Drew concluded his account, “We left just as they were forming a search party for Lord Chesterfield’s son and arrived home three days ago. As far as I know, he hasn’t spoken to anyone.”
Drew fingered the bishop’s note in his hand. Should he show it to Eliot?
“Do you hear any sounds coming from his room?”
Drew shook his head no.
“Maybe he’s killed himself!”
Eliot started toward the stairs.
“Eliot, wait! There is this.”
Drew held up the bishop’s note and handed it to Eliot.
Eliot began reading. “This ain’t the bishop’s handwriting,” he said.
“No, it’s mine.”
“I thought you said it was from the bishop.”
“It is. I can’t tell you any more than that.”
“What are these numbers on top?”
“Can’t tell you.”
Eliot looked up, exasperated.
“I can’t tell any more than that I know it’s a message from the bishop.”
Drew waited for Eliot to finish reading the note.
He said, “What do you think? Do you think it’s a suicide note?”
Eliot shook his head. “I don’t know. Sounds too pretty for a suicide note. Why would he write a pretty suicide note? Where did you find it?”
“In my room. He must have left it while I was sleeping.”
Eliot slumped into his chair again.
“If this is a suicide note, why would he give it to you? Why not just let people find it when they find the body?”
That made sense to Drew.
Eliot crumpled the piece of paper and tossed it on the floor. He jumped up again.
“Where are you going?”
Eliot didn’t answer. He bounded up the stairs taking two and three steps at a time. A moment later Drew could hear Eliot pounding on the bishop’s bedroom door and yelling. This went on for several minutes. Then Eliot returned.
“Any luck?” Drew asked.
Eliot shook his head and resumed his place opposite Drew. He placed his head in his hands and rubbed his wild eyes.
“He’s alive. At least I know that much.”
“How? Did he speak to you?”
“No, but I heard a scraping noise—a chair being moved or something like that.”
For several minutes the boys sat in silence.
“Did I ever tell you how me and the bishop met?” Eliot hunched forward, resting his chin in his hands. “He caught me lifting Timmins’ purse.”
“No!” Drew laughed.
“God’s truth!” Eliot laughed with him. “I must have been seven, maybe eight at the time.”
“What happened?”
“Instead of turning me in, he took me home with him. Never explained why. But if he hadn’t I sure woulda died. That was a plague year. Church bells played for the dead every day. Whole families were swept away; in my alley, thirty kids died. I was sick at the time and the bishop brought me here. He was the first person who was ever kind to me for no reason.”
Drew smiled. “I know what you mean.”
“Where did you first meet him?” Eliot asked.
Drew laughed and shook his head.
Eliot leaned forward eagerly. “This must be good. Come on, out with it. Where did you meet him?”
“At Windsor Castle.”
Eliot shook his hand like he was playing a stringed instrument. “Well, lah dee dah! And?”
“It was during a reception for the king.”
“AND?”
“He caught me hiding in a suit of armor.”
Eliot howled. He laughed so hard he fell out of his chair and rolled on the floor. His hyena-sounding laugh brought the round cook flying into the room. When he saw who it was, he left, wiping his hands with a towel and shaking his head.
For most of the afternoon the boys shared Bishop Laud stories. Eliot told how the bishop bought him the first set of clothes he ever wore that hadn’t been handed down or stolen. Drew told how the bishop had filled the gap in his life left by the death of his grandfather. There were solemn stories and hilarious ones. A passerby would have thought it was a wake for the bishop.
The shadows in the room were growing long.
Eliot asked, “Can Elkins be trusted?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will he keep his mouth shut about the accident?”
Drew hadn’t thought about it. “I guess so.”
Silence.
Eliot stood. “If the bishop asks for me, tell him I’ll be gone for a while.”
“Just ‘gone’? Nothing else? What about your report on Scarborough?”
“I can tell him when I get back.”
Alone again, Drew sat at the bishop’s desk and opened the cleric’s King James Bible. Still unfamiliar with the contents, it took him the better part of the evening to find the right words to put into a note. It would have been easier to compose one using his own words, but since Bishop Laud saw fit to write him a coded note, he felt the return message should be in like form.
With a confident hand he wrote: (23/41/10/1–11) (20/17/17) (20/18/24/10–20) (41/3/18/2). Translated, it read: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed. A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. And there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Andrew.”
He carried the note with him through supper, reading it several times. It wasn’t until he retired to his bedroom that night that he went by the bishop’s closed bedroom door and slipped the note under it.
The late summer morning light woke Drew as it spilled through the window onto his face. Birds were singing, and he could smell the flowers from the bishop’s garden. Drew rose from bed and stretched. As he did he saw a piece of paper on the floor. He recognized the bishop’s perfectly formed numerals: (9/2/1/6–8) (22/5/4/1–2) (18/6/27/12–13) (66/22/5/29–32).
Without dressing, Drew grabbed his Bible and a pen. Pages flew back and forth as he decoded the note. As the message emerged he thought how much easier it was to translate a message than to write one.
