Revelation

'I don't know. I left her dressing.' He sighed. 'Sometimes I wonder if she thinks I get these knocks to spite her.'

'Are you still on poor terms?'

'Probably. When we got back I tried to tell her I just wanted to sleep, but she wanted to know everything. I was too tired to talk,' he added. 'Too worried, too, because this isn't over.'

Before leaving the remains of Goddard's house, Harsnet and I and Sir Thomas Seymour had held a conference. It was clear now that Goddard had been a victim, not the perpetrator, of the killings. I wondered whether he, too, after leaving Westminster Abbey had flirted with radical Protestantism, but drawn back and thus had qualified to became the seventh victim. The killer was still on the loose, and we had no idea who he was, or where he would strike again.

'Who is the bastard?' Barak asked. 'How did he get to know all these different people and their religious affinities?'

'At least we know how he got to us. By watching and spying as a pedlar. By the way, that gash on poor Goddard's head was on the wrong side of his face. The killer put it there to encourage our belief we were facing the killer in that room.'

'He slipped up there,' Barak said.

'It's the first time he has.'

'How did he get to Goddard? How did he find out where he lived?'

'Heaven knows. The magistrate said Goddard hadn't been seen for a few days. I'll wager the killer got into the house and tied him up, then sent that note to Dean Benson. And set up his greatest ever display.' I clenched my hands into fists. 'Who is he? Where is he now?'

'We're back to square one.'

'And without any idea where he will strike next. But one thing I am sure of. He will not end it now.'

'Do you think he will come after you?'

'I don't know. Why not just blow the house up with us all in it?' I sighed. I wished I could have consulted Guy. I had heard nothing since our quarrel. I would not have been surprised if Piers had returned, wormed his way back in with my friend.

I pushed my plate aside and stood up, wincing at the pain from my back. 'I should go to the Bedlam today. Shawms should have his report ready for the court and I want to look it over, and see Adam. And Dorothy later. I expect Bealknap is still there.'

'Are you all right to go out?' Barak asked.

'I can't sit around here. I will go to Chambers and try to do some work after I have seen Dorothy. I—'

The door opened and Tamasin came in. She wore a plain dress and her blonde hair was unbound, falling to her shoulders. She looked between us with a hostile glance. 'You have both been in the wars, I see,' she said.

'Where is your coif?' Barak asked. 'Your hair is unbound like an unmarried woman.'

She ignored him, and turned to me. 'Jack says you haven't caught him.'

'No,' I said. I added quietly. 'We have to go on searching.'

'He's killed eight people,' Barak said, impatiently. 'Nine, if Sir Thomas' man that was injured in the explosion dies. Seven of them in horrible slow ways.'

'We have to go on,' I said.

Tamasin sat down opposite her husband. She looked him in the eye, with an expression that was somehow both angry and sad. 'It is not what you're doing now that makes me angry with you. It is what you've been like since our baby died.'

Barak looked at me, then back at her. 'You shouldn't be talking of this in front of someone else. Not that you haven't already, I know.'

'I talk in front of someone else because you won't listen when we talk alone.' Tamasin's voice rose to a shout and she banged a hand on the table, making us both jump. 'Do you ever think what it's been like for me since the baby died? Do you think a day passes without it all coming back to me, the day he was born? You weren't there, you were out drinking. Yes, that was when that started—'

'Tamasin—' Barak raised his voice, but she raised hers higher.

'The pain, the awful pain, I never felt anything like it. You don't know what women bear. And then the midwife telling me the baby was all twisted round in my womb, she couldn't bring him out alive and I would die unless she broke his little skull. You didn't hear that crack, it wasn't loud but it still sounds over and over in my head. Then she lifted him out and I saw he was dead — anyone could see he was dead — but still I wanted so desperately to hear him cry, hear him cry . . .' Tears were rolling down her face now. Barak had gone pale, and sat very still.

'You never told me,' he said.

'I wanted to spare you!' she cried. 'Not that you spared me. Coming back drunk, always going on about your son, your poor son. My son too.'

'I didn't realize it had been like that,' Barak said. 'I just knew he was born dead.'

'What in God's name did you think it was like?'

He swallowed. 'I've heard — that when a baby is twisted in the womb like that it can stop a woman having others. We—'

'I don't know if that's why there have been no others!' Tamasin shouted. 'Is that all you care about? Is that all you can say to me?'