Revelation

A great sucking sensation nearly dislodged me once more. It was the water ebbing. My head was suddenly in the open. I took a huge gasp of air. The water swirled down below my chest, then rushed away and was gone with a last rushing boom. Only a trickling sound remained, and loud drips falling from the ceiling.

I let myself tumble to the ground, shouting in agony as I landed on my shoulder, jarring it. I was a mass of pain, shivering with cold, wet through and stinking. And my hands and feet were still bound. I rolled out of the alcove, into the passage. And I thought, if I have survived, Cantrell might have too.

A FAINT HALF-LIGHT coming through the dripping grille lightened the gloom. It was dawn, we had been here all night. I stared round frantically. Where was he? And then my heart leaped into my mouth as I saw him. He was sitting up against the grille, facing me.

I groaned. I was too weak to fight any more, even to think. But Cantrell stayed unmoving. I stared and stared through the gloom, trying to see if he was breathing. Once or twice in the seemingly endless time that followed he appeared to move. Then I heard shouting from beyond the grille and saw lights moving there, then several men jumped into the ditch in front of the grille, tramping through stream-water. They held their torches up, exclaiming when they saw Cantrell sitting there with his back to them. But by the light of their torches I saw now that he was impaled, one of the broken metal rods sticking right through his head, brains and blood smearing his face. He must have been thrown against it by the full force of the flood. His eyes were open and he looked astonished, angry. In his last seconds he must have realized that he had failed. I found it strange that during the night I had felt no sense of evil passing.

A guard bent to the grille, a key in his hand. It was hard to get it open.

'The lawyer's here!' he called. 'Alive!'

A new figure bent and entered the tunnel. Harsnet came up to me and held a torch to my face. I met his gaze.

'Is Barak alive?' I croaked. 'Yes.'

'You would have drowned me.'

He looked sad, but not ashamed, his face stayed set. 'We guessed you were down here.' Harsnet spoke slowly, his west country accent strong. 'There were marks on the bolt on the hatch, we wondered if he had somehow closed it from below. I feared that with the powers he has he might have got away in these tunnels, even if I sent a dozen men after him. It was the only way to be sure he died, the only way. I'm sorry, Matthew.'

Chapter Forty-six

THREE DAYS LATER an unexpected visitor arrived at my house. I was still in bed, recovering from my ordeal, when a flustered Joan appeared to say that Lord Hertford himself had called. I told her to show him up. I knew I should have made the effort to rise and receive him in the parlour, but I was too weary.

Lord Hertford wore a plain, fur-lined coat, a grey doublet beneath. I thought again how different he was from his brash, gaudily dressed brother. He had struck me before as a man of deadly seriousness, but today he was relaxed, giving me a friendly smile before sitting in the chair by my bed. I thought, today he is the politician. 'I am sorry I must receive you here,' I said. He raised a hand. 'I was sorry to hear of what you suffered in that sewer. And at Goddard's house before. We would never have got Cantrell had you not realized Goddard's killing was intended to mislead us. Catherine Parr would be dead by now.'

I sighed. 'I am sorry we could not get him sooner. Nine victims killed, including the solicitor and the innocent coalman that we found dead.'

'Lady Catherine knows you saved her,' Lord Hertford said quietly. 'She knows, and is grateful.'

'You told her about Cantrell?'

'Not the whole story. But that there was a killer on the loose, and he wanted her for a victim. Harsnet had to tell her that to keep her in her chambers. She saw you that night, you know, for a moment. She thought you were the killer.'

'I wondered whether she did.'

'I told her you had saved her. She would like to receive you to thank you. She is a lady to remember favours a long time.'

'I am honoured.' Indeed I was, but at the same time apprehensive that someone else near the summit of the court had taken notice of me now. I looked again at Lord Hertford. He was smiling, he was happy.

'I do not know when she will send for you. She will have many calls on her time these next few months, for she has consented to marry the King.'

'She has?'

'She has accepted that it is God's will.'

'When will it be?' I asked.

'Not till full summer. The King plans to have Bishop Gardiner marry them.' He laughed. 'How he will hate that, marrying the King to a reformer.'

'But why is the King marrying her?' I had to ask. 'When his own sympathies grow ever more strongly against reform?'

'She has attracted him for some time. Since before her husband died. And he is old, and ill, and lonely.'