Setting his pen down, he read the translation: “My heart rejoiceth, my beloved. Your friend forever and ever.”
It was then he heard the bishop’s humming and the clip, clip, clip of his shears in the garden. Drew smiled. The bishop’s back!
“Christopher Matthews is a serpent.”
The bishop of London gestured toward Drew with his knife as he spoke between bites of mutton.
“He’s a dangerous man. If he and others like him are not stopped, the whole fabric of the church will be rent to pieces. He must be silenced.”
Drew pushed his plate away and concentrated as his mentor instructed him on his upcoming mission. It wasn’t unusual for the bishop to continue eating for fifteen to twenty minutes longer than everyone else at the table. Tonight it was just the two of them.
“I don’t understand what makes him so dangerous,” Drew said. “He’s just the curate of a small village.”
The bishop gulped hurriedly to respond.
“That’s exactly why he’s dangerous,” he said, poking his knife emphatically at Drew. “An Oxford dean wouldn’t dare spout Puritan propaganda, because he knows we’d have him locked up before nightfall. It’s the backwoods preachers in the small towns who do the damage. They deceive their unlearned church members.”
The knife waved back and forth furiously.
“No, deceive isn’t strong enough. They bewitch their people. For when the heretic is exposed, it’s not uncommon for the very people who were bewitched to rise up and defend the heretic!”
“I still don’t understand why small villages are a threat. What difference does it make if there are small pockets of dissenters on the fringes of the country? If you control the major learning centers, you control the country, right?”
The bishop beamed.
“You’re unlike any of my other boys,” he said. “You ask intelligent questions. It’s refreshing.”
He chewed a bite of potato while formulating his explanation.
“It’s a matter of unity, Drew. ‘There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.’ Ephesians chapter 4. The dissenters undermine the unity of our faith. It is for the sake of unity that we insist on conformity for all churches. Any member of the church should be able to walk into any church in England and be familiar with the worship service—that’s why we have the Book of Common Prayer. That same member should know the minister is approved by the church and agrees with what the church stands for—the ministerial surplice is the symbol of an approved minister. And that same member would rightfully expect that the things of God are kept holy—that’s why the altar is placed uniformly and set apart with a railing so that people don’t profane it by using it as a common table to transact their business, or to lay their goods on it, or to write frivolous notes on it.”
Bishop Laud helped himself to the last of the potatoes as he continued.
“The Puritans are determined to undermine the unity of the faith. They insist on preaching their own messages. Many of these men are illiterate, empty-headed fools, yet they claim to speak for God! Even in their public prayers, when they divert from the printed prayers, they spout their ignorance in the pretense of leading their people to the throne of God! For the good of the faith, for the unity of the church, these harmful simpletons must be silenced! And I will overcome every obstacle at any cost until England is rid of every last one of these heretics!”
He paused, looked at Drew and chuckled.
“Sermon’s over.”
Drew smiled back. It was good to see the bishop full of life again.
“When do I leave?” he asked.
The question seemed to knock the wind out of the bishop. He stopped mid-bite and lay his knife down and shoved his plate away. Drew had never seen the bishop leave any food on his plate before.
“In the morning,” was all he said. There were tears in the bishop’s eyes.
Drew gulped hard and looked down.
“I had planned on sending Eliot on this mission,” the bishop said. “But the Lord alone knows where he is.”
“He’ll come back. I’m sure of it,” Drew offered.
“Oh yes, I’m sure of it too. I trust Eliot. It’s just that … well, I’ve been trying to convince myself that you’re not ready for this mission. Just so I can keep you near me. But I’ve only been fooling myself. You are ready. You’re just as qualified as Eliot for this mission, maybe even more so, because you’re smarter. The truth is, this assignment may take several months and I don’t want to let you go.”
Drew blushed and fiddled with his dessert spoon.
“You think it will take that long?”
“Edenford is a tightly knit village. You will not gain their confidence easily. It’ll take time, but,” Bishop Laud slapped the table with a pudgy hand, “I can’t let personal motives interfere with God’s work. May God speed your way to Edenford, Andrew, and may He bring you back to me soon.”
The road west held haunting memories for Drew. Just a few weeks ago he had accompanied a stricken Bishop Laud along the road as they returned to London. He tried not to think about it, but occasionally a landmark would prompt a memory he would rather forget.
He decided the best way to fight the unwanted feelings was to keep his mind occupied with the mission. He reviewed his preparations and his plan. He would travel by horseback to Bridgewater. There, he would leave his horse and walk the rest of the way to Edenford, a little more than thirty miles through Wellington, Halberton, and Tiverton.
He chose the long walk on purpose; upon arriving at Edenford he wanted to have a well traveled, near indigent look. He carried stale bread with him from London, which would be moldy by the time he arrived at the village, a little trick the bishop suggested. The cleric said he got the idea from the Bible. Drew wondered if there were other espionage tricks in the Bible he could pick up. He determined to read the book more. Besides a few clothes, the only items he carried with him were the Bible, needed for coding and decoding messages, and his grandfather’s cutlass to protect himself from highway thieves.
