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HEARTSTONE, which marks the fifth appearance of hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake, is set at a very tense moment late in the reign of Henry VIII. In retaliation for Henry's disastrous invasion of France in the previous year, the French have mounted a huge naval force, now arrayed just off Portsmouth, and are preparing to invade. Stacks of wood are ready to be set alight as beacons if the French come ashore, every possible man is pressed into service and marched toward Portsmouth bearing longbows and pikes, and the pride of the English fleet, the Mary Rose and the Great Harry, together with other, lesser, ships and war galleys are anchored in the Solent, awaiting action. Ever since he drowned a man in self-defence and he himself also almost drowned, Shardlake has taken a dim view of bodies of water. Left to his own devices, he would stay as far from Portsmouth as possible. But Queen Catherine Parr, Henry's final wife, has a commission for him that will take him close to that port and he has himself a private concern that warrants investigation in the same general vicinity, so he and his clerk, Barak, set off into the heart of the action, even though Barak's wife, Tamasin, is due to give birth momentarily. The situation he is investigating at the Queen's behest involves allegations of monstrous wrong-doing against a ward, Hugh Curteys. Few novelists could make the workings of the odious Court of Wards, in which the interests of the orphaned and widowed were bought and sold at great profit to everyone but the orphans, as involving as Sansom does here. Of course, Sansom is himself a lawyer, and clearly one who loves the law. But he has the enormous gift of being able to convey all the necessary facts about every activity without once resorting to that dread information dump in which everything grinds to a halt while the author unloads page after Wikipedia page on the helpless reader. Sansom tells us what we need to know and makes us want to know it - how to string a longbow, how to hunt a stag, how to raise an army, how to board (and equally important, how to get off) a ship like the Mary Rose. Along the way, we know how it all sounded, smelt, and felt. But more to the point, he makes understand why it all matters. Unlike far too many novels set well back in history, HEARTSTONE never glamourizes war. While the young and inexperienced race off to glory, experienced soldiers face the forthcoming battle with dread and resignation. Most moving of all is one Sergeant Leacon, in whose company Shardlake travels toward the coast. A veteran of the campaigns against the Scots and the French, he has seen the brutality of total war and wants no further part in it. Today, I suppose, he would be diagnosed as suffering from PTSD; in the 16th century, he is saddened to the core of his being and stoically committed to doing his duty. Of all the Shardlake novels to date, this seems to me both the best and the saddest. England is in perilous shape, with a fat and vainglorious monarch on the throne, recklessly debasing the currency and undermining the welfare of the people in pursuit of some vain medieval dream of knightly glory. The religious conflicts that have marked his reign continue to simmer, to the point where religion has essentially lost all but a political meaning. One of the more telling remarks is the passing comment on the part of a tenant of a lodging house: "Samuel and I just worship the way the King commands." But sadder still is the looming tragedy in Shardlake's own life. He too has lost any meaningful connection to the faith that launched him on his career. What he had left was his unshakeable conviction that truth is worth pursuing at any risk to himself. What he discovers in this novel is that his relentless pursuit of the truth may have disastrous outcomes, that to intend well, even to do well, does not mean that good will be done. By the end of the book, he, like Sergeant Leacon, is suffering from post-traumatic shock and like Leacon, he has little choice but to carry on. The end of Henry's reign is imminent, but not, one hopes, the end of Shardlake. I look forward to seeing how this rich and complex character will fare in the turbulent days following the death of the king and how he will deal with the continuing power and influence of his enemy, Sir Richard Rich. § Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, November 2010
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