‘I did not suspect her either. But she was desperate to get her fiancé freed, it was all that mattered to her. And a desperate person can be more dangerous than the worst villain. You never know what they might do in their desperation, while a villain is always a villain.’
‘She was clever, too. I expect she stole the keys of St Mary’s church easily enough. Someone with a name as feared as Lady Rochford’s behind her could go where she willed at King’s Manor.’
‘It was a cold cleverness. She pretended to be my friend.’ I smiled sadly. ‘It softened me towards her. I wanted her friendship.’
He looked at me interrogatively. ‘Sweet on her, were you?’
I sighed. ‘No, Sir William, I was not. I always distrusted that obsessive quality about her. I think that obsessiveness enabled her to justify to herself what she was doing. Desperate people can think up reasons to justify almost anything, be they stupid or clever.’ I took a deep breath, then added, ‘She thought you had been responsible for Master Locke being put in the Tower, said you coveted his lands and hoped to see him attainted for treason.’
I braced myself for a storm, but Maleverer only laughed. ‘Insolent mare. I merely sent him south on the Privy Council’s orders. Though if his lands are attainted, as they will be now, I might buy some of them.’ A covetous look came into his eyes, and in the midst of our talk of traitors and murderers he gave a momentary smile at the thought of more profit. Perhaps soon he would have enough land to feel he had redeemed his name enough to marry.
He frowned at me. ‘What’s the matter with you? You still look worried.’
‘Some things still puzzle me. Why was she so certain I had seen all the papers in the casket? When she knocked me down at St Mary’s she must have seen I had only pulled out the topmost ones.’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps she thought you’d already looked at them, and put them back.’
‘She believed I’d seen them all and was keeping my knowledge from you, perhaps to tell Cranmer.’
He looked at me hard. ‘She wasn’t right, was she?’ He tapped the casket with a finger. ‘We’ve only your word for how much you saw.’
‘I spoke the truth, Sir William.’
He gave me another disdainful look. ‘I’ll have her quarters turned upside down, and if we don’t find those papers hidden there I’ll have everyone associated with her questioned. Young Miss Reedbourne. Lady Rochford.’
‘Lady Rochford will not be pleased,’ I said. ‘And Tamasin will be terrified.’
‘Pox on her.’
I thought, if soldiers appear at her quarters Lady Rochford, and Tamasin too, will think the Queen and Culpeper have been found out. As perhaps they will be if those papers still exist. If. I looked at Maleverer. ‘Sir William, her aim was to destroy those papers. I think she may have done that long since, after she first took them at St Mary’s.’
He nodded, running his finger along the edge of his beard again. ‘If there is no trace of the papers we can assume that she got rid of them. She took them from Oldroyd and he was in with the conspirators.’
‘Yes. Bernard Locke told her he had repented. She told herself she was helping scotch the conspirators’ plans, as well as destroying evidence that would incriminate him. Though I think Locke’s main concern may well have been to save his own skin.’
Maleverer nodded. ‘Many held in the Tower come to see things that way. Especially if they’ve been shown the rack, and heard the screams.’
‘Not Broderick.’
He grunted. ‘He’s not there yet. Well, if she has destroyed the papers, she did us a favour. Though the Privy Council would have preferred to see them.’ He got up. ‘Locke will have some stiff questioning now. I am going to start the search.’ I could almost feel the nervous energy coming from his big frame. ‘And I’d better have that bitch’s body fetched down, before some villager stumbles over it. Until I come back, do not move from this room, do you understand?’
HE LEFT THE ROOM, his robe whisking behind him. I sat down in the seat Wrenne had vacated. I thought, Maleverer is not the cleverest of men, he gets his way by bullying. He despises me but likes to pick my brain. I sighed and looked round the room. It might have been a study once. An old tapestry of a hunting scene hung behind Maleverer’s desk. Had the executed Robert Constable sat gazing at it, as I did now? I turned away and looked out of the window at the dark night for some time, thinking.
I thought of Jennet Marlin. Even now I could not help but feel sorry for her. Her love for Bernard Locke must have been an obsession since childhood. She had not been unattractive, she could have made another match had she not fixed her heart so desperately on Locke. What manner of man was he, I wondered. A charismatic rogue perhaps, who could get women to do anything he asked. I had come across those in my career, usually when they had bled some woman of all her money and she was trying to recover it at law. Had Locke used that obsessive love of Jennet’s to turn her into a murderess, to save him from execution? If so, he was worse than her. I shuddered as her face came to mind, her expression as she looked at me over the crossbow.
I looked at the box. Who did you originally belong to, I wondered. Someone rich. I leaned forward and opened it, looking into the empty interior. There was still a faint smell of old, musty papers. Had Jennet Marlin destroyed them all? If she had, anything there about the Queen and Culpeper was gone. How little I care about that, I thought; I have no loyalty left to Henry. Perhaps a false King. He will be relieved indeed if that was what the Blaybourne papers said.
I jumped violently as the door banged open and Maleverer reappeared. He shut the door and frowned down at me.
‘What are you fiddling with that box for?’ He threw himself down in his seat. ‘There’s no sign of the papers in her quarters. Just letters from Bernard Locke in the Tower, tied up with ribbon. They say nothing, they just say how much they love each other. Like turtle-doves.’ He snorted. ‘I’m having the ladies questioned to see if they remember anything that might help us, but I doubt they will. I think you were right, she destroyed those papers. Perhaps threw them on to one of the campfires in York.
‘Go back to your tent now, I’ll call you if need be. There’s a soldier outside. He will take you back.’
‘Very well, Sir William.’ I rose, bowed and left the room. A soldier waiting outside led me out of Howlme Manor. It was a relief to be back in the open air.
‘Is the King abed?’ I asked the soldier, to make conversation.
‘No, sir, he is playing chess with the gentlemen of the bedchamber. He will not sleep for many hours, I think.’
The soldier led me into the camp. The cooking fires were dying down now, the soldiers and servants fed. Men sat before their tents talking or playing cards.
‘Is it far?’ I asked. ‘I am sore tired.’
‘Not far. You have a tent by the fence. Your man and the old lawyer are next to you.’
He came to a halt where three small conical tents were set together in a corner of the field. There were others dotted around, some lit from within by flickering candlelight; the other lawyers, perhaps, whose status merited their own tent. I thanked the soldier, who walked away to the manor, and opened the flap of the only tent of the three that was lit from within.
Inside, Giles lay on a truckle bed which had been set on the bare grass. Barak sat on a box beside him, his injured leg up on another box and his crutch beside him, drinking beer.
‘This is a homely scene,’ I said quietly. ‘How are you both?’
‘Master Wrenne is asleep,’ Barak answered. ‘He told me what happened. Is Jennet Marlin truly dead?’
‘Ay, she is. I have been with Maleverer; he has searched her belongings for the papers, but found nothing.’
‘She destroyed them, then?’
‘He thinks so. How is your leg?’