Revelation (61 page)

'What news, my lord:' Harsnet's head jerked up.

'My brother has been appointed Ambassador to the Regent of the Netherlands.'

'Because the King fears Lady Catherine may still have a mind to marry me,' Sir Thomas said. Angry as he had looked, he shifted his stance, swaggered lightly.

'We cannot be sure that is why you were chosen,' his brother said. 'And if it is, think yourself lucky the King is sending you on an ambassadorship, not to the Tower.'

'Perhaps.' Sir Thomas looked at me curiously. 'You, sir. Someone said the King made mock of your bent back, when he was at York two years ago.'

I took a deep breath. 'He did, sir.' Who had told him that story, I wondered.

'He would not get to York now,' Seymour said. 'He is so fat he can hardly walk. He has ulcers on both legs now. When they are bad he has to be taken around the palace in a wheeled chair. They say when the ulcers leak the smell as you enter the Privy Quarters would stun a bull. When you leave here, Master Shardlake, if you hear the squeaking of wheels in the corridors, I should run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.' He laughed bitterly.

Harsnet shifted uneasily in his chair. Lord Hertford shook his head. 'Your indiscretions will be the death of you one day, Thomas. But it is true the King's health worsens every month. He cannot live many years longer. And then, if a queen sympathetic to reform were in place, ready to assume the regency for young Prince Edward . . .' He spread his hands.

I thought, they have planned for this marriage, looking years ahead. How deeply my hunt for Roger's killer had become entangled in court politics.

'When do you go abroad, Sir Thomas?' Harsnet asked.

'I do not know. A few weeks, perhaps.'

Harsnet nodded, his face expressionless, though I guessed that, like me, he would rather Sir Thomas and his careless tongue were gone tomorrow. But we badly needed the support his household could give.

I jumped at the sound of a loud knock. After Sir Thomas' words, a shiver of fear seemed to pass through the room, but Lord Hertford called out in a firm voice, 'Come in.'

Barak entered. He knew when to be humble, and bowed his head under Hertford's glare. 'I am sorry to interrupt you, my lord, but the guard from Lockley's tavern is here. Janley. They have found him.'

'Alive?' Hope came into Harsnet's face.

'No, sir. Dead.' Barak looked around the company, took a deep breath. 'In the old Charterhouse. The manner of his death shows he is the sixth victim.'

Lord Hertford seemed to slump. He put a hand to his brow.

'Who knows?'

'Nobody who matters, my lord. Yet.' 'Shardlake, Harsnet, go there now.' 'I wish to go too,' Sir Thomas said.

'Very well,' Lord Hertford agreed. He looked between us. 'He has made us all dance, has he not? And now again. Will we ever have him dancing as he should, at the end of a rope?'

Chapter
Thirty
-
six

T
he rain continued
during our long ride to the Charterhouse. I was constantly blinking water out of my eyes as Sir Thomas, Barak, the guard Janley and I rode together; the others listening as I shouted questions to Janley about what had happened there. We rode as fast as we could along roads that were turning to quagmires, mud spattering our horses and our boots.

'The Charterhouse watchman came running over to the Green Man this morning,' Janley told us. 'The place is empty but for him and the Bassano family, the King's Italian musicians; they've turned some of the old monks' cells into accommodation for them.' 'No one else lives there?' Sir Thomas asked. 'No, sir. The place is used to store the King's hunting equipment and tents and costumes for the masques. The watchman's known as a hopeless drunkard. Apparently he used to spend most evenings in the Green Man getting sow
-
drunk; Lockley and Mistress Bunce often had to put him outside at closing time. One of his duties is to open and close the lock gates in the old conduit
-
house, keep the water flowing on through the cellars of the houses in the square. He would forget and the locals had to go over and remind him.' 'Do the locals know about this?' Harsnet asked. 'No, sir. The watchman came running over an hour ago, babbling about floods and a dead man in the conduit. He knew I was some sort of official guard. He said it was Lockley. I sent him back and rode to the coroner's office, which I'd been told to do if anything happened.'

'You've managed to keep the truth of what happened to Mrs
Bunce a secret?' I glanced at Janley, noticing the man looked tired and strained.

'Ay. I've told everyone who called it looks like Lockley came back, murdered her and fled. I've hinted it was about money. A lot of neighbours and old customers have called round.'

'Good. Well done.'

'I'll be glad to be gone, back with my family. I keep thinking of that poor woman lying there. Especially at night.'

'She was only a tavern keeper,' Sir Thomas grunted. 'Be thankful it wasn't someone more important, it would be harder to cover up what happened.'

W
e arrived at
Charterhouse Square and followed the path between the trees covering the ancient plague pit. We rode past the deserted old chapel. The door was closed; the beggars would be out seeking alms in the town. We drew up at the small gatehouse set in the long brick wall of the dissolved monastery. There was a rail for horses there and we tied our animals up. Sir Thomas frowned at the mud on his fine netherhose.

Janley knocked loudly at the door. Shuffling footsteps sounded and a thin middle
-
aged man with a red face and a bulbous, pock
-
marked nose opened it and peered at us with frightened eyes.

'I've brought some people to see the body, Padge,' Janley said gently.

The watchman looked at us uncertainly. 'They'll have to climb down to the sewer. I don't know how you'll get him out. He's fixed to the lock gates somehow, blocking them. He's naked. It's horrible. Why has someone done this? Why?' His voice rose.

'Leave it to us, matey,' Barak said soothingly.

We followed the watchman through the gates, past the ruins of the old monastic church with the windows out and the roof off, and found ourselves in a large, square, grassed courtyard. In the centre stood an octagonal, copper
-
roofed building, with taps on the sides.

