Lamentation (The Shardlake Series Book 6) (39 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

I
WALKED SLOWLY
home. It had been a long day, even by the standards of this last week. I was utterly weary. It was still afternoon, but the shadows were beginning to lengthen. Looking down a narrow street leading to the river, I saw a fisherman in a boat, casting a long net that turned the water silver as it splashed into the Thames, sending swans flying to the bank. Normality. I remembered Guy’s words. Why did I keep walking into danger, taking others with me? My feelings for the Queen had led to my involvement in this case; yet it had been the same even before I met her. It went back to Thomas Cromwell, my association with him that first brought me into contact with the high ones of the realm who, like Cromwell himself, sought to use my skills and exploit my obstinate refusal to give up anything I had started. I thought, if I get through this, perhaps it is time to move out of London. Plenty did. I could practise in one of the provincial towns: Bristol, perhaps, or Lichfield, where I had been born and still had cousins. But I had not been there for years; it was a small place and not all of its associations were happy for me.

My musings reminded me of young Timothy and his reluctance to move on. I decided to speak to Josephine; she was fond of the boy. And I resolved, as well, to ask her directly what was the matter between her and Martin Brocket. My steward did not seem like a bully, but I did not see all that went on in my home. No master does.

I arrived home towards five. Martin opened the door to me, his expression deferential as always; I asked if there had been any messages and he told me none. I thought, perhaps I should visit Barak, then decided, better for him to establish a story first with Tamasin. Damn all the lies.

J
OSEPHINE WAS IN THE PARLOUR
, dusting with her usual care. She rose and bowed as I entered. I looked longingly through the window to my little resting place in the garden, but as I had caught her alone I should take the chance to speak to her. I began in a friendly tone. ‘I have had little chance to talk to you of late, Josephine. How go things with you?’

‘Very well, sir,’ she said.

‘I wanted to speak to you about Timothy. You know I have suggested that when he turns fourteen he should go for an apprenticeship, as Simon did?’

‘That would be a good thing, sir, I think.’

‘And yet he is reluctant to go.’

Her face clouded. She said, ‘He did not have a happy time before he came here.’

‘I know. But that was three years since.’

She looked at me with her clear blue eyes. ‘I think, sir, he sees this house as a refuge.’ She blushed. ‘As do I. But it is not good to cower from the world too long, perhaps.’

‘I agree.’ I paused. ‘What do you think I should do, Josephine?’

She looked at me in surprise. ‘You are asking me, sir?’

‘Yes.’

She hesitated, then said, ‘I should go carefully, sir. Slowly.’

‘Yes. I think you are right.’ I smiled. ‘And you, Josephine, will you be seeing Goodman Brown again soon?’

She blushed. ‘If you are agreeable, sir, he has asked me to walk with him again on Sunday.’

‘If he is agreeable to you, so he is to me.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘If I remember, you met him at the May Day revels. At Lincoln’s Inn Fields.’

‘Yes. Agnes persuaded me to go with her, and to wear a little garland of flowers she had made. Master Brown was standing next to us, he said it was pretty. He asked where we worked, and when he found it was for a barrister he told us that he did, too.’

‘The law was ever good for establishing friendships.’ I thought of Philip Coleswyn. Was he a friend? Perhaps, I thought. I said to Josephine, gently, ‘I think Master Brown is perhaps the first young man you have walked out with?’

She lowered her head. ‘Yes, sir. Father, he did not want me – ’

‘I know.’ There was an awkward silence, then I said, ‘Make sure you behave in a ladylike way, Josephine, that is all I would say. I think you will not find that difficult.’

She smiled, showing white teeth. ‘He asks nothing more, sir.’ She added quickly, ‘Your approval is important to me.’

We stood for a moment, both a little embarrassed. Then I said, ‘You get on very well with Agnes.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she answered brightly. ‘She advises me about clothes. No woman ever has before, you see.’

‘She is a good woman. Martin, I suppose, did not come with you to the revels.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘No, sir. He regards such things as silly.’

‘But he treats you well enough?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she answered hesitantly. ‘Well enough.’

I pressed her, gently. ‘Josephine, I have sensed an – unease – between you and Martin.’

She put the cloth down on the table. Then she took a deep breath and lifted her head. ‘I have been meaning to speak to you, sir, yet I did not know if it was right – and Agnes Brocket has been so good to me – ’

‘Tell me, Josephine.’

She looked at me directly. ‘Two months ago, I went into your study one day to dust, and found Martin Brocket going through the drawers of your desk. Agnes was out, perhaps he thought he was alone in the house. I know you keep your money in a locked drawer there, sir.’

I did, and my most important papers, too. Martin had keys to most places in the house, but not to that drawer, nor the chest in my bedroom where I kept my personal items. ‘Go on,’ I said.

‘He snapped at me to get out, said that he was looking for something for you. But Master Shardlake, he had the look of one uncovered in wrongdoing. I have been battling with my conscience ever since.’

I thought, thank heaven there was nothing in writing about the
Lamentation
; even the notes I had made in the garden I had destroyed. And, besides, two months ago it had not even been taken. But the news sent a chill down my spine, all the same. And how many times had Martin nosed around without Josephine seeing?

I said, ‘I have never sent Martin to fetch anything from my desk. Thank you, Josephine, for telling me this. If you see him doing something like that again, come to me.’

