Dissolution (Matthew Shardlake Mysteries) (56 page)

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Authors: C J Sansom

BOOK: Dissolution (Matthew Shardlake Mysteries)
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‘What is that? Over there?’ Brother Guy pointed to something floating, some way out.
 
‘It’s a lamp! One of those little candleholders from the infirmary. They must have been carrying it. Oh God.’ I grabbed at the infirmarian for support, for my senses failed at the thought of Mark and Alice losing their footing and falling, lying now somewhere under that flooded morass. Brother Guy lowered me to the bank and I sat taking deep breaths until my senses cleared. I looked up again to see the infirmarian praying quietly in Latin, hands clasped in front of him, his eyes fixed on the lamp drifting gently over the face of the waters.
 
 
BROTHER GUY helped me back to the infirmary. There he insisted I rest and eat, sitting me down in his kitchen and serving me himself. Food and drink revived my body, though my heart lay dead within me like a stone. I kept seeing pictures of Mark in my head; laughingly exchanging jests on the road; arguing with me in our room; holding Alice in the kitchen. At the end it was him I mourned most.
 
‘There were only two sets of footprints going out through that gate,’ Brother Guy said at length. ‘It does not seem Edwig went that way.’
 
‘Not him,’ I answered bitterly. ‘He’d have been out through the gate when Bugge’s back was turned.’ I clenched my fists. ‘But I’ll hunt him down if it takes me the rest of my days.’
 
There was a knock at the door and Prior Mortimus appeared, his face grim.
 
‘Have you sent to Copynger?’ I asked.
 
‘Yes, he should be here soon. But Commissioner, we’ve found—’
 
‘Edwig?’
 
‘No. Jerome. He’s in the church. You should come and see.’
 
‘You’re not able,’ Brother Guy said, but I shook off his hand and grabbed my staff. I followed the prior to the church, where a crowd had gathered outside. The pittancer stood guard on the door, keeping them out. The prior shouldered through the crowd and we went inside.
 
Water was dripping somewhere; the only other sound was a faint weeping, a keening. I followed Prior Mortimus down the great empty nave with its candlelit niches, our footsteps echoing, until we came to the niche where the Thief’s hand had stood. The heap of crutches and braces that had lain at the base of the plinth were scattered across the floor. I saw now that the block was hollow, there was a space underneath large enough to hold a man. Inside, sitting crouched over and holding something, was Jerome. His white habit was torn and filthy and a great stink rose from him as he sat, weeping piteously.
 
‘I found him half an hour ago,’ the prior said. ‘He’d crawled under there and pulled the crutches back in front to hide himself. I was looking round the church and I remembered that space under there.’
 
‘What has he got? Is it—?’
 
The prior nodded. ‘The relic. The hand of the Penitent Thief.’
 
I knelt before Jerome, wincing as pain shot through my joints. I could see he held a big square box, encrusted with jewels that sparkled in the candlelight. A dark shape was dimly visible inside.
 
‘Brother,’ I said gently, ‘was it you that took the relic?’
 
For the first time since I had met him, Jerome’s voice was quiet. ‘Yes. It is so dear to us, to the Church. It has cured so many people.’
 
‘So you took it in the confusion after Singleton was killed.’
 
‘I hid it under here to save it, to save it.’ He clutched it tighter. ‘I know what Cromwell will do, he will destroy this holy thing which God gave as a sign of his forgiveness. When they locked me up I knew you might find it, I had to protect it. Now it is lost, lost. I cannot resist any more, I am so tired,’ he concluded in a sad, matter-of-fact voice. He shook his head and stared before him, his eyes blank.
 
Prior Mortimus reached in and took his shoulder. ‘Come, Jerome, it’s all over. Leave it and come away with me.’ To my surprise the Carthusian made no demur. He climbed painfully out of the niche, pulling his crutch after him, and kissed the casket before depositing it carefully on the floor.
 
‘I’ll take him back to his cell,’ the prior said.
 