That had to be the old monastic conduit, fed by the streams from Islington, where the monks had drawn their water and which then went on to drain the sewers under the houses in the square. Round the sides of the yard stood the old monks' cells, little square two
-
roomed houses, each with a small patch of garden behind, water dripping from the eaves. This would have been a peaceful place once. The monks of the Charterhouse had lived secluded lives in their cells round the central square, an architectural pattern unique among monastic buildings. The cells had stout wooden doors secured with padlocks. To our left was a larger building, the doors open. I saw figures within.

'I've put the Bassano family in there,' the watchman said. 'They came into the gatehouse earlier, gabbling away about being flooded out.' He pointed to the conduit and I saw that water was seeping and bubbling up between the flagstones surrounding it. A section of the grassy square between the conduit and the cells on one side was waterlogged. Still the rain pelted down on us. The watchman wiped his face with a trembling hand. 'I went to look at the conduit
-
house where the lock gates are, and saw a body jammed in front of them. I leaned over the rail and saw his face, saw it was poor Francis.'

'Stopping the waters of the Euphrates,' I said quietly. 'Master Padge, did you hear anything last night?'

'No. A man has to sleep,' he added in a truculent mumble.

'Not if he's a watchman,' Sir Thomas said sharply. 'Where are the Italians?'

Padge led the way to the building with the open door. It had evidently been the monastic chapter house, for there were benches round the wall as there were at Westminster Abbey. But this was a far smaller, more austere room. Most of the space was taken up with chests and wardrobes; to store the costumes for the masques, no doubt. Two huge suits of armour stood beside them, and half a dozen enormous jousting lances were stacked against the wall. A little group of people had found space on the benches and sat huddled together, looking scared. They were swarthy, dark
-
haired; four men and three women with children in their laps. All were clutching musical instruments, lutes and tabors and even a harp. I saw the men's doublets and the women's dresses were soaked through. 'Does anyone speak English?' I asked.

One of the men stood up. 'I do,' he said in heavily accented tones.

'You are the Bassano family, the King's musicians?'

'Yes, sir.' He bowed. 'I am their servant, Signor Granzi.'

'What has happened to you?' Sir Thomas asked. 'You look like a lot of drowned rats.'

'We woke this morning to find the floors of our quarters in water above our feet,' the Italian said. 'The ground goes downward from that conduit. Water was coming into our rooms. We had to rescue our instruments. We came here, then called the watchman. What is it, sir? We heard the watchman cry out.'

'Nothing to worry you.'

'Did any of you hear anything strange last night?' I asked. Master Granzi consulted the other in their strange, musical tongue, then shook his head. 'No, sir. We were all asleep.'

Sir Thomas grunted. 'Come on, Padge. Take us to where you found the body.' He pushed the watchman out into the rain; a born bully.

As we crossed the courtyard Harsnet fell into step beside me. 'Those musicians perform before the King. If they learn there has been a killing here it will be a fine bit of gossip to tell around the court. They must not find out what has happened.'

'I agree.' Was that what the killer had intended?

'We'll say it was an accident.'

'Padge is a drunk. He'll talk in his cups.'

'I'll take him with us when we leave,' Harsnet said. 'Keep him somewhere safe and put one of Sir Thomas' men in here for now. I'll square it with the Court of Augmentations.'

Padge led us back to the gatehouse. He had appropriated one room, a truckle bed on the floor. The room stank of beer. There was a fire burning in the grate, and he lit three lamps from it. He passed them to Barak, Janley and then me.

'We'll need these, sir,' he said and led the way back to the outer courtyard. We followed him, heads bowed against the rain, into a low, square building standing on its own. In the centre of the stone floor was a large square opening, protected by a low railing. An iron ladder bolted to the side led down into a brickwork shaft streaked with green lichen. A large wheel stood off to one side.

'I left the lock gates slightly open last night,' Padge said. After all the rain there is a lot of water coming through and it needs to drain. When I came this morning I thought to open them fully with the wheel but they were stuck fast. I looked down the shaft and — you will see.' The hand that held his lamp began to shake.

We all went to the rail and looked down, holding our lamps out over the shaft. It went down twenty feet. At the bottom, on one side, a pair of heavy wooden gates about eight feet high was set into the brick wall. They were slightly open, enough to let a trickle of water through. My eyes widened as I made out the body of a naked man at the bottom of the gate. His posture was strange, he was spreadeagled against the wooden gates, limbs outstretched. His face looked upwards, merely a white shape in the gloom, but I could make out that it was Lockley.

'The body's fixed to those gates somehow,' Padge said. 'Did you go down to look?' Sir Thomas asked. Padge shook his head vigorously.

'We'd better see. Barak, Harsnet, come with me. You too, Shardlake - if you can climb down ladders,' he added with a nasty smile, a flash of white teeth in the gloom.

'Of course I can,' I replied sharply, though I did not relish the prospect.

Sir Thomas swung easily over the railing and began his descent. Barak and Harsnet followed. I made up the rear, grasping the slippery rungs hard.

At the bottom we found ourselves standing on wet brickwork that sloped down to a central channel where the water ran off down an archway into darkness. We looked at the lock gates, rendered speechless by what we saw there. The naked body of Francis Lockley had been laid out at the bottom of the gates and then nailed to them, like some terrible mockery of the Crucifixion, his hands nailed to one gate and his feet to the other. Big, broad-headed nails, driven in to the hilt. The gates could not be opened without ripping them out, and that would require more force than the weight of the water and turning of the wheel above could provide. I saw there was a mass of dried blood on the back of his head, but little sign of blood flowing from the terrible wounds. Lockley had at least died quickly. I guessed if he had been drugged with dwale and left to wake in the darkness there was the risk that he might live long enough to talk to a rescuer. The killer had put his safety before his sadistic cruelty. Nonetheless the savagery was unspeakable.