Dark Fire (10 page)

‘You’re a brave girl, Susan,’ he said. ‘Now, can you take us to your mistress?’

The girl let go of the door. She shuddered at the sight of the bloody footsteps inside, then swallowed and, clutching Barak’s hand tightly, led the way down the corridor.

‘Two people, by the look of those prints,’ I said. ‘A big man and a smaller one.’

‘I think we’re in the shit here.’ Barak murmured.

We followed Susan into a large kitchen with a view onto a stone-flagged yard. The room was dingy, the fireplace black with dirt and stains of rats’ piss on the whitewashed ceiling. It
struck me that Gristwood’s schemings had brought him little profit. A woman sat at a big table worn with years of use. She was small and thin, older than I would had expected, wearing a white
apron over a cheap dress. Straggles of grey hair were visible under her white coif. She sat rigidly, her hands clutching the table edge, her head trembling.

‘She’s shocked out of her wits, poor soul,’ I whispered.

The servant crossed to her. ‘Madam,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Some men have come. To help us.’

The woman jerked and stared at us wildly. I raised a soothing hand. ‘Goodwife Gristwood?’

‘Who are you?’ she asked. Something sharp and watchful came into her face.

‘We came on some business with your husband and his brother. Susan said you came home and found the place broken into—’

‘They’re upstairs,’ Goodwife Gristwood whispered. ‘Upstairs.’ She clutched her bony hands together so hard the knuckles whitened.

I took a deep breath. ‘May we see?’

She closed her eyes. ‘If you can bear it.’

‘Susan, stay here and look after your mistress. Barak?’

He nodded. If he was feeling the same shock and fear as I, he gave no sign. As we turned to the door, Susan sat down and hesitantly took her mistress’s hand.

We passed the tapestry, which I saw from the style was very ancient, and mounted a narrow wooden staircase to the first floor. The house’s lopsidedness was noticeable here, some of the
stairs were warped and a large crack ran down the wall. There were more bloody footsteps, wet and glinting – this blood had been shed very recently.

At the top of the stairs a number of doors gave off the hallway. They were closed except for the one straight ahead of us. Like the front door it hung off one hinge, the lock smashed in. I took
a deep breath and stepped inside.

The chamber was large and well lit, running the whole length of the house. There was an odd, sulphurous smell in the air. I saw the ceiling’s large beams were painted with Latin texts.
‘
Aureo hamo piscari
,’ I read. To fish with a golden hook.

No one would fish here again. A man in a stained alchemist’s robe lay sprawled on his back over an upturned bench amid a chaos of broken glass pipes and retorts. His face had been
completely smashed in; one blue eyeball glared at me from the hideous pulpy mess. I felt my stomach heave and turned quickly to study the rest of the room.

The whole workshop was in chaos, more overturned benches, broken glass everywhere. Next to a large fireplace lay the remains of a large iron-bound chest. It was little more than a heap of broken
spars now, the metal bands smashed right through. Whoever had wielded the axe here – and everything pointed to an axe – must have had unusual strength.

Beside the chest Michael Gristwood lay on his back, his body half-covered by a blood-soaked chart of the astral planes that had fallen from the wall. His head was almost severed from his neck; a
great spray of arterial blood had stained the floor and even the walls. I blenched again.

‘That the lawyer?’ Barak asked.

‘Ay.’ Michael’s eyes and mouth were wide open in a last scream of astonished terror.

‘Well, he won’t be needing Lord Cromwell’s bag of gold,’ Barak said. I frowned. He shrugged. ‘Well, he won’t, will he? Come on, let’s go back
downstairs.’

With a last glance at the butchered remains, I followed him down to the kitchen. Susan seemed to have recovered herself somewhat and was boiling a pan of water on the filthy range. Goodwife
Gristwood still sat with her hands clenched.

‘Anyone else live here, Susan?’ Barak asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘Is there anyone that could come and sit with you?’ I asked Goodwife Gristwood. ‘Any other relatives?’ Again a momentary sharpness came into her face, then she answered,
‘No.’

