Revelation

'I know the New Testament by heart, Matthew.' He frowned, thinking hard.

Thomas Seymour laughed. A rich, booming sound that made Cranmer wince. 'I have never heard such a tale. The crookback lawyer's mind is addled by too much reading.'

Lord Hertford gave his brother a stern look. 'Remember where you are, Thomas, and watch your language.'

Cranmer seemed to have retreated into a brown study, his fingers toying with the big silver cross at his neck. When he sat up his expressive eyes were full of sorrow.

'I think Matthew could be right. These deaths do fit exactly with Revelation 16, even to their sequence. And in these times when every apprentice believes himself an authority on scripture — yes, a man who was mad and vicious enough could believe he was inspired to fulfil the prophecy — for Revelation is, above all, a prophecy of what must come to pass.' He gave a sigh that was almost a groan.

I looked at him. Was he talking of possession again, a man's soul taken over by the devil?

Hertford had pulled a Testament from Cranmer's shelf and was reading it. He nodded slowly. 'He is right, my lord. These murders fit the pattern of the vials of wrath too closely to be any coincidence. But we may take a little comfort.'

'Comfort? How?' Cranmer asked incredulously.

'If the killer's purpose is to fulfil these prophecies, the fact that the second victim was Lord Latimer's doctor surely has no significance.' He looked at Cranmer. 'This is not aimed at the proposed marriage.'

Cranmer nodded slowly. 'Yes, that follows. But the King would still be horrified beyond measure if he knew.' He glanced at Harsnet. 'I think he too might see the killer as inspired by the devil, and turn away from any possible involvement with the lady Catherine.' He smiled sadly. 'He is so superstitious; I have tried for years to persuade him out of such false thinking, but without success.'

'Would His Majesty necessarily be wrong to think this was inspired by the devil?' Harsnet's keen eyes darted round the room. 'Consider the blasphemous pattern the killer is following, how cunningly he planned these three terrible displays, his uncanny ability to carry the bodies over great distances.'

'The cottar's murder was also intended for display,' I said. 'But it was blamed on a woman he had thrown out.'

'Does that not speak to you of a man possessed?' Harsnet asked.

'Why are you gospel men always so ready to cry possession?' Thomas Seymour snapped irritably. 'We should be catching this man, not wasting time on these speculations. We cannot know what he is until then.'

For once I agreed with Seymour. 'Sir Thomas speaks true, my lord,' I said. 'Catching him remains our priority.'

Cranmer looked to me. 'Well, Matthew, where would you go from here?'

'We must find out if this Tupholme had any acquaintances in common with Roger and the doctor—'

'Fie, man,' Sir Thomas said impatiently. 'He was a cottar, a nobody, and the others were gentlemen.'

'Tupholme and Roger had both held radical reformist views, though in different ways both had abandoned them. Was that also true of Dr Gurney?'

'Yes,' Cranmer said. 'He — he had once been very radical, but recently he had become — disillusioned.' He frowned for a long moment, then looked at me. 'You think the killer may be seeking men who were once religious radicals but abandoned that position for one reason or another?'

'I fear so. And there is one place where radicals of all classes meet. In church.'

'The three dead men did not live near each other,' Cranmer said. 'They cannot have attended the same parish churches.'

'Sometimes radicals go to church outside their parishes,' Hertford said. 'Run private Bible-reading and prayer groups. And why should they not?' he added with sudden fierceness. 'When they are persecuted and driven underground for their beliefs.'

'Are you suggesting it was one of the godly people who did this?' Harsnet asked me, looking me straight in the eye.

'Not necessarily. But certainly someone who knew the reformers.'

Archbishop Cranmer buried his face in his hands. Everyone fell silent; Hertford glanced uneasily at Harsnet. I realized the Archbishop was caught in the middle, between his own reforming beliefs and the dangers the radicals presented to the very existence of reform. Lord Hertford, I thought, saw this, but Harsnet for the moment was too caught up in his own outrage. Sir Thomas did not care one way or the other.

Cranmer lowered his hands again and sat up straight in his tall chair, his face set hard. He looked at me.

'Matthew, the danger to me, to everyone in this room, grows by the hour. Some of my staff are still being questioned for heresy, though they will find nothing, for they are not heretics. More butchers are being arrested. Now there is a talk of a purge of booksellers. The Earl of Surrey is in the Fleet prison for Lent-breaking. And you will have seen that plays and interludes with a reformist slant are being made targets, their posters pulled down.'

'Yes, my lord.'