'Well, Matthew,' he said, 'how are you? Your practice prospers?'
I hesitated, thinking of my lost cases. 'Well enough, thank you, my lord.'
'What's that on your robe? It's on your doublet too, Jack.'
'Dust, my lord,' Barak replied. 'They're bringing down the Whiteys' chapter house and nearly brought us down with it.'
Cromwell laughed, then gave Barak a sharp look. 'Is it done?'
'Ay, my lord. Forbizer gave no trouble.'
'I knew he wouldn't.' Cromwell turned back to me. 'I was interested to learn of your involvement in the Wentworth case, Matthew. It occurred to me then we might be of help to each other for old times' sake.' He smiled again. I wondered uneasily how he had heard; but he had eyes and ears everywhere and certainly at Lincoln's Inn.
'I am most grateful, my lord,' I said carefully.
He smiled wryly. 'These little crusades of yours, Matthew. The girl's life matters to you?'
'Ay, it does.' I realized that these past days I had thought of little but Elizabeth's case. I wondered why for a moment. It was something to do with her wounded helplessness, lying there in that filthy Newgate straw. If Cromwell wished to use her life as a rope to bind me to him, he had chosen well.
'I believe she is innocent, my lord.'
He waved a beringed hand. 'I'm not concerned with that,' he said bluntly. He fixed me with a serious look; once again I felt the power of those dark eyes. 'I need your help, Matthew. It's an important matter, and secret. The bargain is I'll keep the girl alive for twelve days. We have only that for my task. Less than a fortnight.' He nodded abruptly. 'Sit down.'
I did as bidden. Barak went and stood against the wall, folding his hands across a large gold-coloured codpiece. Glancing at Cromwell's desk, I saw among the papers a miniature painting in a tiny silver frame, an exquisite portrait of the head and shoulders of a woman. Following my gaze, Cromwell frowned and turned it over. He nodded to Barak.
'Jack's a trusted servant. He's one of only eight that know this story, including myself and Grey here and his majesty the king.' My eyes widened at that name. I still held my cap, which I had removed on entering the church, and involuntarily began twisting it in my hands.
'One of the other five is an old acquaintance of yours.' Cromwell smiled again, cynically. 'It's not a matter to irk your conscience this time – you needn't crush your cap into a rag.' He leaned back and shook his head indulgently. 'I was impatient with you over Scarnsea, Matthew. I saw that later. None of us could have known how complex that affair would turn out. I have always admired your mind, your skills at teasing out the truth in men's affairs. Ever since the old days when we were all young reformers. Do you remember?' He smiled, but then a shadow crossed his face. 'Days with more hope and less care.' He sat silent for a moment and I thought of the rumours of his troubles over the Cleves marriage.
'May I ask who this old acquaintance is, my lord?' I ventured.
He nodded. 'You remember Michael Gristwood?'
Lincoln's Inn is a small world. 'Gristwood the attorney, who used to work for Stephen Bealknap?'
'The same.'
I remembered a small, scurrying fellow, with bright sharp eyes. Gristwood had once been friendly with Bealknap and, like him, forever on the lookout for new money-making schemes. But he had none of Bealknap's calculating coldness and his schemes never came to anything. I remembered he had once come to me for help in a property case he had taken on. A mere unqualified solicitor, he had got hopelessly out of his depth. The case was in a dreadful tangle, and he had been fulsomely grateful for my help. He had bought me a dinner in hall, where I had listened, half-amused, as he offered to involve me in a number of hare-brained schemes by way of thanks.
'He had a falling out of some sort with Bealknap,' I said. 'He hasn't been around Lincoln's Inn a long time. Didn't he go to work for the Court of Augmentations?'
Cromwell nodded. 'He did. To help Richard Rich pull in the proceeds of the dissolution.' He made a steeple of his fingers and looked at me over them.
