We locked the door again. Barak looked at me questioningly. Curiosity fought the fear of getting ever deeper into this grim business. But we were in deep as it was, and I knew how good a lockpick Barak was – I had seen him in action before. ‘Do it,’ I said abruptly. ‘But for Jesu’s sake, be careful.’ I removed the pin from my cap and handed it to him

He inserted it into the little lock, twisting it gently to and fro. I looked again at the scene painted on the box, Diana the huntress. The paint was lined with hairline cracks through age, but the picture was very well done; this box must have been very expensive once.

‘Shit,’ Barak said suddenly. He stood holding up half the pin. It had broken off, leaving the other half stuck in the lock. I could just see a tiny sliver of metal protruding. He tried to grasp it but it was not sticking out far enough.

‘You dolt!’ I cried ‘So much for your brag! If that pin’s stuck the box will have to be smashed open. Maleverer will see it’s been tampered with.’

‘The damned pin was too thin.’

‘Excuses won’t help.’

‘We could say we found it like that.’

‘I do not fancy lying to him. Do you?’

He frowned. ‘If I could lay hold of a pair of thin pliers I could have that pin out of the lock. Those workmen are bound to have pliers.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Well, go and find some, for Jesu’s sake. I knew I should not have agreed to this.’

He looked, for once, crestfallen. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he said, and made for the door. He turned the key to let himself out. I heard his footsteps moving away down the corridor and sighed, looking anxiously at the box. I gently touched the broken end of the pin, wondering if my thinner fingers might get it out, but it was impossible.

Then I heard a faint click. I stared at the casket. Had my fiddling moved the tumblers? Hesitantly, I grasped the lid. It opened. Very tentatively, I pulled it fully up. A musty smell assailed my nostrils. I bent my head and slowly, carefully, looked inside.

The box was half full of papers. I picked out the top one, unfolded it carefully, then stared in puzzlement. It was a chart of the royal family tree such as one sees in ornamental genealogies, but written crudely in ink. It went back a century to Yorkist times, though some minor members of the family who had died without issue were missing. I studied it carefully, quite bemused. There was nothing secret here – it was the familiar royal line such as one saw displayed in many official buildings. If someone had made an abbreviated family tree of the royal house for a pastime, why on earth hide it?

I looked in the box again. Underneath the family tree was a scrappy piece of paper on which a rude text had been written. ‘This is the prophecy of the great magician Merlin,’ it began. ‘Revealed in the days of King Arthur, his prophecy of the Kings that will follow John…’ There was stuff about monarchs who would be called the Goat, the Lion and the Ass, before it concluded with, ‘The eighth Henry, that shall be called the Mouldwarp, who shall be cursed by God for his actions. His kingdom shall be divided into three, and none of his heirs shall inherit.’

I laid the scrawl down. It looked like one of the scurrilous prophecies that had been hawked around London at the time of the Pilgrimage of Grace. The penalty for distributing such things had been death.

The next document was not a paper but a parchment, quite a large one, folded over several times. I opened it out. To my astonishment it had the seal of Parliament at the bottom: this was an Act of Parliament, though not one I recognized. ‘Titulus Regulus,’ I read. ‘An Act for the Settlement of the Crown upon the King and his Issue…’ Which King? I hastily scanned the thick, beautifully inscribed black lettering. ‘Our Soveraign Lord the King Richard the Thirde…’ I read. I frowned again. I had never heard of this Act. I laid it carefully aside and turned to the box. The rest of the pages seemed to be a series of handwritten scrawls on cheap paper. The top one was larger than the rest. I took it out and laid it on the table.

This is the true confession of me, Edward Blaybourne, that I make in contemplation of death, that the world may know of my great sin…

Then something struck me on the side of the head, a heavy blow that made me gasp. My vision went misty, but I saw a big red drop fall on to Blaybourne’s confession. As I realized that it was my own blood, I felt another blow on the back of my neck. My legs buckled beneath me, and I fell into a great darkness.

Chapter Twelve

MY FIRST SENSATION WHEN I woke was of unaccustomed warmth. I luxuriated in it for a second, realizing how used I had become in York to feeling cold and damp. But why was I in York? Then I remembered everything in a rush. I tried to sit up but a throbbing pain banged at the back of my neck. Hands grasped me and eased me back to a lying position. ‘He’s awake!’ I heard Master Craike call out. ‘Bring the hippocras! Careful there, sir, you have had a bad blow to the head.’

I opened my eyes: I was lying on a nest of cushions on a rush-matting floor. Master Craike stood above me, his plump hands clasped anxiously. Barak appeared behind him, bearing a jug and a glass. ‘Have some of this, sir,’ he said. ‘Not too much.’

I drank some of the warm wine. The sweetness revived me. I endeavoured again to sit up but the back of my neck hurt and there was another pain at the side of my head. I felt it and my hand came away sticky with blood.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ Barak said. ‘That one was a glancing blow.’

I stared groggily around the room, which seemed familiar, and realized I was in Maleverer’s office at the King’s Manor. The warmth came from a firepan, one of the charcoal-burning braziers used to heat rooms in wealthy houses. A red-coated soldier with a pike stood by the door, watching us, and I realized we were under guard.

‘How long have I been unconscious?’ I asked.

‘Over an hour,’ Barak answered. ‘I was worried.’ And indeed his face was as anxious as Craike’s.

‘Do you remember what happened, sir?’ Craike asked.

‘Something hit me. The box clicked open when I touched the lock, there were papers inside. I was looking at them – Barak, the box! Where is it?’

‘The box is safe enough.’ He nodded at the table, where the casket stood, the lid open. ‘It’s empty,’ he said heavily.

‘Papers,’ I said. ‘It was full of papers.’

His face set. ‘We’re in the shit,’ he said. ‘I came back with some pliers, perhaps half an hour after I left you. I found you lying on the floor of Master Craike’s office, with him bending over you.’ He looked suspiciously at Craike, who frowned back at him.

‘The steward’s office asked me for the key,’ the plump official said. ‘They had told me it wasn’t required till this evening but they changed their minds.’ He gave Barak a haughty look. ‘You may check with them. I looked for you but could not find you. In the end I came to the office. As I turned the corner I heard footsteps, someone going down the back stairs. The office door was open and you were lying on the floor. Then this fellow came in.’

I felt my head carefully. It was a wonder I had not been killed. Oldroyd had been, I thought, and felt a stab of terror lance through me. I looked at Craike. ‘You must have interrupted the person who assaulted me. You may have saved my life. Did you hear or see anything of the person running?’

‘No. Only those footsteps.’

I sighed deeply. ‘So the papers are gone.’ I looked at Barak. If his lockpicking had not come to grief this would not have happened. I tried to marshal my thoughts. ‘If whoever attacked me heard Master Craike coming they could have grabbed the papers and fled. The box would be more difficult to hide.’ I looked at the wretched thing that I had tried to guard with such care. ‘With the papers gone it has no value.’