C.J. Sansom - Heartstone

The maid-in-waiting returned, bringing with her the woman I had seen in the presence chamber. She was small, frail looking. She approached with nervous steps, her hands held tightly together.

'Come, good Bess,' the Queen said in a welcoming voice. 'This is Master Shardlake, a serjeant at law. Jane, bring over a chair. One for Serjeant Shardlake too.'

Mistress Calfhill lowered herself onto a cushioned chair and I sat opposite her. She studied me with her intent gaze, grey-blue eyes clear against the lined, unhappy face. She frowned for a second, perhaps noticing I was a hunchback. Then she looked at the Queen, her expression softening at the sight of the dog.

'This is Rig, Bess,' the Queen said. 'Is he not a fine fellow? Come, stroke him.'

Hesitantly, Bess leaned across and touched the animal. Its feathery tail wagged. 'Bess always loved dogs,' the Queen told me, and I realized she had kept Rig back to help relax her old servant. 'Now, Bess,' the Queen said, 'tell Serjeant Shardlake everything. Do not be afraid. He will be your true friend in this. Tell him as you told me.'

Bess leaned back, looked at me anxiously. 'I am a widow, sir.' She spoke softly. 'I had a son, Michael, a goodly, gentle boy.' Her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them away resolutely. 'He was clever, and thanks to Lady Latimer's—I beg pardon, the Queen's—kindness, he went to Cambridge.' Pride came into her voice. 'He graduated and came back to London. He had obtained a post as tutor to a family of merchants named Curteys. In a good house near the Moorgate.'

'You must have been proud,' I said.

'So I was, sir.'

'When was this?'

'Seven years ago. Michael was happy in his position. Master Curteys and his wife were good people. Cloth merchants. As well as their house in London they had bought some woodland belonging to a little nunnery down in Hampshire, in the country north of Portsmouth. All the monasteries were going down then.'

'I remember very well.'

'Michael said the nuns had lived in luxury from the profits of selling the wood.' She frowned, shaking her head. 'Those monks and nuns were bad people, as the Queen knows.' Bess Calfhill, clearly, was another reformer.

'Tell Master Shardlake about the children,' the Queen prompted.

'The Curteyses had two children, Hugh and Emma. I think Emma was twelve then, Hugh a year younger. Michael brought them to see me once and I would see them when I visited him.' She smiled fondly. 'Such a pretty boy and girl. Both tall, with light brown hair, sweet-natured quiet children. Their father was a good reformer, a man of new thinking. He had Emma as well as Hugh taught Latin and Greek, as well as sportly pastimes. My son enjoyed archery and taught the children.'

'Your son was fond of them?'

'As if they were his own. You know how in rich households spoiled children can make tutors' lives a misery, but Hugh and Emma enjoyed their learning. If anything, Michael thought they were too serious, but their parents encouraged that: they wanted them to grow up godly folk. Michael thought Master Curteys and his wife kept the children too close to them. But they loved them dearly. Then, then—' Bess stopped suddenly and looked down at her lap.

'What happened?' I asked gently.

When she looked up again her eyes were blank with grief. 'There was plague in London the second summer Michael was with them. The family decided to go down to Hampshire to visit their lands. They were going with friends, another family who had bought the old nunnery buildings and the rest of the lands. The Hobbeys.' She almost spat out the name.

'Who were they?' I asked.

'Nicholas Hobbey was another cloth merchant. He was having the nunnery converted to a house and Master Curteys' family was to stay with them. Michael was going down to Hampshire too. They were packing to leave when Master Curteys felt the boils under his arm. He had barely been put to bed when his wife collapsed. They were both dead in a day. Along with their steward, a good man.' She sighed heavily. 'You know how it comes.'

'Yes.' Not just plague, but all the diseases born of the foul humours of London. I thought of Joan.

'Michael and the children escaped. Hugh and Emma were devastated, clinging to each other for comfort, crying. Michael did not know what would become of them. There were no close relatives.' She set her jaw. 'And then Nicholas Hobbey came. But for that family my son would still be alive.' She stared at me, her eyes suddenly full of rage.

'Did you ever meet Master Hobbey?'

'No. I know only what Michael told me. He said originally Master Curteys had been thinking of buying the nunnery and all the land that went with it, as an investment, but decided he could not afford it. He knew Master Hobbey through the Mercer's Hall. Master Hobbey came to dinner several times to discuss splitting the woodland between the two of them, which was what happened in the end, with Master Hobbey buying the smaller share of the woodland and the nunnery buildings, which he was going to convert to a country residence. Master Curteys took the larger part of the woodland. Master Hobbey became friendly with Master and Mistress Curteys over the sale. He struck Michael as one who adopts reformist positions when he is with godly people, but if he were negotiating the purchase of lands with a papist he would take some beads to click. As for his wife, Mistress Abigail, Michael said he thought she was mad.'

Madness again. 'In what way?'

She shook her head. 'I don't know. Michael did not like to talk to me of such things.' She paused, then went on. 'Master and Mistress Curteys died too quick to make wills. That was why everything was uncertain. But shortly afterwards Master Hobbey appeared with a lawyer, and told him the children's future was being arranged.'

'Do you know the lawyer's name?'

'Dyrick. Vincent Dyrick.'

'Do you know him?' the Queen asked.

'Slightly. He is an Inner Temple barrister. He has represented landlords against me in the Court of Requests occasionally over the years. He is good in argument but—over-aggressive perhaps. I did not know he worked in the Court of Wards too.'

'Michael feared him. Michael and the Curteyses' vicar were trying to trace relatives, but then Master Hobbey said he had bought the children's wardship. The Curteyses' house was to be sold and Hugh and Emma were to move to the Hobbeys' house in Shoe Lane.'

'That went through very quickly,' I said.

'Money must have passed,' the Queen said quietly.

'How much land is there?'

'I think about twenty square miles in all. The children's share was about two-thirds.'

That was a great deal of land. 'Do you know how much Hobbey paid for the wardship?'

'I think it was eighty pounds.'

That sounded cheap. I thought, if Master Hobbey bought Hugh and Emma's wardship he has control of their share of that woodland. In Hampshire, near to Portsmouth, where there would be much demand for wood for ships, and not too far from the Sussex Weald, where the expanding ironworks had brought constant demand for fuel.

Bess continued. 'Master Hobbey seemed minded to get his own tutor, but Hugh and Emma had grown attached to Michael. The children asked Master Hobbey to keep Michael on, and he agreed.' Bess lifted her hands, made a sort of helpless motion. 'Apart from me, the Curteys family were all Michael had. He was a lad full of generous emotion: he should have sought a wife but for some reason never did.' She composed herself again, continued in a flat voice. 'And so the children were moved, and the house they had lived in all their lives sold and gone. I think the proceeds were put in care of the Court of Wards.'

'Yes. It would be the trustee. So, Mistress Calfhill, your son moved with the children to Shoe Lane.'

'Yes. He did not like the Hobbeys' house. It was a small, dark place. And Michael had a new pupil. The Hobbeys' son David.' She took a deep breath. 'Michael said he was a spoiled and pampered only child, the same age as Emma. Stupid and cruel, always taunting Hugh and Emma, saying they were in his house on sufferance, that his parents did not love them as they did him. True enough, I suppose. I believe Master Hobbey only took the children on to profit from their lands.'