Dark Fire

Chapter Forty-one

DESPITE EVERYTHING, I slept peacefully that night. I woke towards six refreshed, although my back ached when I got up. I changed the bandage on my arm, pleased to see it had almost healed, then for the first time in days I did Guy's exercises, carefully lest I do more harm than good. It was the eighth of June; we had two days left now.

After breakfast Barak and I walked up to Lincoln's Inn, where the lawyers' day was just beginning. A carousing student lay collapsed on the bench where I had met Lady Honor. He sat up and winced at the light; barristers walking past with papers under their arms gave him disapproving scowls. We passed my rooms and headed for Marchamount's chambers.

The two clerks in his outer office were agitated. One was anxiously explaining a case where Marchamount was due to appear that morning to another serjeant. The other clerk was leafing frantically through a pile of papers; he gave a groan and sped across to Marchamount's room, the door of which was open. We followed him in. He glanced up from searching through another pile of papers and gave us a harassed look.

'This room is private. If you're here about one of Serjeant Marchamount's cases, please wait. We have to find the papers for this morning.'

'We're here on Lord Cromwell's orders.' I said. 'To investigate his disappearance. And make a search.' Barak produced his seal. The man looked at it, hesitated, then shook his head in despair. 'The serjeant will be angry, he has private things in here.' The clerk found the paper he was looking for, grasped it and hurried out. Barak shut the door behind him.

'What are we looking for?' he asked.

'I don't know. Anything. We'll search his living quarters after.'

'If he's gone of his own will, he won't have left anything incriminating behind.'

'If he has. Look in those drawers, I'll search the desk.'

It felt strange to be rifling through Marchamount's possessions. A locked drawer roused our hopes but when Barak prised it open we found nothing inside but a genealogical chart. It traced Marchamount's family back two hundred years. Occupations were scribbled under the names; fishmonger, bell-founder, and worst of all 'villein'. Under one name from a hundred years back Marchamount had scrawled 'This man was of Norman descent!'

Barak laughed. 'How he lusted after that title.'

'Ay. He was always a vain man. Come, let's try his living quarters.'

But there was nothing there either, only clothes, more legal papers and some money, which we left. We quizzed the clerks but all they could tell us was that they had come in to work the day before to find Marchamount gone, with no message and a hundred jobs waiting. Defeated, we left and crossed the courtyard to my chambers.

'I'd hoped there would be something,' Barak said.

I shook my head. 'The people involved in this wouldn't leave evidence of Greek Fire in their homes. Even the Gristwoods kept that apparatus out at Lothbury.'

'They kept the formula at home.'

'And look what happened to them. No, everything's hidden away somewhere.'

'But where, if not in a house?'

I stopped dead. 'What about a warehouse?'

'That's possible. But there are dozens along the river bank.'

'There was a warehouse conveyancing among the cases I lost. Near Salt Wharf. It struck me at the time that the transaction was conducted in the name of people who looked like nominees and I wondered who would want to keep ownership of a warehouse secret.'

'But it was Rich who took those cases away from you.'

I paused a moment, then hastened into chambers. Skelly was sharpening a quill into a nib; he squinted up at me.

'John,' I asked. 'Is Master Godfrey in?'

'No, sir.' He shook his head sadly. 'He has another hearing before the committee.'

'Will you do something for me? You know a number of cases have been taken away from me recently – half a dozen or so. Would you make a list for me now? The names, what they were about and the parties.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Wait.' I looked into his red eyes. 'I have wondered, John, if you see as well as you might.' And then I was filled with guilt, for he looked mortally afraid.

'Perhaps not, sir,' he murmured, shifting from foot to foot.

I made my voice cheerful. 'I have an apothecary friend who is experimenting with spectacles. He is looking for subjects. If you would go to him he may be able to help your sight, and as you would be aiding his work there would be no fee.'

I saw hope in his face. 'I'll be glad to see him, sir.'

'Good. I'll arrange it. Now, go and make the list.'

He scurried away.

'Do you think that warehouse could really be where they are storing the Dark Fire and the apparatus?' Barak asked.

