by C. J. Sansom
I reached for my dagger; but Cantrell was quicker. In a single fluid movement he bent, picked up Barak's sword and thrust it at my throat. His clumsiness had been another act. I glanced frantically down at Barak; but he was unconscious, or worse.
'The Jew cannot help you.' Cantrell's voice was low, thick with gloating pleasure, quite different from his previous dull tones. He threw his club down on a cushion, keeping Barak's sword in his other hand held at my throat, the sharp point pricking at my skin.
'Now I have you,' he said. 'God has delivered you to me. I knew setting the summerhouse on fire would make everyone run about like ants!' He laughed, a childlike giggle that somehow chilled me to the bone.
'Catherine Parr is well guarded,' I said, trying to keep my breathing steady.
'I thought you would all think it had ended with Goddard, the pouring of the last vial.' He shook his head, his expression serious now. 'But of course the devil knows Catherine Parr is the Great Whore that was foretold. The devil told you the truth, didn't he? She will be well guarded now.' He frowned, looking for a moment like a thwarted child, then smiled again. 'But the Lord has delivered you to me. To remove an enemy and strengthen my hand.' He looked down at Barak's prone form a moment, stirred him with his toe and smiled at his own cleverness. Barak's face was white. I prayed he was still alive. I could hear voices outside, but dared not call, for Cantrell would slash my throat in a moment.
'Kneel down,' he hissed releasing the pressure of the sword a little. I hesitated, then knelt on the wooden floor. The burned skin of my back stretched agonizingly with the movement. A splinter dug into my knee. Cantrell pulled something from his pocket. A small glass vial, half-killed with yellowish liquid. Still holding the sword to my throat, he unstoppered it and held it out. 'Drink this,' he said.
I looked at it fearfully, knowing what it was. Dwale. His prelude to torture and death. 'You will never get us out of this room,' I said. 'The whole house is in uproar.'
'Drink it! Or I cut your throat and then the Jew's.' He pressed the sword to my neck, I felt a sharp pain, then blood trickling down my neck.
'All right!' I took the vial. It smelt of honey, he had mixed the evil stuff with nectar. I looked at it. My hand trembled. I thought, if I refuse and he kills me now, at least my death will be quick. But Barak would certainly die too. By drinking it I could live a little longer, and the instinct to do so is always powerful. I lifted it to my mouth. My throat seemed to constrict, I feared I would not be able to swallow it down, but I gulped once and it was gone. I wondered how long the dwale would take to have effect. Perhaps someone would come before it did. But immediately I felt strange, as though my body was enormously heavy. I tried to take a breath, but could not. Then everything slipped away.
I WOKE IN DARKNESS, to a cesspit smell that made me retch and gasp. My body felt thick and heavy. A stab of pain shot down my back. I realized my wrists were bound in front of me, my ankles tied as well. I was propped up in a sitting position, my back against a brick wall, my legs on a rough, slimy floor. There was a light to one side. I turned painfully towards it. A lantern containing a fat bees' wax candle showed the ordure-smeared floor of a low, narrow brick passage. Cantrell sat cross-legged beside it, looking at me with a brooding gaze, his eyes glinting as they caught the light. He was near, four feet or so away. Barak's sword lay at his side.
I realized I was very cold, and shivered. The motion made the little wound at my neck sting.
'You are awake?' Cantrell asked in a neutral tone.
'Where are we?' I asked. My mouth was terribly dry, my voice came as a croak.
'In the sewer. Under the house.'
I looked round. There were long, narrow alcoves in the brick--work; they must connect to the lavatories above. Behind me, the passage stretched away into darkness. Ahead, as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I made out the shape of a large metal grille, a patch of moonlit sky beyond. The thick iron mesh was broken in a few places, metal spikes sticking out at odd angles, but leaving barely space to put an arm though. We were trapped. Beyond the grille I heard the sound of running water; it must be the stream into which the sewer drained.
