The King's Evil

by Andrew Taylor

  ‘Mr Warley,’ she said, ‘the care of a child was entrusted to your grandmother during the Interregnum.’ Her voice had become crisp and businesslike. ‘I have been sent to bring her to London.’

  ‘Madam, it’s true that my grandmother adopted a young cousin of hers into the family.’ His own voice was chilly; I suspected he did not like being dictated to by a woman. ‘She’s perfectly happy with the arrangement, and so is the child. I see no reason to disturb it.’

  ‘Really? On the contrary, sir, I hear that Mistress Warley is not in the best of health, and the child is becoming a burden to her. The child isn’t well, either. She needs the sort of treatment you will not find in Hitcham St Martin or even Cambridge. Before we go any further, I advise you to read this.’

  She took a letter from her pocket and slid it across the table towards him. He glanced at it. Frowning a little, she stared at him and he stared back. Then he took up the letter, broke the seal and unfolded it. The blood rushed to his face as he scanned the contents. He swallowed hard and looked up at her.

  ‘This is from the King himself. It … It looks almost as if … as if it’s in his own hand.’

  ‘You hold your position at Jerusalem by royal mandate,’ Lady Quincy said softly. ‘In case you had forgotten.’

  ‘I could hardly forget,’ he said angrily. ‘But my grandmother dotes on Frances. She will be distraught if she loses her.’

  ‘I’m sure Mistress Warley wants what’s best for the child.’

  ‘We need time to consider. My grandmother will want to discuss whatever is planned with – with an adviser. She will want to write to him.’

  ‘To Lord Clarendon, you mean?’ she said. ‘Oh, I think not.’

  Yet again she had taken me by surprise. I could not help looking at her. She looked very handsome, I thought, sitting by the window with the late afternoon light on her face. I admired her poise, too, and the seemingly effortless way she was bending Warley to her will.

  ‘It has nothing to do with him,’ Lady Quincy was saying smoothly. ‘It was the late Lady Clarendon who made the original request to your grandmother. The yearly payments for the child’s maintenance came from her ladyship, and so did the promise of funds towards your new chapel at Jerusalem. But as you know, Lady Clarendon died last month. The arrangement concerning the child’ – she hesitated – ‘concerning Frances was a personal matter, between cousins, for your grandmother was born an Aylesbury, as her ladyship was. And Mistress Warley was well aware that her Lady Clarendon was acting on behalf of someone else.’

  ‘Who?’ Warley leaned forward, his face intent. ‘I’ve often wondered.’ He tapped the letter before him. ‘Do you mean—’

  ‘I mean nothing,’ she interrupted. ‘And you would be unwise to speculate.’

  There was an awkward silence. God in heaven, I thought, what have I stumbled into? Is this child the King’s bastard?

  ‘All you need to know,’ Lady Quincy went on, ‘is that, in view of Lady Clarendon’s death, Mistress Warley’s health and Frances’s condition, the King has decided that this would be the best time to make changes to the arrangement. He wants to bring the girl to London before winter sets in. And he has sent me to escort her.’

  ‘Will she return to us?’

  ‘That’s not for me to say. Perhaps.’

  Warley’s nostrils flared. ‘It seems we have no choice in the matter.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Lady Quincy said. ‘You do not.’

  Her last words were almost drowned out by footsteps thundering on the stairs and on the landing. There were raised voices and a frantic knocking on the door. Warley, nervous as a cat, spun round towards the noise. I stood up.

  Lady Quincy looked at me and smiled. ‘Thank you, Mr Marwood.’

  I unlatched the door. A small boy darted under my arm and rushed into the room, bringing with him a faint but disgusting smell of rancid fat.

  Lady Quincy’s maid was red-faced with anger. ‘Madam, I tried to stop him.’

  Another servant, one of the tavern’s maids, dropped me a curtsy. I turned and seized the boy by the shoulders.

