Lamentation

‘No, it was not him.’ Nor you either, I thought.

McKendrick released my hand and leaned back on the bed with a groan. ‘Then it can only have been Curdy, William Curdy we all thought such a true soul.’ Yes, I thought, and Curdy is dead, unable to say who his master was. Killed by one of Richard Rich’s men.

He looked at me. ‘Are you one of us?’ he asked.

‘One of who?’

‘The brethren. The believers in a new heaven and a new earth. Those our enemies call Anabaptists?’

‘No. I am not.’

The dying man’s shoulders slumped. Then he looked at me fiercely. ‘I see it, among these dreams I have here. The greater vision, a future Commonwealth where all share equally in the bounty of nature, and worship the one Christ in peace. No princes, no warring countries, all men living in harmony. Is it a dream, do you think, or do I see Heaven?’

‘I think it a dream, Dominie,’ I answered sadly. ‘But I do not know.’

A few moments later McKendrick slid back into unconsciousness, his breathing shallow. I stood, my knees creaking. I had learned what I needed to know and returned slowly to the main room, where Guy was writing notes at a desk at the back of the ward.

‘He is unconscious again,’ I sighed. ‘Or perhaps in a sleep of wondrous dreams. There is nothing to be done for him?’

He shook his head. ‘We doctors know the signs of coming death.’

‘Yes.’ I remembered Cecil telling me about the King’s doctors saying he could not last long now. ‘Thank you for summoning me, Guy. One thing more. When — when he dies, it would be safer for the hospital if he were buried under a different name. He is wanted in connection with possible treason.’

Guy looked at me, then spoke with quiet passion. ‘I pray every night that whatever terrible thing you are involved in, it may end soon.’

‘Thank you.’

I left the hospital. At home I sent a note to Lord Parr, telling him the Scotchman was found, and that he was not the spy. Very early next morning, Brocket woke me with two notes that had arrived with the dawn: one on expensive paper with the seal of the Queen in red wax, the other a second folded scrap from Guy. The first told me that I was required at Whitehall Palace again that morning, the second that McKendrick had died in the night. Again, Guy had signed his note only with his name.

Chapter Thirty-nine

And so I took a boat to Whitehall Palace. I had no more information to bring Lord Parr about what might have happened to the Queen’s book; and I realized that, with all Greening’s group gone, its fate might remain unknown.

On the way to Temple Stairs I called in at chambers to tell Barak I would be away that day, I did not know for how long. He was alone — Nicholas and Skelly had not yet come in — and I summoned him to my room.

‘Whitehall?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I found McKendrick last night.’ I told him what had happened at the hospital.

‘So the late Master Curdy was the spy.’

‘So it seems.’ I sighed. ‘I have reached a dead end.’

‘Then leave it to the politicians now,’ he said roughly. ‘You’ve done all you can.’

‘I cannot but feel I have failed the Queen.’

‘You’ve done all you can,’ he repeated impatiently. ‘Risked your life.’

‘I know. And yours, and Nicholas’s.’

‘Then have done with it. If Queen Catherine falls, it will be through her own foolishness.’

I entered the palace by the Common Stairs again, the wherry jostling for space at the pier along with boats carrying newly slaughtered swans for the royal table and bolts of fine silk. The pier ran a long way out into the water, so that unloading could take place even at low tide. The tide was almost full now, though, just starting to ebb. Dirty grey water washed round the lowest of the stone steps. I thought for a moment of poor Peter Cotterstoke, tumbling into the river on a cold autumn day. As I left the boat, gathering my robe around me and straightening my cap, I looked upriver to the Royal Stairs. There, a narrow, brightly painted building two storeys high jutted out of the long redbrick facade of the palace. It ended at a magnificent stone boathouse, built over the water. A barge was heading towards it, oarsmen pulling hard against the tide. A man in a dark robe and cap sat in the stern. I recognized the slab face and forked beard: Secretary Paget, master of spies, and one of those who knew whether an emissary of the Pope called Bertano was truly in London.