C.J. Sansom: Revelation

I whirled round. Barak was lying on the floor, his forehead red with blood, his sword beside him. Standing over him, the pile of cushions he had been lying under scattered around him, was Cantrell, in one of his old shabby smocks. He was carrying the piece of wood he had shown me at his house. He wore no glasses, and now I realized what the old woman had meant about his strange eyes. They were large, pale blue, with a dark heaviness in them such as I had never seen in human eyes before. It was as though, while he looked at me, he was also looking inward, at a terrible, exhausting vision. But he did not squint or peer; there was little wrong with his vision. He had been exaggerating his short-sightedness to deceive us, and his acting had been good.

I reached for my dagger; but Cantrell was quicker. In a single fluid movement he bent, picked up Barak's sword and thrust it at my throat. His clumsiness had been another act. I glanced frantically down at Barak; but he was unconscious, or worse.

'The Jew cannot help you.' Cantrell's voice was low, thick with gloating pleasure, quite different from his previous dull tones. He threw his club down on a cushion, keeping Barak's sword in his other hand held at my throat, the sharp point pricking at my skin.

'Now I have you,' he said. 'God has delivered you to me. I knew setting the summerhouse on fire would make everyone run about like ants!' He laughed, a childlike giggle that somehow chilled me to the bone.

'Catherine Parr is well guarded,' I said, trying to keep my breathing steady.

'I thought you would all think it had ended with Goddard, the pouring of the last vial.' He shook his head, his expression serious now. 'But of course the devil knows Catherine Parr is the Great Whore that was foretold. The devil told you the truth, didn't he? She will be well guarded now.' He frowned, looking for a moment like a thwarted child, then smiled again. 'But the Lord has delivered you to me. To remove an enemy and strengthen my hand.' He looked down at Barak's prone form a moment, stirred him with his toe and smiled at his own cleverness. Barak's face was white. I prayed he was still alive. I could hear voices outside, but dared not call, for Cantrell would slash my throat in a moment.

'Kneel down,' he hissed releasing the pressure of the sword a little. I hesitated, then knelt on the wooden floor. The burned skin of my back stretched agonizingly with the movement. A splinter dug into my knee. Cantrell pulled something from his pocket. A small glass vial, half-killed with yellowish liquid. Still holding the sword to my throat, he unstoppered it and held it out. 'Drink this,' he said.

I looked at it fearfully, knowing what it was. Dwale. His prelude to torture and death. 'You will never get us out of this room,' I said. 'The whole house is in uproar.'

'Drink it! Or I cut your throat and then the Jew's.' He pressed the sword to my neck, I felt a sharp pain, then blood trickling down my neck.

'All right!' I took the vial. It smelt of honey, he had mixed the evil stuff with nectar. I looked at it. My hand trembled. I thought, if I refuse and he kills me now, at least my death will be quick. But Barak would certainly die too. By drinking it I could live a little longer, and the instinct to do so is always powerful. I lifted it to my mouth. My throat seemed to constrict, I feared I would not be able to swallow it down, but I gulped once and it was gone. I wondered how long the dwale would take to have effect. Perhaps someone would come before it did. But immediately I felt strange, as though my body was enormously heavy. I tried to take a breath, but could not. Then everything slipped away.

I WOKE IN DARKNESS, to a cesspit smell that made me retch and gasp. My body felt thick and heavy. A stab of pain shot down my back. I realized my wrists were bound in front of me, my ankles tied as well. I was propped up in a sitting position, my back against a brick wall, my legs on a rough, slimy floor. There was a light to one side. I turned painfully towards it. A lantern containing a fat bees' wax candle showed the ordure-smeared floor of a low, narrow brick passage. Cantrell sat cross-legged beside it, looking at me with a brooding gaze, his eyes glinting as they caught the light. He was near, four feet or so away. Barak's sword lay at his side.

I realized I was very cold, and shivered. The motion made the little wound at my neck sting.

'You are awake?' Cantrell asked in a neutral tone.

'Where are we?' I asked. My mouth was terribly dry, my voice came as a croak.

'In the sewer. Under the house.'

I looked round. There were long, narrow alcoves in the brick--work; they must connect to the lavatories above. Behind me, the passage stretched away into darkness. Ahead, as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I made out the shape of a large metal grille, a patch of moonlit sky beyond. The thick iron mesh was broken in a few places, metal spikes sticking out at odd angles, but leaving barely space to put an arm though. We were trapped. Beyond the grille I heard the sound of running water; it must be the stream into which the sewer drained.

'I hid us under those cushions,' Cantrell said quietly, almost conversationally. He smiled. 'People came in, but they thought we were gone out of the window. They were all in such a panic, thinking of nothing but protecting the Whore. I got you down here when the house was quiet.'

'And Barak?'

'Still hidden under the cushions. They'll find him.'

'Is he dead?'

Cantrell shrugged. 'I don't know. It doesn't matter.' He frowned then, lapsed into his own thoughts.

'Why am I still alive;' I ventured after a few minutes.

He frowned. 'Don't distract me,' he said angrily. 'You distract me, damn you.'

I was silent again. The candle burned slowly down. Cantrell sat brooding. After a while he sighed, and turned to look at me again with his heavy, merciless gaze. 'You stopped God's plan,' he said. 'I don't know what to do.' He shook his head. 'I didn't complete the sequence, that is why I failed.'

'I don't understand.'

He put a hand to each side of his face. 'My head spins. Ever since God first spoke to me, so many messages, so many thoughts.' He sighed, a long groaning sound. 'God told me to set that fuse to give you time to escape, so you would think Goddard had done it all, but Goddard was not an apostate from true religion so the prophecies were not fulfilled — you are the apostate the seventh vial must be poured out on, the devil's agent too, you have to die, still, in a great earthquake.' He was talking fast now, gabbling to himself rather than to me. 'For the prophecies to be fulfilled, for me to be able to kill the Great Whore. I see it now.' He looked at me. 'But I cannot think how to do it, down here, and I cannot get you out alive.' He turned and pointed a skinny finger at me. 'I knew you were the devil's man when you came to where I left Dr Gurney. I marked your bent back, which is a sign of a twisted soul, I learned you were an apostate from true reform. You looked sad, lost. I recognized that in your face when I first saw you by the river. And I thought, yes, that is how a man possessed would look.'

I wondered with a shudder if he had rambled on like this to Tupholme, or Mistress Bunce, as they died in slow agony. The shudder turned into a bout of shivering, for I was cold, frozen. I had felt cold for weeks but nothing like this. Cantrell did not seem to care how cold it was.

'I'll have to get you out alive, later,' he said. 'Find some way to kill you.' I felt a wave of relief. So there was to be no torture and death down here at least, unless something in his buzzing, burning mind told him to kill me. I flinched as Cantrell reached into a pocket and pulled out a large, narrow pair of tweezers. He held them up and smiled.

'Don't think of rescue. They've no idea we are down here. After I hauled you down I used these to move the bolt back into position from below. There was just enough space, the hatch is a poor fit. I studied it when I came last week, the first time I acted as the coalman's boy.' He looked at his hand, where a piece of ordure from the floor adhered. He wiped it on his tunic, wrinkling his nose. 'This is a disgusting place.' He gave me a look that chilled me to the bone. 'It's your fault I'm stuck down here.'