‘I might be better going alone.’

‘No, I’ll come. I need to be doing something. I am still in the dark. There was another thought I had. What if the attack on me at the camp happened for a different reason than the first one?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Rich’s threat. I was attacked once, if I was attacked again it would be assumed it was connected to the stolen papers.’ I shook my head. ‘Yet would Rich go to the trouble and risk of employing some rough to kill me, just because I have been tenacious on the Bealknap case?’

‘Too tenacious.’ Barak looked at me seriously. ‘Rich is capable of putting someone out of the way if they cause him trouble. But I doubt he’d do it just to get a troublesome lawyer off his back, especially when given time he can find the right judge.’

I sighed. ‘You are right. But Jesu, what a tangle. ’Tis hard to be the hunted rather than the hunter.’

‘That Titulus you found did not help?’

‘No. Though there are things in it that puzzle me. And we are left with this dangerous knowledge about the Queen. I still think we should tell Maleverer.’

‘But if we do, and Lady Rochford and the Queen and Culpeper deny it, as they will, what proof have we? We will be punished as troublemakers. And I do not want to place myself in Maleverer’s hands. He lied, you know, when he said the Titulus was a forgery. Couldn’t you write to Cranmer, tell him all that’s happened, let him deal with it?’

‘A letter wouldn’t get out of here unread. And it would take ten days for a reply to get back.’ I looked at him. ‘No, we’re stuck here. And I can’t trust anyone. Except you.’

Barak sighed. ‘Well, I said I would see Tamasin. I ought to go, if I may.’

‘Of course.’

‘She is afraid.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ll walk you back to the lodging house?’

We returned and arranged that Barak would be back at nine and we would visit the tavern. I went into my cubicle and locked the door. It was starting to get dark. I sighed. I seemed to be making trouble for everyone: Barak, young Leacon over that arbitration, and Broderick, whose life I had saved for the torturer. I saw again in my mind’s eye the King’s face as he smiled cruelly at me at Fulford. I shook my head. How that image kept haunting me, biting into my guts, somehow at the centre of everything that had happened. The Mouldwarp.

Chapter Twenty-six

THE BELLS OF THE Minster sounded loudly as Barak and I passed it, booming through the damp night air. It was dark, and we stumbled on the unpaved streets as we headed down the Fossgate towards the corner from which Barak had seen Master Craike emerge.

‘This is the way,’ Barak said.

He pointed down a narrow lane, the sky almost hidden by the overhanging top storeys of the tumbledown houses. Doors and shutters were closed, only strips of yellow light showing through warped timbers. A white board creaked and flapped in the wind at the far end of the lane. ‘That’s the alehouse sign,’ he said. ‘The White Hart.’

I studied it. ‘Seems a mean place. You’re right, Craike wouldn’t put folk from the Progress up there.’ I wrinkled my nose at the strong stench of piss from the alley.

‘Sure you want to come?’ Barak asked. ‘This is a rough spot.’

‘I want to find out what he was up to.’ I followed him into the lane, hand at my dagger. At his suggestion I had donned my cheapest-looking clothes. I looked at the doorways we passed; I had a sense of eyes watching. But no one had followed us from St Mary’s; we had watched and listened carefully.

Barak pushed open the door of the alehouse. It was the sort of poor place I expected, merely a room set with benches and tables and a hatch through which a slatternly looking woman passed home-brewed beer to the men in ragged clothes who sat on the benches lining the walls. The floor was bare and the room cold, without a fire. A dog, belonging to a pair of young Dalesmen in sheepskin coats who sat together by the wall, growled at us then barked loudly.

‘Down, Crag.’ The dog’s master laid a big hand on its back. ‘Look, Davey, here’s gentlemen come to’t White Hart.’

Barak went up to the bar and asked the landlady for two mugs of beer. She did not understand him at first and he had to repeat his request. ‘Southrons,’ the man with the dog said loudly to his friend. ‘Crag caught their stink.’

Barak turned to them. ‘We’ve just come for a drink, my friend,’ he said. ‘We want no trouble.’

I looked around uneasily. There were a dozen Yorkers there, all glaring at us with hostile expressions. The Dalesmen, from their looks, had been drinking for some time.

The woman handed two wooden mugs through the hatch. All the benches were taken; we could have found spaces if some of the customers had moved up but they sat where they were. We stood awkwardly. The Dalesman called Davey laughed.

‘Can thee not find a bink, maisters?’ He turned to his friend. ‘Tha should make a seat for the southron gentlemen, Alan. They must be gentlemen, they don’t allow the soldiers and servants into York. We should mebbe stand in their presence.’

‘I say we’re all made by one workman, of like mire,’ Alan replied.

‘I agree,’ Barak replied cheerfully. ‘From London to Carlisle, we are all one.’

‘Nay, maister. Not in riches, when all our rents go down to London.’

‘We’ve done well enough out of them today,’ his friend said. ‘Selling those poor nawtes of sheep to the purveyors for five nobles.’

‘Ay, but when the Progress leaves prices will fall again. Our folk can’t pay the money southrons can.’ He looked at us belligerently, hunting for an argument. I took a sip of the foul-tasting beer.

‘Has tha come on business, maisters?’ one of the men on the benches asked, and to my surprise some of the others laughed.

‘Business?’ I repeated.

‘Ay, tha’ll not have come for our company.’ There was more laughter.

Just then a door opened and a tall stringy fellow in an apron appeared. He frowned at the Dalesmen then came over to us.

‘Can I help thee, maisters?’ he asked quietly.

I exchanged a look with Barak. Something more than the selling of ale was going on here.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Can you?’

The man inclined his head towards the door, and we were glad enough to follow him into a narrow passageway beyond, that stank of old beer. A candle burned in a lamp on the staircase. He closed the door. ‘I’m sorry about that, maisters. Southrons aren’t popular here.’

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Now then, how can you help us?’

‘Depends on your wants.’ He scanned our faces with narrow, calculating eyes.

‘A friend of mine was here a week or so ago. An official from the Progress. A large fellow with a fringe of fair hair.’

‘Ay.’ His face relaxed into a leer. ‘I remember him. Tell you what we have here, did he?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well.’ He smiled confidingly. ‘Tell me what your pleasure is. Sharp little nips from a girl with a dagger, or a belt-thrashing from an old carrion-whore, like your friend enjoys?’ He leered again. ‘I can arrange to indulge the most sinful lusts.’

I was taken aback. Whatever I had expected, it was not this. Barak stepped in. ‘You provide girls who cater for special tastes, hey?’

He nodded eagerly. ‘Tastes the ordinary houses don’t cater for. Boys, too, if you like. Got a good network in York, going back to the days of the monks. Sinful, some of those fellows were.’

‘Tell you what,’ Barak said quickly. ‘We’re making enquiries on behalf of one of the senior officials at St Mary’s, who doesn’t care to be seen here himself. I think you have what he wants. We’ll talk to him and come back. He wouldn’t want to be seen here, perhaps some private room?’

‘Ay, sir, that can be arranged.’

‘Here’s two shillings for your trouble in the meantime.’ Barak produced the coins and handed them over. The man looked at them.