for in a physician.’
‘He has had little chance to develop it. His parents died when he was young. And my late neighbour, Apothecary Hepden, worked him hard and taught him little.’
‘He told me about his death. He seems to have thought little of him.’
‘Yes, Piers can speak harshly. But I believe he has the capacity for sympathy, I believe I can teach it to him.’
‘He says you are a father and mother to him.’
‘Did he say that?’ Guy smiled, then his expression turned sombre.
‘What are you thinking?’ I asked gently.
‘Nothing.’ He changed the subject. ‘I have been to see Adam Kite again. You know, I think there is improvement. That woman keeper, Ellen, she works hard with him. She forces him to eat and clean himself, tries to pull him away from his obsession with constant prayer.’
‘Did you know she is a former patient, and is not allowed to leave the precinct?’
‘No.’ Guy looked taken aback. ‘That surprises me.’
‘She told me herself.’
‘She is gentle with Adam, but very firm. It has had an effect. The other day he even talked of normal everyday things for a minute. He said the weather is getting warmer, he did not feel so cold. But still I cannot get him to explain why he feels such a sense of sin. I wonder what brought it on.’
‘What do his parents say? I saw you leave with them after the court hearing.’
‘They say they have no idea. I believe them.’
‘Thank you for doing this. Adam cannot be - easy to work with.’
Guy smiled sadly. ‘He touches me, yet intrigues me too. So like you with Bealknap, my motives are not all pure.’
‘I ought to visit Adam again.’
‘I am going to see him again tomorrow morning. Would you like to come?’
‘Very well. If I can.’
‘You do not sound as if you want to.’
‘I find it distressing. He is in such pain. And religious madness makes me think of the man we are hunting, and who has been hunting me.’ I looked at my arm. ‘How can he believe that what he is doing is inspired by God?’
‘Have we not seen enough these last years to know that men may do cruel, wicked things, yet believe they have communion with God? Think of the King.’
‘Yes. Belief in God and human sympathy can be very different things. Yet the killer is something different again. That obsessive savagery.’ I looked at Guy. ‘He still has three murders to commit. And if he succeeds, I, like you, do not think he will stop. I told Cranmer so today.’
‘No. Such a momentum would have to be carried forward. Till he is caught, or dies.’
‘How will he feel if he pours out the seven vials of wrath and the world does not end?’
‘There have been many in these last years who thought they knew when the world would end. When it does not they go back to Revelation for the clues they have missed. And that is easy. It is not a story in sequence but a series of violent narrative
s giving alternative ways in which the world will finish. So they find a new formula.’
I nodded slowly. ‘Does he suffer, I wonder?’
‘The killer?’ Guy shook his head. ‘I do not know. My guess would be the acts of killing are a sort of ecstasy for him, but perhaps, that apart, he lives in a world of pain.’
‘But he conceals it - he is able to live a normal life or something like it. Without standing out.’
‘Yes. I think among the many things he is, he is a good actor.’
‘Is it Goddard?’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. Harsnet still thinks he is possessed.’
Guy shook his head. ‘No. He is an obsessive, and all obsessions come from some maladjustment of the brain. Not the devil.’ He set his lips. I thought, why are you sure?
We were silent for a moment. Then I asked, ‘What happens after the vials are poured out? In Revelation. What comes next?’
Guy rose and went to his bookshelf. He brought down a New Testament and turned to Revelation.
‘The seven vials of wrath are in Chapters 15 to 16. Already before then there has been another version of the end of the world, disasters coming when the seven angels blow their trumpets.’ He turned the pages with his long brown fingers. ‘Hail and fire, a mountain falling into the sea. But there is not such concentration on the torments of men as there is in the story of the seven vials. Perhaps that was what attracted the killer.’ He paused, turned the page. ‘The judgement of the Great Whore comes after.’
‘When I read them, those passages seemed more obscure than most. Who is the Great Whore meant to be?’
Guy smiled sadly. ‘It used to be thought she symbolized the Roman Empire, but now the radicals say she represents the Church of Rome. And after that, war in Heaven and Jesus’ final victory.’
He passed the book across to me. I had studied the passages about the seven vials to exhaustion, but now I read on, aloud. ‘I saw a woman sit upon a rose-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.’ I remembered the painting of the creature in the Westminster chapterhouse. ‘And the woman was arrayed in purple and rose colour . . . And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of whoredom and abominations of the earth . . . and the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and shall go into destruction . . . her sins have reached into heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.’ I put the Testament down with a sigh. ‘I can make little sense of it.’
‘Nor I.’
We both jumped violently at a loud hammering on the door to the street. We exchanged glances. As Guy crossed to open it, the inner door opened and Piers came in. I wondered whether he had been listening outside again.
‘Who is it?’ Guy called out.
‘It is I, Barak!’
Guy threw open the door. I caught a glimpse of Sukey, tied to the rail beside Genesis. She was breathing heavily, Barak must have ridden here fast. There was no sign of drunkenness about him today, he was sober and alert, his expression hard and serious. He stepped inside.
‘There has been another killing,’ he said. ‘There’s some strange mystery about this one. Dr Malton, sir, can you come with us?’
Chapter Thirty-one
‘WHO?’ I ASKED. Barak glanced at Piers. Guy turned to the boy. ‘Would you fetch my horse to the front of the house?’ he asked. Piers hesitated for a moment, then went out. Barak looked between us. His face was set hard.
‘It’s Lockley’s wife.’
‘He has killed a woman?’ Guy gasped.
‘Sir Thomas sent a man round to keep guard at the inn. He was too late. He found her lying on the inn floor. She’s been mutilated. The message said something strange, something about poisoned air. We’re to join Harsnet there at once.’
