'Go up to her. I will see you in the morning.'
I went to the kitchen to get some food. Joan was preparing some pottage, and looked more tired than ever. I had to get her some more help. My stitched and bandaged arm was hidden under my doublet; I did not want to worry her even more than she was already.
'I'll bring you up some cold food, sir,' she said. Looking past her, through the open door to the scullery, I saw Harsnet's man Orr sitting at the table with the kitchen boy Peter. A little book open before them.
'He's teaching Peter to read,' I said.
'Yes, but it's all hot Bible stuff,' Joan answered disapprovingly. 'It'll give the lad nightmares.'
I went up to bed. In my room, I looked through the window. A beautiful spring evening, my lawn a pretty design of crocuses, daffodils beginning to break through. A world away from the turmoil and darkness around me. During the night I had a strange dream of someone whimpering and pulling at my injured arm. When I turned round it was Bealknap, looking weak and wasted. 'You could have helped me,' he said, pleadingly. 'You could have helped me.'
Next morning
Barak and I rode down to Westminster. I felt safer riding, above the crowd and better able to watch it. My arm throbbed, but much less than yesterday. I had to admit Piers had made a good job of his stitching. Barak had been unusually quiet at breakfast, and Tamasin had not made an appearance.
'It was brave of you to go out on London Wall yesterday,' I said. 'I feared young Kite might turn on us, throw us down to the street.'
'That is not the sort of madness he has.' 'Who knows what mad folks may do?'
I looked at him. 'He was there, you know, our killer. I caught a glimpse of him, turning into the crowd, when you were in the gate
-
house.'
'What did you see?'
'A glimpse of a brown doublet. He was tall, I think.'
'Might just have been someone in the crowd leaving.'
'I don't think so. I — I felt it. I feel he has me marked.'
Barak was silent for a moment. Then he asked, 'D'you think he's pretending to be a sectary somewhere, mixing with the radicals?'
'Ay, and garnering names of people to kill. The sectaries probably spend half their time cursing and criticizing backsliders.'
I spent the morning at court, and then we rode down into Westminster, moving slowly through the busy, narrow streets. A beggar came right up to me and I flinched away. 'On your way!' Barak shouted. 'It's all right,' he said, 'I had him marked.'
'Now I must look out for beggars, instead of avoiding their eyes all the time. An ironic justice.' I laughed bitterly.
We passed into the hive of activity that was the southern precinct. Barak looked round the buildings. 'The record said he lived on the same street as the White Oak Inn. See, it's over there.' He pointed to a small, two
-
storey house. It was in poor repair, the paint flaking from the frontage. On the other side of the house was a large double
-
door, locked and padlocked. 'Adrian Cantrell, Carpenter' was painted above it in faded letters. We looked at it. 'I thought all the ex
-
monks were offered church livings as well as their pensions,' he said. 'Yet neither of these two, Cantrell and Lockley, seems to have taken them.'
'Lockley was only a lay brother, he wouldn't have been offered a benefice. But Cantrell would. Quite a few did not take up the offer, though.'
'Maybe he got himself a wife.'
We crossed the muddy road.
I knocked on the door. There was no answer, and I was about to knock again when I heard shuffling footsteps from within. The door opened to reve
al a gaunt young man in his late-
twenties. He wore a scuffed leather jerkin over a shirt that was in sore need of a wash. His face was thin, framed by a shock of straw
-
coloured hair, and he wore wood
-
framed spectacles, the glass so thick his eyes were like blue watery pools.
'Are you Charles Cantrell;' I asked.
'Ay
-
I smiled to try and put him at ease. 'I have come on behalf of the King's assistant coroner. We hoped you might be able to help us with some questions. May we come in;'
'If you like.' The young man led us into the house, which had a sour, unwashed smell, up a dim corridor and into a parlour with only a table of rough planks and some hard stools for furniture. Through a dusty window we saw a yard, containing a small vegetable garden run to weeds, and a storage shed which must have been used by his father. I noticed Cantrell kept a couple of fingers against the wall as he walked, as though guiding himself. He waved us to the stools, sat down on one himself and faced us. His posture was slumped, dejected.
'I understand you were an assistant in the monks' infirmary at Westminster,' I said. 'Before the Dissolution. We
are seeking infor
mation on your master, Dr Goddard.'
He screwed up his face in distaste. 'Is he dead;' he asked. For the first time, he seemed interested.
'No. But he needs to be traced, there are some enquiries to be made. We wondered if you might know where he was.'
Cantrell gave a short, bitter laugh. 'As though he'd keep in touch with me. He treated me like a louse. I didn't want to stop being a monk when they closed us down three years ago, but I was glad I'd never see him again.' He paused. 'Has he killed a patient? It wouldn't be the first time.'
'What?' I stared at him. 'What do you mean?'
Cantrell shrugged. 'There were one or two he sent to their rest before their time through bad treatment.' He paused. 'Goddard was a shit.'
'You know this for sure?' I asked.
He shrugged. 'There was nothing I could do, Abbot Benson wouldn't have listened to me. Besides - you didn't cross Goddard.'
'You were frightened of him?' Barak asked.
'You didn't cross him.' The boy swallowed, causing the promin
-
ent Adam's apple Dean Benson had mentioned to jerk up and down. He licked his lips nervously, and I caught a glimpse of grey teeth.
'We have spoken to Abbot Benson,' I said. 'He told us Goddard got you some glasses. You have problems in seeing?'
