C. SANSOM - Sovereign

C. J. SANSOM was educated at Birmingham University, where he took a BA and then a PhD in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex, until becoming a full-time writer. Sovereign is the third novel in his acclaimed Shardlake series and his stand-alone thriller, Winter in Madrid, was a top 5 bestseller. He lives in Sussex.

IT WAS DARK UNDER the trees, only a little moonlight penetrating the half-bare branches. The ground was thick with fallen leaves; the horses hooves made little sound and it was hard to tell whether we were still on the road. A wretched track, Barak had called it earlier, grumbling yet again about the wildness of this barbarian land I had brought him to. I had not replied for I was bone-tired, my poor back sore and my legs in their heavy riding boots as stiff as boards. I was worried, too, for the strange mission that now lay close ahead was weighing on my mind. I lifted a hand from the reins and felt in my coat pocket for the Archbishops seal, fingering it like a talisman and remembering Cranmers promise: This will be safe enough, there will be no danger.

I had left much care behind me as well, for six days before I had buried my father in Lichfield. Barak and I had had five days hard riding northwards since then, the roads in a bad state after that wet summer of 1541. We rode into wild country where many villages still consisted of the old longhouses, people and cattle crammed together in hovels of thatch and sod. We left the Great North Road that afternoon at Flaxby. Barak wanted to rest the night at an inn, but I insisted we ride on, even if it took all night. I reminded him we were late, tomorrow would be the twelfth of September and we must reach our destination well before the King arrived.

The road, though, had soon turned to mud, and as night fell we had left it for a drier track that veered to the northeast, through thick woodland and bare fields where pigs rooted among the patches of yellow stubble.

The woodland turned to forest and for hours now we had been picking our way through it. We lost the main track once and it was the Devils own job to find it again in the dark. All was silent save for the whisper of fallen leaves and an occasional clatter of brushwood as a boar or wildcat fled from us. The horses, laden with panniers containing our clothes and other necessities, were as exhausted as Barak and I. I could feel Genesis tiredness and Sukey, Baraks normally energetic mare, was content to follow his slow pace.

Were lost, he grumbled.

They said at the inn to follow the main path south through the forest. Anyway, it must be daylight soon, I said. Then well see where we are.

Barak grunted wearily. Feels like weve ridden to Scotland. I wouldnt be surprised if we get taken for ransom. I did not reply, tired at his complaining, and we plodded on silently.

My mind went back to my fathers funeral the week before. The little group of people round the grave, the coffin lowered into the earth. My cousin Bess, who had found him dead in his bed when she brought him a parcel of food.

I wish I had known how ill he was, I told her when we returned to the farm afterwards. It should have been me that looked after him.

She shook her head wearily. You were far away in London and wed not seen you for over a year. Her eyes had an accusing look.

I have had difficult times of my own, Bess. But I would have come.

She sighed. It was old William Poer dying last autumn undid him. Theyd wrestled to get a profit from the farm these last few years and he seemed to give up. She paused. I said he should contact you, but he wouldnt. God sends us hard trials. The droughts last summer, now the floods this year. I think he was ashamed of the money troubles hed got into. Then the fever took him.

I nodded. It had been a shock to learn that the farm where I had grown up, and which now was mine, was deep in debt. My father had been near seventy, his steward William not much younger. Their care of the land had not been all it should and the last few harvests had been poor. To get by he had taken a mortgage on the farm with a rich landowner in Lichfield. The first I knew of it was when the mortgagee wrote to me, immediately after Fathers death, to say he doubted the value of the land would clear the debt. Like many gentry in those days he was seeking to increase his acreage for sheep, and granting mortgages to elderly farmers at exorbitant interest was one way of doing it.

That bloodsucker Sir Henry, I said bitterly to Bess.

What will you do? Let the estate go insolvent?

No, I said. I wont disgrace Fathers name. Ill pay it. I thought, God knows I owe him that.

That is good.

I came to with a start at the sound of a protesting whicker behind me. Barak had pulled on Sukeys reins, bringing her to a stop. I halted too and turned uncomfortably in the saddle. His outline and that of the trees were sharper now, it was beginning to get light. He pointed in front of him. Look there!

Ahead the trees were thinning. In the distance I saw a red point of light, low in the sky.

There! I said triumphantly. The lamp we were told to look out for, thats set atop a church steeple to guide travellers. This is the Galtres Forest, like I said!

We rode out of the trees. A cold wind blew up from the river as the sky lightened. We wrapped our coats tighter round us and rode down, towards York.

THE MAIN ROAD into the city was already filled with packhorses and carts loaded with food of every kind. There were enormous foresters carts too, whole tree-trunks dangling dangerously over their tails. Ahead the high city walls came into view, black with the smoke of hundreds of years, and beyond were the steeples of innumerable churches, all dominated by the soaring twin towers of York Minster. Its busy as Cheapside on a market-day, I observed.

All for the Kings great retinue.

We rode slowly on, the throng so dense we scarce managed a walking pace. I cast sidelong glances at my companion. It was over a year now since I had taken Jack Barak on as assistant in my barristers practice after his old masters execution. A former child of the London streets who had ended up working on dubious missions for Thomas Cromwell, he was an unlikely choice, even though he was clever and had the good fortune to be literate. Yet I had not regretted it. He had adjusted well to working for me, doggedly learning the law. No one was better at keeping witnesses to the point while preparing affidavits, or ferreting out obscure facts, and his cynical, slantwise view of the system was a useful corrective to my own enthusiasm.

These last few months, however, Barak had often seemed downcast, and sometimes would forget his place and become as oafish and mocking as when I had first met him. I feared he might be getting bored, and thought bringing him to York might rouse him out of himself. He was, though, full of a Londoners prejudices against the north and northerners, and had complained and griped almost the whole way. Now he was looking dubiously around him, suspicious of everything.