Sovereign (5 page)

M
Y MUSINGS WERE
interrupted by voices outside the room. I nudged Barak awake with my foot, and we stood up hurriedly, wincing, for our legs were still
stiff. The door opened and a man in a rather threadbare lawyer’s robe came in. Master Wrenne was a square-built man, very tall, overtopping Barak by a head. I was relieved to see that
although he was indeed elderly, his square face deeply lined, he walked steady and straight and the blue eyes under the faded reddish-gold hair were keen. He gripped my hand.

‘Master Shardlake,’ he said in a clear voice with a strong touch of the local accent. ‘Or Brother Shardlake I should say, my brother in the law. Giles Wrenne. It is good to see
you. Why, we feared you had met with an accident on the road.’

I noticed that as he studied me his eyes did not linger over my bent back, as most people’s do. A man of sensitivity. ‘I fear I got us lost. May I introduce my assistant, Jack
Barak.’

Barak bowed, then shook Wrenne’s extended hand.

‘By Jesu,’ the old man said. ‘That’s a champion grip for a law-clerk.’ He clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Good to see, our young men take too little exercise
now. So many clerks these days have a pasty look.’ Wrenne looked at the empty plates. ‘I see my good Madge has fed you. Excellent.’ He moved over to the fire. The falcon turned to
him, a little bell tied to its foot jingling, and let him stroke its neck. ‘There, my old Octavia, hast tha kept warm?’ He turned to us with a smile. ‘This bird and I have hunted
around York through many a winter, but we are both too old now. Please, be seated again. I am sorry I cannot accommodate you while you are in the city.’ He eased himself into a chair, and
looked ruefully at the dusty furniture and books. ‘I fear since my poor wife died three years ago I have not kept up her standards of housekeeping. A man alone. I only keep Madge and a boy,
and Madge is getting old, she could not cater for three. But she was my wife’s maid.’

So much for Barak’s theory about Madge, I thought. ‘We have accommodation at St Mary’s, but thank you.’

‘Yes.’ Wrenne smiled and rubbed his hands together. ‘And there will be much of interest to see there, the Progress in all its glory when it arrives. You will want to rest now.
I suggest you both come here at ten tomorrow morning, and we can spend the day working through the petitions.’

‘Very well. There seems to be much work going on at St Mary’s,’ I added.

The old man nodded. ‘They say any number of wondrous buildings are being erected. And that Lucas Hourenbout is there, supervising it all.’

‘Hourenbout? The King’s Dutch artist?’

Wrenne nodded, smiling. ‘They say the greatest designer in the land, after Holbein.’

‘So he is. I did not know he was here.’

‘It seems the place is being prepared for some great ceremony. I have not seen it, only those with business are allowed into St Mary’s. Some say the Queen is pregnant, and is to be
crowned here. But no one knows.’ He paused. ‘Have you heard anything?’

‘Only the same gossip.’ I remembered Cranmer’s annoyance when I had mentioned that rumour.

‘Ah well. We Yorkers will be told when it is good for us to know.’

I looked at Wrenne sharply, detecting a note of bitterness under the bluffness. ‘Perhaps Queen Catherine will be crowned,’ I said. ‘After all, she’s lasted over a year
now.’ I made the remark deliberately; I wanted to establish that I was not one of those stiff-necked people in the royal employ that would talk of the King only with formal reverence.

Wrenne smiled and nodded, getting the point. ‘Well, we shall have much work to do on the petitions. I am glad of your assistance. We have to weed out the silly fratches, like the man
disputing with the Council of the North over an inch of land, whose papers I read yesterday.’ He laughed. ‘But you will be familiar with such nonsense, brother.’

‘Indeed I am. Property law is my specialism.’

‘Ah! You will regret telling me that, sir.’ He winked at Barak. ‘For now I shall pass all the property cases to you. I shall keep the debts and the feuds with the lesser
officials.’

‘Are they all such matters?’ I asked.

‘For the most part.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I have been told the point is that the King must be seen to care for his northern subjects. The small matters will be arbitrated
by us under the King’s authority, the larger remitted to the King’s Council.’

‘How shall our arbitration be conducted?’

‘At informal hearings under delegated powers. I will be in charge, with you and a representative of the Council of the North sitting with me. Have you done arbitration work
before?’

