by Alan Judd
‘Have you any other names?’ I was thinking of Frizer, the Earl of Leicester’s man.
‘None. There are many whose names I do not know and I cannot afford to appear curious. They mention one George Eliot, some sort of sheriff’s man or enforcer who sniffs around, but I haven’t met him.’
‘You must try to stay until Campion returns, if he does.’
‘What do you want me to say to him?’
‘You don’t need to say anything. Just let me know he’s there. Then we can arrest him. Or this George Eliot can.’
‘Arrest?’
‘Of course. What else should we do?’
He nodded. ‘Of course, that is what it must come down to. I’ve always thought Judas deserved more credit than we give him. Why he did it, I mean.’
‘Thirty pieces of silver, was it not?’ Some spy for money openly and shamelessly, others do the same but pretend other reasons. Christopher was being paid but I didn’t know how much and assumed this to be a preliminary to a request for more.
‘I’m not sure thirty pieces was sufficient motivation in his case.’
‘You think he should have held out for more?’
‘No. I think he had another reason.’
‘Loyalty to the scribes and Pharisees, to Judaism?’
‘More complicated than that.’
That was all we had time for. The following day being the Sabbath, I anticipated no message and no Christopher, there being little opportunity to escape from such a religious household on a Sunday morning. But I still went to the tree. It was another fine morning and dappled sunlight filtered through the branches. After checking the bole I lingered, observing the wood anemones and other examples of God’s handiwork. It was too late for bluebells, my favourite, but I suspected there must have been plenty. Then I climbed the tree to the bough from which Christopher had surprised me, intending to rest a while. It was even more comfortable than it looked and I nodded off.
I awoke to hear hooves and men’s voices on the path. I couldn’t see them nor could I hear what they said as they spoke low. I climbed down and crept through the undergrowth until I could see the flank of a horse through the branches, with a man’s leg in the stirrup. Beside it were the head and shoulders of another man talking up to the rider, whose upper body I could not see. The man on the ground had one hand on the horse’s mane and was gesticulating with the other. He had an unkempt red beard, untidy brown hair and some kind of rusty birthmark or scar across the top of his cheek and the side of his nose. His voice was low and urgent.
‘Abingdon, go to Abingdon,’ he was saying. ‘Find George Eliot and tell him to bring the magistrate and a force of men, as many as he can, and come with all speed. There are rich pickings here and I don’t doubt he will be well rewarded.’
The other man said something I couldn’t catch and Red Beard shook his head. ‘Now, with all speed. Go now.’ He stepped back and slapped the horse’s neck as the rider turned away.
I could hear him trotting briskly along the path towards Wantage. Red Beard stood watching for a moment before turning back towards the manor. I waited for his footsteps to fade before creeping farther forward. Through the massed leaves of a holly I saw the back of him as he disappeared around a bend, a broad back, burly, clad in a brown leather tunic and clumping along in heavy riding boots. I could have followed but did not want to risk his turning and seeing me. Instead I returned to the inn.
I visited the tree again early that evening but there was still no Christopher and no message. Worried that something might have gone wrong in the manor, that he might have been discovered, I advanced through the trees towards the house, keeping parallel with the path. It was difficult to move silently through the undergrowth but I took my time and eventually had a view of it. The drawbridge was still down but there was a man watching it from one of the turrets. He took no care to conceal himself, looking outwards all the time, either down at the grounds or scanning the horizon and shielding his eyes with his hands. Twice he looked directly at the trees concealing me. I kept still. Then, while I watched and wondered what I could do – which was nothing, of course – Red Beard appeared on the far side of the drawbridge leading a sturdy bay horse. Once across the bridge he mounted and trotted back along the path towards Wantage, passing close enough for me to smell the horse. The man in the tower watched him for a while before turning away and disappearing. He was back two or three minutes later, having presumably reported.
