OUTSIDE I TURNED angrily on Barak. ‘Well done,’ I said. ‘Your manners really helped our enquiries.’
He shrugged. ‘Insolent old Moor. God’s teeth, he’s an ugly creature.’
‘And you,’ I snapped, ‘you are what you call everyone else - an arsehole.’
Barak only grinned.
‘Since you probably lost us Guy’s help in finding the founder, you can go up to the Guildhall and ask for details of all the founders they employ on the conduits. I am going to Wolf’s Lane to ask Goodwife Gristwood a few more questions. If Michael and Sepultus were visiting the founders, she must have known about it.’
‘I thought we were going across to Southwark to find the whore.’
‘I’ll meet you at the Steelyard steps in an hour and a half. Who knows, I may even have time to grab a pie from a stall.’ I wiped sweat from my brow, the heat of the afternoon was punishing. Barak hesitated and I wondered if he were going to argue: I felt so angry I would almost have welcomed it. But he only smiled, mounted his black-mare and cantered away.
AS I RODE THROUGH the narrow streets to Queenhithe my anger ebbed. I found myself once more watching fearfully for dangerous movements in the shadows. The streets were empty, people indoors avoiding the heat if they could. I felt my cheek prickle with sunburn and pulled my cap lower. I jumped as a rat scurried from a doorway and ran down the street, hugging the wall.
The Gristwoods’ house was unchanged, the split and broken front door still in place. I knocked, the sound echoing within. Jane Gristwood herself opened the door. She wore the same white coif and grey dress and there was a new unkemptness about her appearance; I saw food stains on the dress. She stared at me wearily.
‘You again?’
‘Yes, madam. May I come in?’
She shrugged and held the door open. ‘That stupid girl Susan’s gone,’ she said.
‘Where’s the watchman?’
‘Drinking and farting in the kitchen.’ She led me past the ancient tapestry into the dowdy parlour and stood there waiting for me to speak.
‘Any more news on the house?’ I asked.
‘Yes, it’s mine. I’ve seen Serjeant Marchamount’s lawyer.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘For what it’s worth. I’ll need to take in lodgers - a fine class of tenant I’ll get in this mouldy hole. He had my money, you know.’
‘Who?’
‘Michael. When we married he got a big dowry from my father, to get me off his hands. That’s all gone and this is how I’m left. He couldn’t even bring any decent furniture from the monasteries, just that ugly old wall hanging. Did you see that whore?’ she concluded bluntly.
‘Not yet. But I have a query, madam. I believe Sepultus may have worked with a founder in his recent experiments.’
The frightened look that came into her face told me I had hit the mark. Her voice rose.
‘I’ve told you: I’d no interest in his mad doings beyond worrying he’d blow up the house. Why are you asking me these questions? I’m a poor widow alone!’
‘You are keeping something back, madam,’ I said. ‘I must know what it is.’
But she had stopped listening. She was staring out at the garden, her eyes wide. ‘It’s him again,’ she whispered.
I whirled round. A gate in the wall was open and a man was standing there. I dreaded seeing the pockmarked man but it was a stocky, dark-haired young fellow who stood there. Seeing us looking, he turned and fled. I stepped to the door, then paused. Even if I caught him, what then? He could overpower me easily. I turned back to Goodwife Gristwood. She had sat down at the table and was crying, her thin body wrenched with sobs. I waited until she calmed down.
‘You know who that man was, madam?’ I asked sternly.
She raised a piteous face to me. ‘No! No! Why do you try to catch me in these coils? I saw him watching the house yesterday. He was there all afternoon, just watching, he near scared the wits from me. He’s one of the men who killed Michael, isn’t he?’
‘I don’t know, madam. But you should tell your watchman.’
‘This is punishment for my sin,’ she whispered. ‘God is punishing me.’
‘What sin?’ I asked sharply.
She took a deep breath, then looked me hard in the eye. ‘When I was young, Master Shardlake, I was a plain girl. Plain, but full of base lusts and when I was fifteen I romped with an apprentice.’
I had forgotten how coarse her tongue was.
‘I had a child.’
‘Ah.’
‘I had to give him away and do hard penance, confessing my sin in church before the congregation, saying how unclean I was Sunday after Sunday. The old religion was no gentler than the new when it came to sins of the flesh.’