Dark Fire

Chapter Four

I RODE FROM NEWGATE TO my chambers at Lincoln's Inn, just up the road from my house in Chancery Lane. When King Edward III ordered that no lawyers should be allowed to practise within the precincts of London, necessitating our removal outside its walls, he did us great service for the Inn was semi-rural, with wide orchards and the space of Lincoln's Inn Fields beyond.

I passed under the high square towers of the Great Gate, left Chancery at the stables and walked to my chambers across Gatehouse Court. The sun shone brightly on the red-brick buildings. There was a pleasant breeze; we were too far from the City walls here for London smells to penetrate.

Barristers were striding purposefully around the precincts; the Trinity law term began the following week and there were cases to set in order. Among the black robes and caps there were also, of course, the usual young gentlemen in bright doublets and exaggerated codpieces strutting around, sons of gentry who joined the Inns only to learn London manners and make social contacts. A pair of them walking by had evidently been rabbiting in Coney Garth, for a pair of hounds frisked at their heels, their eyes on the furry bodies dripping blood from poles slung over their masters' shoulders.

Then, ambling down the path from Lincoln's Inn Hall with his customary amiable smile on his beaky features, I saw the tall, thin figure of Stephen Bealknap, against whom I would be pleading in King's Bench in a few days. He halted in front of me and bowed. The courtesies require that barristers, even when opponents in the bitterest of cases, must observe the civilities, but Bealknap's friendly manner always had something mocking in it. It was as though he said: you know I am a great scamp, but still you must be pleasant to me.

'Brother Shardlake!' he declaimed. 'Another hot day. The wells will be drying up at this rate.'

Normally I would have made a curt acknowledgement and moved on, but it struck me there was a piece of information he could help me with. 'So they will,' I said. 'It has been a dry spring.'

At my unaccustomed civility, a smile appeared on Bealknap's face. It seemed quite pleasant until you came close and saw the meanness in the mouth, and realized the pale-blue eyes would never quite meet yours no matter how you tried to fix them. Beneath his cap a few curls of wiry-looking blond hair strayed.

'Well, our case is on next week,' he said. 'June the first.'

'Ay. It has come on very quick. It was only in March you lodged your writ. I am still surprised, Brother Bealknap, that you have taken this up to King's Bench.'

'They have a proper respect for the rights of property law there. I shall show them the case of Friars Preachers v. the Prior of Okeham.'

I laughed lightly. 'I see you have been ferreting in the Assize of Nuisance Rolls, Brother. That case is on a different point and it is two hundred years old.'

He smiled back, his eyes darting around. 'It is still relevant. The prior pleaded that matters of nuisance such as his faulty gutter were beyond the council's jurisdiction.'

'Because his priory came directly under the king's authority. But St Michael's priory comes under yours now. You are the freeholder and you are responsible for the nuisance your priory causes. I hope you have better authority than that to hand.'

He would not be drawn, bending to examine the sleeve of his robe. 'Well, Brother,' I said lightly, 'we shall see. But now we are met, I would ask a question on another matter. Will you be at the gaol delivery on Saturday?' I knew that running compurgators in the bishop's court was one of Bealknap's disreputable sidelines, and he often lurked around the Old Bailey justice hall looking for clients. He flicked a curious glance at me.

'Perhaps.'

'Judge Forbizer is on, I believe. How quickly does he deal with the cases?'

Bealknap shrugged. 'Fast as he can. You know the King's Bench judges; they think dealing with common thieves and murderers beneath them.'

'But Forbizer has good knowledge of the law for all his hardness. I wondered how open he would be to legal argument for the accused.'

Bealknap's face lit up with interest and his eyes, bright with curiosity, actually met mine for a moment. 'Ah, I had heard you were retained for the Walbrook murderess. I said I didn't believe it, you're a property man.'

'The alleged murderess,' I replied flatly. 'She comes up before Forbizer on Saturday.'

'You won't get far with him,' Bealknap said cheerfully. 'He has a Bible man's contempt for the sinful, wants to hasten them to their just deserts. She'll have little mercy from Forbizer. He'll want a plea or a kill.' His eyes narrowed and I guessed he was thinking whether he might turn this to his advantage. But there was no way, or I should not have asked him.

'So I thought. But thank you,' I added, as lightly as I could. 'Good morning!'

'I shall look out for you on Saturday, Brother,' he called after me. 'Good luck: you will need it!'

IT WAS IN NO GOOD temper that I entered the small set of ground-floor rooms I shared with my friend Godfrey Wheelwright. In the outer office my clerk, John Skelly, was studying a conveyance he had just drawn up, a lugubrious expression on his thin face. He was a small, weazened fellow with long rats' tails of brown hair. Although not yet twenty he was married with a child and I had taken him on last winter partly from pity at his obvious poverty. He was an old pupil of St Paul's cathedral school and had good Latin, but he was a hopeless fellow, a poor copier and forever losing papers as I had told Guy. He looked up at me guiltily.

'I have just finished the Beckman conveyance, sir,' he mumbled. 'I'm sorry it is late.'