'I hid us under those cushions,' Cantrell said quietly, almost conversationally. He smiled. 'People came in, but they thought we were gone out of the window. They were all in such a panic, thinking of nothing but protecting the Whore. I got you down here when the house was quiet.'
'And Barak?'
'Still hidden under the cushions. They'll find him.' 'Is he dead?'
Cantrell shrugged. 'I don't know. It doesn't matter.' He frowned then, lapsed into his own thoughts.
'Why am I still alive;' I ventured after a few minutes.
He frowned. 'Don't distract me,' he said angrily. 'You distract me, damn you.'
I was silent again. The candle burned slowly down. Cantrell sat brooding. After a while he sighed, and turned to look at me again with his heavy, merciless gaze. 'You stopped God's plan,' he said. 'I don't know what to do.' He shook his head. 'I didn't complete the sequence, that is why I failed.'
'I don't understand.'
He put a hand to each side of his face. 'My head spins. Ever since God first spoke to me, so many messages, so many thoughts.' He sighed, a long groaning sound. 'God told me to set that fuse to give you time to escape, so you would think Goddard had done it all, but Goddard was not an apostate from true religion so the prophecies were not fulfilled — you are the apostate the seventh vial must be poured out on, the devil's agent too, you have to die, still, in a great earthquake.' He was talking fast now, gabbling to himself rather than to me. 'For the prophecies to be fulfilled, for me to be able to kill the Great Whore. I see it now.' He looked at me. 'But I cannot think how to do it, down here, and I cannot get you out alive.' He turned and pointed a skinny finger at me. 'I knew you were the devil's man when you came to where I left Dr Gurney. I marked your bent back, which is a sign of a twisted soul, I learned you were an apostate from true reform. You looked sad, lost. I recognized that in your face when I first saw you by the river. And I thought, yes, that is how a man possessed would look.'
I wondered with a shudder if he had rambled on like this to Tupholme, or Mistress Bunce, as they died in slow agony. The shudder turned into a bout of shivering, for I was cold, frozen. I had felt cold for weeks but nothing like this. Cantrell did not seem to care how cold it was.
'I'll have to get you out alive, later,' he said. 'Find some way to kill you.' I felt a wave of relief. So there was to be no torture and death down here at least, unless something in his buzzing, burning mind told him to kill me. I flinched as Cantrell reached into a pocket and pulled out a large, narrow pair of tweezers. He held them up and smiled.
'Don't think of rescue. They've no idea we are down here. After I hauled you down I used these to move the bolt back into position from below. There was just enough space, the hatch is a poor fit. I studied it when I came last week, the first time I acted as the coalman's boy.' He looked at his hand, where a piece of ordure from the floor adhered. He wiped it on his tunic, wrinkling his nose. 'This is a disgusting place.' He gave me a look that chilled me to the bone. 'It's your fault I'm stuck down here.'
He was silent for a while then, frowning with concentrated thought. He was mad, I knew. There was something in his complete self-obsession that reminded me of Adam Kite in his worst phase, but there was something very different too, something wild and savage that I did not begin to understand. I knew that at any moment he might jump up and kill me. But he stayed quiet, thoughtful. After a while he spoke suddenly. 'Goddard treated me badly. That hard tongue of his. He regretted it when I hammered nails into his jaw before I drugged him.' He smiled. 'How surprised he looked when he woke up, after I broke in and knocked him unconscious. He was another that thought I was stupid. He learned different.'
My back burned and the ropes chafed at my wrists and ankles as I listened to him. He was talking without even looking at me now. 'When they closed the monastery, put me
out in the world, it made my head spin. Helpless, like a tiny boat in a great storm. Yet it was all meant by God. The day came when I heard his voice, and knew that it was his, that he had chosen me.' He looked at me then and smiled transparently. He seemed to notice how uncomfortable I was for the first time, and cocked his head slightly. 'Are you in pain:' he asked. 'Does your back hurt:'
'Yes.'
