Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

  They entered the chamber together.

  And as they both stared at her in surprise she announced coolly:

  “You won’t be needing her tonight.”

  She had burned her boats. For the merchant had been expecting to see her that night. But she was confident she could succeed; and on the third night with Wilson, she put it to him squarely:

  “Time you had a wife. You won’t find better than me.” She looked him straight in the eye. “And I’m descended from the nobility.”

  Wilson gazed at her. He thought of his roving life, his forty years, the many women he had known. Were they so important to him, any of them? This woman, who had calmly walked into his bed and thrown a rival out, this woman had a fire, an inner strength and determination he had not met before.

  “By God,” he suddenly thought, “I’ve money enough of my own; I could do worse.”

  Two months later Nellie Godfrey got her house. It was at Christchurch.

  But why, Shockley wondered, why had Peter Mason performed this act of madness?

  Each time he thought of it, he remembered the day only a few months before, when he had seen the cutler staring so strangely into the middle distance at the execution of the three heretics.

  Was it then that he had decided to do it? Was it before even that, some day when he heard Abigail’s scornful words for the men who, like himself, had not the courage to speak out? It was impossible to know: for one thing was certain – Peter Mason was not saying.

  The cutler had chosen his time well. Shockley was there.

  He would never forget how that morning, at the moment of the elevation of the Host, the quiet form of Peter Mason had suddenly walked into the aisle and approached the altar table. For a second no one noticed him: then they assumed that he must have some private purpose – an unexprcted call of nature perhaps – for moving from his place. He reached the front and then turned to face them. The priest and his assistants glanced back at him, irritated. Then, looking rather drawn and pale, Peter Mason said something. His voice was so soft, no one heard. He gazed at them, clearly expecting something to happen. Again he opened his mouth and Shockley strained to hear. This time there was a little gasp from the front rows.

  That was all. He stood there, very still, with that curious, half puzzled smile on his face, waiting. After a little time, the priest ordered two of the men to lead him out.

  Peter Mason had denied the Transubstantiation.

  Few men were more eager than Bishop Capon and his chancellor to prosecute heretics; yet even they, it seemed, hesitated. Indeed, for an entire week, nothing happened, and the rumour in Salisbury was that Peter Mason had become a little weak in the head.

  Edward Shockley was uneasy. He was concerned for Peter Mason, but also for himself.

  He had been to the prayer meetings less of late. He told himself he was too busy; but he knew very well that it was also the sense of Abigail’s secret scorn that kept him absent.

  He had no wish, however, for attention to be drawn to the existence of the little group. He thought of John Moody. Had he seen him after all, that day when he came out of the prayer meeting? Had he guessed, spoken of it to anyone – even perhaps to Katherine? He spoke slightingly of the foolish Protestant heretics to her and watched her reaction. There was none he could detect. But his mind was still not easy. No doubt there were others, too, who might have seen him in the Masons’ company on those occasions. When he saw Abigail in the street the next day, he avoided her.

  He did pay one visit to Peter though, at his workshop, and urged him not to repeat the offence: to which Peter had replied only with that same, distant half smile that made it impossible to know whether he had understood or not.

  But the next Sunday, when Peter stood in the churchyard of St Edmunds, and afterwards went into the cathedral itself and made his declaration in front of the bishop, there could be no question. It was an open challenge. Before the end of the day, he had been taken by the bailiff.

  The priests questioned him. They gravely asked him if he denied Transubstantiation: he did. Would he accept the supremacy and authority of the pope? He quietly shook his head. Did he deny purgatory, the power of holy relics; did he refuse to raise his eyes at the elevation of the host? Did he deny all the tenets of Holy Church? He did.

  The priests were fair with him. Would he not recant? He would not.

  One of the canons, a tall, elderly man who had watched him intently, then intervened.