A few minutes later Christopher strolled out of the house onto the drawbridge. He gave the appearance of one at ease and taking the air. He crossed the drawbridge and loitered on the bank, examining the water-lilies. Then he strolled towards the trees on the other side of the path from me, fingering and examining the lower branches. Next he bent a hazel branch until it half snapped, then from beneath his tunic took out the dagger I thought he had promised to leave behind and cut the branch free. Next he strolled along the path past where I was hiding, using his knife to shape one end of the branch into a rough handle. He looked like a well-fed idler on a fine day, a youth without thought or care.
I let him pass before creeping back through the woods to our oak. He had beaten me to it but was no longer the dreamer with time on his hands. He cut off my account of how I had followed him, stabbing the ground with his stick.
‘You must act now. Father Campion is here for the taking. He arrived last night and preached this morning. He said Mass, I was there. They will hide him until tomorrow. But they are watchful, suspicious of another man there, a man called Frizer. He’s a bit of a ruffian but friendly with the cook with whom he used to work at the house of Thomas Roper in Canterbury, which is where I come from. Roper is grandson to Sir Thomas More, good Catholic family, which was why the cook vouched for Frizer. But they don’t trust him, they suspect he might be doing what I’m doing, especially as he left suddenly on horseback just now without word to anyone.’
‘Any sign that you are suspected?’
‘I don’t think so. He and I quarrelled.’
‘How? What about? Describe him.’
He described Red Beard and I told him what I had overheard. Also, that I had been warned of him and that he worked for the Earl of Leicester. ‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to complicate your task. What was your quarrel?’
‘He challenged me in front of others, asking did he not know me by sight, was I not the cobbler’s son from Canterbury? I don’t remember him and had no reason to think he’d recognise me but he evidently does. In which case I can’t think why he’d say so publicly unless to deflect attention from himself. I denied it, of course, but he kept on about it and so I said he must know me from Cambridge where I now suddenly remembered seeing him with soldiers and burghers of the town. He’d helped arrest some scholars suspected of being Catholics about to flee abroad. He denied that of course and cuffed my head, cursing me for a lying whelp. Which was true, of course. Then we fought.’
‘You fought?’ The Frizer I had glimpsed was a burly grown man but Christopher looked unharmed, his skin unblemished, his skull unbroken.
‘Only briefly. Others intervened. But not before I split his lip with a pewter mug.’ He smiled. ‘I did not pull my knife. You should be proud of me.’
That was the first sign I had that Christopher, for all his gentle airs and graceful speech, relished a fight. He used to excuse it by saying he had inherited his father’s temper. Maybe he had, but I think he also enjoyed it. He had the self-control to contain himself when he wished.
We were interrupted by the sounds of horses, harnesses and marching feet from the direction of Wantage. Christopher sprang up into the oak like a monkey, standing on the bough he and I had rested upon. ‘A lot of them, soldiers and burghers.’ He jumped down. ‘I must get back to the house.’
‘No. Stay here. If they see you they’ll take you for a sympathiser and arrest you.’
‘That’s what you want, surely? What we want, I mean. Proof I’m a loyal Papist so
that Robin Noakes can ride again on Mr Secretary’s behalf, unlike that Frizer whom they will now know has betrayed them.’
I hadn’t realised that he saw himself as continuing in our service and wasn’t at all sure that Mr Secretary envisaged that. ‘You may be imprisoned or worse, especially if they find Campion there.’
‘Sir Francis will see me right, won’t he? You trust him, don’t you?’
I had never come across such youthful enthusiasm in an agent. ‘You’ve no idea what prison is like. You’re better off here, let the searchers do their work. You’ve done your job.’
‘I want to see it through.’ He ran off through the trees.
I assume, sir, that you do not need me to describe all the events of that night? They were much trumpeted at the time and are one of the events of the old Queen’s reign, along with the Armada and the more noble executions, that are spoken of still. I did not witness them myself, anyway, so could only summarise what I had from Christopher later.
