Tombland

‘Edward said we shouldn’t come back to the yard after dark. It’s not safe.’

‘I could have told you that.’

Back in Tombland, the sound of singing was audible from the cathedral. In the alcove by the Maid’s Head the man in the ragged blanket still lay unmoving. On impulse I bent down and shook his shoulder. He did not stir. Carefully, I removed the blanket. I almost gagged at the smell. A young man in his early twenties lay there, his cheeks sunken, his hair alive with lice. His eyes were half open, unseeing. He was quite dead.

‘Looks as though he starved,’ Barak said.

‘Ay.’ I looked over at the cathedral. ‘So much for Christian charity.’

Chapter Twenty

The next morning, Toby came to the Maid’s Head at seven. Barak would be busy with Assizes work all week. It was Monday, the seventeenth of June, three days until Boleyn’s trial. The judges would be arriving that evening, and the Maid’s Head was busier than ever.

I laid out what we needed to do that day to Toby and Nicholas over breakfast. ‘First, we see Boleyn, ask him about this Snockstobe, and whether he used any other locksmiths. And after what Reynolds’s steward told me, I need to press him about his relations with his wife. And there is that lack of an alibi. I am sure Boleyn wasn’t telling the truth.’

‘Maybe the prospect of being hanged on Friday will have made him think again,’ Toby said.

‘I hope to God it has. We’ll see. Afterwards, we’ll visit the locksmith, and if he made no copy of the keys, we’ll visit every other locksmith in Norwich. Nicholas and I will do that. If we find the twins took the key from Scambler and made a copy, it throws a whole new light on the case.’

‘Could the twins have been working for someone else?’ Nicholas asked. He turned to Toby. ‘Didn’t you say they and some other young gentlemen did dirty work for Richard Southwell?’

‘So it is said,’ Toby replied.

‘After we’ve seen Boleyn, Toby, I want you to try and trace the brother of this Grace Bone.’

‘That will not be easy, if he’s poor, with no link to a trade guild or someone of rank. There’re thousands like your friend Josephine, living in slums around Norwich, with no reason to advertise themselves to the authorities.’

‘Do what you can. You found Josephine, after all.’ My tone was snappish, for I was conscious how near to trial we were, and the face of the dead man from the night before still haunted my mind. I went on, ‘Where was Edith during those nine years? If this Grace Bone is still alive and in Norwich, perhaps she could tell us something. If we could find where Edith went, maybe we could solve this case.’

Nicholas said, ‘If Edith was not in her wits, she would have needed a protector.’

‘Or a guard.’

I bit my lip. ‘Then either her protector gave up on her, or she escaped from her guard. And made her way to Elizabeth as a last hope. But we’ve no idea.’

‘And we’ve still somehow got to get the twins on their own,’ Nicholas added.

Just then, a shadow fell over our table. I looked up to find a tall, thin man in his late forties, dressed identically to me in the robe, coif and cap of a serjeant-at-law, smiling down at me tightly. He bowed and doffed his cap. ‘God give you good morrow, sir. I did not know any other serjeants were attending the Assizes.’

I rose and bowed in my turn. ‘Matthew Shardlake, of Lincoln’s Inn.’

‘I am John Flowerdew of Hethersett. Most of my work now is local, representing the Norfolk escheator Henry Mynne.’ He smiled again, a thin, insincere smile not reflected in the cold, searching brown eyes under heavy black eyebrows. His narrow face with his large Roman nose, no doubt handsome enough once, had deep lines in each cheek.

‘Are you staying at the Maid’s Head for the Assizes?’ I asked him.

‘Yes. I need to attend in my official capacity. What case are you here on?’

‘I am advising Master John Boleyn in respect of the murder charge against him.’

Flowerdew’s gaze intensified. ‘Ah, there has been much talk about that matter. It looks as though he will hang. Then I shall be responsible for his lands.’

‘I understand you have visited Isabella Boleyn?’

Flowerdew laughed sardonically. ‘Does she still call herself Boleyn? Well, she will be out bag and baggage if Boleyn’s lands pass to the King. Yes, I made a preliminary visit.’

I raised my eyebrows. Flowerdew asked, ‘Will you be attending the ceremony to welcome the judges into the city this evening?’

‘Probably.’

‘Well,’ he said, looking a little put out by the brevity of my responses. ‘I have a meeting with the county justices of the peace to attend.’

Nicholas asked, ‘Excuse me, sir, is there any more news of the troubles in the West?’

Flowerdew frowned mightily. ‘It is said they are besieging Exeter, and an army will be sent against them. They have had the insolence to send petitions to the King, demanding the religious reforms be abolished, the Scottish war ended and God knows what else.’

‘It is very serious, then,’ I said.