  “But why do you refuse all these, Peter Mason?” he asked, not unkindly. “Give us your reasons.” And for a moment Peter’s brow furrowed, as if he could not remember; but then it cleared. “These superstitions go against the true revealed religion; they are popish practices,” he recited; and contentedly awaited their verdict.

  There could only be one verdict; but it was qualified by the canon who had interrupted as follows:

  “We think thou art a simpleton, Peter Mason. Consider well that thou mayst yet escape death by a timely repentance.”

  As he was led away, his cheerful round face showed no sign of fear.

  Not so Edward Shockley.

  Each of the next two days he waited in dread for others of the little Protestant prayer group to be brought for questioning. Would Peter be asked for accomplices and would he name them?

  What if they took Robert or Abigail – or what if they took him himself?

  How would he answer if they asked him whether he denied Transubstantiation? He trembled at the thought. And then a worse one occurred to him. What if he denied his secret Protestantism but Abigail and the others insisted to the priests that he was one of them?

  Several times during the day he would break out into a sweat; and once or twice in the big workshop he thought he had caught his young brother-in-law gazing at him with a cynical smile: John Moody whose pale blue eyes missed nothing – certainly he knew.

  Was it possible that one of his own family might denounce him to the bishop? He had been kind to John, and to Katherine of late. Surely they would not.

  It was three days after Peter’s arrest that Edward Shockley stood in the market place and saw John Moody walking towards him with a strange look on his face. He felt himself grow pale.

  The young fellow came beside him.

  “There is something I must say.”

  “Well?”

  “Peter Mason. I know how well you know him.”

  Now he was ashen.

  “I scarcely know the man.”

  John Moody frowned.

  “But I thought . . .”

  “The Masons are nothing to me.”

  What did that expression on his brother-in-law’s face mean? He dreaded to know, yet he must find out. He paused anxiously.

  “I had thought you could speak with him,” John Moody said. “Something must be done.”

  “He’s said what he believes. What can anyone do?” he replied guardedly.

  To his surprise now, John took a different tack to what he had expected.

  “I’ve seen him at his house – every day. ’Tis not what he believes.” He grimaced, “’Tis what his wife believes. Yet it will kill him.”

  “And you wish me . . .?”

  “To urge him to recant.”

  Edward stared at him. Then, after all, the young man did not suspect him.

  “Yet we are good Catholics,” he challenged him, watching the young man’s face carefully for any hint of cynicism about the claim. “Do we say that a heretic is not to be punished?”

  “I think,” Moody answered him gravely, “that there are other ways to save a man’s soul than through the fire. You should help him.”

  He considered the idea for several hours. If he went to see Peter, might not people suspect complicity? What if Peter let fall a careless word? And again, if he urged Peter to recant, Abigail might be furious and even denounce him. On the other hand, what would young Moody think if he refused such a Christian act? Could that be seen as suspicious? He turned it all ov
er in his mind for several hours.

  He liked Peter Mason. Perhaps he was too fearful. If they were going to arrest him, they would have done so already. Finally, he went to see the prisoner that evening, at a time when he was alone. He only meant to stay a few minutes.

  The room at Fisherton gaol in which he was being kept contained only two other prisoners, a man and a woman. It was furnished with two small benches and a wooden table. He and Peter Mason sat opposite each other. There were no priests about.

  They had not seen each other for a week, but he saw no great physical change in the prisoner except that he was a little thinner. His manner, however, was altered completely. Instead of the cheerful, eager, simple-minded fellow he had known, he found a stranger, mild-mannered, but withdrawn – as if he had already entered some other private world that gave him a comfort he would not share. He was almost serene.

  The two men conversed in low tones for half an hour.

  “Many of us, your friends, wish you would not take this matter to the bitter end,” Edward told him. But Peter only smiled gently.

  “A man may outwardly conform yet keep his heart pure, praying in secret,” he also suggested hopefully. But it was as if Peter had not heard.