'Yes. He got me the glasses because I was useful.' I caught a bitter note in Cantrell's voice, though I could not read his expression properly; those swimming blue pools behind his lenses were disconcerting. 'He didn't want the trouble of training someone else up,' the young man continued. 'Not when the abbey was soon to go down.'
'How long were you a monk?'
'I entered the novitiate when I was sixteen. My father got me in, he did carpentry for the abbey. He didn't want me working for him, said I was clumsy. Though it was my eyes, of course.' Cantrell's voice had sunk to a sad monotone.
'How came you to work in the infirmary?'
He shrugged. 'Goddard wanted someone to train up and I was the only young monk there. I didn't mind, I thought it would be better than copying old texts, which is what I did before. They burned them all, when the house went down.' He laughed bitterly.
'Do you miss the life?'
He shrugged. 'I liked the routine, after a while I believed all they said, about our serving God. But — well — it was all wrong, so they say now, 'tis as futile to say Masses for the dead as throw a stone against the wind.' He paused. 'The world has gone all crooked. Do you not think so, sir?'
'Tell me about Dr Goddard,' I said. 'What he did that killed his patients.'
'I
won't get into trouble:' he asked nervously.
'You will if you don't answer,' Barak said.
Cantrell considered. 'Dr Goddard was an impatient man. Some
-
times he used to prescribe what I thought was too much medicine, and the person would die. There was an old monk, too, he fell down some stairs and smashed his arm badly. It had to come off. Goddard used to do the operations himself, it cost money to bring in the barber
-
surgeon, and he gave the monk a big dose of some stuff that sends you to sleep; he slept through the operation all right but never woke up afterwards. Goddard said he must have given him too much. He said, at least he'd never have to hear his creaky whining again.'
'This medicine, was it called dwale:'
'Yes, sir.' He looked surprised that we knew.
'Surely if you thought the doctor was hastening people out of the world, you should have spoken.'
Cantrell shifted uncomfortably.
'I
wasn't sure, sir, I'm no doctor. He would have talked his way out of it, and I'd just have got into trouble. And you don't know what he was like.' He hesitated. 'He would look at me sometimes as a man will look at a beetle on his table.' Then he laughed, uneasily. 'I'd be working away in the infirmary sometimes, not saying anything because he didn't like conversing with inferiors like me. Then suddenly he'd fly at me for some little mistake, nothing.' A strained, bitter smile flickered over his thin face. 'I think he did it just to make me jump.' He paused. 'What has he done, sir:' he asked again.
'I am afraid I cannot say. Your eyes, they are still weak:'
'Even with the glasses I can hardly see. They say the King wears glasses now.' He laughed bitterly again. 'I'll wager he can see better than me.' He seemed to slump further on the stool. 'When I left the monastery I went back to work for my father, but I was no good. After he died I gave up the business.' He looked at an inner door. 'That was his workshop. Do you want to see?'
I looked at Barak. He shrugged. I stood up.
'Thank you, no. But thank you for your help,' I said. 'If you think of anything that might help us, anything at all, I can be reached at Lincoln's Inn.' I hesitated, then added, 'I am sorry for the trouble with your eyes. Have you ever seen a doctor?'
'There is nothing anyone can do,' he said flatly. 'I will go blind eventually.'
'I know someone—'
'I have little faith in doctors, sir.' His mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. 'After my time with Dr Goddard. You understand.'
Outside, Barak
shook his head. 'You'd send every sparrow that falls from a tree to the old Moor.'
I laughed. Then Barak touched my arm. 'Look, over there, that old woman's waving to us.'
I followed his gaze. An aged, respectable
-
looking goodwife in a white coif, carrying a basket in which a pair of dead rabbits lolled, beckoned to us from the other side of the street. We crossed over to her. She fixed us with a pair of sharp eyes.
'Were you visiting Charlie Cantrell?' she asked.
'What's that to you?' Barak asked.
'He's not in trouble, is he?'
'No. Helping with some legal enquiries, that is all.'
'He's a poor fellow, I don't think he stirs much from that house. His father died last year and Charlie inherited the house and business. I was a friend of his father. Adrian was that skilled with wood, he was always turning away business. Charlie can't do carpentry with his poor vision, now all he has is his monk's pension.' She looked between us, waiting for a reply, eager for gossip.
'You live nearby, goodwife?' I asked.
'Five houses down.
I
've asked Charlie if he'd like some help with cleaning, his house is filthy and he could afford someone else to do it out of that pension, but he won't have anyone there.
I
reckon he's ashamed.'
'Poor young fellow.'
I
looked at her stolidly, and seeing she was not going to get anything out of us she wrinkled her face at me then turned and walked off, the rabbits' heads hanging out of her basket, bobbing up and down.
'Nosy old bitch,' Barak said.
'Young Cantrell is not one of those who went from the Dissolution to a better life.'
'Poor arsehole. Shouldn't think there was ever much go in him, even if he could see properly.'
'No. But he damns Goddard, more than ever.'
'Yes. Now all we have to do is find him.'
I
sighed. 'Let's see what the other assistant can tell us.'
Chapter
Twenty
-
two
W
e rode up to
Smithfield through a countryside coming to life again after the winter, the cattle out in the meadows again after months indoors. In the fields men were ploughing while women walked behind pairs of shaggy
-
hoofed horses, casting grain from bags at their waists. I wondered what Lockley would be like. An ex
-
monk living at, perhaps running, a tavern was unusual, but with thousands thrown out of the monasteries there were many stories stranger than that.