Lamentation (The Shardlake Series Book 6) (72 page)

Barak had brought quill and ink, anticipating my request. I scribbled a note explaining what had happened and addressed it to Mary Odell. ‘Seal it at chambers,’ I told Barak. ‘They like a seal. But for God’s sake, hurry.’

‘I’ll try,’ he said, but his tone was not hopeful.

The guard opened the door again. ‘Time’s up,’ he said brusquely. Barak and Josephine went out with Ethelreda; she was weeping, and Josephine, though trembling herself, supported her. The door slammed shut again.

I
SAT BESIDE
P
HILIP
on his bed and looked at Edward. I feared the state he was in, what he might blurt out when brought before the council. He was sitting up now, his head bowed. I whispered to Philip, ‘He told you he killed his stepfather?’

Philip nodded sadly. Edward had heard me, despite my lowered voice, and looked up, still with that expression of despair. ‘Yes, I killed him, a man who was guilty of nothing, and I must answer to God for it. I have hidden the truth from myself and the world for forty years, blamed Isabel for everything, but now the secret is discovered I must answer for it along with her. Somewhere in my heart I always knew this time would come.’

‘What happened, Master Cotterstoke, all those years ago?’ I needed to try and reach this shocked and devastated man.

He was silent a moment, then said quietly, ‘Our father was a good man. Isabel and I were always quarrelling, but though it merely annoyed our mother, our dear father would always settle things between us, bring us round. He was our rock. When he died, the sorrow, for Isabel and me – ’ He shook his head, fell silent.

‘And then your mother married again?’ I prompted.

‘When our father had not been in his grave a year.’ I heard a touch of the old anger in his voice now. ‘Another few months and her belly was swelling with a new child. She fawned on Peter Cotterstoke, ignoring Isabel and me. How we hated him.’ He looked at me. ‘Have you brothers or sisters, sir?’

‘No, but I have seen families broken by hatreds before. Too many times.’

Edward shook his head sadly. ‘Children – their minds can encompass such wickedness, such depravity. We were sure Peter Cotterstoke would give everything to his new child and disinherit us. Though we had no evidence.’ He shook his head. ‘We started by doing little things, stealing possessions of his and destroying them. Sometimes the idea was mine, more often Isabel’s.’ He shook his head. ‘We got bolder; we burnt a book he valued – in a field, dancing round the little fire we made, tossing in the illuminated pages one by one. We were wicked, wicked.’

‘You were but children,’ I said.

He looked back at me bleakly. ‘We tried to poison him. Not to kill him, not then; just to make him sick. But he was ill, very ill. We thought we would be discovered, but he never suspected us.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. But your mother did, I thought, and watched for her husband. But not close enough.

Edward went on in that flat, toneless voice. ‘Always Isabel and I kept a mask of loving childishness before him, and he did not see through it. We used to giggle at his innocence. And then Isabel had the idea of killing him. To secure that inheritance, and gain vengeance. For depriving us – as we had persuaded ourselves – of our inheritance.’ He closed his eyes. ‘And for not being our dear father, whose place no man could take.’ A tear coursed down Edward’s lined cheek. In that house, I thought, there was no reminder of their real father save that wall painting, no one left whom they trusted, whom they could talk to. Some children make friends among the servants, but I guessed neither Edward nor Isabel had been that sort of child. They had driven each other slowly but steadily into a kind of madness.

Edward continued, ‘We talked of all sorts of plans to kill him secretly, but could not think of one that might work. I truly believe I never intended to match the word to the deed, though perhaps Isabel did. Then that day on the wharf – Peter Cotterstoke looking out over the river, right on the edge of the wharf; Isabel whispering in my ear that now was our chance. The tide was full and the water cold, he would not be able to climb out. It took only one push from behind, and I was a big boy, tall for my age.’ He lowered his head. ‘Strange, it was only afterwards that we realized what we had done. Murder. Isabel took charge, decided we must say we had left our stepfather at the wharf.’

Philip said, ‘And no one could prove otherwise.’

‘And then – then we learned he had not planned to disinherit us at all.’ Edward hid his face in his hands, his voice scarcely audible. ‘Mother suspected, somehow. Afterwards she could not stand the sight of us, got both of us out of the house as soon as she could. She had no interest in my family, her grandchildren. And that Will she made – ’ He broke off.

I said, ‘Her revenge.’

He shook his head. ‘Yes. I see it now. I never thought Vowell had guessed, even on the day of the inspection when he was so upset. I have been blind, blind for so long.’ He made a fist of his hand and banged it against his forehead.

I said quietly, ‘All these years, you and Isabel have blamed each other, because it was easier than facing the truth.’

Edward nodded dumbly. ‘A truth too terrible to bear.’

‘In a way all this time, you have still been conspiring together, each determined to avoid your share of the blame.’ It was a strange, turnabout thought.

‘After it was done, I blamed her for pressing me to do it, while she said she never intended me to actually push him, it was just playacting. We ceased speaking. But, in truth, it was both our sin. Though I hid it even from the sight of the Lord when I came to true faith. But He knew, and now He has His just vengeance.’