  ‘Sir,’ he was saying in a high, excited voice to Warley, ‘sir, the Dean says you’re to come back to college.’ His voice rose higher still. ‘Dr Burbrough’s drowned.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  AN HOUR LATER, with the sound of water roaring in my ears, I stared down at Burbrough. The doctor was not drowned after all, though he had come within an inch or two of it. He had also sustained a number of injuries, including a blow to the head. He had vomited copiously after they had dragged him from the mill pond and now lay barely conscious on the grassy bank. Someone had covered him with a cloak.

  Warley was with me, as well as another fellow of Jerusalem, an elderly, desiccated man who had been introduced to me as the Dean, together with the small boy who had brought us the news at the Rose Tavern.

  ‘Who exactly is this gentleman?’ I heard the Dean whisper to Warley. The Dean was a trifle deaf, and his whispers were louder than he realized.

  ‘Mr Marwood?’ Warley glanced at me. ‘He comes with the King’s authority, sir.’

  ‘The King? This is most irregular.’

  ‘So is your Vice Master in a millpond, sir,’ I said, tiring of eavesdropping. ‘You may see my warrant if you wish. First, though, have you sent for a physician?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The Dean was trembling with shock. ‘We must make the poor fellow more comfortable. There’s an inn nearby …’ He turned to the kitchen boy. ‘Your uncle works there, does he not? Run over and order them to prepare a chamber and light a fire for us.’

  The boy ran off. I glanced at Warley. He shuffled uneasily under my gaze.

  ‘I – I wish Burbrough no harm, you know,’ he murmured to me, too low for the Dean to hear. ‘Not personally. It’s just that we disagree about everything.’

  The miller and his two sons were standing a little apart, giving us sullen, suspicious glances. I guessed that there wasn’t much love lost between the university and the ordinary folk of the neighbourhood. The miller was probably scared he would be blamed for the accident, if it had been an accident.

  The afternoon had shaded into a golden evening. The sun dappled the water of the millpond. The great wheel was no longer turning, for the miller had locked it as soon as he heard what had happened. But the stream surged through the wheel race, relentless and unceasing, as unstoppable as time.

  The stone coping at the sides of the millpond was mossy and wet from the spray. A narrow millstream channelled the water towards it with considerable force. The wheel itself must have been nine or ten feet in diameter with paddles projecting from its circumference to catch the power of the water and use it to turn the wheel. It was set in a narrow race lined with old stone. It looked centuries old. For all I knew, it had been built by the monks. Below the millpond, a tailrace carried the water back to the river.

  The mill building was on the other side of the wheel, reached by a footbridge that crossed the mill race. It had a lower storey of stone and two upper ones made of wood. House martins ducked and dived into nests tucked under the eaves.

  By a fluke of the current, Burbrough’s hat was bobbing serenely on the water against the further bank. As for the man himself, he had been found half-submerged, wedged between the wheel and the bank of the millpond. The miller and his sons had managed to drag him out. He was lying on his side on the grass.

  In this broken, bedraggled state, Burbrough seemed half the size of the man I had met earlier, quivering with passion in Jerusalem. He wore his own hair, and it trailed around his head in an indefinite halo. Some of his gown’s dark material had been shredded when it was dragged underwater in the mill race. There was a long, bloodless gash on his right cheek from the corner of the eye to the base of the jaw.

  He must have fallen into the water upstream, I thought, and been dragged by the current under the wheel. It was a miracle he had survived.

  ‘You,’ I said, beckoning the
miller. ‘Come here.’

  The man shuffled towards me. He was heavily built, not unlike Burbrough himself, with muscular arms from shifting the sacks of grain.

  I ignored the muttering behind me. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked the miller.

  ‘Cutlack, master,’ he said. ‘Listen, we didn’t see anything. Didn’t hear anything either. Then my boy Tom came out for a piss and saw him. God’s body, sir, I’d have given all I have to prevent this.’

  ‘When did he fall in?’

  He shrugged. ‘He wasn’t there dinnertime, I know that. As soon as I saw him, we pulled him out, and I sent Tom to tell them at Jerusalem. But he can’t have been there long or he’d have drowned.’

  ‘How did you know who he was?’

  ‘We know the doctor well enough, sir. He often comes up here. College owns the mill.’

  Warley cleared his throat behind me. ‘The Master is infirm, so Dr Burbrough generally deals with the properties that the college owns. As Vice Master.’

