Revelation (78 page)

'Wait and see,' I said as we rode under the Bedlam gate, into the precinct of the hospital. We tied up the horses and I knocked at the door. Barak looked along the length of the building, anxiously, as though some lunatic might lean from the windows and shriek at him, rattling his chains. But the house seemed quiet today. The big keeper Gebons opened the door, bowing to me. Since my confrontation with Shawms over his locking out of Ellen, Gebons seemed to have developed a respect for me.

'Are Goodman Kite and his wife here yet?' I asked.

'Ay, sir, they are. They are all in the parlour, with Ellen.'

'Come, then, Barak. This is what I wanted you to see.'

I led the way into the parlour. The scene there today could have come from any peaceful domestic home. Adam and his father sat at the table playing chess. Sitting watching him, Minnie Kite had a look of happy repose that I would not have believed possible four months ago. Beside her, Ellen sat knitting, a look of pride on her long, sensitive face. The old woman Cissy sat next to Ellen, also knitting, though sometimes stopping and staring into space with a look of desperate sadness, seeing something not here in the room.

'Well done, Adam.' Minnie laughed and clapped her hands as her son reached out and checkmated her husband.

As we entered, the company rose to greet us, but I bade them sit again. 'I have brought my assistant to see you, Adam,' I said. 'You may remember him from the court hearings. Master Barak. He helped me prepare your case.' Barak bowed to the company.

'I have beaten my father at chess for the third time running,' Adam said. Then he fell silent for a second. 'Is it the sin of pride to take such pleasure in it?' He looked at Ellen.

'No, no, Adam. How many times have we told you, it is no sin to take pleasure in the little diversions God has given us in this hard world.'

Adam nodded. He was still much troubled by fears of sin, but accepted — most of the time — that whether one was saved or damned was ultimately knowable only to God. His parents feared what would happen when he left the Bedlam and learned of Yarington's terrible fate, which the congregation had been encouraged to blame on Catholic fanatics. But Guy believed that Adam ought to leave soon, return to the world, face up to the things it contained. His parents remained as radical as ever in their religious views, but because they loved their son they had agreed with Guy that his fragile mental state meant the subject of religion must be treated gently. Bishop Bonner had unintentionally done the family a favour with his persecution of radicals in the spring; Reverend Meaphon had taken a living in Norwich, far from the tumults of the capital, and had gone in May. A new vicar had been appointed; a time-server with no deep belief, a harmless man.

Daniel Kite rose from the table. 'Come, son, shall we take a walk around the yard? I thought we might take ourselves as far as the Bishopsgate today.'

'Yes, all right.' Adam got up. His mother too rose and slipped her arm through his. I stepped away from the table. Adam turned to me with a nervous smile. 'Master Shardlake, when we come back, will you tell me more about life in the law?'

'I will, with pleasure.' On my last couple of visits Adam had shown some interest in his legal position, even expressing indignation when I told him he could not be freed without the agreement of the Privy Council. It was a world away from the days when nothing was real to him save his desperate struggle with God.

Adam glanced past me to Barak, and reddened slightly. 'I remember seeing you at court, sir,' he said.

'Ay, that's right.'

'I was in a bad way then,' the boy said quietly.

'That you were.' Barak smiled, though he still looked uneasy with Adam, and with this place.

We watched from the open front door as father and mother and son walked slowly across the yard, talking quietly; Ellen stood a little behind us, afraid as ever to step too close to the world out
-
side.

'Adam's parents care for him,' she said. 'They are not like those families that abandon their troublesome relatives here.' There was a note of bitterness in her voice; I looked at her and she forced a smile. I wished I knew the details of her story but beyond what Shawms had told me of the attack on her when she was a girl I knew nothing; she would not say, and I would not pry.

'This sudden interest of Adam's in the law is a new thing,' I said. 'He's a bright lad.'

'Who knows, one day he may make a lawyer?'

'Ay. I will give him Barak's place, and train him up. He will come cheaper.' Ellen laughed.

'Exploiting the mad, I call it,' Barak said. Then he turned to me.

'He certainly looks different from the last time I saw him. But there is still something

'Fragile?' Ellen asked. 'He has a long journey to make yet. But I believe he will complete it. One day.'

'So there you are, Barak,' I said. 'Madness is an illness, and sometimes, like other illnesses, it may be treated.' I thought, but did not say, that he had been so damaged he might well slip back at times, though I hoped never to the terrible state in which I first found him. Could he ever fully recover? I did not know.

Barak stepped outside and bowed to Ellen. 'I ought to get over to the Old Barge. I have things to pack. And some of Tamasin's things to sort out. She said I could take them over to her new lodgings. Better make sure I've got everything.'

'I will see you at Lincoln's Inn tomorrow morning.'

'Ay. Couple of tricky cases coming up.'

I sensed he was glad of the excuse to leave. He untied Sukey and rode away, raising his cap to the Kites as he passed them at the gate.

'Your assistant is moving house?' Ellen asked.

'Yes, he and his wife have separated. It is sad, he could not bear to stay in their old lodgings. He has taken a room near Lincoln's Inn. They may get back together in time, there is still a great bond between them. I hope so.'

'The papers requesting Adam's release go to the Court of Requests this week?' Ellen asked.

'Yes, on Thursday. If the judge agrees to the request it will be forwarded to the Privy Council. I believe they will grant it.' I knew they would, for Cranmer had written to me, promising he would see the matter through.

