‘Come over here,’ he said sharply. He grasped my arm and led me out of earshot of Barak. He gave me a hard, fixed look. ‘You know I have been having dealings with your master here, Sir William Maleverer.’ His thin face was tense with anger now. ‘He is interested in buying more lands up here, and Augmentations has lands to sell. Do not forget, Brother Shardlake, that Sir William has many powers here, and that you are alone in York but for your boorish servant. And not liked by the King, it appears. Tread carefully.’ He paused significantly. ‘And do not send that letter about the Bealknap case to London; I know you have not sent it already.’ I looked surprised, and he laughed. ‘Do you think, sir, with the political trouble there has been up here, that the posts from the Progress go unwatched?’ He looked at me with those cold grey eyes. ‘Mark well what I say, and do not trifle with me.’ He turned and walked away with sharp, rapid steps.
Barak came over to me. ‘What did he want?’
I told him what Rich had said. ‘He always threatens much,’ I said. ‘He did last year.’ Yet I felt uneasy. More threats, more danger.
‘We need to get home,’ Barak said emphatically. ‘We and Tamasin.’
‘We can none of us go till we are ordered. For now we are trapped here like flies in jam.’
‘In shit, more like,’ Barak muttered as we headed for the gate.
WE WENT THROUGH TO the Minster precinct and down to Giles’s house. He answered the door himself. He looked much better; there was colour in his cheeks again. He welcomed us into the solar where Madge sat by the fire ticking at some plain beads. Madge rose and bowed, then went to fetch some wine for us. Master Wrenne urged us to sit. The greyfalcon on its perch inclined its head at us.
‘You look much better, sir,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Thank you. My rest did me much good. And Dr Jibson’s prescription eases my pain. How do you fare, Master Barak, did you see the King yesterday?’ His manner was easy, he mentioned the King’s name in a light tone.
‘Yes, sir. When he entered the city. He is a man of great presence.’ Barak looked at Giles a little uneasily; I guessed he had never encountered a man who was dying slowly before. But if Giles noticed he did not show it.
‘Let none doubt the King has presence,’ he agreed, nodding wisely.
Madge brought in the wine and a plate of little cakes. She seemed to avoid my eye, I wondered why. Giles took an appreciative swig from his goblet. ‘Ah, good French wine, nothing better on a fine morning. And jumble cakes, help yourselves.’ He smiled at us. ‘Now, I have had a list from the steward’s office of the petitioners who will present themselves at the castle tomorrow. It will be the first of two hearings.’
‘You are sure you feel well enough to preside?’ I asked him.
‘Quite sure.’ He nodded emphatically. ‘They are mostly simple enough matters.’
‘What if the parties refuse to accept our arbitration?’
He smiled. ‘Then they may try their luck in the London courts. I doubt many will want to do that.’
‘Then we must be sure we do justice.’
‘Indeed. I have left the list in my little study next door, together with the knapsacks containing the petitions. I wonder if Master Barak might be set to marrying up the papers with the names, and our summary, then we can have a quick look through them together.’
‘A good idea. Do that, would you, Barak?’
‘And take your wine,’ Giles added. ‘Do not go dry to your task.’
When the door was closed Giles turned and gave me a wry smile. ‘Madge tells me she committed a small indiscretion when you were here yesterday. She told you a little of my quarrel with my nephew.’
‘Only that it was a quarrel over politics.’
‘She felt she had to tell me.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Well, Matthew, if you are to help me in London, you should know. Only – it was a little difficult for me to speak of.’
‘I understand. But – Giles, are you sure you are well enough to travel? After Fulford -’
He waved a large hand, his emerald ring catching the light. ‘I am going,’ he said with sudden sharpness. ‘That is decided. But let me tell you about my nephew.’
‘If you wish.’
Giles began. ‘It was a great sorrow to me that my wife and I had no children that lived. My wife had a sister, Elizabeth, and she married a man called Dakin. A law-clerk, a mousy little fellow without ambition. I always thought him a poor creature, and – well, if I am honest, I was jealous they had a son who grew up tall and strong, never had a day’s illness. He went to read for the bar at Gray’s Inn when he grew to manhood. With a letter of recommendation from me.’ He smiled tightly. ‘An affection for the boy had grown in me by then. Martin was clever, he liked to think for himself and I admired that. It is an uncommon quality. You have it,’ he added, pointing at me with his goblet.
I laughed. ‘Thank you.’
‘And yet that quality can be carried too far, it can take one into dangerous waters.’
‘It can,’ I agreed.
‘Martin would return to York to visit his parents every year.’ He looked at the table on its dais. ‘We had some merry evenings here, Martin and his parents, me and my wife. All dead now, apart from Martin and me.’ His mouth hardened. ‘And yet he never spoke to me of something that must have been working secretly in his mind for a long time. Not till he came home in the summer of 1532, nine years ago. The King was still married to Catherine of Aragon then, though he had been trying to get a divorce out of the Pope for years so he could marry Anne Boleyn. He was coming to the end of that road, soon he would break with Rome, appoint Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury and get him to declare his first marriage invalid.’
‘I remember it well.’
‘Virtually everyone in the north viewed the prospect of a break with Rome with horror. We knew Anne Boleyn was a reformer, we feared this would mean heretics like Cromwell coming to power, as indeed it did.’
‘I was a reformer then, Giles,’ I said quickly. ‘I knew Cromwell well in the days before he came into his great power.’
Giles gave me an interrogative look. His eyes could be very sharp. ‘From what you have said, I think you are no longer an enthusiast?’
‘I am not. For neither side.’
Giles nodded. ‘Martin was. He was as much of an enthusiast as it was possible to be.’
‘For reform?’
‘No. For the Pope. For Queen Catherine. That was the problem. Oh, it was – and is – easy to be sentimental about the King’s first wife. How she had been married to him for twenty years, always been loyal, how wicked the King was to cast her aside for Anne Boleyn. Yet there was more to it than that, as we both know. Queen Catherine was in her forties, past child-bearing, and she had not given the King a male heir. Unless he could marry a younger woman who might provide an heir, the Tudor dynasty would die with him.’
‘All that is true.’
‘And there were many of us who thought the only way to preserve true religion in England was for Queen Catherine to do what the Pope himself had suggested to her: go into a nunnery, allow the King to marry again.’ He shook his head. ‘Foolish, obstinate woman. By insisting God intended her to be married to the King until death, she brought about the very revolution in religion she hated and feared.’
I nodded. ‘It is a paradox.’
‘A paradox Martin could not see. He stood stiff in the view that the King must stay married to Catherine of Aragon. So he told us over the dinner-table that day, in no uncertain terms.’ Giles looked over at the table. ‘It made me wroth, furious. I saw, if he did not, that unless Catherine of Aragon agreed to a divorce, or to go to a nunnery, the King would break with Rome. As in the end he did. It may seem strange, now both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn are dead, to think we argued so fiercely, but we who supported the old religion were split: the realists like me, and those like Martin who urged Queen Catherine should not give an inch. I was angry, Matthew.’ He shook his leonine head. ‘Angry too to hear Martin’s parents support him, and realize he must have discussed his beliefs with them, though not with me that had done everything to smooth and aid his path into the law.’ A heavy bitterness came into Giles’s voice.