Revelation

I steered her away from the instruments and led her back outside; she was clearly disappointed that I would not tell her more. In the doorway I asked her, 'That cart in the workshop? Was it Adrian Cantrell's?'

'Ay. He used to take things to customers in it.' A thought struck me. To get from Westminster up to Hertfordshire, Cantrell must have a horse.

'What became of his horse?' I asked. 'I thought Charlie must have sold him.'

'What did it look like?'

She shrugged. 'Brown, with a white triangle down its nose.'

'You never saw him going in or out of there with a horse and cart?'

'Him that can hardly see?' She snorted. 'No. I saw him going out to buy something once or twice, shrinking against the wall, feeling his way along it.'

'Ever see him go out at night?'

She laughed. 'I shouldn't have thought that was very likely. Anyway, I got to bed early and lock my doors. It is not safe around here. Look, sir, what's this all about—'

'It doesn't matter. Thank you.' I gently closed the door on her and turned to Harsnet. 'So he learned about acting,' I said quietly. 'Perhaps even as a boy he needed to act to appear like a normal man. I wonder if he killed his father. I wonder if that was when he learned what he truly wanted to be.'

'Such speculation does not get us anywhere,' Harsnet said.

'No. You are right.'

'What about that horse?' Harsnet asked.

'He must have one.'

'Can he see to ride?'

'I begin to think he has greatly exaggerated that eye trouble of his. He has to be able to ride to get to Goddard's house.' I turned to the stairs. 'I want to have another look at his Bible, those underlined passages. See if I can wring some meaning from his scribblings.'

'I'll come up with you.'

Harsnet was too blinkered to give me any serious help. 'No, thank you, Gregory. I work best alone.'

I CLIMBED the stairs again. It was strange to sit at Cantrell's desk, beside his bed, the room silent apart from the noises from the street. I sat down, held my head in my hands and bent over the book. Like a lawyer trying to get inside an opponent's mind through the text of an affidavit, I searched for what Cantrell might see here, what final enemy was to be destroyed. My mind tumbled and turned the words of the short chapter. 'I will shew unto ye the judgement of the great whore ... with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication...' On to where the angel said she would explain her mystery to the saint: 'And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.'

I thought, after the seven vials the next victim will be the eighth; like the seven, but different somehow in kind. The most important victim because, after her judgement, Armageddon comes at last. I thought furiously. Was a woman his victim? It would have to be a woman to symbolize the Whore. Fornication with the kings of the earth. For Cantrell surely it would have to be a Protestant woman who had backslid, like poor Mistress Bunce that took up with the ex-monk Lockley. I thought, fornication, a king, the eighth. A woman who had not yet abandoned true religion but who would surely be seen to do so if she were to marry a religious conservative. 'The beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth.' King Henry VIII, who had been a reformer himself but was so no longer. Not the King, but a woman who would be his wife.

I stood up. I looked out of the window into the yard. The drunken guard had sat down on an upturned pail. I went back downstairs. I turned to face Harsnet. I made myself speak steadily.

'I think—' I said, 'I think he means to kill Catherine Parr.'

Chapter Forty-four

I STOOD BEFORE Archbishop Cranmer's paper-strewn desk. The prelate stared at me intensely, and I felt the force of the powerful mind behind those blue eyes. Around the desk, also looking at me, were both Seymour brothers. Harsnet and I had just finished telling them of our visit to Cantrell's house. We had gone immediately to Lambeth Palace, and the Seymours had been summoned to meet us there.

'Then it seems Cantrell is the killer,' Cranmer said quietly. 'Have you left men at his house?'

'The three constables,' Harsnet replied. 'They are hiding in the house and in the shed in the back yard. If he returns they will surprise him and take him.'

'But what if he does not?' Lord Hertford asked. As ever, he came straight to the point. 'What if he is even now pursuing his eighth victim?'

'We must send a squad of men to Catherine Parr's house at once,' Sir Thomas said. 'To ride to her succour, ensure she is protected. I already have men at the Charterhouse—'