Tombland

‘Because this work is being paid for from church funds, we couldn’t afford it if it weren’t for the money from the sale of all the old silver plate we were ordered to remove. There was one candle holder, beautifully carved, it was bought by my great-grandfather’s family for a candle dedicated to him, perpetually lit in the church.’ He looked at one of the many empty niches, then lowered his eyes and said hastily, ‘I know, we must obey King Edward’s orders as we did King Henry’s. I am sorry if I offended at all.’

‘Change is sometimes hard,’ I said quietly.

‘Did you have business with the vicar, sir?’ He looked anxious now, afraid he had said too much.

‘No, I am just a traveller who wandered in.’

He nodded, relieved. ‘I must lock up now, for the night.’

I left the church. When I closed the door it made a hollow, echoing noise.

* * *

I DID NOT FEEL like returning to the inn; there was a wooden bench beside the church and I sat down, watching the sun set. I reflected that old King Henry himself would not have approved of what was happening, but power rested now with the Duke of Somerset and with Cranmer, who were taking England halfway to the continental radicals like Zwingli and Calvin. Though there were, of course, plenty who did approve, especially in London where some churches had even replaced the altar with a bare Communion table. Yet it had all been imposed from above, like every religious change these last sixteen years, whether people liked it or not. I recalled the sudden fear in the painter’s eyes after he spoke to me about the candle holder. I remembered Jack Barak’s total cynicism, his disrespect for both sides of the religious divide. ‘Balls to it all,’ he had said when we last met for a drink a couple of weeks before, in a tavern near the Tower where we were unlikely to see anyone who knew his wife Tamasin.

Tamasin. I shook my head sorrowfully. I had been present the day she met her husband, and for years we had been good friends; I had shared her sorrow at the death of her first child, her joy at the birth of the second. But for three years now she had been my open enemy. I recalled the terrible night when she learned Barak had been maimed, and might die, after I had got him, behind her back, to help me in a dangerous enterprise. I remembered her balled fists, the fury in her face as she cried out, ‘You will leave us alone, never come near us again!’ She blamed me for what had happened, as I partly blamed myself, though Barak stoutly insisted he was responsible for his own actions.

When Barak had recovered sufficiently Guy had worked to find a suitable prosthesis for his missing right hand. They had settled on a device, strapped to his arm above the elbow, with a little metal stump at the end, from which a short knife protruded. Underneath it was a curved half-circle of metal, with which Barak could carry things and even, after practice, ride, while the knife could be used at table, to manipulate latches and open boxes, and in the last resort, in the dangerous London streets, serve as a weapon. It was a clumsy-looking thing, but he had learned to use it with dexterity. And, to my amazement, he had taught himself to write with his left hand. It was a scrawl, but perfectly readable.

As Tamasin had forbidden him to work for me again, Barak had looked for work among the solicitors – some respectable and others less so – who found work for the barristers around the Inns of Court. He found employment easily, for he had gained a high reputation as my assistant. He now worked for various solicitors; finding witnesses, taking depositions, rooting out evidence, no doubt with a little bribery and perhaps threats along the way. He had also gained a place as a junior assistant to the judges when, twice a year, they made their circuits of the localities, trying civil and criminal cases, and ensuring the magistrates were carrying out the Protector’s instructions. Barak’s work was in assessing jurors, rooting out reluctant witnesses, helping with the paperwork, and sniffing out the local mood in the taverns. He worked on the two nearest circuits to London, the Home Counties and the Norfolk circuit, which travelled from Buckinghamshire to East Anglia. Each circuit lasted a month, and though it paid well, he had refused work on the more distant circuits as Tamasin did not like him spending too much time away from her and the children. I suspected, too, that with his disability riding to the longer circuits would be tiring. Though he never mentioned it, when we met I could sometimes tell that his arm was painful.