The Final Sacrament

by James Forrester

  “Not now.”

  He moved his hand. “What then? You want to sleep?”

  “I want to think.”

  “About the woman?”

  “About Jenifer. About the assizes. About Lady Percy. God’s breath, I wish I could wipe the smile off that judge’s face. And Lady Percy’s too. They sicken me. I wish it could be them that we had to kill and not this poor woman. What does she do except help sick soldiers?”

  John moved, trying to dig himself deeper into the hay for warmth. “She is alone in the cottage. We could go back and do it now.”

  “Too dangerous. If she cried out, the whole community would come running—and they know the lanes and alleys; we don’t. They will have lights; we’ll be hunted down. And remember, it’s not just a matter of killing her. Father Buckman gave us precise instructions.”

  “Then we don’t let her cry out.”

  Joan remembered how scared she had been when Lady Percy’s officers came for her in the prison. And how nervous she had been later, at Sheffield Manor. She and two other women, Jane Carr and Sarah Cowie, had been told to kill another condemned woman in front of Lady Percy. Sarah had proved weak-willed; Jane simply weak. Joan had done the killing almost alone, using the hem of the victim’s own skirt to throttle her. Then, slumped in the torment of what she had done, she had seen her seven-year-old daughter Jenifer carried into that same great chamber, and the other women’s daughters too, including the daughters of the woman she had just killed. The memories were horrible: the dead woman’s petticoat, the crying of the children. She had been told to go to London and call at a certain tavern, the Black Swan, where a priest in a dark attic room would give her instructions. Given what she had already done, the prospect of killing this middle-aged, lonely nurse had not worried her at the time. Only now, faced with the necessity of killing again, with these houses and these people around her—all of them southern, strange, and untrustworthy—did it unnerve her. Also, the sense of being someone else’s instrument made her feel as if she was owned. Like a slave.

  She settled herself into the hay. The owl outside continued hooting. Soon afterward she heard John snore. When the memories of Lady Percy came into her mind she beat them back, each time saying a prayer for Jenifer, wishing her more and more good things—wishing her a smile.

  10

  Tuesday, December 24

  The weather was a mixture of weak sunlight and gray cloud. Clarenceux looked at the sky and across the road, and pulled out his piece of paper. He marked “Greybeard” and “Tom Green” as the two men watching the house. However, today there was a third man too. He did not see his face clearly through the distorting glass, but he was tall and clean shaven, and wore a black felt cap, bright white shirt, and velvet jerkin. The last item was more the sort of garment that would be seen at court than at a house in Fleet Street. The way he carried himself reminded Clarenceux of a naval captain he had once sailed with on a diplomatic mission. This man had authority. There could be little doubt that the house of spies had a new master.

  Clarenceux created a new column on his piece of paper and headed it “captain.” There were now eight men coming and going from the house. At some points there had been as many as five in the building at one time.

  Turning from the window, he put the paper away and tried to concentrate on the preparation for his visitation of Oxfordshire. There were piles of bound books and unbound manuscripts all over the table and floor. His heart was not in reading them, however; he could think of nothing but the growing threat across the street. He chose instead to stack them away in the book press by the door. But in so doing he picked up the chronicle of Henry of Abingdon.

  It was a most unusual volume. The best parts were all the things the author deplored. One concealment of two Lollard knights at Thame Abbey was particularly obnoxious to Henry and thoroughly entertaining for Clarenceux. Henry had not written to praise these men, who were Lollards and therefore heretics in his eyes, but to show what evils lurked in the Church. He had been appalled that the abbot of Thame—a Cistercian, no less—should have sheltered two such men and even facilitated their escape. He was no less outraged that the abbot was never prosecuted. Clarenceux made a note to point out the passage to Sir Richard when he returned the volume, for Sir Richard was now the owner of Thame Abbey.

  The bell of St. Bride’s chimed eleven. Entering the hall, he saw Thomas lighting the fire and the table laid out, with his elder daughter, Annie, positioning the salt and the butter dish in front of his place at the head. Awdrey rushed in, carrying a tablecloth. She looked anxious.