I had missed no money. But if not money, what had Brocket been looking for? ‘You did right to tell me, Josephine. For now, let us keep it a secret.’ I smiled uneasily. ‘But remember, tell me if anything like this occurs again.’

‘I did not like him from the start, sir, though Agnes has been such a friend, as I have said. Sometimes he speaks roughly to her.’

‘Sadly husbands occasionally do.’

‘And he was always asking about you when he first came, last winter. Who your friends were, your habits, your clients.’

‘Well, a steward needs to find such things out.’ It was true, but I felt uncomfortable nonetheless.

‘Yes, sir, and it was only at first. Yet there has always been something about him I did not trust.’

‘Perhaps because he speaks roughly to Agnes, whom you like?’

Josephine shook her head. ‘No, it is something more, though I am not sure what.’

I nodded. I felt the same.

She said, hesitant again, ‘Sir, perhaps I should not ask – ’

‘Go on– ’

‘If I might say, this last week you have seemed – preoccupied, worried. Have you some trouble, sir?’

I was touched. ‘Merely work worries, Josephine. But thank you for your concern.’

I felt uneasy. I thought of the books I possessed, forbidden by the recent proclamation. They were concealed in my chest, and under the amnesty I had another fortnight to turn them in; I thought, if I do that officially, my name will doubtless go on a list. Better to burn them discreetly in the garden. And I would keep a careful eye now on Master Martin Brocket, too.

T
HAT EVENING
I
WAS
due to visit Philip Coleswyn.

He lived on Little Britain Street, near Smithfield. I walked there by back lanes to avoid seeing Smithfield itself again. His house was in a pleasant row of old dwellings, with overhanging jettied roofs. Some peddlers and drovers in their smocks were pushing their carts back towards the city from the Smithfield market. They seemed to have many unsold goods; I wondered if the troubles caused by the King’s debasement of the coinage would ever end. A small dog, a shaggy little mongrel, wandered up and down the street whining and looking at people. It had a collar – it must have come to Smithfield with one of the traders or customers, and got itself lost. Hopefully its owner would find it.

I knocked at the door of Coleswyn’s residence, where, as he had told me, a griffin’s head was engraved over the porch. He let me in himself. ‘We have no servants at the moment,’ he apologized. ‘My wife will be doing the cooking tonight. We have a fine capon.’

‘That sounds excellent,’ I said, concealing my surprise that a man of his status should have no servants. He led me into a pleasant parlour, the early evening sunlight glinting on the fine gold and silver plate displayed on the buffet. An attractive woman in her early thirties was sitting with two children, a girl and boy of about seven and five, teaching them their letters. She looked tired.

‘My wife, Ethelreda,’ Coleswyn said. ‘My children, Samuel and Laura.’

Ethelreda Coleswyn stood and curtsied, and the little boy gave a tiny bow. The girl turned to her mother and said seriously, ‘I prefer the name Fear-God, Mamma.’

Her mother gave me a nervous look, then told the child, ‘We want you to use your second name now, we have told you. Now go, both of you, up to bed. Adele is waiting.’ She clapped her hands and the children went to their father, who bent to kiss them goodnight, then they left obediently.

‘My sister has come from Hertfordshire to help with the children,’ Coleswyn explained.

‘I must see to the food.’ Ethelreda got up. She left the room. Coleswyn poured me some wine and we sat at the table.

‘That was quite a scene at the Cotterstoke house this morning,’ he said.

‘My client’s behaviour towards you was insufferable. I apologize for her.’

‘Her manners are not your responsibility, Brother Shardlake.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘Have you seen her again today?’

‘No, I have not been back to chambers. If she called this afternoon, she was unlucky. No doubt there will be a message tomorrow.’

Coleswyn smiled wryly. ‘I keep thinking of those two beetles we saw fighting in the stableyard. Why do Edward and Isabel need their carapaces, and what lies underneath?’

‘God alone knows.’

He fingered the stem of his glass. ‘Recently I met an old member of the Chandlers’ Guild, Master Holtby. Retired now, over seventy. He remembered Isabel and Edward’s father, Michael Johnson.’

I smiled. ‘Met by chance, or design?’

‘Not purely by chance.’ He smiled wryly. ‘In any event, he said that Michael Johnson was a coming man in his day. Shrewd, prosperous, a hard man in business but devoted to his family.’

‘You can see all that in the painting.’

‘Yes, indeed. He inherited the business from his own father and built it up. But he died way back in 1507; that was one of the years when the sweating sickness struck London.’

I remembered the sweating sickness. More contagious and deadly even than the plague, it could kill its victims in a day. Mercifully there had not been an outbreak for some years.

Coleswyn went on, ‘The family were devastated, according to old Master Holtby. But a year later Mistress Johnson remarried, another chandler, a younger man called Peter Cotterstoke.’

‘Common enough for a widow left alone to marry a new husband in the same trade. It is only sensible.’

‘The children were about twelve, I think. Master Holtby did not remember any trouble between them and their stepfather. They took his name in place of their father’s, and kept it. In any case, poor Cotterstoke also died, a year later.’

‘How?’

‘Drowned. He had been down at the docks on some business to do with a cargo, and fell in, God save his soul. But then to everyone’s surprise, Mrs Cotterstoke sold the business soon afterwards, using the proceeds to live on for the rest of her life. Disinheriting her son, Edward, in effect. He would have started as an apprentice in the business in a year or so. Master Holtby told me there was no love lost between the mother and either of her children.’