Now was Gabriel’s only chance for escape—while Arundel was so distracted by white-hot anger he could think of nothing but lighting the fire beneath his enemy. Some of the Blackfriars in the crowd had surged forward. Gabriel moved toward the edge of the crowd, then pulled up his cowl and looked back.
The morning light streaming through the windows fell in a strip across Sir John’s face. He looked like some saint from an illuminated text as he raised his hands, which were bound in front of him, to shield his eyes.
“I will not confess to you,” he said. “I confess all my many sins only to God. You may condemn my body, but you cannot harm my soul.”
Arundel was no longer smiling.
“Then, my Lord Cobham, we have no choice but to condemn you for heresy and hand you over to the king’s men for execution. May that God, with whom you claim such familiarity, have mercy on your soul.” He banged his gavel again.
It was the moment for which those assembled had been waiting. In the general hubbub that followed, Gabriel made his escape though the archway leading to the refectory, thinking of Anna and their son, and the fury he’d unleashed on all their heads.
Every day Anna watched the lane between Appledore and her mother-in-law’s cottage. And every day it was the same; no one came down the path from the village. Anna thought how bleak it would be to spend the winter here, but Mistress Clare seemed not to consider it so. Although her demeanor was somber, sometimes Anna heard her humming as she went about her chores. Today the lane was fog-wrapped. Gray sky and sea melded together until it was hard to tell if the sky swallowed up the sea or the sea the sky. It was all one great void.
“You must be patient,” Mistress Clare said.
Anna could not think of her as Gabriel’s mother. The only similarity she saw was in her beautiful hands, well formed and shapely in spite of the reddened and chapped skin. Anna had first noticed VanCleve’s hands the day he’d carried Little Bek on his shoulder, his well-shaped hands clasping the boy’s skinny knees.
“It is hard,” Anna said. “Not knowing.”
“He will come,” the taciturn old woman said.
There was a hard, determined strength in Mistress Clare’s eyes. It was a look that reminded Anna of Brother Gabriel. She’d only once seen that look in VanCleve’s eyes—the day they’d argued about the indulgences.
The babe woke and started to cry. He hushed when Anna tipped the cradle, the cradle that had been a gift from Sir John and Lady Joan.
I should never have let him bring me here, she thought, to this windswept headland. I should have stayed behind with Mother and Bek. At least there, she would have had news.
“I’m going into the village,” she said, wrapping a shawl around her and bending to lift the sleeping child.
“I will watch him,” the woman said.
“Thank you.” Anna smoothed his blanket, tucked it more tightly around him, thinking how small he looked, how fragile. “I won’t be long.”
It was only a couple of furlongs to the village. She stopped at the first shop, the chandler’s, and bought some tallow dips. “What news from London?” she asked as though it did not matter. “What news from the new king’s court?” As though she were only some goodwife in search of gossip.
“The price of beeswax just went up. A new tax for the new king’s French wars,” the chandler grumbled. He handed her the tallow dips. “Some pilgrims passed through here yesterday from Canterbury. Said the archbishop was putting Sir John Oldcastle on trial for heresy. A bad business, that. He’ll likely burn afore it’s all over.”
Anna saw in her mind her child sleeping peacefully in his cradle, the cradle Sir John had given him, as though he lay in a world not gone mad with fierce and angry men who used the Word of God as an excuse to kill and maim.
“Was he the only one?” she asked, thinking too of the abbey and Lady Joan. Thinking of her husband.
“Only one?”
“Arrested.” She paid for the candles.
“As far as it be told, ’twere no other but him.”
The chandler looked at her quizzically. “Beint you living with the old woman in the cottage on the headland?”
“Yes. My name is Anna.”
“There was a messenger in fancy livery asking for you not an hour gone.”
Anna’s breath caught in her throat. “What were his colors?”
The chandler scratched his head. “Red and something … silver … I think.”
Cooling Castle’s colors were red and silver. But he’d not been sure of the silver. Her mind raced to try to think if she remembered the archbishop’s colors. “Did you tell him where to find me?”
“I did. I’m surprised you didn’t pass him on the way.”
She would have noticed a rider on horseback on the lonely path through the marsh. Even in the fog, wouldn’t she? What if it were some spy for the archbishop? “If the archbishop finds out about you, you and my son will be in danger.”
She didn’t even bid adieu to the chandler, but bolted out the door.
Her heart was hammering in her chest as she pulled her shawl tightly and started home. The little cottage glowed like a beacon in the dense fog. She bent her back against a north wind and headed toward that beacon.
As she neared, she could make out the outline of a horse tethered to a sapling. She picked up her skirts and ran, not breathing, until she was close enough to see the red and silver of the Cobham livery.
Shivering with cold and relief, she reminded herself that it could still be a trap, but as she entered she recognized the familiar figure of the Cobhams’ gatekeeper. He was bending over the cradle, making clicking noises to the tiny occupant. Mistress Clare hovered, watchful as a mother robin. He stood up and handed Anna a rolled parchment with the abbey seal.
“It’s from one of the nuns, mistress. She bade me wait for an answer.”
