The radical groups were well known to be disputatious, often falling out among themselves. Okedene had overheard them arguing loudly. I thought, what if they had somehow stolen the manuscript and planned to print it as proof that the Queen sympathized with religious radicalism? They might even have thought it would stir up the populace in support of their stance, so popular was the Queen. Of course, the notion was mad – the only result would be the Queen’s death. But the religious radicals were often ignorant and naive when it came to actual political realities.
I stood up, pacing to and fro. This, I told myself, was pure speculation. And the person Okedene had heard them arguing over just before Greening’s murder was not the Queen, but this mysterious Jurony Bertano, that they called the ‘agent of the Antichrist’, who was soon to arrive, but about whom nobody at court appeared to know anything. I wrote the name down phonetically, as I was unsure of the spelling, and decided I would ask Guy about the possible nationality of its owner.
Then I wrote another, final name: Bealknap. What he had said was a complete mystery, and a worrying one. He had seemed certain that both the Queen and I had an ill fate in store. But I crossed out his name; his deathbed words had, surely, referred to the heresy hunt and his hope to live to see me and the Queen caught up in it.
I put down my pen, and stared over the garden, almost completely in shadow now. I thought of the Queen. That evangelism of hers, that desire to share her faith, had caused her to forget her habitual caution and common sense. She regretted it now, was full of guilt. The Lamentation itself might not be strictly heretical, but she had shown disloyalty to Henry by writing it in secret. That would not be easily forgiven. The King had not allowed her to be prosecuted without evidence, when Gardiner was after her, but if that manuscript were to be given to him – or, worse still, printed in public . . . I shook my head at the thought of what her fate might be then.
Chapter Sixteen
THE NEXT MORNING, Monday, Barak called at the house early. Like Genesis, his black mare, Sukey, was getting older, I noticed, as we rode out along Fleet Street, under the city wall. The sky had taken on that white milky colour that can portend summer rain.
‘Bealknap died yesterday,’ I said.
‘There’s one gone straight down to hell.’
‘He told me he did not believe in an afterlife. And he was unpleasant to the last.’
‘Told you so.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘And this business. This chest. What’s behind it?’
I saw Barak’s curiosity had got the better of him. I hesitated, but realized I would have to give him something to satisfy that curiosity. ‘A ring was stolen from it. Best you do not know more.’
We had just passed under London Bridge, and the horses shied at a rattle of pots and pans. A middle-aged woman, dressed only in a shift, was seated backwards on a horse, facing the animal’s tail and wearing a pointed cap with the letter S on it. Her head was bowed and she was crying. A man, his expression stern, led the horse along, while a little band of children ran alongside, banging sticks on pots and pans; several adults too.
‘A scold being led to the stocks,’ Barak said.
‘Ay, Bishop Bonner’s courts do not like women overstepping themselves.’
‘No,’ said Barak. ‘And those folk will be her neighbours. How little excuse people need to turn on each other.’
WE RODE DOWN to Thames Street, where Baynard’s Castle stood by the river. It was an old building, renovated and expanded, like all the royal properties, by Henry. I had seen it from the river many times; its tall four-storey turrets rose straight from the Thames. Since Catherine of Aragon’s time it had been the Queen’s official residence, doubling as the Wardrobe, where her clothes and those of all her household were looked after and repaired. Catherine Parr’s sister, Anne, resided there now with her husband, Sir William Herbert, a senior officer in the King’s household. All the Parrs had found advancement in these last years; the Queen’s brother, named William like his uncle, was on the Privy Council.
Baynard’s Castle was reached from the street by a large gate, well guarded by men in the Queen’s livery, for there was much of value inside. We dismounted, our names were checked off on the usual list, and our horses taken to the stables. The courtyard of Baynard’s Castle seemed even more a place of business than Whitehall; two merchants were arguing loudly over a bolt of cloth they held between them, while several men unloaded heavy chests from a cart.