Dark Fire by C. J. Sansom Page A

poverty.’ Barak smiled mockingly again. His mare wove quickly through the crowds and I had to spur poor Chancery to keep
up. We passed under the Bishopsgate and soon the chimneys of Cromwell’s impressive three-storey house came into view.
    The last time I had been there, on a bitter winter’s day three years before, a crowd of people had been waiting at the side gate. Another crowd was there this hot afternoon. The outcasts
of London, shoeless and in rags. Some supported themselves on makeshift crutches, others had the pits and marks of disease on their faces. The number of workless poor in London was growing beyond
control; the dissolution had cast hundreds of servants from the London monasteries, and the unhappy patients from the hospitals and infirmaries too, out onto the streets. And pitiful as the doles
given by the Church had been, now even those were gone. There was talk of charitable schools and hospitals, and schemes for state works, but nothing had been done yet. Cromwell, meanwhile, had
adopted the wealthy landowner’s custom of distributing his own doles; it strengthened his standing in London.
    We rode past the beggars and through the main gate. At the front door a servant met us. He asked us to wait in the hallway, then a few minutes later John Blitheman, Lord Cromwell’s
steward, appeared.
    ‘Master Shardlake,’ he said, ‘welcome. It has been a long time. Does the law keep you busy?’
    ‘Busy enough.’
    Barak, who had untied his sword and handed it with his cap to a servant boy, came over.
    ‘He’s waiting for us, Blitheman.’ The steward smiled at me apologetically and led us into the house. A minute later we were outside Cromwell’s study. Blitheman knocked
softly and his master called, ‘Enter,’ in a snapping tone.
    The chief minister’s study was as I remembered, full of tables covered with reports and drafts of bills, a forbidding place despite the sunlight streaming in. Cromwell sat behind his desk.
His manner was different from what it had been that morning; he sat crouched in his chair, head sunk between his shoulders, and gave us a look so baleful it made me shiver.
    ‘So,’ he said without preliminaries, ‘you found them murdered.’ His voice was cold, intense.
    I took a deep breath. ‘Yes, my lord. Most brutally.’
    ‘I’ve got men searching for the formula,’ Barak said. ‘They’ll take the place apart if need be.’
    ‘And the women?’
    ‘They’ll be kept there. They’re both scared out of their wits. They know nothing. I’ve told the men to ask round the neighbouring houses to see if anyone saw the attack,
but Wolf’s Lane looks like a place where people take care to mind their own business.’
    ‘Who betrayed me?’ Cromwell whispered intently. ‘Which of them?’ He stared at me fixedly. ‘Well, Matthew, what did you make of what you saw?’
    ‘I think there were two men involved and that they broke in with axes. They killed the brothers at once in the alchemist’s workshop, where they were working, then went to a chest
that was kept there and smashed it in. There was a bag of gold inside, but they left it untouched.’ I hesitated. ‘My guess is that the formula was there and they knew it.’
    There was a grey tinge to Cromwell’s face. He set his thin lips.
    ‘You can’t be sure,’ Barak interjected.
    ‘I’m not sure of anything,’ I replied with sudden heat. I made my voice calm. ‘But no search was made of the rest of the room. The books on the shelves were undisturbed
and would they not have been an obvious place to look for a hidden paper? Also, I believe some bottles were taken from the shelves. I think the people who murdered those poor men knew exactly what
they were looking for.’
    ‘So there will be no physical traces left of their experiments,’ Cromwell said.
    ‘That would be my guess, my lord.’ I looked anxiously at him, but he only nodded reflectively.
    ‘See, Jack,’ he said suddenly, nodding at me. ‘Learn