'Why?'
'Because someone hired two ruthless rogues to kill the Gristwoods. I can't see Lady Honor or either of the lawyers charging in there with an axe, can you? But any of those three could have afforded to hire killers, though it would cost much more than a pensioned-off friar could raise. I still want to talk to him – he saw the stuff discovered. I'll see Bealknap and Marchamount tomorrow at Lincoln's Inn; there's a lunch in hall. For the Duke of Norfolk,' I added.
He screwed up his face in distaste. 'That arsehole. How he hates my master.'
'I know. We can use tomorrow morning to go to the jetty where you saw that ship burned up, and I'll try to see Joseph then too. We can also go to Augmentations – they're so busy these days they keep open on Sundays. I can miss church for once. What about you?'
'My parish in Cheapside is so full of people coming and going the vicar scarce keeps note of who's there or not.'
Pleased at the brisk way I had formulated my plan of action, I gave Barak a satirical half-smile to match his own. 'You don't feel the need to humble yourself before God then, ask forgiveness of your sins?'
He raised his eyebrows. 'I serve the king's vicar-general and the king is God's anointed representative on earth. If I am on his business, how can I be doing other than God's will?'
'Do you really believe that?'
He gave his mocking grin. 'About as much as you do.'
I took some strawberries and passed the bowl to Barak. He spooned half the dish onto his plate and added cream. 'Then there is Lady Honor,' I continued.
He nodded. 'She usually has these sugar banquets of hers on a Tuesday. If you haven't heard by Monday morning I'll ask his lordship to give her a nudge.'
I looked at him levelly. 'Doing what you can do to assist, eh?'
'Ay.'
'And is that what you are? My assistant?'
'Assist and facilitate,' he replied briskly. 'That's what his lordship asked me to do. I know what I'm about. Don't mind that fussy old arsehole Grey; he doesn't like my rough ways. He thinks he knows my master's business better than my master, but he doesn't. Sniffling old pen gent.'
I would not be diverted. 'You started as my watcher.'
He changed the subject. 'That Wentworth case – there's more to it than meets the eye, if you ask me. That girl in court, y'know what she reminded me of? John Lambert's burning. Remember that?'
I remembered only too well. Lambert was the first Protestant preacher to go too far for the king. Eighteen months earlier he had been tried for the heresy of denying transubstantiation, before the king himself as head of the Church, judge and inquisitor, dressed in the white robes of theological purity. It had been the first major reversal for reform. 'That was a cruel burning,' I said, looking at him sharply.
'Were you there?'
'No. I avoid these spectacles.'
'My master likes his people to go, show loyalty to the king.'
'I remember. He made me go to Anne Boleyn's execution.' I closed my eyes for a moment against that memory.
'It was a slow burning, the fire fairly sweated the blood out of him.'
I was relieved to see a look of distaste cross Barak's face. Burning was a terrible death, and in those days of accusation and counter-accusation it was the one everyone feared. I shuddered, passing my hand across my brow. It felt red and sore, I had a touch of the sun.
Barak leaned his elbows on the table. 'The way Lambert walked to the stake with head bowed, refusing to answer the taunts of the crowd, that was what reminded me of the girl. His demeanour. Later, of course, he was screaming.'
'You think Elizabeth seemed like a martyr, then?'
Barak nodded. 'Ay, a martyr. That's the word.'
'But for what?'
He shrugged. 'Who can say? But you're right to talk to the family; I'll warrant the answer's there.'
The idea of Elizabeth's manner as martyrlike had not occurred to me, but it rang true. I looked again at Barak. Whatever else he was, he was no fool. 'I've sent Simon with a note asking Joseph to call here tomorrow at twelve.' I got up. 'We can go to the jetty first thing, we should start early. Where is it exactly?'
'Downriver, out beyond Deptford.'
'And now I should look at these papers of yours. Could you bring them to me?'
'Ay.' As he got up he nodded. 'You're getting to grips with the matter, I see. Planning everything out. My master said you were like that, didn't let go once you were started.'
THE SUN WAS BEGINNING to set as I took Barak's satchel out into the garden. I had had much work done there these last two years and often sat outside enjoying its calm and fine scents. Its design was simple; squares of flower beds divided by trellised paths shaded by climbing roses. No knot gardens with complex designs in the form of puzzles for me; there were puzzles in my work and my garden was a place of quiet order. Once I had thought reform might similarly order the world, but that hope was long gone. More recently I had hoped that the peace of my garden might be a foretaste of a quiet life away from London, but that too now seemed very far off. I sat on a bench, glad simply to be alone at last, and opened the satchel.
I sat reading for two hours as the sun sank gradually and the first moths appeared, flickering towards the candles Simon lit in the house. I turned first to the papers Michael Gristwood had brought from the monastery. There were four or five illustrated manuscripts written by old monastic writers, giving vivid descriptions of the use of Greek Fire. Sometimes they called it Flying Fire, sometimes the devil's tears, fire from the dragon's mouth, Dark Fire: I puzzled over that last name. How could fire be dark? An odd image came into my head of black flames rising from black coals. It was absurd.
There was a page in Greek torn from the biography of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I who reigned four hundred years ago.
Each of the Byzantine galleys was fitted in the prow with a tube ending with the head of a lion made of brass, and gilded, frightful to behold, through the open mouth of which it was arranged that fire should be projected by the soldiers through a flexible apparatus. The Pisans fled, having no previous experience of this device and wondering that fire, which usually burns upwards, could be so directed downward or towards either side according to the will of the engineer who discharges it.
I laid down the paper. What happened to the apparatus? I wondered. Had that been taken from Wolf's Lane too? If it was metal it would be heavy. Had the killers brought a cart there? I turned to another account, of a giant Arab fleet sent to invade Constantinople and utterly destroyed by flying fire in AD 678, fire that burned even on the very surface of the sea. I stared out over the lawn. Fire that burned downwards, that could burn on water itself? I knew nothing about the mysteries of alchemy, but surely such things were impossible?
I turned next to the only paper in the collection in English. It was written in a round, clumsy hand.
The year after Constantinople fell to the Turks, I remembered.