I took it from him. 'This should have been done two days ago. Is there any correspondence?'

'It is on your counting table, sir.'

'Very well.'

I passed into my room. It was dim and stuffy; dust motes danced in the beam of light from the little window giving onto the courtyard. I removed my robe and cap and sat at my table, breaking the seals on my letters with my dagger. I was surprised and disappointed to find I had lost another case. I had been acting on the purchase of a warehouse down at Salt Wharf, but now my client wrote curtly to say the seller had withdrawn and he no longer required my services. I studied the letter. The purchase was a curious one: my client was an attorney from the Temple and the warehouse was to be conveyed into his name, which meant the purchaser must want his own name kept secret. This was the third case in two months where the client had suddenly withdrawn his instructions without reason.

Frowning, I put the letter aside and turned to the conveyance. It was clumsily written and there was a smudge at the bottom of the page. Did Skelly think such a mess would pass? He would have to do it again, with more time wasted that I was paying for. I tossed it aside and, sharpening a new quill, took up my commonplace book, which held years of notes from moots and readings. I looked at my old notes on criminal law, but they were scanty and I could find nothing about peine forte et dure.

There was a knock at the door and Godfrey came in. He was of an age with me. Twenty years before we had been scholars and ardent young reformers together, and unlike me he had retained his zealous belief that following the break with Rome a new Christian commonwealth might dawn in England. I saw that his narrow, delicate-featured face was troubled.

'Have you heard the rumours?' he asked.

'What now?'

'Yesterday evening the king rowed down the Thames to dinner at the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk's house with Catherine Howard beside him under the canopy. In the royal barge, for all London to see. It's the talk of the City. He meant to be seen – it's a sign the Cleves marriage is over. And a Howard marriage means a return to Rome.'

I shook my head. 'But Queen Anne was beside him at the May Day jousts. Just because the king has his eye on a Howard wench doesn't mean he'll put the queen aside. God's wounds, he's had four wives in eight years. He can't want a fifth.'

'Can't he? Imagine the Duke of Norfolk in Lord Cromwell's place.'

'Cromwell can be cruel enough.'

'Only when it is necessary. And the duke would be far harsher.' He sat down heavily opposite me.

'I know,' I said quietly. 'None of the privy councillors has a crueller reputation.'

'He is a lunch guest of the benchers here on Sunday, is he not?'

'Yes.' I made a face. 'I shall see him for myself for the first time. I do not greatly look forward to it. But, Godfrey, the king would never turn the clock back. We have the Bible in English and Cromwell's just got an earldom.'

He shook his head. 'I sense trouble coming.'

'When has there not been trouble these last ten years? Well, if London has a new topic that may take the heat from Elizabeth Wentworth.' I had told him yesterday that I had taken on the case. 'I've been to see her in Newgate. She won't say a word.'

He shook his head. 'Then she'll be pressed, Matthew.'

'Listen, Godfrey, I need a precedent to say someone who won't speak because they're mad can't be pressed.'

He stared at me with his large blue-grey eyes, strangely innocent for a lawyer's. 'Is she mad?'

'She may be. There's a precedent somewhere in the yearbooks, I'm sure.' I looked at him; Godfrey had an excellent memory for cases.

'Yes,' he said. 'I think you're right.'

'I thought I might try the library.'

'When's gaol delivery – Saturday? You've little time. I'll help you look.'

'Thank you.' I smiled gratefully; it was like Godfrey to forget his own worries and come to my aid. His fears, I knew, were real enough; he knew some of the evangelicals in the circle of Robert Barnes, who had recently been put in the Tower for making sermons with too Lutheran a flavour.

I walked with him to the library and we spent two hours among the great stacks of case law, where we found two or three cases which might be helpful.

'I'll send Skelly over to copy these,' I said.

He smiled. 'And now you can buy me lunch as a reward for my help.'

'Gladly.'

We went outside into the hot afternoon. I sighed. As ever, among the law books in the magnificent library I had felt a momentary sense of security, of order and reason; but out in the harsh light of day I recalled that a judge could ignore precedent and remembered Bealknap's words.

'Courage, my friend,' Godfrey said. 'If she is innocent, God will not allow her to suffer.'

'The innocent suffer whilst rogues prosper, Godfrey, as we both know. They say that churl Bealknap has a thousand gold angels in the famous chest in his rooms. Come, I'm hungry.'

As we crossed the courtyard to the dining hall I saw a fine litter with damask curtains standing outside a nearby set of chambers, carried by four bearers in Mercers' Company livery. Two attendant ladies, carrying posies, stood at a respectful distance while a tall woman in a high-collared gown of blue velvet stood talking to Gabriel Marchamount, one of the serjeants. Marchamount's tall, plump figure was encased in a fine silk robe, and a cap with a swan's feather was perched on his head. I remembered Bealknap had been under his patronage once until he tired of Bealknap's endless crookery; Marchamount liked his reputation as an honest man.