‘Right,’ Barak said bluntly. ‘I’m going to the earl. He must say what’s to be done here.’

‘The constable should be told—’

‘Pox on the constable. I’m going to the earl now.’ He pointed at the women. ‘Stay here with them, make sure they don’t leave.’

Susan looked up anxiously. ‘Do you mean Lord Cromwell, sir? But, sir – but we’ve done nothing.’ Her voice rose in fear.

‘Do not worry, Susan,’ I said gently. ‘He must be told. He—’ I hesitated.

Goodwife Gristwood spoke, her voice cold and hard. ‘My husband and Sepultus were working for him, Susan. I know that much, I told them they were fools, that he’s dangerous. But
Michael would never listen to me.’ She fixed us with pale blue eyes that were suddenly full of anger. ‘Now see what’s become of him and Sepultus. The fools.’

‘God’s bones, woman,’ Barak burst out. ‘Your husband’s lying slain in his gore upstairs. Is that all you have to say about him?’ I looked at him in surprise,
then realized that under his bravado he too was shocked by what we had seen. Goodwife Gristwood merely smiled bitterly and turned her head away.

‘Stay here,’ Barak told me again. ‘I’ll be back soon.’ He turned and left the kitchen. Susan gave me a scared look; Goodwife Gristwood had retreated into
herself.

‘It’s all right, Susan,’ I said with an attempt at a smile. ‘You’re not in any trouble. There may be a few questions for you, that’s all.’ She still
looked frightened: that was the effect Cromwell’s name had on most people. I set my teeth. What in God’s name had I got involved in? And who was Barak to give me orders?

I crossed to the window and looked out at the yard, surprised to see that both the flagstones and the high walls were stained black. ‘Has there been a fire here?’ I asked Susan.

‘Master Sepultus did experiments out there sometimes, sir. Terrible bangs and hissings there were.’ She crossed herself. ‘I was glad he wouldn’t let me see.’

Goodwife Gristwood spoke again. ‘Yes, we were kept out of our own kitchen when he and my husband were at their foolery.’

I looked again at the scorch marks. ‘Did they go out there often?’

‘Only recently, sir,’ Susan said. She turned to her mistress. ‘I’ll make an infusion, madam, it might ease us. Would you like some, sir? I have some marigolds—’

‘No, thank you.’

We sat together in silence for a while. My mind was racing. It struck me that the formula might still be in the workshop, perhaps even with some samples of this Greek Fire. Now was a chance to
look before the room was disturbed further, though I shrank from returning there. I bade the women stay in the kitchen and mounted the stairs again.

I stood in the doorway for a moment, steeling myself to look again at those terrible carcasses. Poor Michael had been in his mid-thirties, I recalled, younger than me. The afternoon sun was
shining into the room, a sunbeam illuminating his dead face. I remembered that dinner in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, how I had thought he had the questing, nosy look of an amiable rodent. I turned
away from his look of terror.

There was a terrible casualness about the way the two men had been smashed down. It seemed the killers had simply staved in the doors and then felled the brothers like animals, with an axe blow
each. They had probably been watching the house, waiting for the women to leave. I wondered if Michael and Sepultus, hearing the front door broken in, had locked themselves in the workshop in a
vain attempt to save themselves.

I noticed Michael was wearing a rough smock over his shirt. Perhaps he had been helping his brother. But with what? I looked around. I had never been in an alchemist’s workshop – I
gave such people a wide berth, for they were known as great frauds – but I had seen pictures of their laboratories and something was missing. Frowning, I walked over to a wall lined with
shelves, my feet crunching on broken glass. One shelf was full of books but the others were empty. From round marks in the dust I guessed jars and bottles had been stored there. That was what I had
seen in the pictures, alchemists’ chambers full of bottles of liquids and powders. There was nothing like that here. In the pictures there had also been benches with oddly shaped retorts for
distillation – that would explain all the broken glass on the floor. ‘They took his potions,’ I murmured.