'Last year, when St Bartholomew's priory in Smithfield surrendered to the king, Gristwood was sent to supervise the taking of the inventory of chattels to go to the king.'
I nodded. The hospital priory had been a large monastic house. I recalled the prior had been in league with Cromwell and Rich, and as a reward had been granted most of the priory lands. So much for vows of poverty. Yet they said Prior Fuller was dying, of a wasting disease God had laid on him for closing the hospital. Others said that Richard Rich, who had moved into the prior's fine house himself, was slowly poisoning him.
'Gristwood took some Augmentations men with him,' Cromwell continued, 'to quantify the furniture, the plate to be melted down and so on. He took the monastery librarian to show him what books might be worth keeping. The Augmentations men are thorough: they poke into nooks and crannies the monks themselves have often forgotten.'
'I know.'
'And in the crypt under the church, in a cobwebby comer, they found something.' He leaned forward, the hard dark eyes seeming to bore into mine. 'Something that was lost to man centuries ago, something that has become little more than a legend and a diversion for alchemists.'
I stared at him in astonishment. I had not expected this. He laughed uneasily. 'Sounds like a mummers' tale, eh? Tell me, Matthew, have you ever heard of Greek Fire?'
'I'm not sure.' I frowned. 'The name is vaguely familiar.'
'I knew nothing of it myself until a few weeks ago. Greek Fire was an unknown liquid that the Byzantine emperors used in warfare against the infidel eight hundred years ago. They fired it at enemy ships and it would set them ablaze from end to end, a rushing inextinguishable fire. It could burn even on water. The formula for its creation was kept a close secret, passed down from one Byzantine emperor to another till in the end it was lost. The alchemists have been after it for hundreds of years but they've never fathomed it. Here, Grey.' He snapped his fingers and the clerk rose from his desk and put a piece of parchment in his master's hands. 'Handle it carefully, Matthew,' Cromwell murmured. 'It is very old.'
I took the parchment from him. It was frayed at the edges and torn at the top. Above some words in Greek was a richly painted picture without perspective, such as the old monks used to illustrate their books. Two oared ships of ancient design faced each other across a stretch of water. At the front of one ship a golden pipe was belching red tongues of fire, engulfing the other.
'This looks like a monkish thing,' I said.
He nodded. 'So it is.' He paused, collecting his thoughts. I glanced at Barak. His face was sober, nothing mocking in it now. Grey stood beside me, looking at the parchment, his hands folded.
Cromwell spoke again, quietly though there were only the three of us to hear. 'Friend Gristwood was at St Bartholomew's one day last autumn when he was called to the church by one of the Augmentations clerks. Among the old lumber in the crypt they had found a large barrel, which, when they opened it, proved to be full of a thick, dark liquid with a terrible smell, like the stench of Lucifer's privy Gristwood said. Michael Gristwood had never seen anything remotely like it before and he was curious. There was a plaque on the barrel, with a name, Alan St John. And some Latin words.
'Man is wolf to man.'
'Those monks could never use plain English. Well, friend Gristwood thought to set the librarian to search for the name St John in the library. They found it in the catalogue and it led them to an ancient box of manuscripts about Greek Fire, deposited there by one Captain St John, who died in St Bartholomew's hospital a century ago. He was old soldier, a mercenary who was at Constantinople when it fell to the Turks. He left a memoir.' Cromwell raised his eyebrows. 'He told how a Byzantine librarian fleeing with him to the boats gave him the barrel, which he claimed contained the last of Greek Fire, together with the formula to make the substance. The librarian had found it when clearing out the emperor's library and gave it to St John so that at the last a Christian should have the secret, not the heathen Turks. You see the page is torn?'
'Yes.'
'Gristwood tore off the formula that was written in Greek above that picture, together with instructions for constructing the throwing apparatus used to project it. Of course, he should have brought it to me – it was monastic property and it belongs to the king now – but he didn't.' Cromwell frowned and his heavy jaw set. There