'It seems a long shot, I know. But it's a possibility; we have to follow it up.' I looked into his sceptical face. 'Unless you have a better suggestion.'

Barak nodded. 'All right, then.'

'I've never heard of a warehouse bought through a nominee before. It stayed in my mind, it was so unusual. Could that be the explanation? It was the last of my cases to go – just after I took Cromwell's assignment.'

'Anything's worth a try.' Barak had crossed to the open window. 'What's going on out there?' he asked suddenly.

I joined him. A small crowd of people, servants and barristers and clerks, had gathered round one of the students, a stocky young fellow with fair hair. He stood gesticulating wildly in the middle of the crowd, his eyes wide with shock. 'It's murder,' I heard him say.

Exchanging a look, Barak and I hurried outside. We shouldered our way through the crowd and I grasped the young fellow by the arm. 'What's going on?' I asked. 'Who's murdered?'

'I don't know, sir. I was going rabbit hunting, up by Coney Garth, and in the orchard I found – a foot. A foot in a shoe, cut off. And blood everywhere.'

'Take us there,' I said. He hesitated a moment, then turned and led us towards the gate to the orchard on the north side of Gatehouse Court. Part of the crowd followed us, nosy as sparrows.

'Stay back,' I said. 'This is official.' People grumbled, but they remained outside as we passed through to the orchard. The apple and pear trees were in full leaf and a carpet of long-fallen blossom lay all around. The student led the way through the trees.

'What's your name, fellow?' I asked.

'Francis Gregory, sir. I wanted some rabbits for the pot. I came out early, but I ran back when I saw that – thing.' I studied his face. He seemed none too bright and very frightened.

'All right, Francis. There's nothing to fear, but a man is missing and we have been ordered to find him.'

Reluctantly young Gregory led us on into the trees. In the middle of the orchard, on the blossom-covered ground, we found a gruesome chaos. A wide patch of ground was covered with blood, black and sticky-looking. One tree had had a branch hacked off and a great gouge cut in its side. The mark of an axe, Wright's weapon of choice. And, lying at the bottom of the tree, was a shoe with an inch of white leg visible above.

I stepped on to the bloody ground to look at the severed foot, my stomach churning a little at the sight. It had been shorn off like a pig's trotter. Flies were buzzing around it.

'That's a gentleman's shoe,' Barak observed.

'Ay.' I saw something else among the blossom and, taking my dagger, brushed the delicate petals aside. Then I jerked upright in disgust. Three fingers from a man's hand lay there, sliced off like the foot, little black hairs standing out against the waxy skin. And on one of them a large emerald ring.

'What is it?' Barak called. He stepped across to my side. I had been steeling myself to pick up the finger, but Barak did it without flinching. 'That is Marchamount's ring,' I said, in a low voice so the student could not hear. He had not ventured onto the patch of bloody ground.

'Shit,' Barak breathed.

'He must have come to meet somebody by arrangement and they went for him with an axe.' I took a deep breath.

'Toky and Wright.'

'Ay. He must have struggled, tried to escape. They probably swung at his foot to bring him down. Then he tried to defend himself with his hands. Poor Marchamount.'

'Why did they take the body away and leave these remains?'

'If it was dark, they may not have noticed the fingers or the ring.'

'I thought this place was patrolled to keep the lawyers and their gold safe.'

'Only the inner court, not the gardens or the orchard. There are ways in here over the wall from Lincoln's Inn Fields.'

His back to the student, Barak pulled the ring from the severed finger and slipped it in his pocket, letting the finger fall to the ground again. We walked over to the boy.

'There's no saying who this is, lad.' I said. 'Best report to the authorities. Go on now.'

He was happy to run from the place. Barak and I followed more slowly. I was glad I had sent a note to Lady Honor last night, warning her not to go out without servants.

'So Marchamount was involved with Toky and Wright,' Barak said.

'So it appears. Perhaps he was worried I was going to have him before Cromwell and told his master. Who decided to stop his mouth.' I stopped on the path. 'God's death, he should have known the risk he ran, enough mouths have been stopped already. The two Gristwoods, the founder, Bathsheba and her brother. And now him.'