  “Do you have the time to help?” she asked pointedly, moving the salt and the butter dish out of the way. “Perhaps you have not noted how much work goes into the preparation of a Christmas meal? Joan and I are both hard-pressed. Even Thomas lent a hand with chopping herbs. You and the children seem to be the only ones in this household with time on your hands.” She did not stop for a reply but went out to the back landing.

  Clarenceux stood still as he heard her rapid footsteps on the back stairs, heading down to the kitchen. “Thomas,” he said, walking over to the table and straightening one corner of the newly laid cloth. The old man looked up from the hearth. “Do you have any idea why Walsingham has increased the guard?”

  “I do not know, sir. But I do fear it, as I know you do. I do not know how to counsel you.” He rose to his feet. “I will say this, though. You carry a heavy load. You do not seem yourself, and that affects us all—Mistress Harley most particularly, but also Nick, Joan, and me. I do not think it was wise to banish Nick to the stables, sir. I do not believe he was consorting with them.”

  “What else should I do? Run the risk of having a spy in my house on the chance that Nick is innocent? What if I should be wrong? It is better to be cautious and wrong than to be wrong about his innocence.”

  “Sir, it is very cold these days. Normally out of mercy you would have let him inside the house. Now you have made him like you less.”

  Clarenceux sighed and rubbed his face in his hands.

  “Sir, I wish I could alleviate you of it, this anxiety. So too does Mistress Harley. She feels that you are worrying over what might never happen.”

  “Might never happen?” Clarenceux took his hands away. “It is happening. What does she want? For me to pretend all is well until someone holds a gun to my head, or to hers, and demands the document?” He turned and looked at the brightness of the glazed window. “Jesus is our Savior, Thomas, but I have been pushed past the point of prayer. I have been pushed past the point of trusting her majesty to protect me too. That document is the point of a dagger and the weight of England is resting on it. It pushes into me; it pierces me. And I do not know what to do. All I know is that Walsingham fears that something will happen soon—and that is why he has increased the guard.”

  “Sir, you could go and ask Mr. Walsingham why he has made this change.”

  “I was thinking much the same thing. My wife’s priority might be setting the table, but my obligations…” He decided and moved to the door. “I will do so now. I will be back before dinner.”

  He went down the front stairs, took his cloak and hat, and stepped out into the street. He could not help but look up at the house opposite: there was a flash of light, as if a man’s shoulder buckle had caught the light. A man’s face moved in the first-floor window—and quickly withdrew.

  “May your heart pour with shame and your eyes weep torrents of regret,” shouted Clarenceux.

  A fine rain had begun to fall. The ground, still frozen after last night’s cold, would soon soften into mud. He looked down the hill to Fleet Bridge and up to Ludgate, with the cathedral tower, lacking its spire, frowning down on the scene. A wherry journey to the Tower would be frustratingly slow, since you could never get the watermen to put their backs into rowing against the tide, especially when it was raining. Back at his house, he opened the
gate and went into the yard. “Nick!” he called.

  Nick had been in the hayloft. Hearing the call, he took two steps on the ladder and jumped the rest of the way to the straw-covered ground. Clarenceux went to the stable door and looked in. Nick unlatched it. The tall black stallion, Brutus, welcomed his master by throwing his nose in his direction. Maud, the chestnut mare he kept for his wife, bucked her head in her stall and snorted. He patted her too. Both horses had been cleaned out; hay was in their manger and fresh straw on the floor.

  “Was it very cold in here last night, Nick?”

  “I kept myself as warm as I could, sir, in the hay upstairs. But, truth be told, it was indeed cold.”

  The boy needed a wash and a clean shirt. Even by the standards of stable boys he was dirty. “I am sorry I spoke sternly to you the other day,” said Clarenceux. “Tonight you can sleep by the kitchen fire.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Do you have family with whom you want to share Christmas dinner? You are welcome to stay with us should you wish, but if you would rather go to your kin, you may.”