‘What about Lockley?’
‘I don’t know.’
Through the window I saw Piers leading Guy’s old white mare round to the front. We went outside.
‘May I come too?’ Piers asked Guy as we mounted.
‘No, Piers, you have studying to do. You should have done it last night.’ The apprentice stepped back, an expression of angry sulkiness momentarily crossing his face.
‘How much does that boy know about what has been happening?’ I asked Guy as we rode quickly up the street.
‘Only that there has been a series of murders. He could not fail to see that,’ Guy added with a touch of asperity, ‘as he has been helping me at the autopsies. He knows he must hold his tongue.’
‘You know he listens at doors,’ I said. Guy did not reply.
We rode on rapidly, up to Smithfield and on to Charterhouse Square. The square was deserted except for two men standing at the door of the inn, under the sign of the Green Man. One was Harsnet and the other was a tall man carrying a sword, who was coughing into a handkerchief. I saw some of the beggars standing by the chapel, looking on from a distance but not daring to approach. We pulled up and tied the horses to the rail next to Harsnet’s. Guy went over to the tall man. ‘What ails you?’ he asked quietly.
The man lowered his handkerchief. He was in his twenties, with a neat black beard. He stared for a moment at Guy’s dark face, then said, ‘I do not know. I came here two hours ago. I knocked but could get no answer.’ He coughed violently again. ‘The shutters were all closed so I broke in. There is a woman lying on the floor, she’s - mutilated.’ He spluttered noisily. ‘There’s something in the air in there, it’s poisonous, it burns at my throat.’
‘Let me see,’ Guy said. He gently opened the man’s mouth and looked in. ‘Something’s irritated your throat,’ he said. ‘Sit down on the step, try to breathe easy.’
‘It was horrible. Like something grasping to take your breath.’
I looked at the door: the lock was smashed. The guard had pulled it shut again when he came out.
‘Have you been inside?’ I asked Harsnet.
‘No. I looked in - one sniff was enough; it’s like this fellow said, like something trying to rip your throat out.’ He looked at Guy. ‘How do you come to be here, sir?’
‘I was with Dr Malton when the message came,’ I said. ‘Dr Malton may be able to help us. Guy, what do you think can have happened to the air?’
‘There is only one way to see.’ He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, held it to his nose and threw the door wide open. I took a step back as something sharp and stinging caught my nostrils. Guy went in. With the shutters drawn the interior was dark. I made out a large pale shape, spotted with darker patches, lying under the open serving hatch. A body.
Guy stepped rapidly to the shutters, throwing them open. A draught of fresh air was immediately drawn into the room with the light. We looked in from the doorway. I saw the tavern was in chaos, overturned chairs and tables everywhere. The pale shape under the serving hatch was indeed Mistress Bunce, lying face down on the stone floor. Her coif had been removed, revealing her long dark hair. Her dress had been pulled up to beneath her armpits, and her underskirt torn off; it lay bundled up under one of the tables. Her plump, pale body was half naked, her arms tied behind her with rope.
‘Shit.’ Barak breathed.
I saw red weals at her wrists where the poor woman had struggled to free herself, but the knots were tight. There was another piece of cloth lying beside her face, something dark red on top of it.
‘Dear God, what has he done to her?’ Harsnet breathed. I saw his hands were clenched tight.
Guy crossed to the body and stood looking down at it. Quickly, he crossed himself. Harsnet, watching from the doorway, narrowed his eyes at the gesture. ‘It is safe to come in,’ Guy said quietly. ‘The fumes are dispersing. But put handkerchiefs to your noses and mouths, take shallow breaths.’
Harsnet and Barak and I drew out our handkerchiefs and stepped cautiously inside. ‘What was that stuff?’ Barak asked.
‘Vitriol,’ Guy answered. ‘In a very powerful concentration.’
We looked down at the b
ody. The white flesh on the trunk and legs bore big red marks that looked like burns. To my horror, half the woman’s posterior had been burned away, leaving a huge, monstrous red wound. Yet there was no blood around her, only a pool of colourless liquid.
‘What is this vitriol?’ Harsnet asked Guy. The air was much clearer, but there still a faint harsh tang. ‘For God’s sake, what did he do to her?’ His voice rose.
‘Vitriol is a liquid that burns and dissolves everything it touches,’ Guy answered grimly. ‘It is well known, alchemists make it up frequently to dissolve stone. They think it has special powers because gold is one of the few things it cannot destroy. It must have taken hours to do this, using repeated applications.’ Then Guy did something I had never seen him do before, no matter what awful things he had to look upon. He shuddered violently.
Harsnet bent to the liquid under the body. ‘What’s this?’ He put out a finger.
‘Don’t touch it!’ Guy shouted, and Harsnet quickly stepped away. Guy took a spatula from the pocket of his robe and touched it to the liquid. There was a faint hiss and it began to smoke. ‘Vitriol,’ he said. ‘See how it has eaten into the wood. It has even marked the stone flags.’
‘If it’s so poisonous,’ I asked, ‘how did he manage to wait here for hours?’
‘I suspect it was night, and he had those large shutters giving on to the yard open. Even so he would need to keep going over to the window.’
Barak was looking through the serving hatch. Cups and pewter goblets stood on a draining board; more lay in the washing bowl. It seemed the killer had come just after the tavern closed; perhaps he had been a late customer.
‘Janley!’ Harsnet called. The guard entered reluctantly, staring with horrified eyes at the mutilated corpse. ‘Search the rest of the building,’ Harsnet ordered. ‘Go on!’ Reluctantly, his hand on his sword, Janley opened a door to the inner chambers and stepped through.
‘Was it Lockley?’ I breathed. ‘Is he the killer?’