'Think what it will be like for you in Hell. They are all there already, your friend Elliard and the others. Perhaps the devil will choose to make you wield a pickaxe for ever and ever among the flames, breaking up stones, your bent back an agony of pain. For ever and ever.' He smiled. 'To purge the enemies of the Lord.'
I thought I caught a sound, back up the passage. I strained to hear. If they came quietly and took him by surprise I might be saved. But it was nothing. The silence that followed seemed to go on for ever, broken only by disjointed remarks from the madman facing me.
'The solicitor Felday said you knew Elliard,' Cantrell said at length.
'Yes. He was my friend.' I took a deep breath. 'That was when I decided I would find you.'
'No, no. That was the devil.' Cantrell shook his head vigorously, then suddenly was on his feet, grasping the sword. 'Do not deceive me!' He knelt before me, and again the sword touched my throat.
'Admit the truth,' he demanded. 'Say you are possessed by the devil. Say he is in you.'
And then I heard it. Far away. A metallic clunk. A creak. A faint rushing sound. I understood and my heart sank. They were opening the doors up at the Charterhouse that held the water back. They knew or suspected that we were down here, and they were going to drown us both like rats. I remembered Harsnet saying he would do anything to protect the Archbishop.
'Admit the devil is in you.' Cantrell’s face was full of rage now. I did not know what to say. Would admitting or denying the accusation make him more likely to kill me?
'I cannot think,' I said. 'I am confused . . .' I thought feverishly, if I could get to the nearest alcove when the water came, wedge myself in somehow . . .
'The devil struggles inside you. Come, admit it. I command you in Jesus' name.' He twisted the sword point, opening a new cut in my neck.
Then came a violent blast of cold air and a roaring, crashing sound. Cantrell whirled round. In the light from his candle I saw a wall of water and foam filling the entire tunnel, rushing down on us. I thrust myself sideways, into the alcove. Cantrell had no time to make a sound before the flood sent him spinning away. I saw him go, arms outspread, as though he was flying.
THE VERY FORCE of the flood saved me, for I had rolled far enough into the alcove for the backwash to slam me up against the far end. I twisted amid the rush of water, thrust out my bound legs and made contact with a side wall, pressing my back into the other wall at the same time. The pain was excruciating but I knew I must not slip or I too would be swept away. The water swirled around me, tugging at my clothes, nearly pulling me from my lodgement. My legs shook, the lump at my back scraped agonizingly against the bricks, burned skin peeling away. But I held on. The rushing water rose over my neck, over my face. My hair streamed out as some nameless stinking thing slid past my nose. My lungs burned and I felt my head swim. Is this the end? I thought. Does it end like this?
A great sucking sensation nearly dislodged me once more. It was the water ebbing. My head was suddenly in the open. I took a huge gasp of air. The water swirled down below my chest, then rushed away and was gone with a last rushing boom. Only a trickling sound remained, and loud drips falling from the ceiling.
I let myself tumble to the ground, shouting in agony as I landed on my shoulder, jarring it. I was a mass of pain, shivering with cold, wet through and stinking. And my hands and feet were still bound. I rolled out of the alcove, into the passage. And I thought, if I have survived, Cantrell might have too.
A FAINT HALF-LIGHT coming through the dripping grille lightened the gloom. It was dawn, we had been here all night. I stared round frantically. Where was he? And then my heart leaped into my mouth as I saw him. He was sitting up against the grille, facing me.
I groaned. I was too weak to fight any more, even to think. But Cantrell stayed unmoving. I stared and stared through the gloom, trying to see if he was breathing. Once or twice in the seemingly endless time that followed he appeared to move. Then I heard shouting from beyond the grille and saw lights moving there, then several men jumped into the ditch in front of the grille, tramping through stream-water. They held their torches up, exclaiming when they saw Cantrell sitting there with his back to them. But by the light of their torches I saw now that he was impaled, one of the broken metal rods sticking right through his head, brains and blood smearing his face. He must have been thrown against it by the full force of the flood. His eyes were open and he looked astonished, angry. In his last seconds he must have realized that he had failed. I found it strange that during the night I had felt no sense of evil passing.