  ‘Where’s his horse?’ I asked.

  ‘He was a great walker,’ Warley said. ‘He probably came out here this afternoon to have a word with Mr Cutlack. The way to the mill is by the footbridge. I assume he was walking along the bank of the mill race and was taken faint. It’s been a warm day … I can only imagine that the heat and the exercise had fatigued him, and perhaps he stumbled …’

  I knelt by the doctor and pulled away the cloak that covered him. He must have left Jerusalem almost immediately after we had seen him in the Fellows’ Garden. A dreadful sense of familiarity swept over me: it was only five days since I had examined another waterlogged body – Edward Alderley’s, in the basement of Lord Clarendon’s pavilion.

  I went through his pockets. The Dean stared pop-eyed but didn’t challenge me. All I found was a clay pipe with a plug of sodden ash in the bowl, a tinderbox, a purse and a ring holding three keys.

  I covered up Burbrough again and stood, slipping the keys discreetly into my pocket. I gave the other items to the Dean. I beckoned the miller, who regarded me with small, shifty eyes. ‘Have you seen any strangers recently?’

  He gave a bitter laugh. ‘There are always strangers here, sir. And half of them are thieving devils, I can tell you.’

  ‘Why here? What do you mean?’

  ‘The main road’s on the other side of the river. There’s a post-house not a quarter mile away, so travellers pass to and fro everyday.’

  ‘That’s the inn where we’ll take him,’ said the Dean.

  ‘I shall leave you to it.’ I touched Warley’s arm. ‘I must get back to Cambridge. Would you come with me?’

  Warley and I left the Dean to deal with the constable and walked back to Cambridge. I had been tempted to go to the inn first, for I wondered whether that had been Burbrough’s destination, rather than the mill. But I had more urgent things to do in Cambridge, and I did not want to risk further questions from the Dean.

  ‘The poor man,’ Warley muttered as we went. He gave a sigh. ‘Such a dreadful sight.’

  After that, we went on in silence. I was turning over in my mind the last words I had heard Burbrough say, in the Fellows’ Garden at Jerusalem. When Warley had told him about the intruder at his rooms and the attack on the college servant, Burbrough’s first impulse had not been to ask how Smith was, or whether anything had been stolen, or whether the intruder had been caught. Instead, he had wanted to know why the servant had been in Warley’s rooms in the first place.

  Smith’s presence there had been exceptional. Burbrough would have expected the rooms to be empty while the college was dining in hall. Add to that the fact that he himself had been talking with Warley about the projected chapel over dinner and had delayed him afterwards in the court, where I had come across them this afternoon. I put that together with his presence in the Fellows’ Garden, the stranger in the MA gown whom Smith had seen, and the shred of black stuff caught in the latch of the Fellows’ gate to St Andrew’s Street. An unexpected picture emerged.

  We were approaching the chimneys of Cambridge. The buildings of Jerusalem College came into view above the trees lining a field where cattle grazed.

  ‘Mr Warley? I should like to see Dr Burbrough’s rooms before we go back to the Rose.’

  His dark brows drew together, rising where they met in an arch of disapproval. ‘That would be most irregular. I couldn’t condone it without consulting the Master.’

  God save us from the scruples of scholars, I thought. ‘I’m afraid, sir, that I must insist in the name of the King.’

  ‘But I don’t see what possible relevance this could have to the business on which you’re employed.’ He compressed his lips. ‘Whatever that may be precisely.’

  ‘I don’t propose to enlighten you. But if you wish, you may accompany me.’

  ‘You will have a difficulty over the keys,’ Warley said. ‘For all we know they are at the bottom of the mill race. The Master has a spare set but he will take some persuading before he hands them over. That’s assuming that he is well enough to receive us. He suffers terribly from the stone and was too ill to dine in hall today.’

  ‘The keys won’t be a difficulty.’ I took out Burbrough’s set and showed them to him.

  ‘You removed these from …?’

  ‘How else could I have them?’ I said, suddenly impatient. ‘Three keys. What are they for?’

  ‘The door of his rooms. The Fellows’ Garden gate. And the Fellows’ Parlour.’