I took one of the books from the shelves,
Epitome Corpus Hermeticum
, and flicked through it. A marked passage read: ‘Distillation is the elevation of the essence of a dry thing, by
fire, thus by fire we come to the essence of things, even while all else be consumed.’ I shook my head and put it down, turning to the remains of the chest. I saw that the fireplace and the
wall behind it were fire-blackened like the yard.

The contents of the chest lay scattered all over the floor – letters and documents, one or two with bloody thumb prints on them. So the killers had searched through the contents. There was
a document dated three years ago, conveying the house to Sepultus and Michael Gristwood, and a marriage contract between Michael Gristwood and Jane Storey drawn up ten years earlier. Under it
Jane’s father contracted to leave all his property to his son-in-law on his death, an unusually generous provision.

Something else on the floor caught my eye. I bent down and picked up a gold angel; it had fallen from a leather bag nearby that contained twenty more. The brothers’ money had been left
behind. Well, I thought, that was not what the killers were after. I rose, pocketing the coin. Another smell was beginning to overlay the sulphurous stink in the room, the sweet, rich smell of
decay. I stepped on something that crunched under my heel and, looking down, saw I had broken a delicate set of scales. Sepultus’s alchemist’s balance. Well, he would not be needing it
now. With a last glance at the bloody remains, I left the room.

J
ANE
G
RISTWOOD
sat where I had left her, Susan beside her sipping something from a wooden cup. Susan looked up nervously as I
came in. I took the gold coin and laid it in front of her mistress. She looked up at me.

‘What’s this?’

‘I found it upstairs, in the remains of your husband’s chest. There is a whole purse of angels there, together with the deeds to the house and other papers. You should keep them
safe.’

She nodded. ‘The deeds to the house. I suppose it’s mine now. Great broken-down place; I never wanted it.’

‘Yes, it will come to you now unless Michael had sons.’

‘He had no sons.’ She spoke with sudden bitterness, then looked up at me. ‘You know the law then. You know about inheritance.’

‘I am a barrister, madam.’ I spoke sharply, for her coldness was beginning to repel me as it had Barak. ‘You may care to fetch the gold and those papers; there will be others
poking around this house soon.’

She stared at me for a moment. ‘I can’t go up there,’ she whispered. Then her eyes widened and her voice rose to a shriek. ‘Don’t make me go up there; for
pity’s sake, don’t make me see them again!’ She began sobbing, a desperate howling like an animal caught in a trap. The girl took her hand again.

‘I will fetch them,’ I said, ashamed of my earlier curtness. I went back upstairs and drew the papers and the gold purse together. In the hot afternoon the smell of death was growing
stronger. As I stood up I nearly slipped. I looked down, fearing I had slithered in the blood, but saw there was a patch of something else by the fireplace; a little pool of viscous, colourless
liquid that had spilled from a small glass bottle that lay on its side on the floor. I bent down and dipped my finger in it. I rubbed my fingers together, it had a slippery feel. I sniffed. The
stuff was odourless, like water. I righted the bottle and replaced the stopper that had fallen off in the struggle and lay nearby. There was no label to identify the thick, clear liquid inside.
Hesitantly, I touched the tip of my tongue to it, then jerked back as a stinging, bitter taste filled my mouth, making me gasp and cough.

I heard footsteps outside and crossed to the window, dabbing at my burning mouth. Barak was outside with half a dozen men in Cromwell’s livery carrying swords. I hastened downstairs as
they marched in, their feet clumping heavily on the boards as they hurried to the kitchen. As I ran downstairs I heard Susan give a little scream. The men had crowded in; Goodwife Gristwood was
frowning at them. Barak saw the little pile of papers I carried. ‘What are those?’ he asked sharply.

‘Family papers and some gold. They were in the chest upstairs. I fetched them for Goodwife Gristwood.’

‘Let me see.’

I frowned as he grabbed the papers. At least, I thought, the churl can read. He opened the bag of gold and examined the contents. Satisfied, he laid the gold and papers before Goodwife
Gristwood. She clutched them to her. Barak looked at me.