Free Heartstone by C. J. Sansom Page B

candle, set it on my desk, and left with a quick curtsey. Her steps descended again, pitter, pitter, pitter.
    At length I stopped writing and sat back to think. Master Hobbey had begun by purchasing a portion of this tract of woodland plus the monastic buildings, which he had converted into a house, then he had bought the children's wardship. The capital outlay for all these transactions would have been large, even for a prosperous merchant. It would be interesting to find out the sums involved. Emma, Bess Calfhill said, had not liked young David Hobbey; but my reading had made clear that only in the most exceptional circumstances would the court consider an appeal by a ward against a proposed marriage. The marriage partner would have to be far below her in social class, or a criminal, or diseased or deformed - I noted wryly that a hunchback counted - for the Court of Wards to disallow the marriage on the basis of 'disparagement'.
    But Emma had died, and if that was Hobbey's plan it had come to naught. Her inheritance would have passed to Hugh and though by one of the law's oddities a girl, if unmarried, could apply to have her wardship ended at fourteen, a boy could not 'sue out his livery' until the age of twenty-one. According to Bess, seven years ago Hugh had been eleven; he would be eighteen now - three years till he could come into his lands.
    I got up and paced the floor. Until Hugh was twenty-one Hobbey would be entitled only to the normal income his lands brought in, and if it was woodland there would be no income from rents. Yet, as I had told Barak, the owners of wardships were notorious for 'wasting' the lands of their wards, selling and profiting from assets like woodland and mining rights.
    A book on my shelf caught my eye: Roderick Mors's Lamentation of a Christian Against the City of London , a diatribe against the city's social evils that had belonged to my friend Roger. I opened it, remembering there was a passage about wardship: 'God confound that wicked custom; for it is too abominable, and stinks from the earth to heaven, it is so vile.'
    I closed the book and looked out over my garden. It was nearly dark; the window was open and the scent of lavender came up to me. I heard the bark of a fox, a flutter of wings somewhere. I thought, I could almost be in the countryside, back on the farm where I grew up. At that moment it was hard to believe the country was embroiled in crisis; armed men marching, armies forming, ships gathering in the Channel.

    N EXT MORNING I walked down Chancery Lane to catch a boat to Westminster Stairs. Crossing Fleet Street, I saw someone had placed handwritten posters all over the Temple Bar, calling on the mayor to beware 'priests and strangers' that would set fire to London. The weather was even stickier this morning; the sky had taken on a yellow, sulphurous look. I turned into Middle Temple Lane and followed the narrow passageway downhill between the narrow buildings. Along a side lane the old Templar church was visible. Vincent Dyrick practised in the Temple. I thought, only four days now until the hearing. I walked on past Temple Gardens, where the recent storms had laid great wreaths of petals under the rose bushes, and down to Temple Stairs.
    The river was still crowded with supply boats heading east. I saw one barge laden with arquebuses, five-foot iron barrels glinting in the sun. The boatman told me all the King's ships had sailed out from Deptford now, bound for Portsmouth. 'We'll sink those French bastards,' he said.
    At Westminster Stairs two barges were tied up, each with a dozen men leaning on the oars. I climbed up into New Palace Yard, under the huge shadow of Westminster Hall. A company of a hundred soldiers was drawn up beside the great fountain, resplendent in the red and white of the London Trained Bands. They made a magnificent display, as they were meant to. Their weapons were a stark contrast to their bright uniforms: dark, heavy wooden maces with heads full