Anna hastily broke the seal and scanned Sister Matilde’s familiar script.
“It’s my grandmother,” she said to Mistress Clare. “She is very ill. She’s asking for me.”
“Then you should go to her.”
“But how can I? I can’t take him; it’s too dangerous. And he has to nurse.”
Her breasts felt full after just her brief absence.
“No, he doesn’t. There are other ways. I can hold a cup of honey and barley water to his mouth.”
“I don’t know, I’ve never—”
“He’ll get enough. We fed my baby brother that way, when my mother was too sick to nurse him. He lived to be a hearty man, hearty enough to go to sea at sixteen. I never heard from him after that.” She looked directly at the messenger. “Will you take her to the abbey?”
“That’s why I waited.”
“Will you bring her back here, when her visit is done?”
“Aye. Not much doing at the castle these days with Lady Joan away again.”
“I don’t know—”
The infant stirred and started to whimper. Anna reached to pick him up. Mistress Clare placed her hand on Anna’s arm to stop her. “No. Let him get hungry first. I’ll put the barley on to boil and show you we can do it so you can go with an easy mind.”
Two hours later, Anna watched in amazement as her two-month-old child drank his fill from the honeyed water held to his lips. For his next feeding she gave him her breasts, more for her relief than his.
The next morning she left at first light with the gatekeeper of Cooling Castle.
“If I’m not back when Gabriel comes, and if there is danger, tell him to flee with our child to safety. He should not come after me. I will return unless—”
Mistress Clare nodded soberly, showing she understood. “We will keep him safe,” she said.
FORTY-ONE
Of what profit is a good knight? … I tell you that
without good knights, the king is like a man who has
neither feet nor hands.
—DÍAZ DE GÁMEZ IN THE CHIVALRIC IDEAL
(15TH CENTURY
)
The fool!” Harry paced the floor in his chamber. Beaufort had just brought the news that Sir John had confessed. “I warned him! What does he expect from me?”
A gust of wind rattled the glass in the window and caused the candles to flicker in the wheel chandelier hanging from the rafters. Shadows danced.
“It would be my thinking, Your Grace, that he expects a royal pardon.”
“Then he expects too much. He knows the game. I have not been anointed yet. To go against Arundel would be regicide—and suicide.”
Beaufort looked grave. “Lord Cobham’s retainers might come to his defense, and he is popular with the peasant class. Even that friar who was sent to spy on him would not give evidence against him.” He added under his breath, “I would not want to be in his boots right now either.”
“So I am to begin my reign like my father before me, with insurrection among my own nobles?” Harry stopped in his pacing. “What do you recommend, uncle? Give me the benefit of your wisdom.”
Now it was Beaufort’s turn to pace.
“I’ve given it much thought, Your Grace. There is no politic response. You either incur the wrath of the archbishop, whom you need to crown you to lend legitimacy to your reign, or you risk civil war with your nobles.”
He bent down to poke at the fire sputtering in the grate, a ploy merely to gain time, Harry knew. Beaufort was a strategist. That was why he was chancellor, not due to nepotism as some had dared suggest.
“Exactly so,” Harry said. “But you forget one thing else. What loyalty friend owes to friend.”
“Ah, sire, but loyalty is a door that opens both ways. In going against you, has not Lord Cobham already betrayed that friendship? Are you bound to honor a bond already broken?”
Harry said nothing. But in his thoughts he was arm wrestling with Merry Jack across a tavern table, with Mistress Quickly and Bardolph and Pistol cheering on their favorites. He could almost smell the sweat and spilled beer of the common room.
Beaufort cleared his throat, clearing the memory from Harry’s mind as well.
“This is my advice, Your Majesty. You do not pardon him. But you defer his execution for forty days, pleading that such an extension is warranted for a knight of the realm. You say that you will try to reason with him, persuade him to recant. This will irritate Arundel, but it will not be sufficient cause to make him delay your coronation—especially if at the end of the forty days he knows he will get the burning he wants.”
“But how can he know it?”
Beaufort’s gaze did not waver when he answered. “Because everyone who was at that trial knows. Sir John Oldcastle will not recant. For good or ill, he considers himself pledged to a lord greater than Your Majesty, and he is prepared to die for it.”
“Then, of what good is—”
“It will buy you time. And who knows what may come in time? Besides, you will not have his death on your conscience. You will have done what you can do. Mercy becomes a monarch.”
Harry thought for a long moment. Another gust of wind, fiercer than the last, rattled the window. He sat down at his desk, took out a quill and a parchment, and handed both to Beaufort.
“Write here, uncle, what you think I should say to the archbishop in this regard. I will sign it. Send it by one of my messengers. Arundel should not think it comes from you.”
After the chancellor had written the message, Harry scrawled in his best hand across the bottom: “His Royal Majesty, Henry V, King of England.” Then he stamped the hot wax with the royal seal and handed it back to his uncle.
“One more thing, Chancellor. See if you can find that friar. We would talk with him.”
“I shall try, Your Grace, but it may not be easy. If I were he, I’d be long gone before the sun rises on another day.”
