Dark Fire

I saw the boxes were full of bones, brown and ancient. A group of apprentices was delving inside them, casting pieces of tattered winding sheets onto the pavement, hauling out skulls and carefully scraping away the greenish moss that clung to some of them. The watchman, a huge fat fellow, watched indifferently. We tied the horses to a post. Barak went over to the watchman and nodded at the apprentices. 'God's teeth, what are they at?'

'Scraping off the grave moss. Sir Richard is clearing out the monks' graveyard.' The big man shrugged. 'The apothecaries say the moss on the skulls of the dead is good for the liver and they've sent their apprentices up here.' He delved in his pocket and pulled out a little golden trinket in the shape of a crescent. 'There's some strange things buried with them – this monk had been on the Crusades.' He winked. 'My little bonus for letting the boys scavenge.'

'We have business here,' I said. 'We are due to meet a Master Kytchyn.'

'Lord Cromwell's business,' Barak added.

The doorman nodded. 'The fellow you want is here already, I allowed him into the church.' He studied us closely, eyes alert with curiosity.

I walked up to the gateway. The guard hesitated a moment, then stepped aside and let us through.

The scene that met my eyes on the other side of the gatehouse made me stop dead. The nave of the great church had been pulled down, leaving only a gigantic pile of rubble from which spars of wood protruded. The north end of the church still stood and a huge wooden wall had been erected to seal it from the elements. Most of the neighbouring cloisters had been pulled down too, and the chapter house stripped of its lead. I could see beyond to the prior's house, the fine dwelling Sir Richard Rich had bought. Washing hung from lines in the back garden and three little girls ran and played among the flapping sheets, oddly incongruous amid the destruction. I had seen monastic houses brought down before – who had not in those days? – but not on this scale. A sinister quietness hung over the wreckage.

Barak laughed and scratched his head. 'Not much left, is there?'

'Where are the workmen?' I asked.

'They start late if it's Augmentations work. They know it's a good screw.'

I followed Barak as he picked his way through the rubble towards a door in the wooden barrier. I had a lifetime's contempt for these huge, rich monastic churches kept for the enjoyment of perhaps a dozen monks; when the purpose of the foundation was to serve a hospital the waste of resources seemed even more obscene. Yet as I followed Barak through the door, I had to admit that what was left of the interior of St Bartholomew's Church was magnificent. The walls soared a hundred and fifty feet in a series of pillared arches, richly painted in greens and ochres, up to a row of stained-glass windows. Because of the wooden barrier at the south end, what remained of the interior was gloomy, but I could see that the niches where saints' shrines had stood were empty now and that the side chapels had been stripped of all their images. Near the top of the church, however, one large canopied tomb remained. A candle burned before it, the only one in that building, which once would have been lit by thousands. A figure stood before the tomb, head bent. We walked towards him, our footsteps ringing on the tiled floor. I caught a faint tang in the air; the incense of centuries.

The figure turned as we drew near. A tall, thin man of about fifty in a white clerical cassock, a tangle of grey hair framing a long, anxious face. The look he gave us was wary and fearful. He leaned back as though wishing he might melt into the shadowed wall.

'Master Kytchyn?' I called.

'Ay. Master Shardlake?' His voice was unexpectedly high. He cast a nervous look at Barak, making me wonder if he had been rough with Kytchyn the day before.

'I'm sorry about the candle, sir,' he said quickly. 'I – it was a moment of weakness, sir, when I saw our old founder's tomb.' He leaned forward quickly and pinched out the flame, wincing as the hot wax burned his fingers.

'No matter,' I said. I glanced at the tomb, where a remarkably lifelike effigy of a friar in Dominican black lay in the dimness, arms folded in prayer.

'Prior Rahere,' Kytchyn mumbled. 'Our founder.'

'Yes. Well, never mind that. I wanted to see the place where a certain Master Gristwood discovered something last year.'

'Yes, sir.' He swallowed, still looking frightened. 'Master Gristwood said to say no word of what we found, on pain of death, and I haven't, I swear. Sir, is it true what this man told me? Master Gristwood has been murdered?'

'It is, Brother.'

'I am not brother,' Kytchyn mumbled. 'I am not a friar any more. No one is.'

'Of course. I am sorry – a slip of the tongue.' I looked around the church. 'Are they to bring the rest of this place down?'

'No.' His face cheered a little. 'The local people have asked to keep what is left as their own church. They are fond of the place. Sir Richard has agreed.'