Dark Fire (3 page)

‘Come, Joseph, there is no point in thinking like that.’

He looked at me imploringly. ‘Can you help her, Master Shardlake? Can you save her? You are my last hope.’

I was silent a moment, choosing my words carefully.

‘The evidence against her is strong, it would be enough for a jury unless she has something to say in her defence.’ I paused, then asked, ‘You are sure she is not
guilty?’

‘Yes,’ he said at once. He banged a fist on his chest. ‘I feel it here. She was always
kind
at heart, sir,
kind
. She is the only one of my family I have known
real kindness from. Even if she is ill in her mind, and by God’s son she may be, I cannot believe she could kill a little boy.’

I took a deep breath. ‘When she is brought into court she will be asked to plead guilty or not guilty. If she refuses then under the law she cannot be tried by a jury. But the alternative
is worse.’

Joseph nodded. ‘I know.’

‘
Peine forte et dure.
Sharp and hard pains. She will be taken to a cell in Newgate and laid in chains on the floor. They will put a big, sharp stone under her back and a board on
top of her. They will put weights on the board.’

‘If only she would speak.’ Joseph groaned and put his head in his hands. But I went on, I had to; he must know what she faced.

‘They will allow her the barest rations of food and water. Each day more weights will be added to the board until she talks or dies of suffocation from the press of the weights. When the
weights are heavy enough, because of the pressure of the stone placed underneath her back, her spine will break.’ I paused. ‘Some brave souls refuse to plead and allow themselves to be
pressed to death because if there is no actual finding of guilt one’s property is not forfeit to the State. Has Elizabeth any property?’

‘Nothing in the world. The sale of their house barely covered Peter’s debts. Only a few marks were left at the end and they went on the funeral.’

‘Perhaps she did do this terrible thing, Joseph, in a moment of madness, and feels so guilty she wants to die, alone in the dark. Have you thought of that?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I cannot believe it. I
cannot
believe it.’

‘You know that criminal accused are not allowed representation in court?’

He nodded glumly.

‘The reason the law gives is that the evidence needed to convict in a criminal trial must be so clear no counsel is needed. That is all nonsense, I’m afraid; the cases are run
through quickly and the jury usually decide merely by preferring one man’s word against another’s. Often they favour the accused because most juries don’t like sending people to
hang, but in this case’ – I looked at the wretched pamphlet on the table – ‘a child killing, their sympathies will be the other way. Her only hope is to agree to plead and
tell me her story. And if she
did
act in a fit of madness, I could plead insanity. It might save her life. She’d go to the Bedlam, but we could try for a pardon from the king.’
That would cost more money than Joseph had, I thought.

He looked up and for the first time I saw hope in his eyes. I realized I had said, ‘I could plead,’ without thinking. I had committed myself.

‘But if she won’t speak,’ I went on, ‘no one can save her.’

He leaned forward and clutched my hand between damp palms. ‘Oh, thank you, Master Shardlake, thank you, I knew you’d save her—’

‘I’m not at all sure I can,’ I said sharply, but then added, ‘I’ll try.’

‘I’ll pay, sir. I’ve little enough but I’ll pay.’

‘I had better go to Newgate and see her. Five days – I need to see her as soon as possible, but I have business at Lincoln’s Inn that will keep me all afternoon. I can meet you
at the Pope’s Head tavern next to Newgate first thing tomorrow morning. Say at nine?’

‘Yes, yes.’ He stood up, putting the handkerchief back in his pocket, and grasped my hand. ‘You are a good man, sir, a godly man.’

A soft-headed man, more like, I thought. But I was touched by the compliment. Joseph and his family were all strong reformers, as I had once been, and did not say such things lightly.

‘My mother and brother think her guilty, they were furious when I said I might help her. But I must find the truth. There was such a strange thing at the inquest, it affected me and Edwin
too—’

‘What was that?’

‘When we viewed the body it was two days after poor Ralph died. It has been hot this spring but there is an underground cellar where they store bodies for the coroner to view, which keeps
them cool. And poor Ralph was clothed. And yet the body
stank
, sir, stank like a cow’s head left out in the Shambles in summer. It made me feel sick, the coroner too. I thought Edwin
would pass out. What does that mean, sir? I have been trying to puzzle it out. What does it
signify
?’

