‘That would be convenient. I have business in the afternoon.’
We rode on. Coleswyn seemed preoccupied today and spoke little. Then we passed the mouth of an alleyway, where a commotion was taking place. A couple of burly men were bringing out furniture from a house in the alley: a truckle bed, a table, a couple of rickety chairs. They loaded them on a cart, while a woman in cheap wadmol clothing, several small children clinging to her skirts, stood by stony-faced. A middle-aged man was arguing loudly with a large fellow who had a club at his waist and was supervising the removal.
‘We’re only a month behind with the rent! We’ve been there twelve years! I can’t help it trade’s so bad!’
‘Not my problem, goodman,’ the big fellow answered unsympathetically. ‘You’re in arrears and you’ve got to go.’
‘People don’t want building repairs done this year, not with all the taxes there have been for the war! And the rise in prices – ’ The man turned to a little crowd that was gathering. There were murmurs of agreement.
‘An eviction,’ Coleswyn observed quietly.
‘There have been many of those this year.’
The builder’s wife suddenly lunged forward and grasped a chest which the two men had brought from the alleyway. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘That’s my husband’s tools!’
‘Everything is to be taken to pay the arrears,’ the big man said.
The builder joined his wife. His voice was almost frantic. ‘I can’t work without those! I’m allowed to keep my tools!’
‘Leave that chest be!’ A man who had joined the crowd shouted threateningly. The fellow with the club – the landlord’s agent, presumably – looked round nervously; the number of spectators was growing.
We halted as Coleswyn called out, ‘He’s right! He can keep the tools of his trade! I’m a lawyer!’
The crowd turned to us; many of their faces were hostile, even though Coleswyn was trying to help. Lawyers are never popular. The man with the club, though, seemed relieved. ‘All right!’ he shouted. ‘Leave that chest, if it’s the law!’ He could tell his employer later that a lawyer had interfered.
The men lowered the chest to the ground and the woman sat on it, gathering her children round her. ‘You can go, pen-scratchers!’ someone shouted at us. ‘Salved your consciences, have you?’
We rode on. ‘Poor men lie under great temptation to doubt God’s providence,’ Coleswyn said quietly. ‘But one day, when we have the godly Commonwealth, there will be justice for men of all ranks.’
I shook my head sadly. ‘So I used to believe, once. I thought the proceeds from the monasteries would be used to bring justice to the poor; that the King, as Head of the Church, would have a regard for them the old church did not. Yet all that money went on extending Whitehall and other palaces, or was thrown away on the war. No wonder some folk have gone down more radical paths.’
‘Yet those people would bring naught but anarchy.’ Coleswyn spoke with a desperate quiet intensity. ‘No, a decent, ordered, godly realm must come.’
WE REACHED THE HOUSE. It was big, timber-framed like most London houses, fronting onto the busy street of Dowgate. An arch led to a stableyard at the back. We tied up the horses and stood in the summer sunshine, looking at the rear of the house. The windows were shuttered, and though the property was well-maintained it had a sad, deserted air. Dry straw from the days when the Cotterstoke horses had been stabled here blew round the dusty yard on the light breeze.
‘This place would fetch a good deal of money, even in these times,’ Coleswyn observed.
‘I agree. It is silly to leave it standing empty and unsold because of this dispute.’ I shook my head. ‘You know, the more I think of the strange wording of her Will, the more I believe that old woman intended to cause trouble between her children.’
‘But why?’
I shook my head.
We walked round to the front and knocked. There were shuffling footsteps, and a small elderly man opened the door. I remembered him as Patrick Vowell, the servant who had been kept on to look after the place after old Mrs Cotterstoke died. He was fortunate. The other servants, including the witnesses to old Deborah Cotterstoke’s Will, had been dismissed, as usually happened when the owner of the household died.
‘Serjeant Shardlake with Master Coleswyn,’ I said.