it.'
He looked dubious. 'Do you represent the guardian?'
'No. I want to find who the guardian is.' I tapped my purse.
Mylling cheered up. 'It's not strictly my department. But I know where the records are.' He took a deep breath, then turned to the young clerk. 'Alabaster, we're going to have to go to the Stinkroom. Go to the kitchens, fetch lanterns and meet us there.'
THE PEOPLE waiting on the bench had all gone. Mylling led me through a warren of tiny rooms with a quick, bustling step. In one a clerk sat with two piles of gold coins on his desk, transferring angels and sovereigns from one pile to another and marking up a fat ledger.
We descended a flight of stone stairs. There was a landing and then another flight, leading down into darkness. We were below street level. Alabaster was waiting on the landing, holding two horn lanterns with beeswax candles inside, which gave off a rich yellow light. I wondered how he had got there before us.
'Thank you, Alabaster,' Mylling said. 'We won't be long.' He turned to me. 'This is not a place you'd want to spend too much time in.'
The young clerk bowed, then walked away with quick, loping strides. Mylling took the lantern and handed one to me. 'If you please, sir.'
I followed him down ancient steps, carefully, for they were so old they were worn in the centre. At the bottom was an ancient Norman door set with studs of iron. 'This was once where part of the royal treasure was kept,' Mylling told me. 'These parts date back to Norman times.' He put his lantern on the floor, turned his key in the lock and heaved at the door. It creaked open loudly. It was enormously thick and heavy, and he needed both hands. Next to the door was half a flagstone. He nudged it into the doorway with his foot. 'Just to be safe, sir. Careful of the steps inside.'
As I descended after him into the pitch-black room, the smell of rot and damp made me gasp and almost retch. Mylling's lantern showed a small, dimly lit chamber with a stone-flagged floor. Water dripped somewhere. The walls were furred with mould. Piles of ancient papers, some with red seals dangling from strips of coloured linen, were stacked on damp-looking shelves and on the old wooden chests that stood piled on top of each other.
'The old records room,' Mylling said. 'The work at Wards grows so fast, the storage space is all taken up so we have put papers about wards who have died, or grown up and sued out their livery, down here. And all the lunatic cases.' He turned and looked at me, his face more lined and seamed than ever in the lamplight. 'There's no money in lunatics, you see.'
I coughed at the foul air. 'I see why you call it the Stinkroom.'
'No one can stay here for long—they start coughing and can't breathe. I don't like coming down here; I start to wheeze even in my own house in a damp winter. In a few years all these papers will be stuck together with mould. I tell them, but they don't listen. Let's get on, if we may. What date would this lunacy enquiry be, sir?'
'Fifteen twenty-six, I believe. The name is Ellen Fettiplace. From Sussex.'
He looked at me keenly. 'Is this another matter the Queen has an interest in?'
'No.'
'Fifteen twenty-six. The King was still married to Catherine the Spaniard then. That caused some stir, his divorcing her to marry Anne Boleyn.' He chuckled wheezily. 'A few more divorces and executions since then, eh?' He weaved his way through the chests to a far corner. 'This is where the lunatics are kept,' he said, stopping at a row of shelves piled with more damp-looking paper. He raised his lantern, and pulled out a stack. 'Fifteen twenty-six.' He laid them on the stone floor, bent down and riffled through them. After a while he looked up. 'Nothing here for Fettiplace, sir.'
'Are you sure? No similar names?'
'No, sir. Are you sure you have the year right?'
'Try the years before and after.'
Mylling rose slowly, wet marks from the floor on his hose, and returned to the stacks. As he ferreted through more papers, my nose and throat began to tingle. It was as though the furry, damp coating on the walls was starting to grow inside me. At least the clerk was thorough. He pulled out two more stacks and laid them on the floor, flicking through them with experienced fingers. I noticed a huge glistening mushroom growing between the stone flags next to him. At length he got up and shook his head. 'There's nothing there, sir. No one named Fettiplace. I've been a year back and a year forward. If it was here I'd find it.'
This was unexpected. How could Ellen be held in the Bedlam if there was no order of lunacy? Mylling rose, his knees creaking. Then we both jumped at the sound of a clap of thunder through the half-open door. Underground as we were, it was still loud.
'Listen to that,' Mylling said. 'What a noise. As though God himself were sending his fury crashing down on us.'
'He'd have cause, given what goes on in this place,' I said with sudden bitterness.
Mylling raised his lantern and looked at me. 'It's the King's wish, sir, everything that happens here. He is our Sovereign Lord and Head of the Church, too. What he orders must be enough to satisfy our consciences.' I thought, perhaps he believes what he is saying, perhaps that is how he is able to do this.
'I'm sorry I couldn't find your lunatic,' Mylling said.
'Well, sometimes knowing what is not on record can be useful.'
Mylling looked at me, eyes bright with curiosity and maybe some deeper emotion. 'I hope you find your witnesses for the Curteys case, sir,' he said quietly. 'What happened to Michael Calfhill? I can see nothing good, though Master Sewster wouldn't say.'
I looked at him. 'He killed himself.'
Mylling looked at me with his sharp dark eyes. 'I wouldn't have thought he'd have done that. He seemed so relieved to have made the application.' He shook his grey head, then led the way back into the corridors. I heard the chink of gold again.
Chapter Six
STEPPING OUTSIDE, I blinked in unexpectedly clear light. The flagstones of the passageway were covered with hailstones, shining under a sky that was bright blue again. The air was fresher, suddenly cool. I walked away carefully, crunchy slipperiness under my feet. In Palace Yard people who had taken shelter from the storm in doorways were emerging again.
I decided to walk to Barak's house, which lay on my way home, and see if he was back. By the time I reached the great Charing Cross the hailstones had melted away, the ground only a little damp underfoot. As I passed the fine new houses of the rich lining the Strand, my thoughts were on Ellen. How could she have been placed in the Bedlam without a certificate of lunacy? Someone had been paid well to take her in and was still being paid. I realized she was at liberty to walk out of the place tomorrow; but there was the paradox, for that was the last thing she could do.
I turned into Butcher Lane, a short street of two-storey houses. Barak and Tamasin rented the ground floor of a neat little house, painted in pleasing colours of yellow and green. I knocked at the door, and it was answered by Goodwife Marris; a stout woman in her forties, Jane Marris normally had an air of cheerful competence. Today, however, she looked worried.
'Is Mistress Tamasin all right?' I asked anxiously.
'
She showed me into the tidy little parlour with its view on a small garden bright with flowers. Tamasin sat on a heap of cushions, hands cradling her belly. Her face was streaked with tears, her expression angry. Barak sat on a hard chair against the wall, shamefaced. I looked from one to the other. 'What's amiss?'
Tamasin cast a glare at her husband. 'We've had that officer back. Jack's only got himself conscripted into the army, the fool.'