Very well, sir, very well. It will add little to His Majesty’s knowledge of Christopher but if it is to the King’s purpose, so be it. But if I may say so, sir – if I may – a little more ale and sustenance would help. I grow weary in this close confinement, as perhaps you can see. Thank you, sir, thank you kindly.
Well, I hid in the tree until the soldiers had passed. I was tempted to creep through the trees again to spy on the house but I feared capture, having seen enough of soldiers when working in the Low Countries for Mr Secretary to know that explanations, subtleties, distinctions and fine judgements are of no account once swords are drawn. So I retreated to the inn.
Christopher did not appear until the following morning, exhausted and exhilarated and not smelling sweetly. ‘I feared you had been taken,’ I told him.
‘I feared for myself at times, but it helps to be of little consequence.’
He told me that the soldiers mounted guard around the house and the other armed men – about a hundred yeomen under charge of a magistrate – entered and searched it. They were at first gentle and reluctant since many were neighbours and the Yate family was well liked. The atmosphere changed when the sheriff’s man George Eliot joined them, armed with a warrant from Wantage. Frizer was with him. Eliot reinforced the yeomen with soldiers, urging them into every chamber, upending beds and furniture and banging on the walls with their hilts and shafts for sounds of hollowness within. But they found not the hair of a priest, and the magistrate, Justice Fettiplace who had accompanied them, apologised most graciously to Mrs Yate, making plain his relief at finding nothing.
But Eliot was not satisfied. He stood in the middle of the drawbridge with Frizer to prevent anyone leaving. In a loud voice he read a passage from his warrant which ordered searchers to make holes in internal walls and take up floorboards. One, a local man who could read, stood looking over his shoulder and objected that there was no such passage. Eliot ordered Frizer to have the man arrested as a Jesuit sympathiser and threatened ruin to Justice Fettiplace if he did not order another search. Fettiplace agreed on condition the man was released, which was done, and another search began, provoking Mrs Yate to wailing and weeping. After much destruction and while it was still going on, she took ill and begged she might be allowed to sleep. Justice Fettiplace agreed and she had a bed made up in an attic that had already been searched. A sentry was placed at the bottom of the stairs.
Christopher witnessed all this with his own eyes, as well as much of what followed, since he had cleverly connived with Mrs Yate and the cook to produce food and drink to mollify the weary searchers. He took it on trays to wherever the searchers were, so saw much of what was going on. Frizer, he said, put himself about everywhere, upstairs and down, goading men on, saying, ‘We know he’s here, I’ve seen him with my own eyes, we’ll find the Papist snake if we have to take the house apart. Not a mouse, not a rat will escape us.’ When Christopher politely offered him sustenance from his tray Frizer said gruffly, ‘I thought you’d be gone.’
‘I am with you always,’ Christopher replied quietly, making free with the words of Our Lord. He smiled when he told me this, saying it gave him as much pleasure to tease Frizer as to strike him.
They searched well into the night. The hammering and banging did not keep Jane Yate from her slumber, however, and gradually the noise ceased as the searchers wearied and the ale took effect. There were not enough candles to go round and many simply lay snoring on the floor where lack of light had stopped them searching. But not Christopher. He was suspicious that Mrs Yate had chosen to sleep in an attic room normally used by servants. Why should she not use her own? When most of the house was asleep he crept out of the kitchen and up to the attic stairs. The sentry was slumped at the bottom, his back against the wall and his head on his shoulder. Christopher stepped over his legs and carried on up the stairs, stopping at the door to the attic. There were voices within, low and male. He could not distinguish the words but from the rhythm he judged they were praying together. At the end he heard the Amen, then Jane Yate’s voice.
There was a pause, followed by sounds of movement and a murmured conversation. As his ear became attuned he recognised Campion’s voice from having heard him preach. There were also the voices of two other priests, one urging that they should leave now while the house was in slumber. The other asked whether there were still guards outside. Mrs Yate said they should stay, that this attic had been searched before and their hole undiscovered, they would be safer here and could leave when all the searchers had gone. Campion agreed.
