“But if you had to say, what about me? And my companions today?”
Fyndern watched Clarenceux walk back to his seat. “You are a good man and true, or so I believe. The old man is loyal to you like no other. The white-haired man is elusive—slippery as an eel.”
“And yet you say that you cannot tell character?”
Fyndern seemed suddenly grave. “It is the good men, the loyal ones, that prove me wrong.”
“Then why trust me?”
“Because…why would I trust the bad ones?”
Clarenceux had no answer to that. “It is getting close to suppertime. There is bread and cheese. You can sleep in the stables or in the attic—it is your choice—but I have to warn you that somebody has been breaking into the house.”
“A woman?”
“What made you say that?”
“I presumed it must be a man—and that did not feel right.” He paused, reading Clarenceux’s face. “Is that what you want me to do? Catch her?”
“If you can do that, Fyndern, you are worth more than two and a halfpence per day.”
“Mr. Clarenceux, I am.”
47
That night, Fyndern sat for a long time in the back attic pondering his change of fortune. Lifting the lantern to look around, he could see three straw mattresses. One was freshly made up, with a plump flock-filled pillow and cleanish sheets; it also felt less damp. This was the one where the dead woman had slept, he reckoned. The pillow still held the scent of a woman’s hair.
He dragged the mattress across to another spot, nearer the hatch; then he sat down and looked into the shadows. There were certain patches of deeper darkness, and he asked himself how he felt about each one. Some felt more ominous than others. Choosing the most threatening space, he arranged the mattress to point with its feet in that direction. Extinguishing the lantern, he lay down, and waited. But before sleep overtook his mind, he told himself: If I hear a sound, wake me. If there is a movement in the air, wake me.
Three hours later, he was awake, lying on his side, the air cold against his face. At first he wondered whether he had actually heard a noise or whether he had simply woken naturally, but then a small scraping sound assured him he had awoken for good reason. The sound came from beyond the foot of his mattress, where he had guessed the danger lay. There was a small knock, and a piece of lead dropped on a wooden shingle. Through the space that opened in the roof, low down, about fifteen feet away from him, he could see the vague lightness of starshine and the hunched shape of someone very slowly and carefully climbing through.
Fyndern lay still, watching as the intruder carefully replaced the covering over the gap. Such was the darkness inside that he could not see the woman, and he only knew from a momentary glimpse of the shadow of her head that her neck was slender and her hair tied back. There was no wind to cover the sounds she made. She carefully placed one foot on the floorboard and then, ten seconds later, the next, feeling the way by touching the beams of the low roof.
Outside, somewhere not far away, a cat screeched. A dog barked three times, and then was silent.
Fyndern heard the woman take another step. He felt powerful, knowing that she was ignorant of his presence while he could hear her and knew where she was. He also could sense her fear. He concentrated on the sound of her breaths, her fingers touching the beams, her feet finding a secure floorboard that would not creak—gently increasing the weight on it until she felt confident enough to move. And he began to suspect that her fear was because she too could sense him. She knew something had changed. However motionless he was, however calm his breathing, she knew she was being followed. She was forcing herself to take these steps—in spite of her instincts telling her to turn back, to flee.
Still he waited as she crept toward him. Not until she was within six feet did he whisper to her.
“Who are you?”
She let out a short, involuntary yelp of alarm, immediately placing a hand across her mouth and stepping onto a floorboard that creaked. A second later she steadied herself, regaining her balance. The voice in the darkness had only asked a question, and it had been young and male: the new stable boy with curly hair. She crouched down, ready to spring away if need be. The darkness hid both of them.
Fyndern listened to her skirts brushing the floor. She had only momentarily panicked. Was she armed with a knife? he wondered. He sensed that she was unarmed. What gave her the confidence to continue to approach him?
Helen Oudry knew the voice was close. Carefully moving her hand in an arc before her, she felt the mattress. She felt the straw as her fingers touched some protruding stalks. She knew that the boy would have heard the sound. But he did not speak.
“Why are you here?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“Mr. Clarenceux said I could sleep here.”
She reached for him and felt the rough wool of a blanket. He said nothing, so she moved her hand, trying to understand his position.
“You ought to go now,” he said, feeling her hand moving over the blanket covering his legs. And as he spoke he heard the tension in his own voice. The whirl of unknown emotions unsteadied him. He could barely speak. It was not the first time he had felt a woman’s hand on his body, but the previous two occasions had been moments of trembling expectation. They had had a direction, and that direction was the lust he could see in the woman’s eyes. Now he could not even see this woman’s face, let alone her eyes. He knew he was betraying Mr. Clarenceux by not raising the alarm. She knew it too. Yet she was lingering, despite being so vulnerable.
How strong is he? she wondered. If he should move now, and press his weight down on her, and shout, Mr. Clarenceux would come running with a sword and a lantern. So would his manservant. She was swimming in the dark deep water of the night where nothing was seen and nothing known, only felt. There were no rules here, only feelings. And feeling now was her only defense.
Barely daring to breathe, she ran her hand up over the blanket to his chest. She felt his hand grip her wrist there, trying to hold it hard.