'Perhaps he was the master,' Barak said.

'What?'

'Perhaps he had been running the whole thing with Toky and Wright, told them things were getting hot and they decided to kill him and make off with the Greek Fire.'

'You could be right,' I said. 'In that case, they're the ones we need to find.'

'Toky knows how things work. An education from the monks and years soldiering. He could arrange to sell Greek Fire to the highest bidder. Perhaps a foreigner.'

'But where are they? Where have they taken Marchamount's body? Where are the apparatus and the formula? Come, let us see if Skelly has done that list.'

By the time we reached the courtyard young Gregory was back at the centre of a crowd, declaiming about what we had found.

'They're bound to connect this to Marchamount soon,' Barak said.

'They won't be able to prove it's him, not without the ring.' I saw Bealknap on the fringe of the crowd, his eyes wide, and wondered if he had guessed who it was that had been killed.

Back in chambers Skelly was waiting for us, a paper in his hand.

'It's all done, sir.'

'Thank you.' I laid it on the table and Barak and I looked over his untidy scrawl. Four pieces of litigation over land, one over a will, and the warehouse conveyancing. Pelican Warehouse, off Salt Wharf.

'What's a pelican?' Barak asked.

'A bird from the Indies. It has a huge pouch in its beak, to hold fish. Or secrets.' I looked out of the window. 'Ask Bealknap to step in here, would you? Tell him, quietly, that we believe the dead man is Marchamount.' A thought occurred to me. 'John, would you add a couple of cases to the bottom of this list. Any cases of mine, choose them at random. Then bring it to me.'

Skelly, who had been standing open-mouthed, nodded and went into my office. A minute later Barak returned, Bealknap beside him. The rogue's eyes were full of fear.

'Is this true? Serjeant Marchamount is murdered? I feared it when I heard –'

'It is, Bealknap, though you'll say nothing, I order you by Lord Cromwell's authority. But I think no one who has any association with Greek Fire is safe any more.'

He waved his hands in angry desperation. 'But I've told you a dozen times, Shardlake, I've had nothing to do with it! It's over the priory matter that Sir Richard's been putting pressure on your cases, it's not about Greek Fire! I had nothing to do with the pestilential stuff beyond being a messenger!' Between fear and anger he was almost dancing; I had him worried now.

'You told Rich nothing about Greek Fire, I hope?'

'And get on the wrong side of the earl? Of course not!'

I handed him the list. 'Here, these are the cases I've lost recently. Can you confirm these are the ones Rich took from me?'

Bealknap ran his eye down the paper, then shook his head. 'I don't know. Sir Richard only told me he was going to damage your trade as a warning, he didn't say which cases he'd take!' He paused, running a hand through his wiry blond hair. 'Listen, if I'm in danger I need protection,' he said fiercely. 'I won't be struck down like Marchamount!'

'Why not?' Barak asked. 'Who'd miss you?'

'Bealknap,' I said quietly, 'I need to see Sir Richard Rich with this list. I need to know which cases he took away. It has a bearing on the other matter. Do you know where he is?'

'He should be at St Paul's at noon to hear Archbishop Cranmer preach. The archbishop is giving the lunchtime sermons this week, as Bishop Sampson's in the Tower. Half the king's council will be there.'

'I'd forgotten. Barak, we'd better go there. I need to show him this list.' I turned to Bealknap. 'Thank you. As for protection, perhaps you should lock yourself in your chambers the next few days with your chest of gold.'

'But – but I've business.'

I shrugged. Bealknap set his jaw, then turned and went out, slamming the door behind him. Through the window we saw him scurrying back to his chambers, glancing nervously around as he went. 'I doubt anyone will be after him,' I said. 'He knows nothing. Like Lady Honor.'

'You're sure he's telling the truth? He really knows nothing about Greek Fire?'

'Oh, yes. He's so scared for his skin he'd have thrown himself on our mercy if he thought he might meet Marchamount's fate. Now come, Barak, we must see Rich and find out whether he put that warehouse on the list.'

'What if he didn't?'

'Then we investigate the place.'

Barak nodded. 'And meet Toky and Wright with surprise on our side for once.'