Dissolution

done, with sighs and smiles that cut me to the heart.

In the end I told her of my feelings. It was clumsily and stupidly done, I fumbled and faltered at my words. The worst thing was her utter surprise.

'Matthew, I thought you wanted only to befriend me, I have never heard one word of love from you. You appear to have kept much hidden.'

I asked her if it was too late.

'If you had asked me even six months before – perhaps,' she said sadly.

'I know my form is not such as to stir passion.'

'You do yourself disservice!' she said with unexpected heat. 'You have a fine manly face and good courtesy, you make too much of your bent back, as though you were the only man that had one. You have too much self-pity, Matthew, too much pride.'

'Then-'

She shook her head, tears in her eyes. 'It is too late. I love Piers. He is to ask Father for my hand.'

I said roughly that he was not good enough, she would pine away from boredom, but she replied hotly that soon she would have children and a good house to look after and was that not a woman's proper role, appointed by God? I was crushed and took my leave.

I never saw her again. A week later the sweating sickness hit the City like a hurricane. Hundreds began shivering and sweating, took to their beds and died within two days. It struck high and low and it took both Kate and her father. I remember their funeral, which I had arranged as the old man's executor, the wooden boxes slowly lowered into the earth. Looking at Piers Stackville over the coffin, his ravaged face told me he had loved Kate no less than I. He nodded to me in silent acknowledgement and I nodded back with a small, sad smile. I thanked God that at least I had released myself from the false doctrine of purgatory, which would have had Kate enduring its pains. I knew that her pure soul must be saved, at rest with Christ.

Tears come to my eyes as I write these words. They came to me that first night at Scarnsea, too. I let them fall silently, keeping myself from sobbing lest I waken Mark to an embarrassing scene. They cleansed me, and I slept.

***

But the nightmare returned that night. I had not dreamed of Queen Anne's killing for months, but seeing Singleton's body brought all back. Again I stood on Tower Green on a bright spring morning, one of the huge crowd standing round the straw-covered scaffold. I was at the front of the crowd; Lord Cromwell had ordered all those under his patronage to attend and identify themselves with the queen's fall. He himself stood nearby, at the front of the crowd. He had risen as one of Anne Boleyn's party; now he had prepared the indictment for adultery that brought her down. He stood frowning sternly, the embodiment of angry justice.

Straw was laid thickly around the block, and the executioner brought from France stood in his sinister black hood, arms folded. I looked for the sword he had brought to ensure a merciful end, at the queen's own request, but could not see it. I stood with my head deferentially lowered, for some of the greatest men in the land were there: Lord Chancellor Audley, Sir Richard Rich, the Earl of Suffolk.

We stood like statues, no one talking at the front, though there was a buzz of conversation from the crowd behind. There is an apple tree on Tower Green. It was in full blossom and a blackbird sat singing on a high branch, careless of the crowd. I watched it, envying the creature its freedom.

There was a stirring, and the queen appeared. She was flanked by ladies-in-waiting, a surpliced chaplain and the red-coated guards. She looked thin and haggard, bony shoulders hunched inside her white cloak, her hair tied up in a coif. As she approached the block she kept looking back, as though a messenger might arrive with a reprieve from the king. After nine years at the heart of the court she should have known better; this great orchestrated spectacle would not be stopped. As she came close, huge brown eyes surrounded by dark rings darted wildly round the scaffold and I think, like me, she was looking for the sword.

In my dream there are none of the long preliminaries; no long prayers, no speech from the scaffold by Queen Anne beseeching all to pray for the life of the king. In my dream she kneels down at once, facing the crowd, and starts to pray. I hear again her thin harsh cries, over and over, 'Jesu, receive my soul! Lord God, have pity on my soul!' Then the executioner bends and produces the great sword from where it had lain hidden in the straw. 'So that's where it was,' I think, then flinch and cry out as it swings through the air faster than the eye can follow and the queen's head flies up and outwards in a great spray of blood. Again I feel a rush of nausea and close my eyes as a great murmur comes from the crowd, broken by the odd 'hurrah'. I open them again at the prescribed words, 'So perish all the king's enemies,' barely intelligible in the executioner's French accent. The straw and his clothes are drenched with the blood that still pumps from the corpse, and he holds up the queen's dripping head.

The papists say that at that moment the candles in Dover church lit spontaneously, and there were other such silly legends around the country, but I can attest for myself that the eyes in the queen's severed head did move, roving madly round the crowd, the lips working as though trying to speak. Someone shrieked in the crowd behind me and I heard a susurration as the crowd, all in their best puffed-sleeved clothing, crossed themselves. In truth it was less than thirty seconds, not the half an hour people said later, before the movement stopped. But in my nightmare I relived each of those seconds, praying for those ghastly eyes to be still. Then the executioner tossed the head into an arrow box, which served as coffin, and as it landed with a thud I woke with a cry to the sound of someone knocking at the door.

I lay breathing heavily, my sweat congealing in the bitter cold. The knocking came again, then Alice's voice called urgently, 'Master Shardlake! Commissioner!'

It was dead of night, the fire burned low and the room was icy. Mark groaned and stirred in his pallet.

'What is it?' I called, my heart still pounding after the nightmare, my voice shaky.

'Brother Guy asks you to come, sir.'

'Wait a moment!' I heaved myself out of bed and lit a candle from the embers of the fire. Mark rose too, blinking and tousle-haired.

'What's happening?'

'I don't know. Stay here.' I threw on my hose and opened the door. The girl stood outside, a white apron over her dress.

'I beg your pardon, sir, but Simon Whelplay is very sick and must speak to you. Brother Guy said I should wake you.'

'Very well.' I followed her down the freezing corridor. A little way along a door stood open. I heard voices: Brother Guy's and another that whimpered in distress. Looking in, I saw the novice lying on a truckle bed. His face shone with sweat and he muttered feverishly, his breath wheezing and rasping. Brother Guy sat by the bed, mopping his brow with a cloth that he dipped in a bowl.

'What ails him?' I could not keep the nervousness from my voice, for the sweating sickness made people writhe and gasp so.

The infirmarian looked at me, his face serious. 'It is a congestion of the lungs. No wonder, standing about in the cold with no food. He has a dangerous temperature. But he keeps asking to speak with you. He will not rest till he has done so.'

I approached the bed, reluctant to go too close lest he breathe the humours of his fever on me. The boy fixed red-rimmed eyes on me. 'Commissioner, sir,' he croaked. 'You are sent here to do justice?'

'Yes, I am here to investigate Commissioner Singleton's death.'

'He is not the first to be killed,' he gasped. 'Not the first. I know.'

'What do you mean? Who else has died?'

A series of racking coughs shook his thin frame, phlegm gurgling in his chest. He lay back, exhausted. His eyes fell on Alice.

'Poor, good girl. I warned her of the danger here…' He began to cry, retching sobs turning into another fit of coughing that looked ready to shake his thin frame apart. I turned to Alice.

'What does he mean?' I asked sharply. 'What has he warned you of?'

Her face was clouded with puzzlement. 'I don't understand, sir. He has never warned me of anything. I have barely spoken to him before today.'

I looked at Brother Guy. He seemed equally puzzled. He studied the boy anxiously.