C.J. Sansom - Revelation

I tied Genesis up outside Guy's shop, and knocked on his door.

He let me in, and I saw he already had another visitor, a tall, stout, rubicund man with a long grey beard. Like Guy he wore a physician's robe, but his was of the best cut. He had a long wooden wand in his hand, which he was pointing at the apothecary's jars that lined Guy's shelves. Young Piers had taken down a couple of the jars and was carefully measuring out quantities in a balance.

The stranger looked at me down a long beak of a nose. 'Perhaps you will allow me to complete my business before you advise your patient,' he said haughtily to Guy, who gestured me to take a seat, with an apologetic look.

I sat and watched as the fat physician pointed to another jar. 'A peck of the wormwood, and I'll take an ounce of antimony. Have you any ground cockerel's blood, sir?'

'I do not keep it.'

'A pity. It is a wondrous cure for headache.'

'Such wisdom,' Piers murmured. The physician stared at him, suspecting insolence, but the boy's smooth face was impassive. I could see, though, that Guy was repressing a smile as he wrote down the man's wants on a slate. Evidently his fellow physician had consulted him in his other capacity, as an apothecary. The big man seemed one of those doctors whose strategy is to awe people with the arrogant confidence that often covers ignorance. I wondered why Guy tolerated him.

'That is all, sir,' his customer said. 'I will have it fetched tomorrow. How much?'

'A shilling.'

'You come cheap.' He brought out a fat purse and handed over the silver coin. Then he deigned to look at me. 'You are a lawyer, sir?' he asked. 'At which Inn?'

'Lincoln's Inn,' I replied curtly.

'I have a patient there. Master Bealknap, perhaps you know him.'

'I do. He seems ill and faint these days,' I added pointedly.

'Oh, I will have him well soon.' The physician seemed blind to the implied criticism. 'He needs more bleeding, that will soon restore him. I am Dr Archer, by the way. I have much experience in treating lawyers' ills.' He smiled condescendingly, then with a cursory bow to Guy, he restored his purse to his belt and left the shop.

'Who was that creature;' I asked.

Guy smiled wryly. Archer is a senior man in the College of Physicians. My status there is tenuous, I must put up with him. He is a great traditionalist, believes there has been nothing new in medicine since Galen, save for his own quack remedies. I let him come to get the ingredients for them. He is a man of influence, he likes to patronize me, and I am careful to undercharge him.' His voice was suddenly weary. He waved a hand. 'Let us forget Archer. Sit down.' He took a seat at his consulting table. 'How can I help you, Matthew; I see by your face this is no social call.'

I paused a moment before answering. Close to, I saw he looked tired, drained, and I felt reluctant to draw him again into the terrible affair of the murders; yet I needed his counsel. I fingered the pilgrim badge in my pocket.

Guy turned to Piers. 'Fetch us some wine, will you, my boy; You should not have mocked Dr Archer,' he added indulgently. 'Foolish as he is, he was suspicious.'

'I am sorry, master, but it was hard to resist.'

'Yes,' Guy answered. 'I know.'

'What shall I say if those men call again, selling oil from the giant fish caught in the Thames;' Piers asked. 'I know many of the apothecaries are buying it.'

'And claiming all sorts of magical properties for it, no doubt. Tell them to be on their way. And keep them outside, that stuff stinks.'

'That must have been them earlier,' Guy said after Piers had gone.

'I thought it was the local children knocking at my door and running away. They think it a good jest for All Fools' Day.'

'You are too soft with that boy, you know. Surely it is a dangerous thing to mock a man like Dr Archer.'

'Ah, but he is a droll lad.' Guy smiled again, then his face resumed its serious expression. 'What has happened, Matthew? Is it to do with Master Elliard?'

'Yes.' I hesitated again. What right had I to involve him in this? Then I thought, because he may help us. I met his gaze. 'It turns out that Roger was the third person to be murdered recently in a terrible, elaborate and apparently pointless way. But I think I know the reason, if you can call it a reason.' I told him about Tupholme and Dr Gurney, the link to the Book of Revelation, the possibility that the killer was seeking out apostates from radical religion. Guy's dark features seemed almost to lengthen and sag as I told him.

'I knew Paul Gurney,' he said when I had ended my narrative and sworn him to secrecy. 'Not well, but we met at a few functions. He seemed a quiet, scholarly man. No swagger to him, unlike Archer.' He shook his head. 'I can imagine him starting as a reformer, but disliking these ill-educated, self righteous radicals now.'

There was a knock at the door, and Piers entered with a tray of wine. His handsome face was again impassive, but there was some- thing intent in the expression in those large blue eyes that made me wonder if he had been listening at the door. I watched him as he laid down the tray and left the room, and let him see that I was watching.

'We found this at the site of Tupholme's murder,' I said when Piers had gone. I produced the badge. Guy turned it over in his long fingers, then gave me a keen look. 'You still think the killer is a Benedictine infirmarian? Because of this, and the dwale?'

'I think it possible.'

He studied the badge, then handed it back. He sighed deeply. 'You could be right. We do not know what has made this man what he is.'

'Barak and I spent yesterday at the Court of Augmentations, tracing Benedictine infirmarians in London at the time of the Dissc lution. The infirmarian who attended the nuns at St Helens is dead, and the St Saviours man went to his family in Northumberland and collects his pension there. But the Westminster infirmarian and both his assistants are still in London. They collect their pensions at Westminster. We won't have the addresses until Monday, but we have names. The infirmarian is called Goddard, Lancelot Goddard. He had two assistants, Charles Cantrell, a monk, and Francis Lockley, a lay brother not in orders. Guy, have you ever heard those names?'

'I told you, I did not know them. When I came to London I was no longer a monk. And, Matthew, many ex-Benedictine monks from elsewhere came to London after the Dissolution. What was done to the monks was enough to drive men mad,' he added with sudden bitterness. 'Torn from their homes and their lives. Thrown into a different world, where the Bible is interpreted as literal fact, its symbols and metaphors forgotten, and fanatics react with equanimity to the blood and cruelty of Revelation. Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in that book? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought.'

'Bishop Bonner would destroy them just as cruelly.'

'Do you think I do not know that?' he answered angrily. 'I, whose family was made to leave Spain by the Inquisition, loyal Catholics though we were, because we had the taint of an Islamic past?'

'I know. I am sorry.'

'So am I. Sorry for what the world has come to.' He leaned forward, supporting his head with his hand for a moment, then looked up. 'I am sorry, Matthew,' he said wearily. 'You came here for my help.'

'No, I spoke insensitively. It is this matter — Guy, we spoke of madness the other day. Harsnet thinks the killer is possessed, thinks someone who was mad could not organize these murders so carefully, so patiently. We think he lay out there in the Lambeth marshes for most of a cold, wet day.'

'What do you think, Matthew?'

'Possession is an easy cry to raise against the inexplicable. But these murders are so strange and terrible I do not know what to think. Even Barak is afraid. He has never heard of anything like them either.'