I nodded. ‘Yes, do that.’
 
 
JEROME DID NOT look at me, or the relic, again, but allowed Prior Mortimus to lead him down the nave in a painful shuffle. I watched him go. If Jerome had told me he had seen Alice visit Mark Smeaton the day I questioned him, instead of playing games, I could have arrested her there and then and with Singleton’s killing solved I might have uncovered Edwig sooner. Then Mark would not have died, nor Gabriel. Yet somehow I did not feel anger towards him; all emotion seemed to have been leached out of me.
 
I knelt and peered at the relic where it lay on the floor. The casket was of richly decorated gold, the stones set in it the largest emeralds I had ever seen. Through the glass I made out a hand, skewered by the wrist to a piece of ancient black wood with a broad-headed nail, lying on a cushion of purple velvet. It was a brown, mummified thing, but discernibly a hand; I could even make out what looked like calluses on the fingers. Could it truly be the hand of the thief who had died with Christ, accepted him on the Cross? I touched the glass, with a second’s mad hope that the pains I felt in every joint might vanish, my hump disappear and my back become whole and normal like poor Mark’s that I had so envied. But there was nothing, only the sound of my fingernail tapping the glass.
 
And then I saw a tiny flash of bright gold from the corner of my eye, descending through the air. Something hit the tiled floor a couple of feet away with a tinkle. It spun and came to rest. I stared at it. It was a gold coin, a noble, King Henry’s head staring up at me from the floor.
 
I looked upward. I was standing under the bell tower, above was the tangle of ropes and pulleys that had been the subject of the jests against Edwig at supper. But something was different. The workmen’s basket was not there. It had been pulled up into the bell tower.
 
‘He’s up there!’ I breathed. So that was where he had hidden the gold, in that basket. I should have looked more carefully at what lay under the cover when I had seen it before, the time I went to the bell tower with Mortimus. It was a clever hiding place. So that was why he had stopped the repair work.
 
I had been fearful when I climbed the winding stairs to the bell tower with Prior Mortimus, but this time I felt nothing but savage, determined fury as I struggled upwards, ignoring the screams of protest from every limb. Emotion had not been drained from me after all, it merely slept. Now an anger such as I had never known before impelled me on. I reached the tower where the bell ropes were. The basket was there, lying empty on its side, a couple more gold coins on the floor. There was no one in the room. I stared at the steps giving access to the bells themselves. More gold coins had been spilled there. I realized anyone here must have heard me climbing up; had he retreated to the bell room?
 
I climbed the steps carefully, holding my staff before me. I turned the handle of the door and quickly stepped back, using my staff to thrust it open. It was just as well I did, for a figure shot out and swung an unlit wooden torch at the space where I would have been standing. The improvised club jarred harmlessly on my staff and I caught a glimpse of the bursar’s face, red and furious, his eyes wide and staring as I had never seen them.
 
‘You are discovered, Brother Edwig,’ I called. ‘I know about your boat to France! I arrest you in the king’s name for theft and murder!’
 
He darted back inside and I heard his feet pattering away across the boards, accompanied by a metallic chinking sound that puzzled me.
 
‘It’s over,’ I called. ‘There’s no other way out of there.’ I climbed the last steps and looked in, trying to get a glimpse of him, but from this angle I could see only the floorboards and the great bells beyond the rail. More coins lay scattered around the floor.
 
I realized this was an impasse; he could not get past me, but I was trapped too. If I were to retreat down the spiral staircase I would be vulnerable to an attack from above and the man I had once taken for a penny-pinching clerk was clearly capable of anything. I advanced into the room, swinging my staff ahead of me.
 
He was at the other end, behind the bells. He stepped out as I entered and I saw he had two big leather panniers tied together with a thick rope round his neck. The chink of metal sounded from them as he moved. He was breathing hard, brandishing the club in his right hand, the knuckles standing out white and hard.
 
