Dark Fire

‘Know better than the coroner, do you?’ Needler said boldly.

At his insolent manner, more than Sir Edwin’s insult, something snapped inside me. ‘Do you let your steward speak for you, sir?’ I asked Sir Edwin.

‘David speaks true. He knows as well as I that you will drag matters out as long as you get paid for it.’

‘Have you any idea what death by the press means?’ I asked him. A couple of aldermen walking up the steps stared round at my raised voice, but I took no heed. ‘It means lying for days under heavy stones, in an agony of thirst and hunger, struggling to breathe as you wait for your back to break!’ .

Sabine began to cry. Sir Edwin looked round at her, then turned back to me. ‘How dare you speak of such things in front of my poor daughter!’ he shouted. ‘She aches for her lost brother as I ache for my son! Black-robed, stinking, bent lawyer! You can tell you have no children!’

His face was contorted, spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth. People going up and down the steps had stopped to watch; someone laughed at his tirade of insults. To stop the spectacle making Elizabeth’s name a talking point again, I stepped past Sir Edwin. Needler sidestepped too, blocking my path, but I stared at him fiercely and he gave way. Followed by a host of stares, I walked down the steps and away to the stables.

When I reached Chancery’s stall I found I was trembling. I stroked his head and he nuzzled my hand, hoping for food. Sir Edwin’s fury had been unnerving; there seemed something almost unbalanced in his hatred of Elizabeth. But he had lost his only son and he was right - I had no children, I could only imagine how he must feel. I slung my bag of books over my shoulder, mounted and rode out. Sir Edwin and his party had disappeared.

I rode north towards the City wall, where the former Franciscan priory of St Michael’s lay. It was situated in a street where good houses were mixed in with poor tenements. The street was empty, quiet and shady, St Michael’s halfway along. It was a small place, the church no bigger than a large parish church. The wide doors stood open and, curious, I dismounted and looked in.

I blinked with surprise at the interior. Both sides of the nave had been blocked off with tall, flimsy-looking wooden partitions. There was a series of doors at ground-floor level and rickety steps led up to more doors, making a dozen apartments in all. The centre of the nave had become a narrow passage, the old flagstones strewn with dirt. The passage was dark, for the partitions blocked off the side windows and the only light came from the window at the top of the quire.

Beside the door a couple of iron rings had been hammered into an ancient font. From the piles of dung on the floor I could see this was where horses were tethered. I slung Chancery’s reins round a ring and walked down the central passage. So this was Bealknap’s conversion. It was so rickety it looked as though the construction could come down at any moment.

One of the doors on the upper floor opened. I glimpsed a poorly furnished room, where cheap furniture was lit by rich multi-coloured light from the stained-glass window that now formed the apartment’s outside wall. A thin old woman stepped out and stood at the head of the staircase; it wobbled slightly under her weight. She gave my robe a hostile look.

‘Have you come from the landlord, lawyer?’ she asked in a sharp northern accent.

I doffed my cap. ‘No, madam, I represent the City council. I have come to look at the cesspit; there have been complaints.’

The old woman folded her arms. ‘That pit’s a disgrace. Thirty of us share it, those who live here and the others round the cloister. The vapours off it would stun a bull. I’m sorry for them living next door to the church, but what can we do? We have to go somewhere!’

‘No one blames you, madam. I am sorry for your trouble. I hope we may get an order for a proper cesspit to be built, but the landlord is resisting.’

She spat fiercely. ‘That pig Bealknap.’ She nodded at her apartment. ‘We’ve refused to pay him rent till he takes these great windows out and boards them up. We bake with the sun coming through them, the wretched papist things.’

She leaned on the rail, warming to her theme. ‘I’m here with my son and his family, five of us in this one room, and we’re charged a shilling a week! Half the floorboards fell out of one of the tenements last week - nearly killed the poor creatures living there.’

‘Your conditions are clearly bad,’ I agreed. I wondered whether her family was one of the thousands being forced off their land in the north to make way for sheep.

‘You’re a lawyer,’ she said. ‘Can he throw us out if we don’t pay our rent?’

‘He could, but I guess if you withhold your rent Bealknap will negotiate.’ I smiled wryly. ‘He hates losing money above all.’ Speaking thus about another lawyer was professional disloyalty, but where Bealknap was concerned I did not care. The old woman nodded.

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