It is the summer of 1545, but the febrile atmosphere is very 1940. A French invasion fleet is on its way with 30,000 troops and Henry VIII is raising a home guard to fight them on the beaches. Against this historical backdrop Matthew Shardlake, master lawyer, Medieval detective and hunchback seeker after truth, returns as the Rumpole of the Tudor era, without the booze and comic turns of John Mortimer’s famous creation. But this 16th century lawyer brings with him his own now familiar coterie of characters. There’s Shardlake’s fiery assistant Jack Barak, anxious to avoid conscription; the Spanish apothecary and physician Guy, avoiding the streets because every foreigner risks a pasting as a suspected spy; the enigmatic Ellen Fettiplace whose fear of open spaces is so great she would rather remain locked up in Bedlam; and the conniving Sir Richard Rich, the king’s fixer and Shardlake’s adversary.
Shardlake is off to Hampshire to right some wrongs in a wardship case which is conveniently close to the Sussex village of Rolfswood where a rape 19 years earlier led to Ellen losing her mind. Both mysteries weave into the other, until they knit together in a breathtaking sequence of surprising twists and unexpected turns. There are murders, recent and ancient, to be unravelled, and near squeaks for Shardlake as enemies try to kill him. The heartstone of the title is the small piece of bone over a stag’s heart with symbolic significance to the story.
To reveal any more of the plot would not be fair to all the Shardlake fans who will be looking forward to this latest book, the fifth in the series. Nor would I spoil it for those who might come to CJ Sansom’s brand of Medieval crime fiction for the first time. In my review of the previous Shardlake novel, Revelation, in these pages I described it as the best yet. Well, Heartstone is better.
Sansom is now so settled in his milieu and at home with his characters that the story canters along effortlessly, while Tudor England is recreated with such attention to detail the reader feels propelled back in time. Medieval dishes are carefully chronicled so Shardlake dines on fresh river eels with butter sauce in London while in the country he enjoys “cold roast goose with rich sauces and fine red wine in silver jugs”. Even the greasy pottage on stops with soldiers bound for Portsmouth sounds more appealing than a sandwich on the M3.
The language is authentic without being unintelligible, and the author is as careful as a wardrobe mistress in a period drama not to trip up over little things. So when Shardlake is watched by a squirrel from the branch of a beech while taking a stroll in the woods, my mental image of the squirrel is a modern one. But when Sansom describes “its bushy red tail bright against the green leaves”, I’m left smiling. Red! Of course! No grey squirrels in those days.
Sansom is a lawyer and historian, so we get his usual authoritative tour through the Tudor legal system, but also in this novel something else. He has really put his back into the historical research. Henry VIII is sick, bloated and old and engaged in a ruinous and unwinnable war with France. The populace is terrified of invasion and the havoc and brutality to be wreaked in revenge for the vile behaviour of our soldiers in France. There is little confidence in England’s ability to repel the French, should they succeed in landing. And it is only their bad leadership which means they do not.
Sansom puts Shardlake aboard the Mary Rose for the Battle of the Solent on July 19 when our most famous Medieval warship topples over and sinks in an attack on the galleys of the French fleet. He makes full use of all that has been learned since the Mary Rose was salvaged in 1982 and restored as a Medieval time capsule.
The result is some fine writing of what it must have been like at the end: “The ship heeled to starboard. I thought… she would right herself, but she tilted more and more. The soldiers on the port side, which rose high as the starboard side dipped lower, clung to the side of the portholes; their guns began slipping back through them and crashing down the decks. Looking through the doorway I saw a man fall off the topmast into the web of rigging, swivel guns fall from the topdeck railing, into the sea.”
The Mary Rose disappeared in minutes and out of 500 soldiers and crew there were only 35 survivors. Matthew Shardlake’s many followers will be relieved to know he is one of them. Which means he can continue his fight for justice into the reign of Edward VI, by which time Richard Rich will have redeemed himself after his disgrace at Shardlake’s hands to become Lord Chancellor. That’s one contest I would not miss – and I hope CJ Sansom is busy working on such an account right now.
