Revelation

'And claiming all sorts of magical properties for it, no doubt. Tell them to be on their way. And keep them outside, that stuff stinks.'

'That must have been them earlier,' Guy said after Piers had gone.

'I thought it was the local children knocking at my door and running away. They think it a good jest for All Fools' Day.'

'You are too soft with that boy, you know. Surely it is a dangerous thing to mock a man like Dr Archer.'

'Ah, but he is a droll lad.' Guy smiled again, then his face resumed its serious expression. 'What has happened, Matthew? Is it to do with Master Elliard?'

'Yes.' I hesitated again. What right had I to involve him in this? Then I thought, because he may help us. I met his gaze. 'It turns out that Roger was the third person to be murdered recently in a terrible, elaborate and apparently pointless way. But I think I know the reason, if you can call it a reason.' I told him about Tupholme and Dr Gurney, the link to the Book of Revelation, the possibility that the killer was seeking out apostates from radical religion. Guy's dark features seemed almost to lengthen and sag as I told him.

'I knew Paul Gurney,' he said when I had ended my narrative and sworn him to secrecy. 'Not well, but we met at a few functions. He seemed a quiet, scholarly man. No swagger to him, unlike Archer.' He shook his head. 'I can imagine him starting as a reformer, but disliking these ill-educated, self righteous radicals now.'

There was a knock at the door, and Piers entered with a tray of wine. His handsome face was again impassive, but there was something intent in the expression in those large blue eyes that made me wonder if he had been listening at the door. I watched him as he laid down the tray and left the room, and let him see that I was watching.

'We found this at the site of Tupholme's murder,' I said when Piers had gone. I produced the badge. Guy turned it over in his long fingers, then gave me a keen look. 'You still think the killer is a Benedictine infirmarian? Because of this, and the dwale?'

'I think it possible.'

He studied the badge, then handed it back. He sighed deeply. 'You could be right. We do not know what has made this man what he is.'

'Barak and I spent yesterday at the Court of Augmentations, tracing Benedictine infirmarians in London at the time of the Dissolution. The infirmarian who attended the nuns at St Helens is dead, and the St Saviours man went to his family in Northumberland and collects his pension there. But the Westminster infirmarian and both his assistants are still in London. They collect their pensions at Westminster. We won't have the addresses until Monday, but we have names. The infirmarian is called Goddard, Lancelot Goddard. He had two assistants, Charles Cantrell, a monk, and Francis Lockley, a lay brother not in orders. Guy, have you ever heard those names?'

'I told you, I did not know them. When I came to London I was no longer a monk. And, Matthew, many ex-Benedictine monks from elsewhere came to London after the Dissolution. What was done to the monks was enough to drive men mad,' he added with sudden bitterness. 'Torn from their homes and their lives. Thrown into a different world, where the Bible is interpreted as literal fact, its symbols and metaphors forgotten, and fanatics react with equanimity to the blood and cruelty of Revelation. Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in that book? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought.'

'Bishop Bonner would destroy them just as cruelly.'

'Do you think I do not know that?' he answered angrily. 'I, whose family was made to leave Spain by the Inquisition, loyal Catholics though we were, because we had the taint of an Islamic past?'

'I know. I am sorry.'

'So am I. Sorry for what the world has come to.' He leaned forward, supporting his head with his hand for a moment, then looked up. 'I am sorry, Matthew,' he said wearily. 'You came here for my help.'

'No, I spoke insensitively. It is this matter — Guy, we spoke of madness the other day. Harsnet thinks the killer is possessed, thinks someone who was mad could not organize these murders so carefully, so patiently. We think he lay out there in the Lambeth marshes for most of a cold, wet day.'

'What do you think, Matthew?'

'Possession is an easy cry to raise against the inexplicable. But these murders are so strange and terrible I do not know what to think. Even Barak is afraid. He has never heard of anything like them either.'

'I have,' he said quietly.

I stared at him.