C.J. Sansom - Revelation

'Gib said his leg was a mass of maggots,' Barak said. 'They must have hatched. There's enough filth in here for them to feed on.' He lifted one of the rags with his foot, and a couple of flies buzzed upward. 'This is his upper hose, I think. There's a tear in it, look, it's stiff with dried blood. Jesus, to cut someone up and leave them to die of infected wounds. That's some revenge.'

I stood in the middle of the foul room, looking round. 'The coroners' men probably cut the clothes off the body and then left everything here as it was,' I said. 'Look, there are some fragments of cut rope over there.'

'It must have been filthy enough here even before the poor arsehole was killed.'

I looked at a truckle bed in the corner, the sheets grey with dirt. A cheap wooden cross was nailed to the mud wall above the bed. A relic of the man's hot-gospelling past?

'Let's get out of here,' Barak said. 'There's nothing but filth and rags.'

'Not yet.' I would have liked to sit down, my back was aching from so long on my feet. 'This is a lonely spot and he was unpopular. If Wilf Tupholme's killer knew him, he would know that in the depths of winter if he was tied up and left to die it might be weeks before anyone opened the place up.'

'Why do you say, he? Surely it was his woman.'

'I wonder.' I looked at a dark bloodstain on the floor by the long- dead fire. 'He was overpowered, perhaps knocked out, then tied up, a rag put in his mouth, then laid down here. Finally his leg was slashed open. Surely a drunken whore he'd kicked out would be more likely to knock him on the head.'

'She wanted to ensure a slow death,' Barak answered grimly.

'And if it wasn't her?'

'Who else could it have been?'

'Someone who kills skilfully, carefully, to make an evil spectacle.' A few dozy bugs still crawled over the bloodstain. 'Jesu, how he must have suffered,' I said.

'This has nothing in common with those others,' Barak said impatiently. He stirred the rags with his foot. 'Hullo, what's this?'

Something among the rubbish had made a metallic chink. Barak bent and, wrinkling his nose, felt among the scraps of clothing. He came up with a large tin badge, showing the painted image of an arched stone structure. I took it from Barak's hand.

'A pilgrim badge,' he said. 'From St Edward the Confessor's shrine at Westminster. That's an odd thing for a hot-gospeller to have. Don't they see shrines as papist images?'

'Maybe one of the constables dropped it while they were clearing the body out,' Barak suggested.

'Unlikely. People don't wear pilgrim badges these days, in case they're taken for papists. But someone dropped it here. Look through the rest of that stuff, Jack, see what else you can find.'

'I do get the nice jobs, don't I?' Barak began turning over all the filthy clothes and other rubbish. 'There's nothing else here,' he said at length. He looked at the cross on the wall, then at the bloodstained spot by the fire. 'Poor bastard,' he said. 'I wonder if he repented him of his fornication as lay watching the maggots eat his leg.'

I gave a start. 'What did you say?'

'I said I wondered if he regretted his time with the whore—'

'No, no, you said "repented him of his fornication". Why did you use that phrase?'

He looked at me as though I had lost my senses. 'I don't know, it just came into my head. It's from the Bible, isn't it?'

I clapped him on the shoulder. 'Yes, it is. Phrases from the Bible, they are what we hear everywhere now, are they not? In the pulpit, in the streets. They have become part of our daily language. That's why those other phrases snagged at my mind.' I stood in that terrible place, thinking. 'Is it possible?'

'Is what possible?'

'Oh, Jesu,' I said quietly. 'I hope I am wrong. Come.'

'Right about what? You talk in riddles—'

'We must get to a church. That one on the edge of the marshes will do.'

I led the way out of the cottage and began walking rapidly down the path. Barak locked it and came after me, for once having to run to keep up as I led the way back to Gib's place. He was back at work. I left Barak to hand over the key, while I unhitched the horses and used a tree trunk as a mounting block.

'What's the hurry?' Gib called out as Barak ran back to me, his face alive with curiosity. 'What did you find?'

'Nothing!' Barak called back as he swung into Sukey's saddle. 'He has to go to church, that's all!'

THE DOOR OF the church was open, and we stepped into the cool interior. It was, I saw, still decorated in the old style, the walls painted in bright colours, worn patterned tiles on the floor. Candles burned everywhere and there was a smell of incense, although the niches where reliquaries and statues of saints once stood were bare. On a lectern beside the richly decorated altar lay a Bible, fixed to it by a chain. The English Bible, ordered by Lord Cromwell to be set in every church, the year before his fall. This particular church, I reflected, was a faithful image of what the King wished to see: saints and relics gone, but otherwise everything as it was before the break with Rome. Here, at least, everything was conformity.

'Why are we here?' Barak asked, following me down the aisle. 'I want to look at that Bible. Sit down in a pew while I seek what I want.'

'But what do you want?'

I turned to face him. 'We've been talking about the hot-gospellers, the end-timers who say Armageddon will soon be here. They preach their message everywhere these days, that's why Bishop Bonner is so keen to stop them. But where do they get their message from, which part of the Bible?'

'The Book of Revelation, isn't it?'

'Yes, the Apocalypse of St John the Divine. That's where most of their religious quotes come from. The last book of the Bible; full of wild, fiery, cruel language, hard to understand, unlike anything else in the New Testament. Erasmus and Luther both doubted whether Revelation was really the word of God, though Luther at least calls it inspirational now.'

'You're saying that's where these phrases you remember come from? But how does—'

'I think they come from a specific part of the Book of Revelation. But please, sit quiet a minute, don't distract me.' I spoke somewhat unfairly, as I had been doing the talking.

With a shake of his head, Barak sat down on the thick-cushioned pew of a rich family in the front row. I mounted the lectern and opened the great blue-bound Bible. I paused at the frontispiece: the King on his throne, underneath him Cromwell and Cranmer passing the Bible down to richly dressed lords, who in turn passed it down to those of lower degree. Then I turned the heavy pages until I came to the very end, to Revelation. I found the part I was seeking and read slowly, following the text with my finger. At length I stood up. 'Barak,' I said quietly. 'Come up here.'

He joined me. 'Look,' I said. 'This is the part of the Book of Revelation where St John is shown the seven angels who pour the seven vials of wrath upon the earth.'

'I remember our vicar reading about that once. I couldn't follow it, it sounded like a mad dream.'

'A mad dream. Yes, well put. Here, look at this, in Chapter 2.' I quoted: 'And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. When you used that phrase, or a version of it, I realized where all these other gobbets that had stuck in my mind came from. Here.' I turned several pages, until I came to a heading: The angels pour out their vials of wrath. 'Now, listen to this,' I said. 'Chapter 16:

'And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, pour out your vials of wrath upon the earth.

'And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image. A noisome and grievous sore. Gib said "a great sore". Poor Wilf Tupholme was murdered in the manner of the victims of the first vial. And he was a believer who had lapsed into fornication. Many would say that meant he had the mark of the beast on him.'