'Is he ready?' Ellen asked. 'There are still times when I go into his room and find him sitting, or worse kneeling, on the floor. Still times when he fears his damnation.'

'Guy believes it is time for him to leave, to
engage
with the world as he puts it. Under continual care from his parents, of course, and

Guy will visit him frequently. He cannot be certain Adam will not relapse, but he believes he will continue to make progress. And that the time when he might make some mad display is past. I hope he is right,' I added quietly.

'I shall never see him again,' Ellen said bleakly. I turned to look at her. She had retreated a couple of steps away from the open door.

'That is sad,' I said seriously. 'When you have done so much to help him. Guy says that without your persistence, your understanding of him, he doubts Adam would have made anything like the progress he has. The Kites would be glad to have you visit him, I am sure.'

'You know my situation, sir,' she said quietly. 'Please do not press me.'

Shawms appeared from his office, gave us a dirty look as he passed between us. When he had gone Ellen said, 'Will you do something for me, sir?' She spoke quickly, reddening, and I guessed she had had to screw up her courage to ask.

'Whatever I can, Ellen.'

'Will you come and visit me sometimes, when you have time? I love to hear what is happening in the outside world, I did not know the King was getting married again today until you told me. Everyone here is so locked inside their own worlds. . .'

'I would rather you made some venture into the outside world, Ellen. Come, will you not take just a few steps outside? You can hold on to my arm. Is it so hard?'

'Harder than you realize.' And indeed the very suggestion made her shrink back against the wall. 'Sir, there are those here like Adam who may be cured, with the help of good friends and those who love them. But there are others, like me, whose best hope of sanity lies in accepting their — disabilities.'

I looked at her. 'I will make a bargain with you, Ellen. I will come and see you, whenever I can, and tell you all the news. But I will also ask you to consider ways in which you may deal with your — difficulty, perhaps even overcome it. I would never make you go outside unless you were prepared to try, but equally I will never let the subject go.' I smiled. 'Is it a bargain?'

'You drive a hard deal, sir, like all lawyers.'

'I do. Will you agree my terms?'

She gave a small, sad smile. 'I will. And thank you for your care.'

Just then, a great clamour of bells began to ring across the city. We looked out through the open doorway, into the sunlit yard, listening to the joyful clamour. Out there, in a chapel in a palace, the King had finally married Catherine Parr.

Historical Note

The spring of
1543
brought another round in the struggle for power between religious reformers and reactionaries which dominated the later years of Henry VIII. Although Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, had begun his rise to power, the pre-eminent figure among the reformers remained Thomas Cranmer, whose close personal relationship with the King kept him in his key position as Archbishop of Canterbury. Part of his success was probably that, unlike Cromwell or Wolsey, he did not try to dominate the King.

Nonetheless, the
return from abroad of the arch-
conservative Bishop Stephen Gardiner led to attempts to unseat Cranmer with the assistance of London's Bishop Bonner. Religious radicals were hunted in Cranmer's households both in Cambridge and London, but nothing serious was found against him. The King frightened Cranmer by telling him, 'I know now who is the greatest heretic in Kent,' but turned the tables on Gardiner by appointing Cranmer himself to head a commission to investigate the allegations against him. I have largely followed the account of the attack on Cranmer given in Diarmaid MacCulloch's
Cranmer
(London
1996).
It was probably autumn, rather than in the spring as I have indicated, that Cranmer found himself out of the woods.

Early
1543
also saw major attacks on Protestantism in Parliament and through a renewed campaign against radicals in London by Bishop Bonner. The Parliament of that year brought in strong anti
-
reformist legislation, notably forbidding the working classes and women to read the new English Bible, which under Cromwell's aegis had been placed in every parish church. I am very grateful to the librarian of St John's College, Cambridge, for allowing me to see their copy of the
1539
Great Bible, which may have belonged to Thomas Cromwell himself. I have used its phraseology in quoting from the Book of Revelation, though I have modernized the Tudor spelling. Susan Brigden's
London
and
the
Reformation
(Oxford
1989)
was an invaluable source for the campaign against the 'sectaries' in London, which included a manhunt for those who had broken the rules on eating meat in Lent. Her book portrays a London increasingly divided between radical and conservative parishes; the radicals, with their view of themselves as persecuted saints, often comforted themselves in the belief that Revelation foretold their eventual victory against the 'Beast' of Rome. Many believed then, exactly as Christian fundamentalists do today, that they lived in the 'last days' before Armageddon and, again just as now, saw signs all around in the world that they took as certain proof that the Apocalypse was imminent. Again like fundamentalists today, they looked on the prospect of the violent destruction of mankind without turning a hair. The remarkable similarity between the first Tudor Puritans and today's fundamentalist Christian fanatics extends to their selective reading of the Bible, their emphasis on the Book of Revelation, their certainty of their rightness, even to their phraseology. Where the Book of Revelation is concerned, I share the view of Guy, that the early church fathers released something very dangerous on the world when, after much deliberation, they decided to include it in the Christian canon.

Catherine Parr married Henry VIII in July
1543
following several months' courtship. Queen Catherine herself admitted years later that, unlike any of his previous queens, she had resisted the idea of marrying him. Partly at least this was because of her affection for Sir Thomas Seymour. It is uncertain whether Catherine Parr was already a reformist sympathizer by
1543;
I think that she was, for otherwise she would have come to a sophisticated reformism only after marrying a King whose increasingly anti-reformist sympathies made such a religious position dangerous. That does not seem to me to make sense.