I shook my head. ‘My friend, we do not know what half the things in the world signify. And sometimes they signify nothing.’

Joseph shook his head. ‘But God wants us to find the true meaning of things. He gives us clues. And, sir, if this matter is not resolved and Elizabeth dies, the real murderer goes free,
whoever he is.’

E
ARLY NEXT MORNING
I
RODE
into the City again. It was another hot day; the sunlight reflecting from
the diamond panes of the Cheapside buildings made me blink.

In the pillory by the Standard a middle-aged man stood with a paper cap on his head and a loaf of bread hung round his neck. A placard identified him as a baker who had sold short weight. A few
rotten fruits were spattered over his robe but the passers-by paid him little attention. The humiliation would be the worst of his punishment, I thought, looking up at where he sat, then I saw his
face contort with pain as he shifted his position. With his head and arms pinioned and his neck bent forward, it was a painful position for one no longer young; I shuddered to think of the pain my
back would have given me were I put in his place. And yet it gave me far less trouble these days, thanks to Guy.

Guy’s was one of a row of apothecaries’ shops in a narrow alley just past the Old Barge. The Barge was a huge, ancient house, once grand but now let out as cheap apartments.
Rooks’ nests were banked up against the crumbling battlements and ivy ran riot over the brickwork. I turned into the alley, welcoming the shade.

As I pulled to a halt in front of Guy’s shop, I had the uneasy sensation of being watched. The lane was quiet, most of the shops not yet open for business. I dismounted slowly and tied
Chancery to the rail, trying to look unconcerned but listening out for any movement behind me. Then I turned swiftly and looked up the lane.

I caught a movement at an upper storey of the Old Barge. I looked up, but had only the briefest glimpse of a shadowy figure at a window before the worm-eaten shutters were pulled closed. I
stared for a moment, filled with a sudden uneasiness, then turned to Guy’s shop.

It had only his name, ‘Guy Malton’, on the sign above the door. The window displayed neatly labelled flasks, rather than the stuffed alligators and other monsters most apothecaries
favour. I knocked and went in. As usual the shop was clean and tidy, herbs and spices in jars lining the shelves. The room’s musky, spicy smell brought Guy’s consulting room at Scarnsea
monastery back to my mind. Indeed the long apothecary’s robe he wore was so dark a shade of green that in the dim light it looked almost black and could have been mistaken for a monk’s
robe. He was seated at his table, a frown of concentration on his thin, dark features as he applied a poultice from a bowl to an ugly burn on the arm of a thickset young man. I caught a whiff of
lavender. Guy looked up and smiled, a sudden flash of white teeth.

‘A minute more, Matthew,’ he said in his lisping accent.

‘I am sorry, I am earlier than I said I would be.’

‘No matter, I am nearly done.’

I nodded and sat down on a chair. I looked at a chart on the wall, showing a naked man at the centre of a series of concentric circles, Man joined to his creator by the chains of nature. It
reminded me of somebody pinned to an archery target. Underneath, a diagram of the four elements and the four types of human nature to which they correspond: earth for melancholic, water for
phlegmatic, air for cheerful and fire for choleric.

The young man let out a sigh and looked up at Guy.

‘By God’s son, sir, that eases me already.’

‘Good. Lavender is full of cold and wet properties, it draws the dry heat from your arm. I will give you a flask of this and you must apply it four times a day.’

The young man looked curiously at Guy’s brown face. ‘I have never heard of such a remedy. Is it used in the land you come from, sir? Perhaps there everyone is burned by the
sun.’

‘Oh, yes, Master Pettit,’ Guy said seriously. ‘If we did not wear lavender there we should all burn and shrivel up. We coat the palm trees with it too.’ His patient gave
him a keen look, perhaps scenting mockery. I noticed that his big square hands were spotted with pale scars. Guy rose and passed him a flask with a smile, raising a long finger. ‘Four times a
day, mind. And apply some to the wound on your leg made by that foolish physician.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The young man rose. ‘I feel the burning going already, it has been an agony even to have my sleeve brush against it this last week. Thank you.’ He took his
purse from his belt and passed the apothecary a silver groat. As he left the shop Guy turned to me and laughed softly.

