Revelation

'Good day, master lawyer. How is your charge?'

'Safe in his cell,' I answered grimly. 'With his parents and his doctor.'

'Oh.' Shawms' face fell.

'He got out, as you planned, but we got him back safe.' I stepped up to him. 'Now, sir, listen to me. Your heartless plan to let him escape and blame this poor woman is discovered. I will raise what you have done with Archbishop Cranmer if anything like this happens again.' His eyes widened. 'Yes, I am the Archbishop's man. Do you understand?'

He gave me a savage look. 'I don't know how he got out,' he muttered. The other keeper meanwhile backed away and disappeared.

'You are a brute, a brute!' It was Minnie's voice. She and Daniel had appeared in the doorway of Adam's cell. Behind them I saw Barak looking grim, but Piers, just behind him, was smiling slightly. He was enjoying this.

'So take care, master keeper.' I looked at Ellen. And do not take it out on her. I do not know what hold you have on her that she cannot go out, but you will not make her your scapegoat.'

Shawms laughed then, throatily. 'Me got a hold on her? Is that what she told you?'

'She told me nothing.'

'I bet she didn't.' He laughed again, gave Ellen a look of cruel amusement, then stared round at the parlour doorway. 'Come on, you lot, there's been enough spectacle for one day.' The patients retreated before his advance, and Ellen flitted quickly past me, vanishing up the stairs.

With a sigh, I turned back to Daniel and Minnie, standing outside Adam's door. 'The doctor asked us to come out while he talked to Adam,' Daniel said. 'There's no hope for him, is there? With Bonner after him now?' The big man's whole body seemed to sag. 'God help me, out there I half wished Adam would fall, end his suffering.'

'No, Daniel, no,' Minnie said fiercely. 'He is our son.'

'Even Reverend Meaphon abandoned us.'

'I will not,' I said. The big stonemason nodded, but his body still slumped hopelessly. Shawms reappeared, jangling his big bunch of keys. 'He'd better be chained up again,' he said grimly.

'Must he, sir?' Minnie asked me.

'If he is not to escape again, I fear so.'

Shawms went into the cell. There was a metallic clinking, then Barak and Piers came out with the keeper. 'We'll leave you,' Barak said. 'You should go home, with that arm.'

'Ay. We can look for those — those people — tomorrow.' I chose my words carefully under Piers' curious eye. It struck me all at once that he was like a bird: a curious opportunistic predator in bright plumage. They walked off, Barak striding out firmly ahead, avoiding the company of the apprentice.

INSIDE THE CELL Guy was kneeling, face to face with Adam, who had squeezed himself into a corner once again. Somehow he had once more gained the boy's attention, was whispering to him in soft tones. I stood watching.

'Did you really think if you converted people, you might be saved?' Guy was asking.

'Yes.' A whisper. 'But I was wrong. How could I save them, if I am not saved myself?'

'The dark angel told you that you were not saved. When did he tell you that?'

'It was in a dream. After I sinned.'

'How did you sin?'

'No.' Adam squeezed his eyes shut. 'No. I have sinned in all ways. No.'

'All right.' Guy laid a hand on his shoulder as the boy gave one of his dreadful, wrenching sighs. 'You must be tired, Adam. After all that running, and climbing.'

'Tiredness does not matter,' Adam muttered. 'I have to pray.'

'But tiredness saps the concentration. How can you pray well, then, or listen to God? Sometimes it is effortful to listen to Him. And what if you had fallen from that wall? You would have no more chance to pray.'

'I was afraid. I did feel I might fall. It was such a long way down.' And with those three sentences, the first I had heard from him that related to the real world, Adam's face seemed to clear, to slip into the lineaments of an ordinary boy, if a terrified one.

'I was afraid too, when I got up there,' Guy said. 'You step out on the wall and your head reels.'

To my amazement Adam smiled, a tiny watery smile. 'Yes, it does.' Then he frowned, checking himself. 'I have to pray,' he said.

'No, not now. You are too tired. With sleep, and some food later, you will pray better. Do not go to God too tired and weak to attend to him.' Guy leaned forward, his brown eyes boring into Adam's. 'There is still time, still time to be saved. But sleep now, sleep. Come, your eyes are closing.' The boy's eyelids fluttered. 'Closing. Sleep. Sleep.' He took Adam's shoulders and gently laid him on the floor. The boy did not resist; he was already asleep. Guy rose, wincing as his joints cracked. Adam did not stir.

'That was remarkable,' I said to Guy.

'It was easy. He was completely exhausted.' He looked at me. 'You too look tired to death, Matthew. And pale. How is your arm?'

'Sore. I should go to Daniel and Minnie—'

Guy laid a hand on my arm. 'I am worried about you, Matthew. All this is affecting you — this other matter.'

'He was there, Guy, today, in the crowd. The killer. I only caught a merest glimpse, but it was him. I know. He taunts me. I am too weak for this,' I burst out savagely.

'No. You will press on. I know you.' He spoke the words in a tone that was half comforting and half bleak. He looked sad.

'It is Roger's funeral tomorrow afternoon. Dorothy has sent me a note of the time.'

'You should go home now, rest that arm.'

'I know. Yet I fear that he will strike again, soon.' I paused, then went on, 'This is affecting me, Guy, not like Harsnet, who thinks we are dealing with a man possessed; nor like Barak, who has never come across the like of this before, and is frightened, thrashing about for an answer. It is the horror of it, it seems to seep into my bones somehow. Oh, I was content before Roger was murdered. Content for the first time in years. And now . . .' I shook my head. 'I think you are right about what he is, Guy; this is some strange and terrible form of madness.' I looked at him. 'You must have suffered mightily all those years ago, to be driven to such a strange and terrible course of study.'

'I did. I told you. And yet all study is worthwhile, observing things and trying to understand their hidden patterns. Medical books alone can become binds and fetters, as can the Bible in the wrong hands.'

'Do you think you understand the pattern of this killer's mind?'

He shook his head. 'No. It is too dark and too strange. With Adam Kite I am hopeful that I will come to understand, but this man — no.'

Again I saw how his thin face was lined with pain. 'You suffer now, too, don't you?'

'We all suffer, Matthew. We have to find our own ways through, with God's help.' He forced a smile. 'I thought young Piers acquitted himself bravely today. He volunteered to come with me, volunteered to go up on that wall with Barak. You see, you had him wrong.'

'I saw him smile as Minnie Kite railed at Shawms. He is not someone you should invest so heavily in.'

'He will learn compassion.'

I did not argue with him then. Yet I doubted what he said was possible. But it also seemed to me then that there was little hope in the world, and a man should not be blamed for clinging on to that which he could find.

Chapter Twenty-one

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON by the time I left the Bedlam. I was exhausted, my arm hurt, and I had not eaten since breakfast. The sun was setting as I arrived home. Barak was waiting for me in the parlour; it was a moment before I remembered he and Tamasin had moved in.

'A message from Harsnet,' he said. 'He's still trying to trace Goddard. He wants us to meet him tomorrow night to report on those two ex-monks. Apparently he's attending the reopening of some church where the steeple fell down. St Agatha's, down by the river.'

'A radical church, no doubt.'