‘What was the plan, Brother?’ I called out. ‘Take the money from the sales and flee to a new life in France?’ I advanced a step, trying to distract him, but he was watchful as a cat and swung the torch threateningly.
 
‘N-no!’ He stood there and bawled out the word like a child falsely accused. ‘No! This is my fee to enter heaven!’
 
‘What?’
 
‘She refused me and refused me and then the Devil filled my soul with anger and I killed her! Do you know how easy it is to kill someone, Commissioner?’ He laughed wildly. ‘I saw too much killing as a child, it opened the door to the Devil, always he fills my mind with dreams of b-blood!’
 
His fat face was scarlet and the veins stood out on his neck as he screamed at me. He had lost control; if I could surprise him, get close enough to ring the bells—
 
‘You’ll find it hard to persuade a jury of that,’ I called out.
 
‘Pox on your juries!’ His stammer vanished as his voice rose to a shout. ‘The pope, who is God’s vicar on earth, allows the purchase of redemption from sins! I told you, God figures our souls in heaven, the credit balance and the debit! And I will make him such a gift he will take me to his right hand! I am taking almost a thousand pounds to the Church in France, a thousand pounds from the hands of your heretic king. This is a great work in the eyes of God!’ He eyed me furiously. ‘You will not stop me!’
 
‘Will it buy you forgiveness for Simon and Gabriel too?’
 
He pointed the torch at me. ‘Whelplay guessed what I had done to the girl and would have told you. He had to die, I had to complete my work! And you should have died instead of Gabriel, you crow, God will hold
you
to account for that!’
 
‘You madman!’ I shouted. ‘I will see you in the Bedlam, displayed as a warning of what perverted religion can do!’
 
Then he grasped his club in both hands and ran at me with an eldritch scream. The heavy panniers slowed him or he would have had me, but I managed to dodge aside. He whirled round and swung again. I raised my staff, but he knocked it from my hand with the torch. As it clattered to the floor, I realized he had got himself between me and the door. He advanced slowly, swinging the torch, and I backed up against the low railing separating me from the bells and the great drop below. He was cooler again now; I saw those wicked black eyes calculating the distance between us and the height of the rail. ‘Where is your boy?’ he asked with an evil grin. ‘Not here to protect you today?’ Then he flew at me and landed a clout on my arm as I lifted it to defend myself. He pushed me hard in the chest and I fell back, over the low railing.
 
I still relive that fall in dreams, the sensation of twisting as I fell, my hands grasping at empty air. Always I hear Brother Edwig’s triumphant shout in my ears. Then my arms slapped against the side of a bell and instinctively I threw my arms round it, clutching at the metal surface, grinding my fingernails into the ornate design on the surface. It stopped my fall, but my hands were slick with sweat and I felt myself slipping down.
 
Then my foot hit something and I came to rest. I flattened myself against the bell and managed, just, to link my fingers together around it. Glancing quickly down I saw my foot had come to rest on the plaque on the old Spanish bell. I clung on desperately.
 
Then I felt the bell start to move. My weight was causing it to swing outwards. It hit the neighbouring bell and a deafening clang echoed through the bell tower as the juddering impact threatened to dislodge me. The bell swung back, with me clinging on like a limpet, and I had a glimpse of Edwig taking off his pannier and bending to the floor to pick up the coins he had dropped, all the while glancing malevolently at me. He knew I could only hold on for moments more. Far below I heard faint voices echoing up; the crowd outside must have run in at the unexpected peal of the bell. I dared not look down. The bell swung back and hit its neighbour again; this time it set the whole lot clanging with a noise I thought would burst my ears and now as the bell vibrated with the impact I felt my hands slipping apart.
 
Then I did the most desperate thing I have ever done in my life. I only made the attempt because I knew the alternative was certain death. In a single movement I let my hands fall apart, twisted in the air and used my foot against the plaque as leverage to hurl myself outwards, towards the rail, commending my soul to God in what I knew was probably my final thought on earth.

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