  We used Burbrough’s own key to enter the college by way of the gate into the Fellows’ Garden. His rooms were in the same building as Warley’s, but further to the east and on the ground floor. They were laid out on the same pattern – a large sitting room, a small study, a smaller bedchamber and a cell-like closet, little more than a cupboard, which was the servant’s domain. From the latter, however, a private door led directly into the Fellows’ Garden.

  With Warley at my shoulder, I moved from room to room. There was very little furniture and a great many books. Rushes were strewn on the floor. The grate had been swept but there was no fire laid in it. Two mugs and a jug stood on the table in the sitting room. They were empty and smelled of small beer.

  There was also a roll of paper on the table. I unfurled it and found a map of the county, hand-drawn in ink. The county was divided into its hundreds. It seemed a sparse, watery place, intersected by rivers, dikes and causeways, and dotted with meres. Cambridge, near the bottom, was the only town of any size.

  ‘I believe it’s a copy based on the Blaeu map,’ Warley said. ‘Twenty years old, and the best we have. We had a sizar here a few years ago who supplemented his scholarship by making such things. Probably Burbrough bought one.’ He bent over it, perhaps glad to be diverted from the grim reason for our presence here. ‘Look – there’s Hitcham St Martin.’

  ‘Where your grandmother lives with Frances?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Where my estate is.’

  I stared at the map. Hitcham St Martin lay north of Cambridge, not far from Ely. I peered more closely. On the map, the village was no more than a blob with a tiny church tower poking out of it. To the immediate left was a tiny hole. I looked more closely. Someone had pricked the name with a pin.

  ‘How far is it from here?’ I asked.

  ‘About seventeen miles. Why do you ask?’

  I shook my head. A possible pattern was beginning to emerge. But I could only see some of its outlines. ‘Dr Burbrough had a visitor,’ I said. ‘When do you think that was?’

  ‘Probably during the morning. Or else his servant would have tidied this away.’ Warley turned aside and stared into the garden. ‘This is becoming a nightmare,’ he said in a muffled voice. ‘He must have fallen in by accident, mustn’t he? Surely?’

  I ignored his question and asked another. ‘What was in the folder? The one that was stolen from your box?’

  Warley said nothing. He continued to stare into the garden.

  ‘You must tell me,’ I said. ‘T
his is a dangerous business, whatever it is, and if I’m to help you I must know.’

  ‘Letters,’ he said at last, so quietly I had to strain to hear him. ‘Lady Clarendon’s letters to my grandmother, and copies of the ones that she had sent to her ladyship. And, latterly, some correspondence between all three of us that touched on the same affair. Lady Clarendon did not write directly to my grandmother, for fear of prying eyes at Clarendon House. Since I’ve been at Jerusalem, their letters have passed through me.’

  The pattern was growing clearer in my mind, and so was the need for urgency. We couldn’t afford to linger in Jerusalem any longer.

  Warley was turning to face me at last, and his face was distraught. ‘Whoever took this knew exactly what they wanted. Now they’ve found it, they must know everything about Frances. The poor child.’ He hesitated and then something – perhaps the scholar in him that knew the value of precision and the cost of truth – made him add, ‘Almost everything, that is. They can’t have learned who she is. None of us knows that, even my grandmother.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  A FEW MINUTES later, as Warley and I were walking through the college’s hall passage, a thought struck me. ‘Sir – this post-house near the mill. Do you know it?’

  ‘The Duke’s Head? Yes, of course. Everyone knows it.’

  ‘If I had time, I would go there and make enquiries about travellers who have passed through today. In particular, whether two men have been seen at the inn. One is a tall man with a northern accent. The other his servant, a gross fellow who carries a sword. They would have been on horseback.’

  ‘I would go there myself if it was really necessary, but I can’t be in two places at once.’ Warley sounded irritable, as men often do when frightened and under pressure. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks, and his face brightened. ‘I shall tell Jeremiah to ask.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our kitchen boy – the lad who brought the news of Dr Burbrough’s accident to us. He knows the Duke’s Head well. His uncle’s an ostler there.’