‘Yes, I have. So the King will have no personal involvement with the small matters?’

‘None.’ He paused. ‘But we may meet him nonetheless.’

Barak and I both sat up. ‘How, sir?’

Wrenne inclined his head. ‘All the way from Lincoln, at the towns and other places along the road, the King has received the local gentry and city councillors in supplication, those who
were with the rebels five years ago on their knees, begging his pardon. He seeks to bind them anew with oaths of loyalty. Interestingly, the orders have been that not too many supplicants were to
gather together at once. They are still afraid, you see. There are a thousand soldiers with the Progress, and the royal artillery has been sent by boat to Hull.’

‘But there has been no trouble?’

Wrenne shook his head. ‘None. But the emphasis is on the most abject forms of surrender. The supplication here at York is to be the greatest spectacle of all. The city councillors are to
meet the King and Queen outside the city on Friday, dressed in humble robes, and make submission and apology for allowing the rebels to take over York as their capital in 1536. The citizenry will
not be there, because it would be bad for the common folk to see their city’s leaders thus humbled –’ Wrenne raised his heavy eyebrows – ‘and in case they might be
angered against the King. The councillors are to hand presents to Their Majesties, great goblets filled with coin. There has been a collection among the citizenry.’ He smiled sardonically.
‘With some cajoling.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And they are talking of us going too, the King’s lawyers, to present him formally with the petitions.’

‘So we’ll be thrust into the heart of it.’ Despite Cranmer’s promise, I thought.

‘We could be. Tankerd, the city Recorder, is in a great lather about the speech he must make. The city officials are sending constantly to the Duke of Suffolk to make sure everything is
done just as the King would wish.’ He smiled. ‘I confess I have a great curiosity to see the King. He sets out from Hull tomorrow, I believe. The Progress spent much longer than planned
at Pontefract, then went to Hull before York. And apparently the King is going back to Hull afterwards; he wants to reorganize their fortifications.’ And that, I thought, is where we put the
prisoner in a boat.

‘When will that be?’ I asked.

‘Early next week, I should think. The King will only be here a few days.’ Wrenne gave me another of his keen looks. ‘Perhaps you will have seen the King before, being from
London.’

‘I saw him at the procession when Nan Boleyn was crowned. But only from a distance.’ I sighed. ‘Well, if we are to be present at this ceremony, it is as well I packed my best
robe and new cap.’

Wrenne nodded. ‘Ay.’ He stood up, with a slowness that revealed his age. ‘Well, sir, you must be tired after your long journey – you should find your lodgings and have a
good rest.’

‘Yes. We are tired, ’tis true.’

‘By the way, you will hear many strange words here. Perhaps the most important thing you should know is that a street is called a gate, while a gate is called a bar.’

Barak scratched his head. ‘I see.’

Wrenne smiled. ‘I will have your horses fetched.’

We took farewell of the old man, and rode again to the gate leading from the Minster Close.

‘Well,’ I said to Barak, ‘Master Wrenne seems a good old fellow.’

‘Ay. Merry for a lawyer.’ He looked at me. ‘Where next?’

I took a deep breath. ‘We cannot tarry any longer. We must go to the prison.’

W
E PAUSED OUTSIDE
the gates, wondering which way to take to York Castle. I hailed a yellow-haired urchin and offered him a
farthing to direct us. He looked up at us suspiciously.

‘Show me thy farthing, maister.’

‘Here!’ I held up the coin. ‘Now, lad, the castle.’

He pointed down the road. ‘Go down through Shambles. Tha’ll know it by smell. Cross the square beyond and tha’ll see Castle Tower.’

I handed him the farthing. He waited till we had passed, then called ‘Southron heretics!’ after us before disappearing into a lane. Some of the passers-by smiled.

‘Not popular, are we?’ Barak said.

‘No. I think anyone from the south is identified with the new religion.’

‘All still stiff in papistry, then?’ he remarked.

‘Ay. They don’t appreciate this happy time of the gospel,’ I answered sardonically. Barak raised his eyebrows. He never spoke of his religious opinions, but I had long
suspected he thought as I did, that neither the evangelical nor the papist sides had much to commend them. I knew he still mourned Thomas Cromwell, but his loyalty to his old master had been
personal, not religious.

