C.J. Sansom - Revelation

Cantrell shifted uncomfortably. 'I wasn't sure, sir, I'm no doctor. He would have talked his way out of it, and I'd just have got into trouble. And you don't know what he was like.' He hesitated. 'He would look at me sometimes as a man will look at a beetle on his table.' Then he laughed, uneasily. 'I'd be working away in the infirmary sometimes, not saying anything because he didn't like conversing with inferiors like me. Then suddenly he'd fly at me for some little mistake, nothing.' A strained, bitter smile flickered over his thin face. 'I think he did it just to make me jump.' He paused. 'What has he done, sir:' he asked again.

'I am afraid I cannot say. Your eyes, they are still weak:'

'Even with the glasses I can hardly see. They say the King wears glasses now.' He laughed bitterly again. 'I'll wager he can see better than me.' He seemed to slump further on the stool. 'When I left the monastery I went back to work for my father, but I was no good. After he died I gave up the business.' He looked at an inner door. 'That was his workshop. Do you want to see?'

I looked at Barak. He shrugged. I stood up.

'Thank you, no. But thank you for your help,' I said. 'If you think of anything that might help us, anything at all, I can be reached at Lincoln's Inn.' I hesitated, then added, 'I am sorry for the trouble with your eyes. Have you ever seen a doctor?'

'There is nothing anyone can do,' he said flatly. 'I will go blind eventually.'

'I know someone—'

'I have little faith in doctors, sir.' His mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. 'After my time with Dr Goddard. You understand.'

OUTSIDE, BARAK shook his head. 'You'd send every sparrow that falls from a tree to the old Moor.'

I laughed. Then Barak touched my arm. 'Look, over there, that old woman's waving to us.'

I followed his gaze. An aged, respectable-looking goodwife in a white coif, carrying a basket in which a pair of dead rabbits lolled, beckoned to us from the other side of the street. We crossed over to her. She fixed us with a pair of sharp eyes.

'Were you visiting Charlie Cantrell?' she asked.

'What's that to you?' Barak asked.

'He's not in trouble, is he?'

'No. Helping with some legal enquiries, that is all.'

'He's a poor fellow, I don't think he stirs much from that house. His father died last year and Charlie inherited the house and business. I was a friend of his father. Adrian was that skilled with wood, he was always turning away business. Charlie can't do carpentry with his poor vision, now all he has is his monk's pension.' She looked between us, waiting for a reply, eager for gossip.

'You live nearby, goodwife?' I asked.

'Five houses down. I've asked Charlie if he'd like some help with cleaning, his house is filthy and he could afford someone else to do it out of that pension, but he won't have anyone there. I reckon he's ashamed.'

'Poor young fellow.' I looked at her stolidly, and seeing she was not going to get anything out of us she wrinkled her face at me then turned and walked off, the rabbits' heads hanging out of her basket, bobbing up and down.

'Nosy old bitch,' Barak said.

'Young Cantrell is not one of those who went from the Dissolution to a better life.'

'Poor arsehole. Shouldn't think there was ever much go in him, even if he could see properly.'

'No. But he damns Goddard, more than ever.'

'Yes. Now all we have to do is find him.'

I sighed. 'Let's see what the other assistant can tell us.'

WE RODE UP TO Smithfield through a countryside coming to life again after the winter, the cattle out in the meadows again after months indoors. In the fields men were ploughing while women walked behind pairs of shaggy-hoofed horses, casting grain from bags at their waists. I wondered what Lockley would be like. An ex-monk living at, perhaps running, a tavern was unusual, but with thousands thrown out of the monasteries there were many stories stranger than that.

We reached the great square of Smithfield. It was not a market day, and the big cattle pens were dismantled, stacked against the walls at the north end. To one side stood the great church of St Bartholemew's where, three years before, Barak had saved my life in the course of our first assignment together. Behind the high walls I saw all the monastic buildings had come down now. Nearby stood the great empty hospital, reminding me again of my promise to Roger. Only a few hours now to his funeral.

Barak turned to me, nodding at the church. 'Remember?' he asked.

'Ay.' I sighed. 'That was as dangerous a time as this.'

He shook his head. 'No. Then we were dealing with politicians. When they do villainy they have reasons. They don't kill in a mad frenzy.'

'As often as not it is only for their own power and wealth.'

'At least that's something comprehensible.'

We rode on, up Charterhouse Lane and under the stone arch leading into Charterhouse Square. This was a wide grassy area dotted with trees that covered the burial pits from the Great Plague of two hundred years ago. An old chapel stood at its centre. A ragged little group of beggars sat huddled outside. To the north, beyond a low redbrick wall, lay the buildings of the Charterhouse, whose monks had defied the King over the break from Rome. Most had been brutally executed as a result; Cromwell had masterminded that, along with so much else. These days the buildings were used for storage, apart from those which I had heard had been made into lodgings for the King's Italian musicians, whom he had recently brought over at great expense.

As with all the monastic houses, the monks had rented out land in their precinct. On this side of the square the dwellings were small and poor-looking, one- and two-storey wooden affairs, but opposite was a row of fine stone and brick houses. I had heard that the best one belonged to Lord Latimer, and now therefore to his widow Catherine Parr. I studied a large redbrick mansion with tall chimneys, the only house standing in its own drive. As I watched, a horseman in red livery galloped down the road fronting the houses and turned in at the drive, raising clouds of dust. More pressure from the King?

Barak brought me back to earth, pointing to a sign dangling over a narrow, ramshackle old building nearby. 'There's our place. The Green Man.' The sign showed a man clothed in vines, painted bright green.

As we dismounted outside the tavern the beggars came over to us. Maybe the chapel had been abandoned when the Charterhouse was dissolved, and they had taken refuge there. Thin, dirty hands clutched at us as we tied the horses to the rail outside the tavern.

'Piss off,' Barak said, waving a couple of the hands away as he tied up. After what had happened in the Westminster crowd we both looked warily at the pinched faces, the ragged, stinking clothes. There were several children. 'Here,' I called to a starveling lad of about ten whose head was half bald and red raw, his hair eaten away by some disease. 'Mind the horses and I'll give you a groat when I come out.'

'I'll do it better!' Other hands plucked at my sleeve. 'He's fucking useless,' another boy called out. 'Hairless Harry!'

'No,' I said, shaking them off. 'Him.'

We knocked on the tavern door and waited, ignoring fresh entreaties from the beggars. Footsteps sounded, and a woman opened it. She wore a stained apron over a creased dress and a white coif from which tendrils of black hair escaped. She was powerfully built, short and square, but her face showed the remnants of past beauty. Her grey eyes were sharp and intelligent.

'We're not open till five,' she said.

'We don't want a drink,' I answered. 'We are looking for Francis Lockley.'

She gave us a sharp, suspicious look. 'What do you want with him?'

'Some private business.' I smiled. 'He is not in any trouble.'