‘Pox on the constable. I’m going to the earl now.’ He pointed at the women. ‘Stay here with them, make sure they don’t leave.’
Susan looked up anxiously. ‘Do you mean Lord Cromwell, sir? But, sir - but we’ve done nothing.’ Her voice rose in fear.
‘Do not worry, Susan,’ I said gently. ‘He must be told. He—’ I hesitated.
Goodwife Gristwood spoke, her voice cold and hard. ‘My husband and Sepultus were working for him, Susan. I know that much, I told them they were fools, that he’s dangerous. But Michael would never listen to me.’ She fixed us with pale blue eyes that were suddenly full of anger. ‘Now see what’s become of him and Sepultus. The fools.’
‘God’s bones, woman,’ Barak burst out. ‘Your husband’s lying slain in his gore upstairs. Is that all you have to say about him?’ I looked at him in surprise, then realized that under his bravado he too was shocked by what we had seen. Goodwife Gristwood merely smiled bitterly and turned her head away.
‘Stay here,’ Barak told me again. ‘I’ll be back soon.’ He turned and left the kitchen. Susan gave me a scared look; Goodwife Gristwood had retreated into herself.
‘It’s all right, Susan,’ I said with an attempt at a smile. ‘You’re not in any trouble. There may be a few questions for you, that’s all.’ She still looked frightened: that was the effect Cromwell’s name had on most people. I set my teeth. What in God’s name had I got involved in? And who was Barak to give me orders?
I crossed to the window and looked out at the yard, surprised to see that both the flagstones and the high walls were stained black. ‘Has there been a fire here?’ I asked Susan.
‘Master Sepultus did experiments out there sometimes, sir. Terrible bangs and hissings there were.’ She crossed herself. ‘I was glad he wouldn’t let me see.’
Goodwife Gristwood spoke again. ‘Yes, we were kept out of our own kitchen when he and my husband were at their foolery.’
I looked again at the scorch marks. ‘Did they go out there often?’
‘Only recently, sir,’ Susan said. She turned to her mistress. ‘I’ll make an infusion, madam, it might ease us. Would you like some, sir? I have some marigolds—’
‘No, thank you.’
We sat together in silence for a while. My mind was racing. It struck me that the formula might still be in the workshop, perhaps even with some samples of this Greek Fire. Now was a chance to look before the room was disturbed further, though I shrank from returning there. I bade the women stay in the kitchen and mounted the stairs again.
I stood in the doorway for a moment, steeling myself to look again at those terrible carcasses. Poor Michael had been in his mid-thirties, I recalled, younger than me. The afternoon sun was shining into the room, a sunbeam illuminating his dead face. I remembered that dinner in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, how I had thought he had the questing, nosy look of an amiable rodent. I turned away from his look of terror.
There was a terrible casualness about the way the two men had been smashed down. It seemed the killers had simply staved in the doors and then felled the brothers like animals, with an axe blow each. They had probably been watching the house, waiting for the women to leave. I wondered if Michael and Sepultus, hearing the front door broken in, had locked themselves in the workshop in a vain attempt to save themselves.
I noticed Michael was wearing a rough smock over his shirt. Perhaps he had been helping his brother. But with what? I looked around. I had never been in an alchemist’s workshop - I gave such people a wide berth, for they were known as great frauds, but I had seen pictures of their laboratories and something was missing. Frowning, I walked over to a wall lined with shelves, my feet crunching on broken glass. One shelf was full of books but the others were empty. From round marks in the dust I guessed jars and bottles had been stored there. That was what I had seen in the pictures, alchemists’ chambers full of bottles of liquids and powders. There was nothing like that here. In the pictures there had also been benches with oddly shaped retorts for distillation - that would explain all the broken glass on the floor. ‘They took his potions,’ I murmured.