I studied the woman, noting the jewelled pomander that hung at her bosom from a gold chain, and as I did so she turned and met my eye. She murmured something to Marchamount and he raised his arm, bidding me to halt. He gave the woman his arm and led her across the courtyard to us. Her attendants followed, their skirts making a whispering noise on the stone flags.

Marchamount's companion was strikingly attractive, in her thirties, with a direct, open gaze. She wore a round French hood about her hair, which was blonde and very fine; little wisps slipped out, stirring in the breeze. I saw the hood was faced with pearls.

'Master Shardlake,' Marchamount said in his deep, booming voice, a smile on his rubicund face, 'may I introduce my client and good friend, Lady Honor Bryanston? Brother Matthew Shardlake.'

She extended a hand. I took the long white fingers gently and bowed. 'Delighted, madam.'

'Forgive my intrusion on your business,' she said. Her voice was a clear contralto with a husky undertone, the accent aristocratic. Her full-lipped mouth made girlish dimples in her cheeks as she smiled.

'Not at all, madam.' I was going to introduce Godfrey but she continued, ignoring his presence. 'I have been in conference with Master Marchamount. I recognized you from a description the Earl of Essex gave when we dined last. He was singing your praises as one of the best lawyers in London.'

The Earl of Essex. Cromwell. I had thought, and hoped, that he had forgotten me. And I realized she would have been told to look out for a hunchback.

'I am most grateful,' I said cautiously.

'Yes, he was quite effusive,' Marchamount said. His tone was light, but his prominent brown eyes studied me keenly. I recalled he was known as an opponent of reform and wondered what he had been doing dining with Cromwell.

'I am ever on the lookout for fine minds to strike their wits against each other around my dining table,' Lady Honor continued. 'Lord Cromwell suggested you as a candidate.'

I raised a hand. 'You compliment me too highly. I am a mere jobbing lawyer.'

She smiled again and raised a hand. 'No, sir, I hear you are more than that. A bencher, who may be a serjeant one day. I shall send you an invitation to one of my sugar banquets. You live further down Chancery Lane, I believe.'

'You are well informed, madam.'

She laughed. 'I try to be. New information and new friends stave off a widow's boredom.' She looked round the quadrangle, studying the scene with interest. 'How marvellous it must be to live beyond the foul airs of the City.'

'Brother Shardlake has a fine house, I hear.' There was a slight edge to Marchamount's voice, a glint in his dark brown, protuberant eyes. He laughed, showing a full set of white teeth. 'Such are the profits of land law, eh, Brother?'

'Justly earned, I am sure,' Lady Honor said. 'But now you must excuse me, I have an appointment at the Mercers' Hall.' She turned away, raising a hand. 'Expect to hear from me shortly, Master Shardlake.'

Marchamount bowed to us, then led Lady Honor back to her litter, making a great fuss of helping her inside before walking back to his chambers, stately as a full-rigged ship. We watched as the litter made its swaying way to the gate, her ladies walking sedately behind.

'Forgive me Godfrey,' I said. 'I was going to introduce you, but she gave me no chance. That was a little rude of her.'

'I would not have welcomed the introduction,' he said primly. 'Do you know who she is?'

I shook my head. London society did not interest me.

'Widow to Sir Harcourt Bryanston. He was the biggest mercer in London when he died three years ago. He was far older than her,' he added disapprovingly. 'They had sixty four poor men in attendance at his funeral, one for every year of his age.'

'Well, what's so wrong with that?'

'She's a Vaughan, an aristocrat fallen on hard times. She married Bryanston for his money, and since his death she's set herself up as the greatest hostess in London. Trying to build up her family name again, which was trampled down in the wars between Lancaster and York.'

'One of the old families, eh?'

'Ay. She specializes in setting reformers against papists over her dinner table, takes a perverse pleasure in it.' He looked at me earnestly. 'She's invited Bishops Gardiner and Ridley and started a conversation about transubstantiation before now. Matters of religious truth are not to be toyed with like that.' A sudden hardness entered his voice. 'They are for hard reflection, on which the fate of our eternal souls depend. As you used to say yourself,' he added.

'Ay, I did.' I sighed, for I knew my loss of religious enthusiasm these last few years troubled my friend. 'So she's in with both factions then?'

'She has both Cromwell and Norfolk at her table, but she's no loyalty to either side. Don't go, Matthew.'

I hesitated. There was strength, a sophistication about Lady Honor that stirred something in me that had been quiet a long time. And yet being in the middle of such arguments as Godfrey described would not be comfortable, and for all he might have kind words for me I had no wish to see Cromwell again. 'I'll see,' I said.

Godfrey looked over to Marchamount's chambers. 'I'll wager the good serjeant would give much to have a lineage like hers. I hear he is still pestering the College of Arms for a shield, though his father was but a fishmonger.'

I laughed. 'Ay, he likes mixing with those of breeding.' The unexpected meeting had lifted me from the concerns of work, but they returned as we entered the dining hall. Under the great vaulted beams I saw Bealknap sitting alone at one end of a long table. He was shovelling food into his mouth with his spoon while reading a large casebook. Friars Preachers v. the Prior of Okeham, no doubt, to quote against me at Westminster Hall in a week's time.