Christopher crept back down the stairs and felt his way through the dark house to find Frizer, who was sleeping on the kitchen floor, across the door. I can recall for you exactly what he said to me, his very words even after these many years. He said: ‘I stood by Frizer’s sleeping body, making up my mind. I had in my hands the power of life and death. I could wake him and tell him and the fugitives would be found and executed. Or I could say nothing and they would probably escape. I hesitated long, waiting to see whether I cared. And I concluded I cared little whether they lived or died. I was indifferent. Does that shock you, Thomas? Some would say I should have shown mercy to a good man, others that I should have rejoiced at unearthing the fox. I liked Father Campion, a powerful and compelling preacher. Yet I remained indifferent. What does that say about me, do you think? For a long time – well, a minute or so – I stood still, waiting to hear how my heart spoke, whether my heart should sway my mind. But I heard nothing. Feelings are poor guides. Thoughts alone should guide us. And thought told me that these men would force us back to the old religion, with all its priests and Popery, its sale of relics, its superstitions, its wine-is-blood and bread-is-flesh magic, its laws and tithes, and foreign rule. Foreign rule, that was the thing. That would not do. Yet still I hesitated, feeling what it is like to exercise power.’
To me, that last sentence is telling. He saw it not as his duty to his country and the rightful worship of God but as a kind of game, a game of dalliance with himself. Years later he told me that the making of his characters and plays was the nearest he came to that early exercise of the power of life and death. But doing it in his plays was more interesting than the reality of that occasion. ‘Reality lacks reality,’ he said more than once in later years, ‘until it is imagined.’
At that time I was encouraged by what he said because it meant he had no secret longings to return us to papal rule. We could trust him. Of course, it did not follow that he was therefore of the Godly party, like me and Mr Secretary and those we worked with. Indeed, it did not follow that he was of any party – or perhaps it did follow that he was of no party. But I was not troubled about that in those days.
The rest of the story has little to do with Christopher. He roused Frizer who roused George Eliot who called for men and a smith’s hammer. They clumped upstairs to Mrs Yate’s attic chamber and accused her of hiding the priests. She protested and denied it, then wept when one of the men swung the hammer against the wooden partiti
on behind her bed. It yielded and there, lying together in a dark narrow cell, lay Campion and the other two priests. They were brought out as dawn was breaking.
Christopher did not witness the unearthing, wisely choosing not to associate himself with the discovery. The arrested men were roped together and brought down and the sheriff sent for. Jane Yate was not arrested despite her crime, nor were any of the nuns who were surely complicit. But some of the other men in the house were, including an unsuspecting priest who happened to call that morning. Christopher slipped away, taking advantage of the fact that the young, like the old, are often little regarded.
The prisoners were held for days in the house in reasonable comfort, with Campion even allowed place of honour at the table so that he could hold forth. Eliot and Frizer stayed with them – I never knew Frizer absent himself from free food and drink – and it was reported that Eliot rashly challenged Campion to theological argument. He was confounded when Campion worsted him, graciously forgave him, drank to him and promised to absolve him if he confessed and repented, provided he paid a large penance. I never heard which of those conditions most deterred the sheriff’s man.
But everything changed when orders from the Privy Council reached the house. The prisoners were placed under close arrest and taken to London on horseback, their elbows roped behind them, their wrists before them and their feet tied beneath their horses’ bellies. In this manner were they paraded through the city to the Tower. A note was pinned to Campion’s hat, inscribed, ‘Campion, the seditious Jesuit’.
Christopher and I saw them, briefly. I was bidden to take him to Mr Secretary’s house in Seething Lane to be thanked and paid for his work. There was a great throng in the streets, with much shouting at the prisoners and merriment at their expense. We could only just see them above the heads of the crowd, bent and weary on their horses. More than once Campion almost toppled and had to be pushed upright by the soldiers.