A guard bent to the grille, a key in his hand. It was hard to get it open.
'The lawyer's here!' he called. 'Alive!'
A new figure bent and entered the tunnel. Harsnet came up to me and held a torch to my face. I met his gaze.
'Is Barak alive?' I croaked. 'Yes.'
'You would have drowned me.'
He looked sad, but not ashamed, his face stayed set. 'We guessed you were down here.' Harsnet spoke slowly, his west country accent strong. 'There were marks on the bolt on the hatch, we wondered if he had somehow closed it from below. I feared that with the powers he has he might have got away in these tunnels, even if I sent a dozen men after him. It was the only way to be sure he died, the only way. I'm sorry, Matthew.'
Chapter Forty-six
THREE DAYS LATER an unexpected visitor arrived at my house. I was still in bed, recovering from my ordeal, when a flustered Joan appeared to say that Lord Hertford himself had called. I told her to show him up. I knew I should have made the effort to rise and receive him in the parlour, but I was too weary.
Lord Hertford wore a plain, fur-lined coat, a grey doublet beneath. I thought again how different he was from his brash, gaudily dressed brother. He had struck me before as a man of deadly seriousness, but today he was relaxed, giving me a friendly smile before sitting in the chair by my bed. I thought, today he is the politician. 'I am sorry I must receive you here,' I said. He raised a hand. 'I was sorry to hear of what you suffered in that sewer. And at Goddard's house before. We would never have got Cantrell had you not realized Goddard's killing was intended to mislead us. Catherine Parr would be dead by now.'
I sighed. 'I am sorry we could not get him sooner. Nine victims killed, including the solicitor and the innocent coalman that we found dead.'
'Lady Catherine knows you saved her,' Lord Hertford said quietly. 'She knows, and is grateful.' 'You told her about Cantrell?'
'Not the whole story. But that there was a killer on the loose, and he wanted her for a victim. Harsnet had to tell her that to keep her in her chambers. She saw you that night, you know, for a moment. She thought you were the killer.'
'I wondered whether she did.'
'I told her you had saved her. She would like to receive you to thank you. She is a lady to remember favours a long time.'
'I am honoured.' Indeed I was, but at the same time apprehensive that someone else near the summit of the court had taken notice of me now. I looked again at Lord Hertford. He was smiling, he was happy.
'I do not know when she will send for you. She will have many calls on her time these next few months, for she has consented to marry the King.'
'She has?'
'She has accepted that it is God's will.' 'When will it be?' I asked.
'Not till full summer. The King plans to have Bishop Gardiner marry them.' He laughed. 'How he will hate that, marrying the King to a reformer.'
'But why is the King marrying her?' I had to ask. 'When his own sympathies grow ever more strongly against reform?'
'She has attracted hi
m for some time. Since before her husband died. And he is old, and ill, and lonely.'
'His sixth marriage. Will she survive, do you think?' I could not help the question.
'It will be as God ordains. The Parr family can look forward to high places at court now. They are all reformers. And Archbishop Cranmer is out of danger.'
'He is?' I was glad to hear that at least.
'Yes. The King realized Gardiner's accusations about his staff amounted to nothing. He has set a commission to investigate the matter - and put Archbishop Cranmer himself at the head of it. Gardiner's plot is unravelled. And Bishop Bonner's campaign against the godly men of London has likewise uncovered little that even he could call heresy. People are being released. They will have to be careful for a while. But the tide is starting to turn again in our favour.'
'What of Dean Benson?'
'Back at his post, told by the Archbishop to keep his mouth tight shut.'
'If he had stopped Goddard and Lockley using the dwale to get those beggars' teeth, lives might have been saved.'
'We could not afford to make a scandal about that now. Think of what might come out if we did.' He looked at me steadily for a moment, fingering his long beard. 'You have proved your worth, Master Shardlake. Would you work for me as once you did for Lord Cromwell?'
