C.J. Sansom - Revelation

For once I reacted quicker than Barak, who seemed transfixed by the sight of the gunpowder trail. I grabbed his arm, twirled him round and shouted, 'Run!'

We fled the room, back down the corridor. Sir Thomas, Russell and Harsnet stared at us. 'Get everybody out, now!' I yelled. 'There's gunpowder, he's going to blow up the house!'

I heard footsteps running towards us from all over the building. Those in the hall were already running for the door. Barak and I followed, with huge strides, almost leaping.

Then I felt a hot heavy impact at my back. It blew me off my feet as though I was a doll. Everything round me seemed to quiver, though strangely I heard no sound. My last thought before losing consciousness was, he did it, he made the earth quake.

WHEN I WOKE my first terrible thought was that I was dead and had been sent to Hell for my unbelief, for all around me was smoke, lit from behind by fire. Then I saw white circular lights moving in the smoke. One approached and for a dizzy moment I feared to see a demon, but the shape resolved itself into Harsnet's face, looking shocked and streaked with smoke-marks. He knelt beside me and I realized I was lying on my side on damp grass, and then that my back was bare, for a chill breeze wafted across it.

'Stay still, Master Shardlake,' Harsnet said in soothing tones. 'Your back is burned, not badly but the village healing man has been, he has applied some lavender to it.' I became conscious then that my back hurt; at the same time the echo of a distant, tremendous explosion seemed to sound in my ears. I realized that Harsnet's voice sounded strangely muffled.

I sat up, shaking my head. A blanket half covered me and I pulled it round to cover my bare back, a movement that hurt it, making me wince.

'I said that was the first thing you'd do when you woke up,' a voice beside me said. I turned to see Barak beside me, his lower half also covered with a blanket. Other men were lying in similar positions all over the long grass of the lawn. I turned my neck painfully. Behind me, at the far end of the lawn, the Goddard house was ablaze from end to end, flames and smoke belching from the windows and from the collapsed roof.

'He had gunpowder,' I said, clutching Harsnet's arm. 'He was in there, he lit the barrels—'

'Yes,' the coroner said gently. 'It is over. The back of the house has collapsed and the rest is burning fast. You saved our lives, sir, by calling out to us.'

'Did everyone get out?'

'Yes. But several others were injured by the blast. One of Sir Thomas' men was thrown through the air and landed on his head. He is likely to die. A doctor has been sent for from Barnet. You worried us, sir, you have been unconscious over an hour.'

'Are you hurt?' I asked Barak.

'Came down with a bit of a bang, like you. Think I've cracked a couple of ribs.'

'Why is there a blanket over your legs?'

'The explosion blew my hose off. Your robe was blown to tatters too, and your doublet.' He spoke lightly, but looking at his eyes I saw the horror in them that he probably saw in mine.

'It is all over,' Harsnet said quietly. 'He poured out the seventh vial, and made the earth shake. He killed himself doing it, probably thought he would be taken up to Heaven.' His mouth set. 'But now he will have found himself in Hell!' He hesitated. 'We think the seventh victim was you.'

'How did he know I would be here?'

'He knew you were at the centre of the investigation,' he said. He grasped at his left shoulder and winced; he had been hurt too. 'You said yourself he would know a large party of men would come here. You would probably be with them. That fuse must have been set slightly too long, or everyone in that part of the house would have been killed. He didn't care how many died,' he added bitterly. 'Ah, there is the doctor.'

I saw Sir Thomas and Russell, with a man in a physician's robe, walking among the wounded on the lawn.

'The men are being told Goddard was an alchemist,' Harsnet went on. 'That we were after him for conducting forbidden experiments, and he blew the place up by accident. Half the local villagers have turned out; Sir Thomas' men are keeping them to the other side of the woods.'

'Why would Goddard kill himself, just at the culmination of his great scheme?' I asked. 'Surely if he thought it would bring about Armageddon he would want to see it.'

'Who knows what went on in his mind? I think he was possessed after all, Master Shardlake, and now the devil has gathered his soul.'

Harsnet's voice still sounded muffled. I hoped my ears had not been permanently damaged. I lay back on one elbow, exhausted. 'Would you like me to fetch you some water?' he asked.

'Please.' When he left me, I lay down in the long grass, wincing at the pain that spread across my entire back. Then I sat up again, drawing the blanket round me, and looked at the burning house. There was a crash and a cloud of sparks as the last of the roof caved in. I turned to Barak.

'It's not over,' I said.

'But we saw him, that was Goddard, the mole on his nose and the cut on his cheek from where Orr ripped off his fake beard. He set a trap, he had plenty of warning with the geese and then us crashing in to set the fuse so it would blow us all to kingdom come.'

'But it didn't. We all got out.'

'Only just.'

I sat up slowly, rubbed a hand across my face, felt giddy for a moment. 'Did you see the window above those gunpowder barrels? The shutter was open slightly. There could have been someone else in there, who lit the fuse and got out. What if the fuse was timed so that whoever saw him would be able to get out of the room and testify the killer was himself dead?'

'But he was sitting there grinning at us. We saw him. Sit down, please.'

'What if Goddard wasn't the killer? What if the seven vials are only a stage in some larger pageant? The next stage of which he can go on to untroubled if he is believed dead?' I stood up, unsteadily. Barak grabbed at the blanket.

'Lie down. You've been unconscious an hour.' But I planted my feet on the grass and called out to Sir Thomas' party, my voice sounding to me as though it was coming from under water. Barak plucked at my blanket again. 'If you tell Sir Thomas we haven't got the killer after all, he'll be furious. He's in a bad enough state as it is.'

But I stepped away as Sir Thomas and Russell approached with the doctor. Sir Thomas looked subdued.

'Well, Shardlake,' he said. 'Here's a spectacular end to your hunt. You got out.' He looked at me accusingly. 'One of my men is like to die.'

'I am sorry for it. But I am not sure Goddard was the killer,' I said. 'I think there was someone else in that room, who may have got away.' I turned to Russell. 'Did any of your men hear or see anything in the woods after the explosion?'

'Your brains are addled,' Sir Thomas said angrily, and the doctor, a thin elderly man with a long beard, looked at me sharply. But Russell nodded slowly.

'Yes. Just afterwards one of my men saw something moving through the woods, said it looked like a man. But it was chaos there, the light almost gone, everyone shocked by the explosion and animals panicking and running to and fro in the shadows.'

'A deer,' Sir Thomas said. But from the look Russell gave me I could see he doubted too.

A HEADQUARTERS had been set up in the stables behind Goddard's house. I got Russell to help me there, then fetch the man who had seen something. He was another of Sir Thomas' young servants, keen and sharp. 'I was sure it was a man that darted past me,' he said. 'It was just a glimpse, a figure darting between the trees, but I would swear it moved on two legs, not four.'

I was sitting on a bale of hay, Barak beside me. He looked at the young man and then at me. 'God help us. If not Goddard, then who is the killer?'