“Let go,” she said gently. “I will not hurt you.” She heard him swallow and felt the movement of his chest beneath the blanket.
“You should go,” he repeated.
“I will, very soon,” she whispered, running her hand down over the rough hemp he was wearing. She could feel the anxiety and physical excitement in the flinching of his muscles as her hand moved lower, toward his groin. She paused, wondering whether the boy was too young to appreciate what she was doing, but then her hand moved farther and she had no doubt.
“Do it,” he said. “Do it to me.”
Helen realized from his use of the word “it” that this experience was not wholly new to him.
“Do it, or I will shout,” he urged her.
She pulled back the blanket and smelled the sweat, dirt, and musk of his body. She kissed his chest, his stomach, his abdomen, and smiled as his body jolted in a spasm at the touch of her lips on his skin. Very slowly, she moved her face up close to his and shifted her leg across his groin, straddling him, and lifting the hem of her skirts out of the way. “Do not move a muscle,” she commanded, lowering herself onto him.
He reached up and placed a hand on her clothed breast. She clasped his hand there, pressing it to her.
“If I keep quiet, will you stay until dawn?” he whispered.
“Keep quiet,” she replied. “Be silent—completely silent, completely still.”
48
Monday, January 27
Clarenceux was flummoxed. He came back down the ladder, into the light. Again he looked in the bedchambers: Fyndern was not there. Not under the beds, not behind the doors. “Fyndern!” he shouted. “Where are you?”
Thomas came up the stairs. “The back door is still bolted, the front door locked. He must have escaped by a window.”
Clarenceux shook his head.
“And he is not in the attic.”
“Perhaps he found the entry used by those women?” asked Thomas.
“Either that or they found him,” replied Clarenceux.
Twenty minutes later, Clarenceux was speaking to Thomas by the front door when they heard footsteps in the hall upstairs. Both men fell quiet, waiting to see who would appear on the landing. Clarenceux was just remembering standing in the same place, looking up at the woman who shot his daughter, when Fyndern’s head popped around the jamb of the door. “I have found the passage, Mr. Clarenceux.”
Both men followed Fyndern through the hall, up the back staircase to the ladder to the attic, and then up into the darkness. The boy seemed to need no lantern. He crouched down and shuffled his way forward as the roof level sunk lower and lower. He turned, and called brightly, “This way, Mr. Clarenceux!” and then crept even further toward the low darkness of the eaves. Then, suddenly, there was bright light as he pushed back the heavy leather hide that covered the hole in the roof.
Clarenceux was astonished. It would never have occurred to him to look in such a dark, inaccessible spot. It was obvious now why he had not seen it: it was just a dark corner, like any other.
“You were right to bring that boy home,” muttered Thomas, behind him.
“Are you coming, Mr. Clarenceux?” called Fyndern.
Clarenceux followed Fyndern into the eaves and out through the hole in the roof. He inspected the hide cover. The lower edge was stitched over, forming a fat seam, and several pieces of lead were inserted into that seam, weighing it down so the hide did not flap open and let in water. It had been nailed with small iron nails into the shingles above. The opening allowed access directly from the roof valley between Clarenceux’s house and Mr. Webb’s house next door. A thick rope hung down over Mr. Webb’s roof, allowing Clarenceux to pull himself up and over it; at the top he found a short ladder down the far side. Even if the opening had been discovered, the route would have been invisible if the rope had been tossed back over the intervening ridge of shingles.
In this second roof valley, on the other side of Mr. Webb’s house, there was another leather-covered opening, much nearer the street side of the house. Clarenceux followed Fyndern though it, plunging into near-darkness in the attic below. He crouched under the low roof, closed his eyes for a few seconds to help them adjust. There was the usual detritus of an attic—old cots, old chests, and servants’ bedding. To his left he saw a ladder in an opening in the floor. Fyndern had obviously already explored this route, for he had no hesitation in going down.
Clarenceux descended after him. The ladder entered directly into a servants’ room. At the front was a half-opened shuttered window with a piece of linen covering it, moving with the breeze. It threw light across three beds on the floor. On one of them were some inexpensive personal items: a string of rosary beads, a toothpick, and a wooden comb. There was also a small round wooden pomander—the sort that a self-respecting tradesman’s wife would carry. He crossed to the window and glanced out; it faced the north side of the street—a view nearly the same as that from his own study.
“The things there,” said Fyndern, pointing at a small pile on the bed, “belonged to the woman who last came into your house.”
“How do you know?” asked Clarenceux, wondering how far he should trust Fyndern’s senses.
“The bedsheets smell of her. The other ones do not,” he said simply.
Clarenceux inspected a series of marks scored vertically on the plaster by the window. “You know her smell? You don’t happen to know whether she could read as well, do you?”
Fyndern did not catch the note of sarcasm in his voice. “No. But now you come to ask, I feel that she could not.”
“Did you see her face?”
“No. It was dark. I explored this way when it was light and I could find my way. This room was empty when I entered. She got away.”