‘When people made remarks like that at first I would correct them, tell them we have snow in Granada, which we do. But now I just agree with them. They are never sure if I joke or not.
Still, it keeps me in their minds. Perhaps he will tell his friends in Lothbury.’

‘He is a founder?’

‘Ay, Master Pettit has just finished his apprenticeship. A serious young fellow. He spilt hot lead on his arm, but hopefully that old remedy will ease him.’

I smiled. ‘You are learning the ways of business. Turning your differences to advantage.’

Apothecary Guy Malton, once Brother Guy of Malton, had fled Spain with his Moorish parents as a boy after the fall of Granada. He had trained as a physician at Louvain. He had become my friend
on my mission to Scarnsea three years before, helped me during that terrible time, and when the monastery was dissolved I had hoped to set him up as a physician in London. But the College would not
have him, with his brown face and papist past. With a little bribery, however, I had got him into the Apothecaries’ Guild and he had managed to build up a good trade.

‘Master Pettit went to a physician first.’ Guy shook his head. ‘He stitched a clyster thread into his leg to draw the pain down from his arm, and when the wound became inflamed
insisted that showed the clyster was working.’ He pulled off his apothecary’s cap, revealing a head of curly hair that had once been black but now was mostly white. It still seemed odd
to see him without his tonsure. He studied me closely with his keen brown eyes.

‘And how have you been this last month, Matthew?’

‘Still better. I do my exercises twice a day like a good patient. My back troubles me little unless I have to lift something heavy, like the great bundles of legal papers that mount in my
room at Lincoln’s Inn.’

‘You should get your clerk to do that.’

‘He gets them out of order. You’ve never seen such a noddle as Master Skelly.’

He smiled. ‘Well, I will have a look at it if I may.’

He rose, lit a sweet-smelling candle, then closed the shutters as I removed my doublet and shirt. Guy was the only one I allowed to see my twisted back. He got me to stand, move my shoulders and
arms, then stood behind me and gently probed my back muscles. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘There is little stiffness. You may get dressed. Keep on with your exercises. It is good to have a
conscientious patient.’

‘I would not like to go back to the old days, fearing ever-worsening pain.’

He gave me another of his keen looks. ‘And you are still melancholy? I see it in your face.’

‘I have a melancholy nature, Guy. It is settled in me.’ I looked at the chart on the wall. ‘Everything in the world is made of a mixture of the four elements, and I have too
much of earth. The imbalance is fixed in me.’

He inclined his dark head. ‘There is nothing under the moon that is not subject to change.’

I shook my head. ‘I seem to take less and less interest in the stirs of politics and the law, though once they were the heart of my life. It has been so since Scarnsea.’

‘That was a terrible time. You do not miss being close to the centre of power?’ He hesitated. ‘To Lord Cromwell?’

I shook my head. ‘No, I dream of a quiet life in the country somewhere, perhaps near my father’s farm. Maybe then I will feel like taking up painting again.’

‘Yet I wonder if that is the life for you, my friend. Would you not become bored without cases to sharpen your wits on, problems to solve?’

‘Once I might have. But London now – ’ I shook my head – ‘fuller of fanatics and cozeners every year. And my profession has enough of both.’

He nodded. ‘Ay, in matters of religion opinions get more extreme. I tell people nothing of my past, as you may imagine. Dun’s the mouse as the proverb has it; colourlessness and
stillness keep one safe.’

‘I have no patience with any of it these days. Sometimes I think all that matters is faith in Christ and all else is no more than a jangle of words.’

He smiled wryly. ‘That is not what you would have said once.’

‘No. Yet sometimes even that essential faith eludes me, and I can believe only that man is a fallen creature.’ I laughed sadly. ‘That I can believe.’ I pulled the
crumpled pamphlet from my pocket and laid it on the table. ‘See there, the girl’s uncle is an old client of mine. He wants me to help her. Her trial is on Saturday. That is why I have
come early, I am meeting him at Newgate at nine.’ I told him of my meeting with Joseph the day before. Strictly it was breaching a confidence, but I knew Guy would say nothing.