‘It is trivial.’
I smiled sadly. ‘Yes. Though not to our clients, unfortunately.’
I showed him out, and through the window watched his trim stocky figure as he walked away to the gate. Then my eyes turned to Bealknap’s shuttered chambers, and I took a deep breath.
Chapter Thirteen
I WENT ACROSS THE COURTYARD to the building that housed Bealknap’s chambers, remembering his odd behaviour at the end of last year, those unexpected overtures of friendship, which I had rejected because he was not to be trusted. I knocked at the door and a porter answered. ‘I have called to see Brother Bealknap.’
He looked at me gloomily. ‘According to his nurse this may be the last day anyone will visit him. I will take you up.’
We climbed a long wooden staircase, passing other chambers, empty on the Sabbath. Very few barristers, save Bealknap, lived in chambers. I had not been inside his rooms for years; I remembered them only as untidy and dusty. He was rumoured to keep his great chest of gold there, running his fingers through the coins at night.
The porter knocked and the door was opened by an elderly woman in a clean apron, a short coif over her grey hair.
‘I am Serjeant Matthew Shardlake.’
She curtsied. ‘I am Mistress Warren. Master Bealknap has employed me to nurse him. He received your note.’ She continued in the same cool, disinterested tone, ‘He has a great growth in his stomach, the doctor says he has little time left now. The end will come in the next day or two.’
‘Has he no family who might be summoned?’
‘None he wished to contact. I think there was some falling-out, many years ago. When I asked him, he said he had not seen his family since the old King’s time.’
I thought, that was near forty years past. Bealknap must have been only in his teens at the time. Another old family quarrel perhaps, such as the one I had just been discussing.
The old woman looked at me curiously. ‘You are the only one he has asked to see. Other than the doctor and the builder, no one has been to visit.’ Builder? I thought. ‘Apart from the priest,’ she added. ‘Master Bealknap received the last rites this morning.’ His death, then, was truly close. ‘I will take you in,’ Mistress Warren said, leading me along a dusty hallway. She lowered her voice. ‘He refuses to have his shutters open, I do not know why. I warn you, his room smells bad.’
She spoke true. As she opened the door to a half-dark chamber a fusty smell of unwashed skin and diseased, rotten breath hit me like a blow. I followed her in. The room was poorly furnished, with a chest for clothes, a couple of wooden chairs, a bed and a crowded table filled with bottles and potions. The bed, at least, was large and comfortable-looking.
Bealknap had always been thin, but the figure under the covers was skeletal, the skin stretched tight over his skull, his ears and big nose prominent, the hands that lay on the sheet like white claws.
‘I think he is asleep,’ Mistress Warren said quietly. She bent over the dying man. ‘Yes, asleep. Each time I think to find him gone, but he still breathes.’ For the first time I heard a note of human sympathy in her voice. She shook Bealknap’s shoulder gently. His eyes opened, those forget-me-not-blue eyes that had always roved around, never quite meeting yours. But today he stared right up at me, then smiled effortfully, showing his yellow teeth.
‘Brother Shardlake.’ His voice was scarce above a whisper. ‘Ah, I knew if I sent you the gold, you would come.’
I brought one of the chairs over to the bed. Bealknap looked at the nurse. ‘Go, Mary,’ he said curtly. She curtsied and left.
‘Is there anything I can get you?’ I asked.
He shook his head wearily. ‘No. I just wanted to see you one last time.’
‘I am sorry to find you in this condition.’
‘No,’ he said softly. ‘Let us speak the truth. You have always hated me, and I you.’
I did not reply. Bealknap’s breath rasped painfully in his chest. Then he whispered, his breath in my face stinking, rotten, ‘What is going to happen now?’
‘None of us can know that for certain, Brother Bealknap,’ I said uncomfortably. ‘We must all hope for God’s mercy on our souls – ’
His eyes stayed fixed on mine. ‘You and I know better than that. I think it is the one thing we agree on. We both know men have no souls, any more than cats or dogs. There is nothing afterwards, nothing. Only darkness and silence.’