‘Did you know any of Greening’s friends yourself?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he answered, a little curtly. ‘But a friend in my congregation knows Curdy, the candlemaker. It appears Curdy may be a sacramentarian, his family are certainly old Lollards, like Greening. He may even be an Anabaptist, though that is probably rumour.’ He gave me a hard, unblinking look. ‘Though be clear, Master Shardlake, I have never spoken for sacramentarianism, and I have nothing but loathing for these Anabaptists, who would overthrow all, interpreting the Bible after their own wild fantasies. The fact they may have played with such ideas does not mean Greening and his friends held them, of course.’ For all his youth, Cecil spoke like an older, more experienced man.
‘That is true.’
‘All Greening’s friends lived around Paternoster Row and the cathedral. I went out very early this morning; I thought it the best time to catch them, before church service. The exiled Scots preacher, McKendrick, lived in a cheap room he rented from Curdy, who was a widower. Curdy apparently was a friendly, jovial man, a journeyman, who worked with other candlemakers. McKendrick, on the other hand, had a reputation for surliness. And he is a big man, and an ex-soldier, so people tended not to get into quarrels with him.’
‘These two friends of Greening’s are very different people.’
‘Which implies common religious affinities. In any event, when I arrived at Curdy’s house both were gone. According to Curdy’s housekeeper, they vanished overnight nearly a week ago, taking hardly anything with them.’
‘Fled somewhere, then.’
‘Unquestionably. The other friend of Greening’s, the Dutchman Vandersteyn, is in the cloth trade, an intermediary for the Flanders wool buyers. He had a neat little house of his own, but when I got there his steward told me the same story; his master gone suddenly, taking only a few possessions.’
‘Could they have been afraid of sharing Greening’s fate?’
‘Perhaps. Or if they were sacramentarians they might have feared the attentions of Bishop Gardiner’s men. If that is the case, the Lord alone knows where they are.’
I remembered young Hugh’s letter, the story of the refugees arriving in the Low Countries, fearing persecution. And Vandersteyn hailed from Flanders.
Cecil continued, ‘Then I decided to call on the apprentice Elias’s mother, to see what news she had, or whether perhaps he had come home. I found her outside, on her knees, frantically washing blood off the wall of the alleyway.’
‘Dear God.’
‘She has two little daughters. Her husband died of quinsy last year.’
‘Perhaps that was why Elias took another job rather than leaving the district as the others seem to have done.’
‘Mayhap.’ Cecil took a deep breath. ‘Elias’s mother told me that in the small hours of last night, she heard her son shouting for help outside. She rushed out, like a good mother.’ He sighed again and shook his head. ‘She saw him killed. Let her tell you the story herself. She has taken the body into the house. Jesu, the sight of it turned my stomach.’
‘Has she told the authorities?’
‘No. Because of what Elias said to her before he died.’
‘The name Anne Askew?’
‘Yes.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Quiet now, look there.’
We were passing along Paternoster Row. All the shops were shut for the Sabbath. However, a man in a black doublet was walking slowly along the sunlit street, peering into the shop windows. Cecil smiled sardonically. ‘I know him. One of Bishop Gardiner’s spies, trying to spot forbidden titles no doubt, or dubious-looking visitors to the printers.’
We walked past him. Looking back at him from a safe distance, I asked Cecil, ‘Have you worked for the Queen’s Learned Council for long?’
‘Two years only. Lord Parr has been good enough to favour me.’
For Cecil’s abilities, I thought; there was no doubting those. And for his reformist sympathies too, most likely. ‘Where are you from?’ I asked. ‘I thought I caught a trace of Lincolnshire. My pupil is from there.’
‘Well divined. My first wife came from there, too, like me, but sadly God took her to Him in childbirth, though He left me our son.’
I looked at him. His was an unremarkable face, but for those powerful, protuberant eyes which I had noticed seldom blinked, and that line of three moles running down one cheek. Yet he had been married, widowed and remarried, and become a confidant of the highest in the land, all by his mid-twenties. For all his ordinary looks and reserved manner, William Cecil was a man out of the common run. ‘We turn down here,’ he said abruptly.
We walked into a narrow alley, made darker by the shadow of the cathedral, onto which it backed. Chickens pecked in the dust. Cecil stopped in front of a door with flaking paint. Beside it, almost blocking the dusty alleyway, stood a cart, a tarpaulin slung over it. Cecil knocked gently at the door: two short raps then a long pause till the next, obviously a prearranged signal.