Revelation (50 page)

Her words reminded me of Tamasin's experience. I wondered whether Mrs Loder ever thought to wonder where those teeth of hers came from.

'Are you still taking care not to go out unaccompanied?' I asked. 'It is only a precaution, but I think it is as well.' 'Yes.'

'Will you stay in London, do you think, or go to Bristol? In the long run?'

She sighed. 'I think it would be hard for me to buy a house in London. But perhaps in Bristol I could.' She raised her eyebrows. 'Treasurer Rowland has sent a message; kindly worded, but he made it clear he wants me out of our rooms as soon as possible now.'

'He is a heartless man.'

She shrugged. 'There is a vacancy at the Inn now, he will want to fill it.' She gave me a searching look. 'Samuel would like me to move back to Bristol permanently. But it is not just obstinacy that makes me stay. It is too early to decide on something like that.' She sighed. 'It is hard to think clearly. Everywhere the empty space of Roger's absence follows me. It is like a hole in the world. Yet do you know, I realized this morning that I had worked for half an hour without thinking of him. I felt guilty, as though I had betrayed him.'

'I think that is how grief is. The hole in the world will always be there, but you begin to notice the other things. You should not feel guilt.'

Dorothy looked at me curiously. 'You have known grief too?'

'There was a woman I knew who died. In the plague of
1534.
Nine years, but I still think of her. I used to wear a mourning ring for her.'

'I did not know.'

'It was after you and Roger went to Bristol.' I looked at her. 'Dorothy, may I ask you something?' 'Anything.'

'The business you feel you must stay for. Is part of it waiting for the killer to be caught; Because I do not know when that will be.'

She came to a halt, turned and laid a hand on my arm. Her pale face, outlined by the black hood, was full of concern. 'Matthew,' she said quietly. 'I can see this dreadful thing is burning you up. I am sorry it was me that set you on this hunt. I thought officialdom did not care. But now I know they are seeking this man, I want you to leave the matter to them. This is having a bad effect on you.'

I shook my head sadly. 'I am bound tightly into the hunt for him now, bound into those official chains. He - he has killed again.'

'Oh no.'

'You are right, Dorothy, the horror eats into me, but I have to see it through now. And I have involved others too. Guy, Barak.' And even if I was willing to leave the killer alone, I thought but did not say, would he leave me; 'Do not be sorry,' I continued. 'We think we may know who the killer is. We will catch him. And one thing we are certain of now is that Roger was a chance victim, in the sense that the killer could equally have chosen someone else.'

'That is little comfort, somehow it makes it worse. But it has happened, I must bear it. Nothing will bring Roger back.'

I smiled at her. 'You are so much calmer now. Your strength is helping you.'

'Perhaps.'

'Do you feel God helps you in your grief;' I asked impulsively. 'Succours you:'

'I pray. For help in dealing with what has happened. Yet I would not ask God to take away my grief. It must be borne. Though I cannot understand how God would allow a good man to be destroyed like that. That is what I mean by his being a chance victim making it worse.'

'I suppose one could answer the killer is an evil man, who has turned from God and all that is good. And God allows us the free will to do that.'

She shook her head. 'I have not the heart for such speculation these days.'

We walked on in silence for a little. Then she said, 'You have much courage, Matthew, to do this hateful work.' She smiled at me. 'For anyone it would be bad, but you — you are affected by things.'

'It has affected Barak too. And Guy, I think.'

'Are you sure you cannot give it up:'

'No. Not now.'

We had reached the edge of the little escarpment and stood looking out over Lincoln's Inn Fields, towards the more distant fields of Long Acre. Clouds in varying shades of grey raced across the sky, promising more rain.

'Do you remember when we first met:' Dorothy asked suddenly. 'That business of Master Thornley's paper:'

I smiled. 'I recall it as though it were yesterday.' Thornley had been a fellow student who studied with Roger and me twenty years before. The three of us shared a little cubbyhole of an office at the Inn. It had been a summer evening. I had been sitting working with Roger when Dorothy had called, with a message from her father, my principal, about a case the following day where he required my assistance. Scarcely had she told me when Thornley had burst in. 'He was such a fat little fellow,' Dorothy recalled. 'Do you remember? He had a round red face, but that evening it was white.'

I remembered. Thornley had been set a fiendishly complicated problem in land law, one on which he had to present a paper on the morrow. 'The story he told us.' I laughed aloud at the memory. 'He would be unable to present his paper because his dog had eaten it. The lamest excuse in the world, yet that time it was true. Did you ever see that dog?'

'No. It lived in his lodgings, did it not?'

'A great big lurcher he brought up from the country. He kept it in that tiny lodging room of his in Nuns Alley. The beast chewed all the furniture to shreds, then started on the contents of his open workcase. Those chewed
-
u
p
fragments of paper he pulled from it. Some of them still wet with dog
-
spittle, the ink all run.'

'And we helped him. You sorted out all those torn bits of paper, as Thornley and Roger and I copied out the exercise again. Some of it was illegible and Thornley had to cudgel his brains to remember what he had said.'

