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wants to see you there at eight
tonight.’
    I sat down heavily. ‘I thought I was done with visits to great men.’ I looked at Barak sharply, for our assignment for Cromwell the year before had made us some powerful enemies.
‘Could it mean danger for us? Have you heard any gossip?’ I knew he still had contacts in the underside of the King’s court.
    He shook his head. ‘Nothing since I was told we were safe.’
    I sighed deeply. ‘Well then, I shall have to see.’
    That day it was hard to keep my mind on my work. I left early, to go home for dinner. As I walked towards the gate I saw, coming in, a tall, thin figure in a fine silk robe, blond curls peeping
out from under his cap. Stephen Bealknap. The most crooked and covetous lawyer I ever met. He bowed to me.
    ‘Brother Bealknap,’ I said politely, as the conventions of the inn demanded.
    ‘Brother Shardlake. I hear there is no date for the hearing of our case in Chancery. They are so slow.’ He shook his head, though I knew he welcomed the delay. The case involved a
little dissolved friary he had bought near the Cripplegate. He had converted it into tumbledown tenements without proper sewage arrangements, causing great nuisance to his neighbours. The case
turned on whether he was entitled to rely on the monastery’s exemption from City Council regulations. He was backed by Richard Rich, as Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations that handled
the property of the dissolved monasteries, because if he lost the case, the sale value of those properties would fall.
    ‘The Six Clerks’ Office seems unable to explain the delays,’ I told Bealknap. I had sent Barak, who could be intimidating when he chose, to harangue them several times, but
without result. ‘Perhaps your friend Richard Rich may know.’ I immediately wished I had not said that, for I was effectively accusing the Chancellor of Augmentations of corruption. The
slip showed the strain I was under.
    Bealknap shook his head. ‘You are a naughty fellow, Brother Shardlake, to allege such things. What would the Inn Treasurer say?’
    I bit my lip. ‘I am sorry. I withdraw.’
    Bealknap grinned broadly, showing nasty yellow teeth. ‘I forgive you, brother. When one has poor prospects in a case, sometimes the worry of it makes you forget what you say.’ He
bowed and walked on. I looked after him, wishing I could have planted a foot in his bony arse.

    A FTER DINNER I DONNED my lawyer’s robe and took a wherry across the river and down to Lambeth Palace. London was quiet, as
it had been all summer, for the King and his court were in the north of England. In the spring news had come of a fresh rebellion nipped in the bud in Yorkshire, and the King had decided to take a
great progress up to awe the northmen. They said he and his councillors had been sore alarmed. As well they might be; five years before the whole north of England had risen in rebellion against the
religious changes and the Pilgrimage of Grace, as the rebel army had called itself, had raised thirty thousand men. The King had gulled them into disbanding with false promises, then raised an army
to strike them down. But all feared the north might rise again.
    Throughout June the King’s purveyors had roamed all London, clearing shops and warehouses of food and other supplies, for they said three thousand people would be going north. It was hard
to comprehend such numbers, the population of a small town. When they left at the end of June it was said the carts stretched along the road for over a mile, and London had been strangely quiet all
through that wet summer.
    The boatman pulled past the Lollards’ Tower at the north end of Lambeth Palace and in the failing daylight I saw a light shining from the window of the prison atop the tower, where
heretics in the Archbishop’s custody were held. Cranmer’s eye on London, some called it. We pulled up at the Great Stairs. A guard admitted me and led me across the courtyard to