‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

‘Yes, yes. I – I am in a little pain. Don’t fuss,’ he added with sudden asperity.

I looked at him with concern, remembering how he had collapsed at Fulford. There was a stir at the gate and Maleverer appeared. He loomed over us, frowning angrily.

‘God’s death, what is it now? The King is here.’ He looked at my face, then said sharply, ‘What’s happened?’

‘I have been attacked again, Sir William.’ I held up the crossbow. ‘With this. It was Jennet Marlin.’

‘What? That woman?’ He looked incredulous. ‘Where is she?’

‘Lying dead outside Howlme church.’

He gave me a long hard stare, then looked at Giles. ‘What’s this old fellow doing here?’

‘Master Wrenne was with me. He saved me.’

Giles looked up. ‘I had to strike her down,’ he said. ‘It was the only way.’

Maleverer held out a hand for the crossbow.

‘She stole it when that cart overturned,’ I told him.

‘Come inside,’ he snapped. ‘Both of you.’

He led the way up the path and into the Great Hall. There was no sign of the King, thank goodness. Maleverer led us through to a downstairs room that had been converted into an office, and sat behind his desk. We stood before him. In the candlelight that filled the room, Wrenne’s face looked white and pouchy.

‘Might Master Wrenne sit, Sir William?’ I asked. ‘He has had a shock.’ Maleverer looked at him and grunted assent. I pulled out a chair for the old man.

‘Thank you.’

‘Well? What happened?’

I told him what had taken place on the hill: Jennet Marlin’s revelation that it had been her trying to kill me, her certainty I had seen papers in the casket that incriminated her fiancé. He leaned back, thinking, then turned to Giles, who had sat silently throughout my narrative. He nodded at the stick he was holding between his knees.

‘You brained her with that?’

‘Yes.’

Giles looked down. He saw smears of blood on his hands and shuddered.

‘How much of what she said did you hear, before you struck her?’ I asked.

‘Only the end. I did not mean to kill her. I have never killed another person -’

‘Well, you did tonight.’ Maleverer looked at him contemptuously. ‘What’s the matter with you? You look as though you’re about to faint away. Seems you’ve a weak stomach for a lawyer.’

‘He has – he is unwell,’ I told Maleverer. He frowned anxiously at the old man.

‘Then he should be got out of here. The King won’t have illness in any house he is staying at. Guard!’ he called. A soldier hurried in, and Maleverer gestured to Giles. ‘Assist him to his tent. Find out where it is and take him there.’

The soldier helped Giles to his feet. He looked at me. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, then allowed himself to be helped out. There was a moment’s silence. Maleverer ran his fingers along the edge of his black beard, a rapid flick, flick. Then he reached down and pulled something out of a drawer in his desk. It was the jewel casket. He set it on the desk. I looked again upon the painting of Diana the huntress, dressed in the style of a hundred years ago, aiming her bow at a stag.

‘I’ve kept this by me since St Mary’s. I’ve sat looking at it, pondering over who could be behind this.’ He gave a bark of laughter. ‘I’ve often wished it could speak, tell me what it contained.’ He shook his head. ‘I never thought of

Mistress Marlin. I’ll have them search her room. She may have those papers hidden there.’

‘I did not suspect her either. But she was desperate to get her fiancé freed, it was all that mattered to her. And a desperate person can be more dangerous than the worst villain. You never know what they might do in their desperation, while a villain is always a villain.’

‘She was clever, too. I expect she stole the keys of St Mary’s church easily enough. Someone with a name as feared as Lady Rochford’s behind her could go where she willed at King’s Manor.’

‘It was a cold cleverness. She pretended to be my friend.’ I smiled sadly. ‘It softened me towards her. I wanted her friendship.’

He looked at me interrogatively. ‘Sweet on her, were you?’

I sighed. ‘No, Sir William, I was not. I always distrusted that obsessive quality about her. I think that obsessiveness enabled her to justify to herself what she was doing. Desperate people can think up reasons to justify almost anything, be they stupid or clever.’ I took a deep breath, then added, ‘She thought you had been responsible for Master Locke being put in the Tower, said you coveted his lands and hoped to see him attainted for treason.’

I braced myself for a storm, but Maleverer only laughed. ‘Insolent mare. I merely sent him south on the Privy Council’s orders. Though if his lands are attainted, as they will be now, I might buy some of them.’ A covetous look came into his eyes, and in the midst of our talk of traitors and murderers he gave a momentary smile at the thought of more profit. Perhaps soon he would have enough land to feel he had redeemed his name enough to marry.

He frowned at me. ‘What’s the matter with you? You still look worried.’

‘Some things still puzzle me. Why was she so certain I had seen all the papers in the casket? When she knocked me down at St Mary’s she must have seen I had only pulled out the topmost ones.’

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps she thought you’d already looked at them, and put them back.’

‘She believed I’d seen them all and was keeping my knowledge from you, perhaps to tell Cranmer.’

He looked at me hard. ‘She wasn’t right, was she?’ He tapped the casket with a finger. ‘We’ve only your word for how much you saw.’

‘I spoke the truth, Sir William.’

He gave me another disdainful look. ‘I’ll have her quarters turned upside down, and if we don’t find those papers hidden there I’ll have everyone associated with her questioned. Young Miss Reedbourne. Lady Rochford.’

‘Lady Rochford will not be pleased,’ I said. ‘And Tamasin will be terrified.’

‘Pox on her.’

I thought, if soldiers appear at her quarters Lady Rochford, and Tamasin too, will think the Queen and Culpeper have been found out. As perhaps they will be if those papers still exist. If. I looked at Maleverer. ‘Sir William, her aim was to destroy those papers. I think she may have done that long since, after she first took them at St Mary’s.’

He nodded, running his finger along the edge of his beard again. ‘If there is no trace of the papers we can assume that she got rid of them. She took them from Oldroyd and he was in with the conspirators.’

‘Yes. Bernard Locke told her he had repented. She told herself she was helping scotch the conspirators’ plans, as well as destroying evidence that would incriminate him. Though I think Locke’s main concern may well have been to save his own skin.’

Maleverer nodded. ‘Many held in the Tower come to see things that way. Especially if they’ve been shown the rack, and heard the screams.’

‘Not Broderick.’

He grunted. ‘He’s not there yet. Well, if she has destroyed the papers, she did us a favour. Though the Privy Council would have preferred to see them.’ He got up. ‘Locke will have some stiff questioning now. I am going to start the search.’ I could almost feel the nervous energy coming from his big frame. ‘And I’d better have that bitch’s body fetched down, before some villager stumbles over it. Until I come back, do not move from this room, do you understand?’

HE LEFT THE ROOM, his robe whisking behind him. I sat down in the seat Wrenne had vacated. I thought, Maleverer is not the cleverest of men, he gets his way by bullying. He despises me but likes to pick my brain. I sighed and looked round the room. It might have been a study once. An old tapestry of a hunting scene hung behind Maleverer’s desk. Had the executed Robert Constable sat gazing at it, as I did now? I turned away and looked out of the window at the dark night for some time, thinking.