Dark Fire

'I saw him this morning. Fine with his glasses. Though still rather slow.' I looked out over the water. 'How easy it is to make victims of people,' I said quietly. 'How humanity is addicted to that sin. I made a victim of Skelly, Elizabeth's family made a far worse victim of her. Reformers have made victims of papists, and now the reformers are being victimized in their turn. Will it never end?' I stared north, towards Smithfield, where the fires would be lit now. The smoke would be visible from Chancery Lane; it takes much fuel to burn a living man to ashes. How they would suffer.

'People shouldn't let themselves be made victims,' Barak said.

'They cannot always help themselves. Not if they are ground down too far, or too often.'

'Perhaps.'

I looked at him. There was an idea I had been turning over in my mind for several days. I was not at all sure it was a good one.

'I have Godfrey's cases now as well as my own. I have a great deal of work to catch up on and more will come in. The population of London grows increasingly litigious by the day. I need more help than Skelly can give; I need an assistant, someone to exchange ideas with, do some of the investigative work. I suppose you are unemployed now?'

He looked at me in surprise. I was not taken in; I had guessed from the beginning he had not suggested this meeting entirely out of good will.

'I'll not get work with the government again. I'm known too well as Lord Cromwell's man.'

'Do you think you could work for me? Is that dog Latin of yours up to it?'

'I should think so.'

'Are you sure you want to stay in London? There are rumours of plague out at Islington.'

He shrugged contemptuously. 'There's always plague.'

'The work will be boring sometimes. You will have to get used to legal language, learn to understand it rather than mock it. You'll have to knock off some of your rough edges, learn to address barristers and judges with respect. And stop calling everyone you don't like arseholes.'

'Even Bealknap?'

'I'll make an exception there. And you'll have to call me sir.'

Barak bit his lip and wrinkled his nose, as though in an agony of indecision. It was all pretence, of course; I had come to know his ways too well to be taken in. I had to prevent myself from laughing.

'I will be happy to serve you, sir,' he said at last. And then he did something he had never done before. He bowed.

'Very well,' I said. 'Come, then, let's go to Chancery Lane. See if we can bring a little order into this wicked world. A tiny bit.'

We walked through Temple Gardens. Ahead lay Chancery Lane. Beyond that Smithfield, where the fires would be lit now. Behind us the river, flowing to London Bridge where Cromwell's head stood fixed on its stake. Between Smithfield and the river the roiling city, ever in need of justice and absolution.

HISTORICAL NOTE

By the summer of 1540, the hottest of the sixteenth century, Thomas Cromwell's position as Henry VIII's chief minister was under threat. The king had repudiated Rome and declared himself head of the Church eight years before and had at first welcomed reformist measures. The dissolution of the monasteries, master-minded by Cromwell, had brought him vast wealth and Henry had allowed Cromwell and Archbishop Cranmer much latitude in ending Latin ceremonies and printing the Bible in English for the first time.

By the late 1530s, however, the tide was turning. Henry's innate religious conservatism was reasserting itself and he was afraid that the overturning of the old religious hierarchy might turn into a challenge to the secular class structure, as had happened in parts of Germany. The religious edicts of 1539 began a process of doctrinal backpedalling.

England, moreover, was now isolated in Europe and the pope was urging the main Catholic powers, France and Spain, to unite and reconquer the heretical island for Roman Catholicism. There was genuine fear of invasion and huge sums were spent in training young men in arms, fortifying the south coast, and building up the navy.

Cromwell sought to strengthen both reform at home and England's military position abroad by marrying the king (a widower since his third wife Jane Seymour's death in childbirth in 1537) to a princess from one of the states associated with the German Protestant League. However, his choice, Anne of Cleves, was a disaster. The king disliked her on sight and declared himself unable to have carnal relations with her. Although he had approved the match, Henry VIII always sought someone else to blame for his problems and now he blamed Cromwell. To make matters worse for the chief minister, an incipient Franco-Spanish alliance broke down as the two Catholic powers resumed their traditional hostilities and the threat of invasion receded.