'So you were, Ambrose,' Roger said. 'I remember it well.'
'And I,' Dorothy agreed. 'You used to wax most fiercely about the duties of the King towards the poor.'
'Well, there's no interest from that quarter, so I don't see what we're supposed to do.' Loder frowned at his wife. 'Take ten thousand scabby beggars into the Inn and feed them at High Table?'
'No,' Roger answered gently. 'Merely use our status as wealthy men to help a few. Till better times come, perhaps.'
'It's not just the beggars that make walking the streets a misery,' old Ryprose added gloomily. '
There's all these ranting Bible-
men springing up everywhere. There's one at the bottom of Newgate Street, stands there all day, barking and railing that the Apocalypse is coming.'
There were murmurs of agreement up and down the table. In the years since Thomas Cromwell's fall, the King's patronage of the reformers who had encouraged him to break with Rome had ended. He had never fully endorsed Lutheran beliefs, and now he was moving gradually back to the old forms of
religion, a sort of Catholic
ism without the Pope, with increasingly repressive measures against dissentients; to deny that the bread and wine of the sacrament were transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ was now a heresy attracting the death penalty. Even the doctrine of purgatory was becoming respectable again. All this was anathema to the radicals, for whom the only truth was to be found in the Bible. The persecution had only driven many reformers towards the radical fringes, and in London especially they were daring and vocal.
'Do you know what I saw in the street today?' another guest said. 'Outside one church people were laying branches in the snow fo
r the
Palm Sunday ceremonies tomorrow. Then a rabble of apprentices appeared and kicked the branches away, calling out that it was a papist ceremony and the Pope was the Antichrist!'
'This religious radicalism gives apprentices another excuse to run wild,' Loder observed gloomily.
'There could be trouble tomorrow,' Roger said.
I nodded. On Palm Sunday the traditional churches would be having the usual ceremonies, the churchwardens dressed as prophets and a child riding in on a donkey, while the radical preachers in their churches would be calling it papist blasphemy.
'There'll be another purge,' someone said gloomily. 'I've heard rumours Bishop Bonner is going
to crack down hard on the Bible-
men.'
'Not more burnings,' Dorothy said quietly.
'The city wouldn't stand for that,' Loder said. 'People don't like the radicals, but they like burnings less. Bonner won't go that far.'
'Won't he?' Roger said quietly. 'Isn't he a fanatic too, on the other side? Isn't the whole city becoming divided?'
'Most people only want a quiet life,' I said. 'Even those of us who were once radicals.' I smiled wryly at Roger. He nodded in acknowledgement.
'Fanatics on both sides,' old Ryprose said gloomily. 'And all we poor ordinary folk in the middle. Sometimes I fear they will bring death to us all.'
The company
broke up late, and I was one of the last to leave. I stepped out into a night that had become colder again, refrozen slush crunching under my boots. My mood was much less cheerful after the conversation round the dinner table. It was true that London was full of both beggars and fanatics now, an unhappy city. And a purge would make things worse. There was, too, something I had not told the company; the parents of the boy in the Bedlam were members of a radical Protestant congregation, and their son's mental problems were religious in nature. I wished I ha
d not had to take the case, but
I was obliged to deal with the Requests cases that were allocated to me. And his parents wanted their son released.
I paused. A quiet footstep, crunching on the slush behind me. I turned, frowning. The precincts of Lincoln's Inn were supposed to be secure, but there were places where entry could be gained. The night was dark, the moon half hidden by clouds, and at this hour only a few lighted windows cast squares of light on the snow.
'Who's that!' I called.
There was no reply, but I heard the slush crackling again as someone walked rapidly away. Frowning, I followed. The sound came from the far end of the building where the Elliards lived; it adjoined the rear wall of Lincoln's Inn. I put my hand to my dagger as I rounded the corner of the building. The outer wall was ahead of me. Whoever was there was trapped. But no one was there. The little square of ground between the buildings and the twelve
-
foot
-
high rear wall, lit by the windows of the Elliards' apartment, was quite empty. A shiver trickled down my spine.
Then I saw the snow on top of the wall had been disturbed. Whoever it was had climbed over. I stood and stared; to scale that wall would require a good deal of strength and agility. I was not sure I would have said it was possible, but the empty yard and the disturbed snow told their own tale. I frowned and turned away; I would tell the watchman that broken glass should be set atop the wall.
Chapter Two
N
ext morning
I set out early for my chambers; the parents of the boy who had been put in the Bedlam were due at nine. The details the Court of Requests had sent me were sketchy, but enough to be worrying. The Privy Council itself had put him there, 'for blaspheming true religion in his madcap frenzy', as their resolution put it, without even an indictment in the bishop's court. The matter was therefore political, and dangerous. I tried to reassure myself again that any involvement I had would be in a purely legal capacity, but cursed the luck that had sent this case to me rather than to my fellow pleader.
The papers described the boy, Adam Kite, as the son of a master stonemason and a communicant at St Martin's church, Creek Lane. I had got Barak to investigate and he had reported back that the vicar was, as he put it, a 'great railer and thunderer'.
This was unwelcome news. In the dealings I had had with the godly men I had found them difficult to deal with, crude hard men who drove at you with biblical verses like a carpenter hammering in nails.
I was jerked from my worrisome thoughts as I slipped on a patch of slush and almost fell over. Somebody laughed.
All over the city, church bells were ringing for the Palm Sunday services. These days I only went to church when it was expected; next Sunday I would have to take Mass and make my annual confession. I was not looking forward to it. The topsy-turvy weather was warmer again, and Chancery Lane was muddy as a farmyard. As I passed under Lincoln's Inn Gatehouse I wondered if the Treasurer would do anything to secure that wall. I had told the gatekeeper to inform him of my near
-
encounter last night.