Gabriel shed the Dominican habit to reveal the simple hose and doublet he’d worn on his wedding day. He pulled the hood low over his brow. If he could avoid the archbishop by blending in with the other visitors in Blackfriars Priory, he could read the lay of the land and make his escape. Perhaps Sir John’s too. But the chancellor’s men collared him outside the priory. He started to make a run for it.
Then he reconsidered.
There were two of them, both bearing sidearms and requesting his presence at court with all due speed. Best not have both the king and the archbishop on his tail. After all, the king was reputed to be a friend to Sir John, and he had proven a valuable ally to Gabriel once before.
As he followed the men into the palace apartment, however, it occurred to him that it might be a trick. Arundel was not the kind of man to leave a betrayal unpunished. He might even be using the king to bait a trap. But when Gabriel was ushered into the king’s private chamber, and not the presence room, he found King Henry alone. The king signaled for the soldiers to leave. Gabriel made the required obeisance.
“We see you have abandoned your habit, Friar.”
“I find that I am unsuited for the demands of a monk, Your Majesty.”
The king smiled. “It would please us if you would put your habit back on, Brother Gabriel.” He held out Gabriel’s abandoned habit.
So it was a trap, then. This boy king was Arundel’s stooge after all.
“For one last benediction?” the king asked. “As a favor to your sovereign. And then you may fade away with your pretty wife into lay obscurity.”
“My wife?” Gabriel stammered, wondering if Arundel already knew also. But the marriage he would have stomached. He’d looked the other way for greater sins; it was Gabriel’s testimony or lack of it that would bring down the archbishop’s anger. The king seemed to find the fact of his marriage amusing.
“Ah, what else but love could make a man with your destiny give it all up? You would hardly be the first.”
“Could not a man simply be called to a sounder doctrine?” Gabriel felt his face grow hot, the ever-present curse of a fair complexion.
The king frowned. “I see Sir John has made himself a convert.”
Gabriel thought it best to neither confirm nor deny this.
“Do not confess it. We’ve heard of one too many confessions to heresy this day. I’m asking you to don your habit once more. I care not for your reasons; I have reasons of my own, reasons that have more to do with friendship than theology. And that, Brother Gabriel, puts us on the same side. On this day, at least.”
And then he told Gabriel of his plan to free Sir John. Gabriel almost laughed aloud at the simple audacity of it.
“You call this thin broth and stale bread supper? How does a man get some real food here?” Sir John was shouting at the warder of the Lion’s Tower when the old man unlocked the heavy door and ushered in the visitor. Sir John saw only the black habit.
“By the bones of Saint Peter, man. I don’t: need some bloodsucking priest. If I’m to last another forty days, I need bread and meat and ale. Even a condemned man needs nourishment or there won’t be anything to burn.”
Then he recognized the brother. “I didn’t expect—”
“Leave us,” Brother Gabriel said to the warder. “Lord Cobham will make his confession in private.”
“You don’t happen to have a joint of beef inside those sleeves, I suppose,” Sir John said when the door clanged shut.
“Better. I’ve brought you news,” his visitor whispered.
“Unless it’s a pardon from the king or news from my lady wife, I’d just as soon have a piece of beef, if it’s all the same.”
The friar shook his head and put his finger to his lips. He should know better than anybody, Sir John thought, that the archbishop had spies everywhere.
“I’ve come to give you an opportunity to recant and to tell you that if you do not, your lady has endowed a chantry for your soul.” The friar said it loud enough for his voice to carry outside the heavy oak door.
John knew that was a lie. Joan would never pay a priest to say masses for her dead husband. So what was the man’s purpose here? Why was a friar who’d bro
ken faith with his archbishop still hanging around? Unless that too was some trick of Arundel’s to lull the prisoner into false security so that he would give testimony against others. Joan had often accused him of being simple when it came to divining the motives of others. He had too much a tendency to take a man at his word.
“I’ll not recant. You’re wasting your breath, preacher.”
Friar Gabriel began to intone loudly. “De profundis …”
Sir John started to protest. Father Gabriel shook his head. He leaned down and said more softly, but never breaking cadence, “A parchment maker from Smithfield bade me give you his regards and say that he wishes you good health.”
“I don’t know—”
“Requiem eternam … Master Fisher … Domini…” First loud, then soft, following a rhythm. “William Fisher. Bade me tell you … Et lux per-petua … that some hides are worth more trouble than others.”
The king! It was a message from Harry.
“Tell Master Fisher to give me his good wishes in person,” Sir John hissed.
“He says that he may not be able to get away from his duties, but he will do what he can … Gloria Patria. … You are to be ready.”
Before Sir John could respond, the priest called out, “Warder, we’re finished here.”
The key grated in the lock almost immediately. “Fetch this man something else to eat. He’ll not last forty days at this rate, and the king has ordered that he be given forty days. His Majesty would be displeased to know you illtreated one of his nobles. I have other visits to make in the White Tower and wish to call upon Sir John after his devotions are complete. Just leave the key in the lock, and I shall return it to you.”
The friar followed the warder out the door, and the key was left as instructed.
Sir John scarcely had time to consider what the message meant, and just what he could do to be ready, when the key turned in the lock again.
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