  Nick seemed brightened by this news. “Thank you, sir. I did ask Mistress Harley if I might spend Christmas with my cousins in St. Dunstan’s parish; she said she would speak to you about it.”

  “Well, you have my permission. Now, if you will help me saddle Brutus, I have a journey to make across the city.”

  11

  Joan Hellier kept watch on the back of Widow Baker’s cottage as John tried the door. It was locked and there was no keyhole: it was bolted on the inside. He stepped back and looked up. A shuttered window ten feet above the ground looked as if it might not be locked, or only fastened with a loose catch. Although it was only small, about a foot wide and about the same high, Joan was slim enough to get through such a gap. There were two buildings in the small yard: a henhouse and an ivy-clad ruined carthouse. By the henhouse John found a crate packed with hay in which Widow Baker stored apples. Emptying the apples out, he carried it in one hand as Joan walked around the yard seeing what else could be used. A wooden pail, a block of wood used for chopping firewood, an old wooden churn. They tried various combinations. Five minutes later, with John balancing on the churn on top of the upturned crate, and Joan standing on his shoulders, she was able to slip a knife between the shutter and the jamb, lift the catch, and haul herself up and into the dark chamber of the cottage.

  She crouched on the floor of the bedchamber of her intended victim. Even though they had knocked on the door repeatedly and believed no one was home, she was still apprehensive. Reassured by the silence, she straightened herself as far as she could, as the roof was low, her eyes adjusting to the light. The room was very neat, with nothing scattered about or left to one side. There were two beds, a chest beside the window, and another chest by the opening to the ladder that led down into the main living space of the cottage.

  Joan went down the ladder. Halfway there she paused and looked around in the gloom of the shuttered space. There was a cauldron of pottage near the fire, some embroidery on a bench by the closed window. These were signs that someone would return soon. She descended the rest of the way, smelling the lingering smoke of the fire and boiled vegetables. The ashes were still warm. Her cautious eyes tried to take in as much as possible: a pair of old bellows, the leatherwork needing repair; two flitches of bacon above the fireplace; a table board and trestles in a corner.

  She went to the back door and unbolted it. “John,” she whispered, “put the pail and block back where we found them. Nothing must appear disturbed. Then come in here and bolt the door after you.”

  12

  Clarenceux rode through the street toward the Tower, impatiently pulling Brutus to the left, then to the right, trying to avoid pedestrians, and spurring the horse when there was an opportunity for speed. The timber jetties of houses hung darkly over the narrow alleys, with little more than a strip of gray sky to be seen above. At London Stone, several coaches blocked their road where merchants’ wives had bade their coachmen stop so they could chat without descending. This infuriated Clarenceux, who turned Brutus north along St. Swithin’s Lane and then right into Lombard Street. In galloping, however, he almost knocked himself off the horse when, standing in the stirrups, he struck the overhanging beams of an old house with his shoulder.

  At Walsingham’s house, the servant who answered the door brusquely informed him that Walsingham was away on the queen’s business. No matter how much Clarenceux harangued the man, he would not say where. Leaving with a few choice curses, he galloped away, riding in a blind fury. People turned their heads and shouted at him to slow down. He almost careered into a wagon crossing Cornhill; another time a young woman had to throw herself out of his path. Only that last close scrape brought him to his senses. A moment later he reached Aldgate and the road heading east. There was no point going further.

  Thomas is right, he thought, wiping his face. It is burning through my mind like spirit of vitriol.

  He looked at the people coming and going through the city gate—women with baskets, men driving small carts, servants carrying firewood or provisions, and one or two people on horseback—and felt suddenly purposeless. My family would be better off if I were dead, he thought. If I were to destroy the document and myself in some way, publicly, no one would bother them again. Brutus snorted and waited, the fine rain still coming down. Clarenceux kicked him into a slow walk back along Leadenhall beneath the expensively glazed windows of fine houses.

  If it came to the worst, he could defeat them all—all his enemies, those within the queen’s government and those who wished to overthrow her—by an act of personal sacrifice.

