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Back Lamentation
Chapters (56)
  1. Chapter One
  2. Chapter Two
  3. Chapter Three
  4. Chapter Four
  5. Chapter Five
  6. Chapter Six
  7. Chapter Seven
  8. Chapter Eight
  9. Chapter Nine
  10. Chapter Ten
  11. Chapter Eleven
  12. Chapter Twelve
  13. Chapter Thirteen
  14. Chapter Fourteen
  15. Chapter Fifteen
  16. Chapter Sixteen
  17. Chapter Seventeen
  18. Chapter Eighteen
  19. Chapter Nineteen
  20. Chapter Twenty
  21. Chapter Twenty-one
  22. Chapter Twenty-two
  23. Chapter Twenty-three
  24. Chapter Twenty-four
  25. Chapter Twenty-five
  26. Chapter Twenty-six
  27. Chapter Twenty-seven
  28. Chapter Twenty-eight
  29. Chapter Twenty-nine
  30. Chapter Thirty
  31. Chapter Thirty-one
  32. Chapter Thirty-two
  33. Chapter Thirty-three
  34. Chapter Thirty-four
  35. Chapter Thirty-five
  36. Chapter Thirty-six
  37. Chapter Thirty-seven
  38. Chapter Thirty-eight
  39. Chapter Thirty-nine
  40. Chapter Forty
  41. Chapter Forty-one
  42. Chapter Forty-two
  43. Chapter Forty-three
  44. Chapter Forty-four
  45. Chapter Forty-five
  46. Chapter Forty-six
  47. Chapter Forty-seven
  48. Chapter Forty-eight
  49. Chapter Forty-nine
  50. Chapter Fifty
  51. Chapter Fifty-one
  52. Chapter Fifty-two
  53. Chapter Fifty-three
  54. Epilogue
  55. A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  56. H ISTORICAL N OTE

So, I thought, this is Isabel’s doing. But her harebrained ravings were surely not enough to have us brought before the council. Then I remembered Philip’s fears that he was already under suspicion, and that Edward Cotterstoke was also a radical. Walsingham continued, ‘You may have food and drink brought. Is there anyone you wish to send for?’

‘I have already sent word to my assistant that I am – taken.’

‘Very well,’ he said neutrally. ‘I hope for your sake that you acquit yourself satisfactorily tomorrow.’ He nodded to the guard and made a note on his paper, and I was led away.

THEY TOOK ME BACK through the Great Hall, then again downstairs, to those dank underground chambers. The same loud clink of heavy keys, the same heavily barred door creaking open, and I was led by the arm into the central vestibule, where Howitson, the big man with the untidy straggling beard, sat behind his overlarge desk. The guards gave him my name and left me in his care. He looked at me, raising his eyebrows in puzzlement for a moment at the sight of a recent visitor returned as a prisoner, before quickly adopting the blank mask of authority again. I thought of the guard Myldmore, who from what Lord Parr had said would soon be smuggled out of the country. I wondered what Howitson made of his employee’s disappearance.

He called for a couple of guards and two more men appeared from the direction of the cells. ‘Master Shardlake, to be kept till tomorrow, to go before the council. Put him with the others in the special cell for prisoners of rank.’

I knew who had occupied that cell recently; Myldmore had told me. Anne Askew.

I WAS LED DOWN a short, stone-flagged corridor. One of the guards opened the barred door of the cell, the other led me inside. The cell was as Myldmore had described it, with a table and two chairs, but this time there were three decent beds with woollen coverlets, not one – they must have put in the other two when they heard three were to be brought in. The chamber, though, held the clammy, damp stink of the dungeons, and was lit only by a high barred window. I looked at the bare flagstones and thought how Mistress Askew had lain there in agony after her torture.