  Suddenly, however, he began to talk of his little workshop, of things that he had made, of Nellie Godfrey who used to come past his door before she was driven away. “I wonder what is become of her now,” he murmured. And sensing that these thoughts of happier times were a comfort to him, Edward encouraged him and added his own memories. He forgot the time.

  They were still talking of these things when Abigail arrived with Robert. He looked at her nervously, but she seemed to take little interest in him beyond acknowledging him calmly.

  She was pale – paler than ever. The rings under her eyes were so deep and black that they seemed to have been branded permanently onto her face. She was very quiet, as though her sense of duty had taken her into a region of the mind that lay beyond mere sadness.

  Though he knew it would be wiser to depart, some instinct – perhaps just curiosity – kept him still in the room.

  As the three of them spoke in low tones, Abigail and Robert giving quiet words of comfort – she with placid composure, he with occasional nods of his head and short, nervous gestures – while Peter sat on the bench and listened with his head bowed, it seemed to Edward that there was something agitated about him, yet he could not say what.

  After a time, he looked up, his eyes a little softer, more uncertain, nearer to the simple Peter that Shockley had known before.

  “Tomorrow, they mean to burn me,” he said.

  Robert Mason shifted his feet awkwardly. Abigail looked at him steadily.

  “’Tis God’s work thou didst,” she said quietly, as if this was enough.

  “It was right to speak?” There it was: the almost puppy-like face of the friend that he knew so well, looking hopefully to his wife for approval.

  “God’s work is hard,” she replied.

  Then Peter, with a dignity Edward had not seen before, stood up and gravely turned to his cousin Robert.

  “I commend my wife to your care,” he said gravely; and Robert bowed his head.

  Edward could bear it no more.

  “Yet will you not recant?” he cried, breaking into their solemn meeting unashamedly. “They will accept a recantation even now. Believe in your heart what you will, until better times come, Peter Mason, but conform in body only, not in spirit.”

  Why such anguish in his voice, when there should only have been sweet reason? Was it that he himself, faced with Peter’s sacrifice, now felt guilty?

  He glanced at Robert, whose eyes fell; at Abigail: how steady she was, how certain.

  “Each man must follow his own conscience,” she said quietly.

  He looked at Peter again.

  And then, for less than a second, yet unmistakable, terrible, never-to-be-forgotten, he saw in Peter Mason’s eyes a look that he had not seen before: a look of perfect comprehension. It was a look that told him the foolish fellow understood, perhaps, more than he about the world, a look that was accompanied by a pain and anguish that even Abigail and Robert did not see as he said, very gently:

  “How can I?”

  Chance caused Nellie Wilson to bring her husband to Sarum that day.

  She had meant to send word to her brother Piers, then had a better idea. Instead of finding a poor priest to write a letter for her, she would arrive in person. It would be a small but happy triumph. As the two Wilsons came into the city in a small cart on a fine autumn morning, she was in a festive mood. She wondered why the people were all walking towards Fisherton.

  Moments later, all her happiness had gone and she was racing towards the place herself.

  He had already been brought to the stake when she arrived, and the fire was just being lit.

  Two things she saw at once. The first was that the sheriffs men had decided to be merciful: for they had prepared a quick fire.

  “Thank God for that at least,” she murmured.

  The slow fire burned the more fiercely, for the dry wood was left uncovered so that the victim was licked by the naked flames to die an agonising death. The quick fire was kinder, for here the fire was packed with damp leaves so that the sentenced man was soon asphyxiated before his body was roasted.

  The second thing she noticed was that one of the canons, a tall elderly man, was standing beside him, talking to him calmly but seriously, obviously urging him to recant; and then she saw where poor Peter’s eyes were looking – at Abigail and Robert, standing at the inner edge of the circle of spectators.

  They did not see her at first.

  Nor, to begin with, did Edward Shockley, who was standing with his wife and John Moody not far from the Mason group.

