Revelation

'Someone who kills skilfully, carefully, to make an evil spectacle.' A few dozy bugs still crawled over the bloodstain. 'Jesu, how he must have suffered,' I said.

'This has nothing in common with those others,' Barak said impatiently. He stirred the rags with his foot. 'Hullo, what's this?'

Something among the rubbish had made a metallic chink. Barak bent and, wrinkling his nose, felt among the scraps of clothing. He came up with a large tin badge, showing the painted image of an arched stone structure. I took it from Barak's hand.

'A pilgrim badge,' he said. 'From St Edward the Confessor's shrine at Westminster. That's an odd thing for a hot-gospeller to have. Don't they see shrines as papist images?'

'Maybe one of the constables dropped it while they were clearing the body out,' Barak suggested.

'Unlikely. People don't wear pilgrim badges these days, in case they're taken for papists. But someone dropped it here. Look through the rest of that stuff, Jack, see what else you can find.'

'I do get the nice jobs, don't I?' Barak began turning over all the filthy clothes and other rubbish. 'There's nothing else here,' he said at length. He looked at the cross on the wall, then at the bloodstained spot by the fire. 'Poor bastard,' he said. 'I wonder if he repented him of his fornication as lay watching the maggots eat his leg.'

I gave a start. 'What did you say?'

'I said I wondered if he regretted his time with the whore—'

'No, no, you said "repented him of his fornication". Why did you use that phrase?'

He looked at me as though I had lost my senses. 'I don't know, it just came into my head. It's from the Bible, isn't it?'

I clapped him on the shoulder. 'Yes, it is. Phrases from the Bible, they are what we hear everywhere now, are they not? In the pulpit, in the streets. They have become part of our daily language. That's why those other phrases snagged at my mind.' I stood in that terrible place, thinking. 'Is it possible?'

'Is what possible?'

'Oh, Jesu,' I said quietly. 'I hope I am wrong. Come.'

'Right about what? You talk in riddles—'

'We must get to a church. That one on the edge of the marshes will do.'

I led the way out of the cottage and began walking rapidly down the path. Barak locked it and came after me, for once having to run to keep up as I led the way back to Gib's place. He was back at work. I left Barak to hand over the key, while I unhitched the horses and used a tree trunk as a mounting block.

'What's the hurry?' Gib called out as Barak ran back to me, his face alive with curiosity. 'What did you find?'

'Nothing!' Barak called back as he swung into Sukey's saddle. 'He has to go to church, that's all!'

THE DOOR OF the church was open, and we stepped into the cool interior. It was, I saw, still decorated in the old style, the walls painted in bright colours, worn patterned tiles on the floor. Candles burned everywhere and there was a smell of incense, although the niches where reliquaries and statues of saints once stood were bare. On a lectern beside the richly decorated altar lay a Bible, fixed to it by a chain. The English Bible, ordered by Lord Cromwell to be set in every church, the year before his fall. This particular church, I reflected, was a faithful image of what the King wished to see: saints and relics gone, but otherwise everything as it was before the break with Rome. Here, at least, everything was conformity.

'Why are we here?' Barak asked, following me down the aisle.

'I want to look at that Bible. Sit down in a pew while I seek what I want.'

'But what do you want?'

I turned to face him. 'We've been talking about the hot-gospellers, the end-timers who say Armageddon will soon be here. They preach their message everywhere these days, that's why Bishop Bonner is so keen to stop them. But where do they get their message from, which part of the Bible?'

'The Book of Revelation, isn't it?'

'Yes, the Apocalypse of St John the Divine. That's where most of their religious quotes come from. The last book of the Bible; full of wild, fiery, cruel language, hard to understand, unlike anything else in the New Testament. Erasmus and Luther both doubted whether Revelation was really the word of God, though Luther at least calls it inspirational now.'

'You're saying that's where these phrases you remember come from? But how does—'

'I think they come from a specific part of the Book of Revelation. But please, sit quiet a minute, don't distract me.' I spoke somewhat unfairly, as I had been doing the talking.