‘In Our Lady’s name,’ I whispered.
‘Our Lady don’t come down here, not if we can help it,’ Iagin said. ‘We don’t want them dying before they’ve talked.’
‘Aye, well,’ I said, and found I had no more words to say.
I followed Iagin in uneasy silence, and Luka followed me. I tried to shut out the noise of the screams, the whimpers, the pleading, but it was no good.
This was Hell.
This was the true face of the house of law.
In a room at the end of the corridor, presiding over her domain like the very devil herself, was Ilse. She wasn’t some hideous old harridan drenched in blood with snakes in her hair, and she wasn’t a leather-clad she-devil from one of the big illustrated books the temple priests don’t want folk looking at, either.
She was just a woman with some fifty years to her, pleasant of face and slightly plump, wearing a woollen kirtle under her stained apron. She could have been a baker or a farmer, a cook or a nun. She could have been anyone, just some woman you passed in the market square and never gave a second thought to, but the hooked knife in her hand was dripping blood.
The man on the table in front of her was shrieking.
‘Ilse,’ Iagin said. ‘This is Tomas Piety, from Ellinburg.’
She looked up and gave me a motherly smile, and I think that was the very worst of it. I will never forget that smile. There are two bones in a man’s forearm, and Ilse had almost removed one of them from the fellow in front of her. The man’s arm had been filleted like a fish, and the bones glinted reddish-white among the neatly flensed meat. No one should be able to smile like your ma while they did that, but it seemed that Ilse could.
‘Nice to meet you, Tomas,’ she said, and the knife in her hand twisted and gristle split with a wet pop. ‘Ah, that’s got it.’
The man’s head hit the table with a thump as she lifted the bone clear, and I prayed to Our Lady that he had finally passed out.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I whispered.
‘Asking questions,’ she said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘This is the second houseman of the royal privy chamber. He emptied Her Majesty’s chamber pots, in other words. He had access to her bedroom and to her most intimate things. I’m sure he knows something.’
‘You’ve cut a fucking bone out of his arm.’
‘Yes, well, he hasn’t been very forthcoming so far,’ she said.
‘No one can answer questions when they can’t talk for screaming, for Our Lady’s sake!’
‘No, of course not,’ she said, and she showed me her smile again like she was addressing a foolish child. ‘He had ample chance to answer my questions while I was explaining what would happen to him if he didn’t. Still, he’ll talk in a day or two.’
‘If that didn’t make him talk then nothing will,’ Luka said.
‘Oh, nonsense, dear,’ Ilse said. ‘I’ll pack the cavity with night soil and sew it up, and put him back in his cell for a little while. Infection is guaranteed, that way. Once the rot gets into his blood he’ll talk, believe me.’
I swallowed. She was going to fill this poor bastard’s arm with shit where his bone should be and stitch it up again. My stomach heaved as I thought about it. There was no way he’d live after that, not even if she took his arm off at the shoulder.
‘He’ll be raving,’ I pointed out. ‘Delirious.’
‘Well, quite,’ she said. ‘A stubborn enough person can resist almost any pain, but a madman says all sorts of things. It’s always easier to break their minds than their bodies, Tomas. You remember that.’
Aye, I didn’t think I’d ever forget it.
*
I’d had more than enough of the house of law by then, and I was happy to leave it.
The fresh air was like breathing heaven when we finally got outside again. I wiped the worst of the waxy ointment off my top lip and took a deep breath, turning my face up into the falling rain. Beside me, Fat Luka was the colour of old cheese.
‘Lady’s sake, boss,’ he started, but I cut him off.
‘Not here,’ I said. ‘Not now.’
We got into our waiting carriage and let it take us back to the Bountiful Harvest, where the others were waiting for us.
‘Been out?’ Bloody Anne asked, in a casual way that meant she had something on her mind.
Rosie would have known where I had gone, of course, and she had no doubt told Anne.
‘Aye,’ I said.
I told the innkeeper to let us into the private dining room, the one where me and Grachyev had had our sit-down the previous year. Those ten crowns I had given him meant I virtually owned the place, for now at least, and I was going to make the most of that. Once we were all inside and the door firmly closed, I took my place at the head of the table and looked at them.
‘What’s the news, then?’ Rosie asked.
‘Much what you said,’ I told her, ‘or rather what you didn’t. No one outside the house of law or the palace knows what’s happened. The royal family are under house arrest, and half the palace staff are in the cells, and . . . Aye, well. Such are the times we live in.’
‘Did you see Mama?’ Billy asked.
‘No, lad, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘She’s at the palace, apparently, doing important work. Truth be told, I don’t know when we’ll see her.’
The look on Billy’s face would have been heartbreaking at any other time, but after what I had seen that day it barely registered. My hands were trying to shake, I realised, and it took all my effort to stop them. That was always the first sign of my battle shock coming