Clarenceux walked around the room, inspecting more of the plaster. It was damaged here and there, but only marked deliberately in that one place, near the window. The marks were in two forms, individual downstrokes and pairs. He turned his attention to the bed. Pride prevented him at first from smelling the bedsheets—but, having cast a quick glance at Fyndern, he threw pride to one side and knelt down and sniffed them. He noticed a mixture of stale sweat, blood, and other body odors mixed with some sweeter smells. He distinctly noted cloves, perhaps licorice too.
“The house is empty,” said Fyndern before Clarenceux had asked the question.
“You must have been very close to her to smell her, and yet she got away?”
“She came near me in the darkness.”
“Have you searched the rest of the house?”
“Yes—but only to see who was here.”
Clarenceux took a final look at the scene. The women had clearly left in a hurry. Or, to be exact, one woman had left in a hurry. She had not even paused to pick up her personal effects. The others had taken their things beforehand. “I don’t think you’ll be seeing that woman again.”
“I did not see her the first time,” replied Fyndern. “But if I smell her again, I will let you know.”
49
Tuesday, January 28
Sounds of a child’s laughter came from a bedchamber at Cecil House. Awdrey sat on the floor, rolling glass beads to Mildred across a sloping board. “Eighteen!” exclaimed Mildred, delighted. “Eighteen,” echoed her mother, smiling. Sunlight made the bead sparkle as it rolled. “Nineteen…twenty!”
“Well done,” said Awdrey encouragingly. “Now, if you were to roll half of all those beads back to me, how many would you have left?”
“Six!” guessed Mildred.
“No, no, think,” said Awdrey. “Divide them into two groups.”
There was a knock at the door. One of Cecil’s ushers entered with a young maidservant, whom Awdrey recognized as a woman called Elizabeth. He bowed. “Madam, your husband is here to see you. And my mistress craves the companionship of her goddaughter in the chapel.”
Awdrey turned to Mildred. “Will you be very good for Lady Cecil, and go with Elizabeth?”
The little girl nodded gravely and got to her feet to join the maidservant, who held her hand out to her, smiling. The usher withdrew. Clarenceux stepped slowly into the room. He bowed to her formally, then came closer and kissed her.
“We have found the way by which those women entered the house,” he said. “They came through a hole in the back attic. It was covered with a hide.”
“How did you find it?”
“With difficulty. How is Annie?”
“Improving. She has been up and about—although she is still not well enough to move from her room. Tell me more about the attic.”
“I met a young lad in a tavern. I do not know him at all and yet I have the feeling I know him very well. He has a gift for divining things—so much so that he has clearly enraged several men in his time who have cut his face for using his skills to defeat them in card games. I used to have something of a similar gift, when I was his age. Mine was nothing like as marked as his, but I understand what it is to sense the truth. He found the concealed entrance.”
“Does this boy have a name?”
“Fyndern Catesby.”
“And? Is there a sign of the women?”
“No. When we investigated their chamber, there were three beds. Two were abandoned. The third woman had recently fled.”
Awdrey bent down and started to pick up the glass beads that Mildred had left scattered on the floor, replacing them in a small box.
“I miss you,” she said suddenly, without meaning to say what she was thinking.
Clarenceux joined her in bending down to pick up the beads, popping a couple in the box. “Do you remember when we were courting? I would visit your father’s house and bow so respectfully, and quote chapters from the Bible
—all the time trying to stop myself from imagining you naked.” He paused, rolling a bead between his fingers.
She smiled and playfully punched his arm.
He smiled back, and then said, “I miss you too. But now, after everything that has happened, I yearn for a different form of satisfaction, one far greater than mere happiness.”
She put her hand on his arm. “You will find it. I have faith in you. I don’t believe anyone will ever be able to stop you doing what you want, or at least what you feel is right.”
They spoke together for another half an hour about the children, and the dark clouds of doubt momentarily parted to allow gleams of hope to touch them. They went to see Annie in her chamber overlooking the garden. Briefly Clarenceux saw Lady Cecil, her young son Robert, and his daughter Mildred after they had concluded their chapel attendance. Then it was time for him to go. He embraced little Mildred and playfully flicked a lock of her hair, which made her giggle. Lady Cecil considerately took the children away, leaving him to say good-bye to Awdrey alone.
“I will call again on Thursday,” he said, putting his cloak over his shoulders. “Tomorrow I have to confront Dethick and agree with him about this visitation of Oxfordshire. I don’t think I can put it off any longer—not without him threatening to summon me to answer to the Earl Marshal. But we shall see.” He came close and put a hand to her cheek. “Your skin is so soft.” He embraced her and kissed her.
Awdrey watched him walk away into the cold damp air of the courtyard. Now she could see that she truly was his Pole Star. His hopes were guided by her existence. She quietly answered questions for him that he did not even think to ask. She steadied him, comforted him, just through merely being part of his life.
50
Wednesday, January 29
In the morning, Clarenceux called again at the house two doors from his own, where the women had stayed. Still the old woman who lived there had not returned, which he found surprising. She was a widow and her married children lived in the city still, so she was often to be seen walking down to the bridge to visit them. As he stood outside with Thomas and Fyndern, rubbing his hands for warmth, he cursed. She was his only hope of finding out who had made the initial approach to her to allow the women to use her house.
The Final Sacrament Page 22