I felt something wet hit my face; another drop followed and I realized it was raining, the first rain after two months of snow. By the time I reached my chambers it was coming on heavily and my cap was soaked. To my surprise, Barak was already in the outer office. He had lit the fire and sat at the big table, getting papers in order for tomorrow's court session. Plaints, affidavits and statements were piled around him. His handsome, impish features looked tired, his eyes bloodshot. And his face was stubbly.
'You need to get a shave, or the judge will be calling you out for a disrespectful demeanour.' Though I spoke roughly, Barak and I had a fast friendship. We had origina
lly come together on an assign
ment for Barak's late master, the King's Minister Thomas Cromwell. After Cromwell's execution three years before, Barak had come to work for me, an unorthodox assistant but an efficient one.
'All right,' he said grumpily. 'The madwag's parents are due soon.'
'Don't call him that,' I said as I looked through the papers he had prepared. Everything was in order, annotations made in Barak's spidery handwriting. 'In on Sunday?' I asked. 'You were here yesterday too? You are neglecting poor Tamasin.'
'She's all right.' Barak rose and began filing away books and papers. I looked at his broad back, wondering what was wrong between him and his wife that he should thus drag out his time at work and, by the look of him, stay out all night. Tamasin was a pretty girl, as spirited as Barak, and he had been happy to marry her last year even though they had been forced into a speedy wedding by her pregnancy. Their son had died the day he was born and in the months since, though Barak had been as cheerfully irreverent as ever, there was often something forced about his banter, at times something haunted in his eyes. I knew the loss of a child could bring some couples closer, but drive others apart.
'You saw Adam Kite's parents yesterday when they called to make their appointment,' I said. 'Goodman Kite and his wife. What are they like?'
He turned back to me. 'Working people, he's a stonemason. He started on about God's mercy in allowing them to take their case to Requests, how He doesn't abandon the true faithful.' Barak wrinkled his nose. 'They look like some of the busy Bible folk to me. Though the godly folk I have seen mostly seem very satisfied with themselves, and the Kites looked like a pair of squished cats.'
'Not surprising given what's happened.'
‘I
know.' Barak hesitated. 'Will you have to go there, among all the lunatics tearing their clothes and clanking their chains?'
'Probably.' I looked again at the papers. 'The boy is seventeen. Brought before the Council on the third of March for frantic and lewd behaviour at the Preaching Cross in St Paul's churchyard, railing there "with strange moans and shrieks". Committed to the Bedlam in the hope of a cure. No further order. No examination by a doctor or jury of his state of health. That's improper.'
Barak looked at me seriously. 'He's lucky they didn't arraign him for a heretic. Remember what happened to Richard Mekins and John Collins.'
'The Council are more careful now.'
Mekins was a fifteen
-
year
-
old apprentice who eighteen months before had been burned alive at Smithfield for denying the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The case of John Collins had been worse still, a youth who had shot an arrow at a statue of Christ inside a church. Many had also thought him insane; but the previous year the King had passed an act to allow insane persons to be executed, and Collins too was burned to death. The cruelty of these cases had turned the populace against Bishop Bonner's harsh religious rule of the city. There had been no burnings since.
'They say Bonner's after the radicals again,' Barak observed.
'So people were saying at dinner last night. What do you think's going on, Jack?' Barak still had friends among those who worked on the more shady fringes of the King's court, those who frequented the taverns and alehouses and reported back on the state of public opinion. I had gained the impression that recently he had spent a lot of time drinking with these disreputable old friends.
He looked at me seriously again. 'The word is that now Scotland has been removed as a threat, the King wants to make an alliance with Spain and go to war against France. But to be acceptable to the Emperor Charles he'll have to be seen to be hard on heretics. They say he's going to try and get a law through this Parliament banning women and common folk from reading the Bible, and give Bishop Bonner encouragement to crack down on the London Bible
-
men. That's what they're saying at Whitehall, anyway. So I'd be careful in handling this one.'
'I see. Thank you.' This only made matters more delicate. I essayed a smile. 'The other thing they were gossiping about last night is that the King is after a new wife. Lady Latimer.'
'That's true as well, from what I'm told. But he's having trouble this time. The lady doesn't want him.'
'She has refused him?' I asked, surprised.
'So they say. Can't blame her. The King's got ulcers on both legs now, they have to carry him around Whitehall in a cart half the time. They say he gets fatter every month, and worse tempered. They say she is interested in someone else too.'
'Who?'
'That's not spoken of.' He hesitated. 'This Adam Kite looby might be better off if he stays in the Bedlam. So might you, rather than tangle with the Privy Council again.'
I sighed. 'I'm only acting as a lawyer.'
'You can't hide behind the law once these people get involved. You know that.' I could see Barak was as worried as I of going near some of the mighty enemies we had made in the past. The Duke of Norfolk and Richard Rich both sat on the Privy Council.
'It's ill luck they passed this to me instead of Herriott to deal with,' I said. 'But I've got it now, so I'll just have to handle it with care. I'll take tomorrow's papers through. Send the Kites in directly when they arrive.'
I went to my inner office and closed the door. Barak's words had unsettled me. I crossed to the mullioned window. The rain was coming down harder, splashing on the pane and distorting my view of Gatehouse Court. I shivered a little, for the sound of hard rain always brought back the terrible night eighteen months before, when for the first and only time I had killed a man. If I had not he would certainly have murdered me, yet even now his awful drowning gasps haunted me. I sighed deeply, ruefully recalling my good mood the evening before. Had my acknowledgement that I felt happy tempted a malign fate?