  The horse broke into a trot, the rain coming down harder on them both. A wide street lay ahead, almost empty because of the rain. He began to canter, then gallop. Onlookers were shocked to see someone galloping straight through the street. Some shouted, some tried to wave at him to slow him down, but Clarenceux’s mind had gone beyond the day-to-day reasoning of polite conduct. He rode hard, swerving this way and that. Coming to Gracechurch Street he turned right and rode to Bishopsgate, under the arch and out along the road to Hackney, past Bedlam Hospital to Hog Lane, where he turned left along the track. A woman in the field to his right had been caught out by the weather and was hurrying to gather up the laundry she had laid on the hedges to dry. Next he had the windmills on his right: four tall wooden buildings, sails unmoving in the wet air. Chiswell Street brought him back into the suburbs of the city, where handsome houses stood with large gardens. He had once wanted to own just such a house. It would have been the way to bring up his children—his son, if he ever had one.

  He would never have a son.

  Clarenceux slowed. The madness of his ride, and the foolish euphoria he had just felt, settled on him like a cloud. How selfish he had been, risking crashing into someone in the street, endangering so many pedestrians, including children. What had so excited him? The thought of his own destruction. The thought of leaving his wife a widow and his two daughters fatherless. He stopped, dismounted, and felt the rain running down his back, under his collar. His sleeves too were beginning to let in water. Destroying himself might crush all the aspirations of his enemies. It would save his family. But they would all pay a price, and his wife and daughters would pay almost as heavily as he. Clarenceux was suddenly jealous: his self-sacrifice would end with another man lying with Awdrey, having children by her. His daughters would lose the love of a father.

  At the turning of Aldersgate Street into London he stopped and rested his forehead against Brutus’s neck. Get a hold of yourself, William. There is a way through this. True, I could end it all, but such decisions can wait. First things first: I must find out why Walsingham has increased the guard on my house.

  13

  It was late afternoon. Rebecca knelt down by the bed of the feverish young man in the long hall of the hospital in Portchester Castle and s
tarted to unwrap the bandages on his leg. Sweating, and uttering involuntary cries of pain, he looked down at her. Like so many sailors and soldiers before him, he saw the kind face, her dark hair and brown eyes with their haunting sadness, and was warmed by her looks, which were even more appealing in the candlelight.

  She reached the innermost section of the bandage, still stuck to the skin, and smelled the familiar odor of pus and bloody flesh. Over the last two and a half years she had grown used to the sights and smells of calamitous injuries. She had assisted in more amputations than she could remember. The French war might be over and the number of patients was not as high as it had been when she arrived, but even so, a steady trickle of naval injuries kept arriving. Some had fallen from the rigging of ships onto the deck; some had been blasted by gunpowder or hit by the recoil of a cannon. This young man had slipped when passing between two boats at sea. His lower left leg had been trapped between the gunwales of the two vessels as a wave brought one hard against the other, breaking both of the major bones. He was lucky. Rebecca had seen a man whose whole pelvis had been crushed in a similar accident; he had been brought in quickly, but even so he had not lived long.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Martin,” he replied, his face contorted as he tried to control the pain. “Martin Milton.”

  Rebecca lifted off the last part of the bandage, pulling it away from the sticky flesh and caked blood, and Martin cried out. Very carefully, she turned the now-exposed limb. One of the bones had punctured the skin. It had not rotted: all the flesh was still bloody and pink, and there was healthy skin around his lower leg and foot. However, the jutting broken bone made her uncertain whether to deliver the good news herself or to leave it to Mr. Wheatsheafen, just in case he decided that it had to come off.

  Three beds away, Mr. Wheatsheafen saw Rebecca studying Milton’s leg. He dried his hands on a towel and walked across to look over her shoulder. He peered curiously, then came around Rebecca and examined the wound more closely, standing right beside the bed. “Well,” he said carefully, taking plenty of time to consider the situation, “this is definitely a job for the bonesetter. He may be able to put you on your feet again. If not, that bone is good enough for the pot—it won’t go to waste.”