We picked our way through the crowds. Barak’s clothes, like mine, were covered in dust, his hard comely face under the flat black cap tanned from our days riding.

‘Old Wrenne was curious about whether the Queen is pregnant,’ he said.

‘Like everybody else. The King has only one son, the dynasty hangs on a single life.’

‘One of my old mates at court said the King nearly died in the spring, some trouble with an ulcer in his leg. They had to push him round Whitehall Palace in a little chair on
wheels.’

‘I looked at Barak curiously. He heard some interesting nuggets of news from his old cronies among the spies and troubleshooters in royal service. ‘A Howard prince would strengthen
the papist faction at court. Their head the Duke of Norfolk being the Queen’s uncle.’

Barak shook his head. ‘They say the Queen has no interest in religion. She’s only eighteen, just a giddy girl.’ He smiled lubriciously. ‘The King’s a lucky old
dog.’

‘Cranmer indicated Norfolk is less in favour now.’

‘Maybe he will lose his head then,’ he replied, bitterness entering his voice. ‘Who can ever tell with this King?’

‘We should keep our voices down,’ I said. I felt uncomfortable in York. There were no broad central avenues as in London, everywhere one felt hemmed in by the passers-by. It was too
crowded for riding and I resolved that we should walk from now on. Although the streets were thronged and much trading was going on in anticipation of the arrival of the Progress, there was little
of the cheerful bustle of London. We attracted more hostile looks as we rode slowly on.

The boy had been right about the Shambles, the smell of ripe meat assailed us when we were still twenty yards away. We rode into another narrow street where joints were set out on stalls,
buzzing with flies. I was glad we were mounted now for the road was thick with discarded offal. Barak wrinkled his nose as he watched the shoppers waving flies from the meat, women holding the ends
of their skirts above the mess as they haggled with the shopkeepers. When we were through the disgusting place I patted Genesis and spoke soothing words, for the smells had frightened him. At the
end of another quieter street we could see, ahead, the city wall and another barbican patrolled by guards. Beyond, a high green mound was visible, with a round stone keep on top.

‘York Castle,’ I said.

A girl was advancing towards us. I noticed her because a servant with the King’s badge prominent on his doublet was walking behind her. The wench wore a fine yellow dress and was
exceptionally pretty, with soft features, a full-lipped mouth and healthy white skin. Fine blonde hair was visible below her white coif. She caught my eye, then looked at Barak and, as we passed,
smiled boldly up at him. Barak doffed his cap from the saddle, showing his fine white teeth in a smile. The girl lowered her eyes and walked on.

‘That’s a bold hussy,’ I said.

Barak laughed. ‘A girl may smile at a fine fellow, may she not?’

‘You don’t want any dalliances here. She’s a Yorker, she may eat you.’

‘That I wouldn’t mind.’

We reached the barbican. Here too a crop of heads was fixed to poles, and a man’s severed leg was nailed above the gate. I brought forth my letter of authority, and we were allowed to pass
through. We rode alongside the castle wall, beside a shallow moat full of mud. Looking up at the high round keep I saw it was in a ruinous state, the white walls covered with lichen and a great
crack running down the middle. Ahead two towers flanked a gate where an ancient drawbridge crossed the moat. People were going in and out across it, and the sight of black-robed lawyers reminded me
the York courts were housed within the castle bailey. As our horses clattered across the drawbridge two guards in King’s livery stepped forward, crossing their pikes to bar our way. A third
took Genesis’ reins, looking at me closely.

‘What’s your business?’ His accent showed him to be another man of the southern shires.

‘We are from London. We have business with Master Radwinter, the Archbishop’s gaoler.’

The guard gave me a keen look. ‘Go to the south tower, the other side of the bailey.’ As we went under the gate I turned and saw him staring after us.

‘This city’s nothing but walls and gates,’ Barak said as we came out into the bailey. Like the rest of the place it had seen far better days; a number of imposing buildings had
been built against the interior of the high castle walls but like the keep many were streaked with lichen, gaps in the plaster. Even the courthouse, where more lawyers stood arguing on the steps,
looked tumbledown. No wonder the King had chosen to stay at St Mary’s Abbey.

I saw something dangling from the high keep. A white skeleton, wrapped in heavy chains.

‘Another rebel,’ Barak said. ‘They like to drive the point home.’