'Roger filled in some of the blanks for him.'

'And next day Thornley presented it, and was praised for the precision of his answer.'

'What became of Thornley? I never saw him again after we qualified.' I looked at her. 'Was that the first time you and Roger met?'

'Yes, it was. But it was you I came to see that day.' 'Me?'

She smiled gently. 'Do you not think my father could have got a servant to deliver his message? I offered to bring it round so that I could see you.'

'I
did not realize,'
I
said. 'But
I
remember noting that you and Roger got on very well, and feeling jealous.'

'I
thought you were not interested in me. So when
I
met Roger—'

'So you came to see me,'
I
said quietly. Something seemed to pull at my heart.
I
looked out over the greens and browns of the flat landscape 'How little we know each other,'
I
said at length. 'How easy it is to make mistakes.'

'Yes,' she agreed with a sad smile.

'Recently -
I
am not even sure
I
know Guy as well as
I
thought.'
I
hesitated, full of confused emotion, then looked at her.
'I
hope you do not go to Bristol, Dorothy.
I
will miss you. But you must decide.'

She lowered her eyes.
'I
feel
I
am a burden to my friends.'

'Never to me.'

She stared out over the fields. There was an awkward moment of silence. 'We should go back,' she said quietly. She turned and led the way, her skirts rustling on the wet grass.
I
feared
I
had embarrassed her. But
I
knew then, amidst all my trouble, that if she stayed, then after a decent period
I
would seek to gain her hand.
I
felt in time her old feelings for me might be resurrected. Perhaps they were budding already, or why had she recalled that story? And
I
had a sudden certainty that Roger would have approved.

R
ecognition of
my feelings for Dorothy, which perhaps had never really gone away in the intervening years, and the thought that there might be some hope for me in the future, cheered me. Amidst all the danger and confusion it was something optimistic to hold on to. And then, going across the courtyard from Dorothy's to my chambers,
I
saw Bealknap again. He was walking across Gatehouse Court, stooped and bent, and
I
saw that now he needed the aid of a stick. His head was cast down and
I
could have avoided him, but
I
did not do so.
I
remembered my meeting with his physician in Guy's shop, the man's confident talk of bleeding and purging.

Bealknap looked up as I approached. His face, always thin, was skeletal now. He glared at me, an expression full of spite and malice. I remembered how in the days of his health he would never look you straight in the face.

'I am sorry to see you with a stick,' I said.

'Leave me, get out of my way.' Bealknap grasped the stick tighter, as though he would have liked to strike me with it. 'You will end by regretting the way you have treated me.'

'At the Court of Requests? I had to do that. But believe it or not, I do not like to see anyone ill.' I hesitated, fought a sudden urge to walk away. 'I met your doctor some days ago,' I said. 'Dr Archer.'

His eyes narrowed with suspicion. 'What has my physician to do with you?'

'He was at my friend Dr Malton's premises when I called there. He mentioned you as a patient he had at Lincoln's Inn. He sounded like a great old purger.'

'So he is. He bleeds and purges me constantly, he says my body is badly disordered and keeps producing bad humours which must be forced out.' He put a hand to his stomach and winced. 'He has given me a new purge to take now. The lax comes on so quick it plucks my stomach away.'

'Some doctors think of nothing but purging. Have you thought of getting a second opinion?'

'Dr Archer was my father's doctor. What would going to a second doctor serve except - confusion? And expense. Archer will get me right in the end.' He looked at me defiantly. It surprised me that Bealknap, of all people, should place his trust in a physician who was clearly making him worse. But a man may be as cunning as a serpent in one sphere of life, and naive as a schoolboy in another. I took a deep breath, then said, 'Bealknap, why do you not go and see my friend Dr Malton? Get another opinion?'

'That brown Moor? And what if Dr Archer found out? He would stop treating me.'

'Dr Archer need not know.'

'Dr Malton would want paying in advance,
I
imagine. A new fee for him.'

'No,'
I
said evenly. But if Bealknap went to Guy,
I
would pay him myself rather than leave Guy to chase him for payment.

Bealknap's eyes narrowed into a calculating look.
I
could see he was wondering whether he could get a free appointment out of this, and thus to his strange way of thinking score a point against me.

'Very well.' He spoke aggressively, as though accepting a chal
-
lenge.
'I
will go.
I
will hear what he has to say.'

'Good. You will find him down at Bucklersbury. I am seeing him tomorrow, shall
I
make an appointment for you?'

His eyes narrowed. 'Why are you doing this? To find some profit for your friend?'

'I
do not like to see anyone brought low by bad medical treatment. Even you, Bealknap.'

'How can laymen know what is good or bad treatment?' he muttered, then turned and walked away without thanks.

I
watched him go, his stick tapping on the stone flags. Why had
I
done this,
I
asked myself.
I
realized that if Guy was able to help Bealknap, which was at least possible, it would be me who in a way would have scored a point against my old enemy. And given myself a sense of virtue, too.
I
wondered if that was partly why
I
had offered to help him. But if we never acted except when we were certain our motives were pure, we would never act at all.