Drew entered Devonshire on his fourth day of travel. The road passed through a high ridge of hills displaying a vast panorama of enclosures and lesser hills, each with a steep ascent.
At Tiverton he joined the River Exe, a clean, clear river whose source was in Exmoor and which emptied into the English Channel just below the city of Exeter, Devonshire’s county seat. The river was Drew’s traveling companion for the remainder of the journey, as the road to Edenford paralleled its course up and down a hilly tract. A stratum of slate nestled in the red soil of the hills on either side of the Exe, and an agreeable mixture of wood and fields made it a very pleasant land. As the road passed over the river on a stone bridge of three arches, Drew found himself in Edenford.
“Stop right there, young fella!”
Drew had barely cleared the town end of the bridge when he was challenged by a potbellied old man with wild white hair carrying a flintlock.
Out of respect for the gun, Drew stopped.
“State your business,” the old man wheezed. He spoke in a slow, lazy drawl. His eyes squinted and his lips pursed in an attempt to look mean.
“I don’t have any business, directly,” Drew said. “I’m just a traveler.”
“Where do you call home?”
The gun bobbed as the old man asked his questions.
“Well, you might say I’m between homes right now.”
“You mean you got two homes?”
The gun lowered and the fierce look faded as the watchman seemed to ponder the incredulous idea of someone owning two homes.
“No, I mean I don’t have a home right now.”
The sneer returned. The old man gripped his firearm tightly and raised the sight to his eye.
“Put your hands up!” he shouted. “You’re under arrest!”
“Now wait a minute!”
But the watchman didn’t wait a minute.
“And drop that sword to the ground!”
His left eye closed while the right one eyed Drew through the gun’s sights.
Drew slowly lowered his grandfather’s cutlass to the ground and held his hands high.
“On whose authority am I being arrested?”
“On my authority, you blasted parvenu! I’m the watchman of this town.”
Parvenu? Where did I hear that word before? That’s right! That’s what some people called Sir Francis Drake. Upstart. He hailed from this backward part of England, didn’t he?
Maybe it was because everything is exaggerated when you’re looking down the wrong end of a rifle barrel, but Drew didn’t like the way this watchman’s hands were trembling, especially the finger curved around the trigger.
In a calm, overly polite tone of voice he asked, “And what, sir, may I ask, are the charges against me?”
“It’s my duty to take up all rogues, vagabonds, and beggars.”
“And which one am I?”
The trembling watchman didn’t seem to have a ready answer for him.
“Not quite sure,” he said finally, “but you must be one of ’em. We’ll let the scrivener decide which.”
Since the man was obviously weak headed and strong willed, Drew decided he welcomed the opportunity to put his fate in the hands of the unmet official.
The scrivener of Edenford was a scarecrow of a man named Ambrose Dudley who resided in a whitewashed brick house not far from the bridge. As he sat behind his desk, pen in hand, peering over the top rim of his glasses, he reminded Drew of a schoolmaster.
“What do you have, Cyrus?” the scrivener said, as Drew was directed to stand before the desk.
“I think he’s a rogue, Ambrose,” the watchman said in his slow drawl.
“A rogue, huh?” The scrivener began
writing in a book.
“I’m not a rogue!” Drew protested.
The scrivener exhaled loudly, stopped writing, and looked up, displeased at having had his writing interrupted.
“At least, I don’t think I am,” Drew continued. “What’s the legal definition?”
Ambrose let out a snort and turned to the front of his book. Upon finding what he was looking for, he read aloud in a flat tone, “A rogue is one who for some notorious offense was burnt on the shoulder.” He turned back to his previous page and continued writing.
“Wait!” Drew cried. “That proves I’m not a rogue!”
The scrivener looked up disgustedly.
“Does it?”
“Sure it does! Examine me if you want, you won’t find a brand on my shoulder!”
The scrivener looked at the watchman who just shrugged.
“Beggar, then,” the scrivener said and returned to his writing.
“I’m not a beggar either!”
“Young man! If you don’t stop interrupting me, I’ll have you arrested for interfering with a public official in the performance of his duty.”
“Sir, I don’t mean to be impertinent, but can you produce anyone who will say that I begged from him or asked any kind of relief?”
The scrivener looked at the watchman who shrugged his shoulders again. With deliberate movements the scarecrow laid down his pen, removed his glasses, and clasped his hands on top of the ledger.
“Then maybe you can help us clear up this matter,” he said.
“In truth, sir, I am an honest man,” Drew said earnestly. “I’ll be happy to assist you in any manner you desire.”
The scrivener nodded. “Then tell me, Master—”
“Morgan. Drew Morgan.”
Drew had decided ahead of time to use his real name during this mission for a couple of reasons. First, since this mission would be a lengthy one, the simpler his story, the better. Second, this far west, it was safe for him to be himself. The chances of any in Edenford having heard of his family, let alone having any dealings with them, were remote indeed.
“Master Morgan. Where do you live?”
The Puritans (American Family Portrait #1) Page 13