Tombland

He told Barak to wait in the courtyard and led me along a corridor, to one of the most magnificent dining halls I had ever seen, with a high hammer-beam ceiling of beautiful proportions. Portraits and a tapestry covered the walls, and the room looked over a carefully tended knot garden. Some of the pictures hung at an odd angle, however, and several chairs had been broken. A large, decorated porcelain vase had been knocked from the long polished table and smashed. Leaning over it, trying to pick up the pieces with her bandaged hands, was Jane Reynolds, as ever wearing a black dress, and a black French hood beneath which wisps of white hair showed. The steward said, ‘Master Reynolds is with Master Nicholas Sotherton. I cannot interrupt them.’ From a neighbouring room I could hear raised, angry voices. I said, scarcely daring to believe my luck, ‘It was Mistress Reynolds I wished to see.’

Jane Reynolds had stood up as the steward entered, introducing me as Master Overton. She stared at me with those cold, still blue eyes as I removed my cap and bowed. Her thin body held its usual rigid stiffness. She nodded to the steward to depart. She did not approach me, or ask me to sit, but put the shards of broken porcelain carefully on the table and stood beside them. ‘Master Shardlake?’ she asked in surprise.

‘Yes, madam. I am sorry to disturb you.’

‘Why did you pretend to be your young assistant?’

‘I thought otherwise you might not speak to me.’

I had expected her to be angry at my deception – most gentlewomen would have been furious – but she said only, ‘It would be better if you left.’ She cast a nervous glance at the door, behind which the argument seemed to be continuing.

‘It is about your poor daughter.’

She stared at me for a long moment, then something in her stance seemed to soften a little. ‘You care about what happened to her.’

‘I do.’

‘My husband is come to visit the Sothertons, to see what has happened to them. The city is falling apart around our ears, he says.’ She spoke evenly, as though she did not care. ‘He brought me to visit Mistress Sotherton, my relative, but, as with most people, a few minutes of my silent company were enough.’ For the first time I saw her smile, a bitter, crooked rictus. She continued, in the same cold, even tone. ‘It is said you have joined the rebels.’

‘I was taken prisoner on the road, and made to help Captain Kett with his trials. I have sought to ensure justice and mercy.’

She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘Mercy? In this world? You ask too much.’

I said, ‘You showed mercy to a poor boy I know, he told me the money you gave him saved him from starving. Simon Scambler.’

She nodded, though her face was expressionless again. ‘Ah yes, Sooty Scambler, the boys call him; they mock him around the town.’

‘Madam, Simon told me you said something to him, that echoed words you spoke in court. I remember them. “Edith, Edith, God save you, I wanted a boy – I wanted a boy!” I remember you running out of court in tears.’

She flinched slightly, and I thought she might break down, but she only stood more rigidly again, one hand playing with the broken porcelain on the table so that I feared she might cut herself. She said quietly, ‘My husband wanted a boy as his heir. If that had happened, or if I had had more children, none of the evils that have followed would have happened.’

‘You did not cause them, madam.’

She went on in the same monotone. ‘When Edith grew up, and John Boleyn showed interest in her, my husband saw a new focus for his ambitions. It was the talk of the country then that King Henry wanted to set aside Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. John Boleyn’s kinship was distant, but even remote kinship counts at the royal court.’

‘I know, madam. I well remember the crowds of distant relatives of the great men who thronged the public spaces of Whitehall Palace in the old King’s time.’

‘How do you know that?’ she asked, showing genuine interest for the first time.

‘I worked on the Learned Council of Queen Catherine Parr, God save her soul.’

‘Then you will know that to make your way at court you have to be clever, quick, know who to befriend and who to bribe. But John Boleyn was a child in that world – he never even got to meet Queen Anne, as she became. Oh, the fact that he had a connection to the Boleyns helped my husband’s rise in Norwich.’ She gave that bitter smile again. ‘But then suddenly Queen Anne was gone, executed, and King Edward’s mother Jane Seymour was Queen. My husband was much angered with John Boleyn and poor Edith.’ Venom suddenly infused her voice. ‘As though it were Edith’s fault the King tired of Anne Boleyn and cut her head off, or that young John Boleyn was a clumsy innocent.’

‘You are right, madam.’

She sighed. ‘It has been said since then that the Boleyn name is cursed, and I think perhaps it is.’ She fell silent, retreating inside herself again.

I took a deep breath. ‘Madam, I have to ask, have you any idea who killed your daughter?’

She shook her head wearily. ‘No.’