I did not reply. At law, both Edward and Isabel were guilty of murder. An open confession from either would see both hang, even now. I thought of their mother, suspecting all these years what her children had done, unable to prove anything but hating them. I took a deep breath. ‘What will you do now, Master Cotterstoke?’

He shook his head. ‘I will confess. That is what the Lord commands.’

I spoke carefully. ‘You understand that your being brought before the Privy Council has nothing to do with your stepfather. It is about heresy. If you have not spoken heresy, it may be that you and Brother Coleswyn are being used to get at me.’

He stared at me with genuine puzzlement. ‘I thought this arrest was concerned somehow with – with what we did. Though, yes, they did say heresy. But I could not understand why we were brought here, why the Privy Council should be involved.’ He frowned. ‘Why would the Privy Council have an interest in you, sir?’ I noted with relief that he looked attentive as well as puzzled. I had brought him back to the real world, at least for now.

‘Because I have been involved in – political matters,’ I said carefully. ‘I may have made enemies on the traditionalist side.’

‘Those rogues! Lost and condemned by God I may be now, but I am not so far fallen that I do not still revile those enemies of faith.’ A look of angry pride appeared on his face.

‘Then for all our sakes, Master Cotterstoke, when they ask you at the council tomorrow whether you have ever publicly condemned the Mass, tell them the truth, that you have not.’

‘In my heart, I have.’

‘It is what you
say
that could burn you. Keep your beliefs locked in your heart, I beg you.’

Philip nodded. ‘Yes, Edward, he is right.’

‘But what we did, Isabel and I – ’

‘Leave that until after, Edward. After.’

Edward’s face worked as he thought. But then he said, ‘If I am asked about my stepfather’s murder, I must tell the truth. But if I am not, I will say nothing.’ He looked hard at Philip. ‘Afterwards, though, I must pay for my sins.’ I thought, he is a strong man, hard and tough like his sister. And indeed it must have taken a strange, perverted strength of mind for him and Isabel to each blame everything on the other, for forty years.

A
FTER THAT THE HOURS
hung heavy. Philip persuaded Edward to pray with him, and they spent a long time murmuring in the corner, asking God for strength, and afterwards talking of the possibility of salvation in the next world for Edward if he publicly confessed his crime. At one point they discussed Isabel’s cleaving to the old ways in religion, and I heard Edward’s voice rise again, calling her an obstinate woman with a cankered heart, in those cadences of self-righteousness and self-pity so familiar to me from the time I had spent with his sister. I thought, if Edward confesses, Isabel, too, is undone.

The barred window above us allowed a square of sunlight into the room, and I watched it travel slowly across the walls, marking the passage of the afternoon. Edward and Philip ended their talk, and Philip insisted we eat some of the food that our visitors had brought.

Evening was come and the square of light fading fast when the guard returned with a note for me. I opened it eagerly, watched by Philip and Edward. It was from Barak.

I returned to Whitehall, and managed to persuade the guard to admit me to the Queen’s Presence Chamber. The Queen has left for Hampton Court, with most of her servants, Mistress Odell, too, it seems. Workmen were removing the tapestries, watched by some sort of female fool or jester with a duck on a leash; when the guard asked if she knew where Mistress Odell was she said Hampton Court, and when he said I brought a message from you she turned and made childish faces at me. I got the guard to ensure the note is forwarded. I am sorry, I could do no more.

Jane Fool, I thought, who had taken against me so fiercely. I put down the note. ‘No news. But my message has been forwarded to – an important person.’

Edward looked at me with incomprehension, as though this were all happening to someone else; he had retreated inside himself again. Philip said nothing and lowered his head.

I
T WAS A LONG
,
LONG NIGHT
. I slept fitfully, waking several times, tormented by fleas and lice that had been drawn from the bedding. I think Philip slept badly too; once I woke to hear him praying softly, too quietly for me to make out the words. As for Edward, the first time I woke he was snoring, but the next time I saw the glint of his open eyes, staring despairingly into the dark.

Chapter Forty-three

T
HEY SAT IN A LONG ROW
behind a table covered with green velvet, six members of the King’s Privy Council, the supreme body answerable to him for the administration of the realm. All wore the finest robes, gold chains and jewelled caps. Philip Coleswyn and Edward Cotterstoke and I were given seats facing them, the three Tower guards who had brought us in taking places behind us. My heart pounded as I thought, this was where Anne Askew had sat, and many others as well these last few months, to answer the same charge of heresy.

Sir Thomas Wriothesley, Lord Chancellor of England, waved a beringed hand in front of his face. ‘God’s death, they stink of the Tower gaol. I’ve said before, can people not be washed before they are brought here?’ I looked at him, remembering his fear at Anne Askew’s burning that the gunpowder round the necks of the condemned might hurt the great men of the realm when it exploded. Nor did I forget that he had tortured Anne Askew together with Rich. He caught me looking at him and glared at my presumption, fixing me with cold green little pebble eyes.