  When the fire was lit, Edward looked at his wife and wondered:

  “Do the flames truly purify his soul?”

  But his wife did not trouble to look at him. She and her brother instead sank to their knees.

  And once again, Edward felt a sense of shame, as he stood between the two sets – Mason and Moody – of true believers.

  Did the fire purify? He stared, not at the flames, but billowing smoke. The sheriff’s men, thank God, had done their job with the leaves efficiently. He could not see Peter.

  By looking down at the kneeling figures, he had missed one small act in the drama. Just before the smoke engulfed him, Peter had for some reason turned his gaze away from Abigail, and seen Nellie. For a second he stared in astonishment, and then he smiled, as he used to do, his simple-hearted, affectionate smile.

  As the crowd began to disperse, Edward Shockley did not move; and thanks to this he witnessed a further small encounter. For long after Peter had gone, and the naked flames were consuming the thin remains of his body, Abigail Mason looked across and caught sight of Nellie, through the thinning crowd. She was staring at the stake. There were tears running down her cheeks.

  For a moment Abigail did not move. Then her face set. She came towards Nellie slowly, Robert walking just behind her.

  Her voice was quiet, but carrying as she reached Nellie, turned to where the Sheriff’s men were still standing with the town bailiff by the fire and announced:

  “Arrest this woman. She is a harlot.”

  Nellie looked at her, and pursed her lips thoughtfully.

  It was Captain Wilson’s voice which rang out for all to hear.

  “No more she ain’t. She’s my wife.” He stared, first at Robert, who now looked embarrassed, then at the sheriff’s men. “Would any care to dispute with me?”

  No one seemed inclined to move.

  “And who’s this pasty-faced scold?” he asked the crowd that had now turned to watch this new spectacle. “Who’s this tittle-tattle, this cold-eyed witch?”

  There was an audible laugh in the crowd.

  Then Nellie Godfrey’s voice rang out as she made her own lightning deductions from what she saw of the family group befor
e her.

  “Why,” she shouted – and it seemed to Edward Shockley that there was not a man or woman that side of Fisherton Bridge would would not hear. “’Tis Abigail Mason who’s just burned her husband so she can get another.”

  Edward stared. Was it possible that Abigail had grown paler? She visibly buckled, as if she had been hit and winded. And she said not a word.

  He looked from one to another. He saw Abigail’s eyes smouldering with rage and hate – the hate not of someone who has been found out, but who has been told a truth about themselves they did not realise.

  As he stared first at the terrible fire, then at the pale figure who stood before it, it seemed to Edward Shockley, tortured for so long by his own conscience, as if the scales had fallen from his eyes.

  The agony of England and Mary Tudor was nearly over.

  In Sarum, in 1557, Bishop Capon died, Queen Mary appointed three vigorous Catholic preachers to uphold the faith at Sarum, but the bishop himself was not immediately replaced.

  In 1557 also, Philip of Spain made one of his rare visits to his unloved queen. He came only for troops, to be used in his quarrel against the French. The English unwillingly supplied them, and Pembroke led seven thousand men to rout the French. It was a brief triumph. In January 1558, after Pembroke himself had returned, the French struck back and attacked Calais. Philip, more anxious to make gains for Spain in Italy, let them take it. So fell the last territory England was ever to hold in France. The loss was a saving to the British exchequer, for Calais had been expensive to keep, but a blow to England’s prestige.

  It broke Mary’s heart.

  But neither her husband nor her people cared for the Catholic queen any more. Cardinal Pole, her great ally, had been recalled from England by a new pope, who hated the proud aristocratic legate. In November 1558, isolated and sick, Mary Tudor died.

  During her reign, some two hundred and eighty were burned: a small number, as the dismal records of religious persecution go, but enough to tell the islanders that they wanted no more. The last victims due to stand at the stake in Sarum were never executed. The under-sheriff, given the writ for their execution, tore it up. Before it was renewed, the queen had died.