‘Very well,’ I said, ‘but now you must excuse me.’

I stepped past her quickly, making her move aside; more quickly than I had intended for she lost her balance, slipped and fell against the wall. Something fell from her dress to the floor.

‘I am sorry,’ I said quickly, for I had not meant to cause her to hurt herself. ‘Let me.’ I bent to pick up the object that had fallen on the floor. I looked at it, then held it up with a puzzled frown. It was a rosary, a cheap thing of wooden beads on a string, the beads smooth with long use. I looked up at her; her face had gone scarlet.

‘You have found my secret, sir,’ she said quietly.

I handed it to her. She quickly enclosed it in her little fist. She must have worn it on a belt round her underskirt, I thought, hidden.

I looked up and down the corridor. ‘Does Barak know you are a papist?’ I asked her quietly. ‘He told me once you had no strong views on religion.’

She met my hard gaze. ‘I am not a papist, sir. But my grandmother was brought up long before reform was heard of and she was always ticking at her beads. She said they calmed her when she was worried. It is a comfort to poor folk still.’

‘A comfort that is disapproved of now. As you know, for you keep it hidden.’

Her voice rose defiantly. ‘Saying the words in your head, sir, ticking the beads, what harm does it do? It calms me.’ She looked at me and I saw the strain in her face. ‘I am worried what we saw may come out. I am afraid. And I mourn Jennet.’

I looked at her fist closed round the rosary. I saw the nails were bitten to the quick. ‘That is truly all the beads are, something to calm you?’

‘Yes, that is all. I think I had better stop this habit,’ she added bitterly. ‘I will follow whatever forms of religion are required by the King, even though they change from year to year. It is a puzzle to me and perhaps a puzzle to God, but common folk must leave God and the King to resolve it between them, must they not?’

‘That is wisest.’

She turned away then. She did not go back to our room where Barak waited but marched off down the corridor. Her footsteps sounded down the inn stairs. I followed more slowly. I wondered, had she told the truth about why she ticked the beads, or had she invented that tale about her grandmother with her usual quickness? I felt more than ever that I did not really know Tamasin, that she was a woman who kept much secret.

THE NEXT MORNING found me at the little library once more, for all that it was raining again. As the servant took my wet coat in the hall, Brother Davies came clattering busily down the stairs, a leather bag under his arm.

‘Brother Shardlake. Back so soon? I have to go now, a case before the City Council, but look at anything that interests you in the library.’

‘Thank you. How much?’

He waved a hand. ‘No fee for visitors. But a little word of warning.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Old Brother Swann is in this morning. He is over eighty, the oldest lawyer in Hull by many years. Long retired – he says he comes here to keep up to date with the law but really he comes to talk.’

‘Ah. I see.’

‘I looked in a moment ago, he is asleep before the fire. Do not wake him if you want to study.’

‘Thank you.’

He nodded, took his coat from the servant and went out into the pelting rain. I opened the library door quietly. Within it was warm and peaceful, a good fire lit in the grate, the embossed lettering on the spines of the large old books glinting in the flames. The only occupant was an old man in a shiny lawyer’s robe, fast asleep by the fire. His face was a mass of lines and wrinkles, the pink skull showing through sparse white hair. I tiptoed over to the shelves, took a couple of books containing cases relevant to the Bealknap case and sat down at a table. I found it hard to concentrate, though; I had been away from my books too long. I reflected on Giles’s words. I had not liked that look Rich had given me as we parted. Yet every instinct told me Rich would not have gone to so much trouble unless he feared he might lose the case. I had to go on, I had to try to win. Fighting for my clients was my life’s work; if I gave in, what was left for me?

I looked up to find the old man had woken and was looking at me with surprisingly bright blue eyes. He smiled, multiplying the wrinkles in his face.

‘Not in the mood for work today, brother?’

I laughed. ‘No, I fear not.’

‘I do not think I have seen you before. Are you new to Hull?’

‘I am here with the King’s Progress.’

‘Ah, yes, that.’

‘My name is Matthew Shardlake.’ I rose in my place and bowed.

‘Forgive me if I do not rise. I am eighty-six. My name is Alan Swann. Barrister at law. Retired,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘So, then, the bad weather keeps you here.’

‘I fear so.’

‘I remember the great gale of 1460, the year of the Battle of Wakefield.’

‘You remember that?’ I asked in surprise.

‘I recall the messenger coming to Hull saying the Duke of York was slain, his head set over the gates of York wearing a paper crown. My father cheered, for we all supported the House of Lancaster then. It was later the county went over to the Yorkists.’

‘I know. I have a friend in York who has told me stories of the Striving between the Roses.’

‘Hard times,’ he said. ‘Hard times.’

A thought struck me. ‘You will remember Richard III’s seizure of the throne after King Edward V died. The disappearance of the Princes in the Tower?’

He nodded. ‘Ah, yes.’

‘When Richard took the throne, rumours were put about that his brother Edward IV’s marriage was invalid.’ I hesitated. ‘And was there not something about King Edward’s own legitimacy?’ I looked at Brother Swann keenly. Giles had been little more than a boy in 1483, but this ancient would already have been a man of almost thirty.

Brother Swann was silent, turning to look into the fire. The wind drew the yellow flames up the chimney with a faint roar. I wondered if he had forgotten me, but then he turned back to me with a smile.

‘That is a matter no one has spoken of for many years. Many years.’

‘I am something of an antiquarian. Like my friend from York. He was telling me about the rumours, about King Edward.’ I felt guilty, lying to the old man, but I wanted to know what he remembered.

Brother Swann smiled. ‘It was an interesting story. How much of it was true no one knows, nor ever will for the King’s father suppressed all talk of it.’

‘Yes, I heard.’

He looked at me. ‘Edward’s mother, Cecily Neville, she made the claim after Edward died. She said in public that Edward IV’s father had not been the late Duke of York, her husband. She said Edward was illegitimate, the son of a liaison she had with an archer, when they were in France during the wars.’

My heart started beating fast.

‘That made a mighty stir,’ the old man said softly. He paused and wrapped his cloak around himself. ‘There is a bitter draught from that window. This wind nearly blew me off my feet on my way here. I remember the gale of 1460…’

I controlled my impatience. ‘Yes, you told me. But you were talking of Cecily Neville -’

‘Ah, yes. Cecily Neville stood up outside St Paul’s – I think it was St Paul’s – and told the world that Edward IV was the offspring of a liaison between her and an archer. A lawyer came up here from London on a case shortly after, he told me all about it.’

‘Do you remember the archer’s name?’

‘Blaybourne. Edward Blaybourne, a Kentish archer.’

The blood was thudding in my ears. ‘What happened to him?’

‘I think he must have been dead by the time of Richard III’s usurpation. The liaison had been forty years before, after all.’ He looked at me seriously. ‘Perhaps he was done away with.’

‘So there was no real evidence for the story?’