Tombland

I heard the door of the next room open, the tread of slow footsteps. Barnabas Boleyn entered the room. His short fair hair stood on end, his face was haggard and unshaven, his scar standing out amid his blond fuzz; he wore only a shirt and hose. But he carried the weapon he had had at Dussindale, a razor-sharp sword, held high in his short, muscular arm. The blue eyes in his pale face were alive with fury. As he entered the room, I noticed he staggered slightly to the left, then corrected himself. I remembered how the twins had always stood shoulder to shoulder; instinctively he had sought to lean against his dead brother.

Reynolds smiled, his expression triumphant again. ‘Kill them, Barney.’ He raised his stick. ‘I’ll deal with the hunchback, you get the other two. Look, the one-handed one’s been hurt, he’s leaning on a stick.’

Barnabas had been staring between the three of us, ignoring Jane as usual, but now he turned to his grandfather. He said, quietly, ‘Gerald was the only one I let call me Barney.’

His grandfather glared back at him. ‘What?’

‘Only Gerald.’ Then he said, ‘You – you killed our mother. Our mother, who we only wanted to love us!’

From the corner, Jane spoke quietly. ‘He did more than that. He interfered with your mother when she was a child.’

Barnabas’s eyes widened. His grandfather yelled, ‘It’s what women are for, you blockhead, I thought I’d brought you up to see that! You and your brother have been fucking women since you were fourteen.’ He waved his stick at us, his voice shaking a little now.

‘Deal with them, do you want me executed and the family fortune lost?’

‘I don’t care!’ Barnabas shouted suddenly. And then, the sword held out before him, he ran straight at his grandfather. The old man raised his stick helplessly, but Barnabas thrust his sword with the full might of his short, strong body, straight through his grandfather’s heart. The force of his charge sent the old man back against the window, and then, with a crash of breaking glass, right through it. Barnabas could have withdrawn the sword, but he did not – alone, I think he no longer wished to live. He, too, crashed through the window, and the two fell together to the street three floors below. Nicholas and Barak and I rushed over. Grandfather and grandson lay dead on the flag-stones of Tombland, blood spreading from their shattered bodies as people gathered round, looking down at them, then up at us.

I turned to Jane. She had not moved from her corner, and her white face wore the same stone-cold expression as when I had first seen her in June.

‘God’s bones,’ Nicholas said.

Barak said, ‘There goes our last living testimony.’

‘No.’ We all turned as Jane spoke from the corner. She stepped forward a couple of paces. ‘I heard it all, his confession,’ she said quietly. ‘And I know the things he did to my daughter, God rest her. My marriage has been hell on earth, I have no wish to hold anything back. I shall prepare a deposition in support of my son-in-law’s freedom.’ She raised her bandaged hands and gave a grim smile. ‘Someone will have to write it for me, but I can sign, just about.’

Chapter Eighty-three

The deaths of Gawen Reynolds and Barnabas Boleyn meant there was business with the coroner in the following days, and we did not manage to leave Norwich until the third of September, nearly three months since we had first arrived. Post-runners were back at work, and Barak wrote a letter to Tamasin saying he was safe and had been held at the rebel camp with Nicholas and me, while I wrote a very long but carefully worded letter to Thomas Parry, telling the story of what had happened but leaving out the role of Richard Southwell – that was something for private discussion when we met. I hoped the letter arrived before we did; I knew the Lady Elizabeth would be sixteen on the seventh of September, and Hatfield busy with celebrations.

I spent a good deal of time with little Mousy. She was thriving under the care of Liz Partlett, who combined efficiency with a natural kindness. It was a strange thing, at my age, to find myself playing with a little child, running my fingers along the floor as she chased them on all fours. Occasionally, I looked up at Liz with embarrassment, but she offered only smiles of encouragement. Once or twice Mousy became fretful, and once she wept and called for ma-ma. It cut me to the heart.