‘You two got on well,’ I said to Barak.

‘Ay, she’s a fine girl. She says the day after tomorrow some of the townsfolk are rehearsing a musical display to be put on before the King when he arrives. I asked her to accompany me there. If that is all right,’ he added.

‘So long as some new demand on us does not arise.’ I looked at him. ‘Are most of the women you dally with so forward?’ I meant the words in jest, but they came out sharp. He shrugged.

‘Perhaps she is forward. But in these strange circumstances for all of us, why should we not snatch a little pleasure where we can?’ There was a slight truculence in his tone. ‘Do you disapprove of her?’

‘I think she has something scheming about her, for all her merry airs.’ I wondered whether to tell him I believed there was something odd about the incident the day before, but held my tongue.

‘Mistress Marlin is a strange woman,’ he said. ‘How old is she, I wonder?’

‘About thirty. Same age as you.’

‘She might be attractive if she did not always look as though she were sucking on a bad tooth.’

‘Yes. Her fiancé is in the Tower. She said she had known him since childhood.’

‘A long engagement, if she’s thirty.’

‘Yes, it is.’

He smiled. ‘I can ask Mistress Tamasin about it tomorrow, if you like.’

‘I confess she piques my curiosity. I have a feeling she dislikes me, I wish I knew why.’

‘I think she dislikes everybody.’

‘Perhaps. But now we are done, I have been waiting for a chance to speak with you about this morning. What you said in the chapterhouse, that you’d never have made a mistake like that when you worked for Cromwell. Is that what has been on your mind these last weeks?’

He hesitated, then said quietly. ‘These days I feel neither fish nor fowl.’ I nodded, encouraging him to continue. He reddened. ‘When I first came to work for you it was something new, it was interesting. But now I realize…’

‘Go on.’

‘I am too rough and crude ever to fit in with the world of the courts. You do not know how many times I have sat taking notes in court, or greeted other barristers in your chambers, and have wanted to call them all pompous arseholes and tweak their noses.’

‘That is mere childishness.’

‘No, it is not. You know what my life was before I met you. A rough life among rough people, Lord Cromwell prized me for my contacts among such folk. But now he is gone, if I were to leave the law without a trade, I should soon sink to being a man of the streets, end up where I was as a child.’ He sighed and rubbed his hand across his forehead.

‘The law may be a dull life sometimes. But, Jack, look ahead ten years. Would you rather be a trickster on the streets then, your joints stiffer each winter, or secure in your post at Lincoln’s Inn?’

He looked me in the eye. ‘I am torn. Part of me wants to stay, settle down, yet part of me enjoyed the excitement this morning.’

‘I saw.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I would be sorrier than I can say to lose you. You have brightened up life in chambers no end. But it is your life, you must decide.’

He smiled sadly. ‘I have been an unruly clerk these last weeks, have I not?’

‘That you have.’

‘I am sorry.’ He bit his lip. ‘I will decide, one way or the other, before we return to London. I promise.’

‘If you want to talk more with me, I shall be ready.’

‘Thank you.’

I drew a deep breath. ‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘I have decided. I think we should get up very early tomorrow, visit the glazier’s house again before this rehearsal of the presentation to King. I am worried Maleverer will say we should have sent a messenger after him. I want to go and check whether the searchers found anything in that room. If there are signs they did, there is less to worry about.’

‘And if they did not?’

‘Then we shall have to look ourselves.’ I spoke with trepidation. Barak’s eyes, though, had lit up at the prospect.

Chapter Ten

BY THE TIME WE left the refectory the rain had stopped. It was dark now, but in the courtyard the men laboured on. Three enormous tents now stood beside the pavilions, and men were taking furniture inside – ornate chairs, big carved wooden buffets and boxes that probably contained gold plate, for soldiers accompanied them. And all of this, I thought, must have been carried from London.

Back in our lodgings the clerks had brought a small trestle table up to the fire and sat playing cards. Kimber and a couple of other young men in lawyers’ robes were with them and I reflected on the odd, temporary egalitarianism the Progress seemed to have brought to its employees. Kimber asked if we would join them and I told Barak to do so if he wished, but I would go to my cubicle. The words ‘crookback lawyer’s clerk’ still rankled. A little to my disappointment, he said he would. I left him and went to repair my robe as best I could with my little sewing kit, then lay down on my bed.

It was too early to sleep, though, and as I lay there listening to the whoops and groans from the card players as their fortunes changed, I found myself prey to a succession of worrying thoughts. I thought about Maleverer’s sudden dash to visit the Privy Council, and my failure to tell him there might be something concealed at Oldroyd’s house. My decision to go there early on the morrow had been an impulsive one, but on reflection it was the safest thing to do to avoid possible trouble. If there was a hiding place in the wall and it had been discovered, nothing was lost, but if it had not and I discovered it, that could only be to my credit. I did not hide from myself that Maleverer frightened me; he was a man as ruthless and brutal as my old master Cromwell had been, yet without his sophistication, and without, I guessed, any principles beyond ambition and a naked love of exercising power. A brute and a bully, a dangerous man.

And then there was Broderick. I recalled his cold assertion that I was feeding him up for the torturers in the Tower. And yet I must not forget that Broderick had been part of a plot which, had it succeeded, would have plunged the realm into untold bloodshed. I wondered again what secret it was he knew, a secret that even Cranmer was afraid of, then told myself that it was safer not to know.

Eventually the card players trailed off to their cubicles. Through the wall I heard Barak come in next door, and the chinking sound of coins laid on his chest; evidently he had had a successful evening. I undressed and got into bed, but still my thoughts turned in my head, worrying at me. I thought of that strange grim woman Jennet Marlin, with her angry grievance against, apparently, the whole world. And then it came to me whom she reminded me of, with a clarity that made me catch my breath.

My disability had marked me out from my earliest days. I had never been at ease among the boys from the local farms who gathered together and played and hunted rabbits in the woods. I had never been welcomed by them; it was as though in some way I threatened their rough physicality. And hunchbacks are known to bring bad luck.

For some years my only companion at play had been a little girl of my own age. Her name was Suzanne, and she was the daughter of the owner of the farm next to my father’s. The father was a widower, a big rough cheerful man with a brood of five hulking boys. Suzanne was the only girl and after his wife died the farmer did not seem to know what to do with her. One day she had appeared in our yard where I was sailing paper boats in a large puddle. She watched me for a while; I was too shy to talk to her.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked at length.

‘Playing at boats.’ I looked up at her. She wore a dirty dress too small for her and her fair hair stuck out like straw. She looked more like the child of a vagabond than a respectable farmer.