Salvation

by Harriet Steel

  The play commenced and as the tyrant Tamburlaine pursued his relentless ambitions, Marlowe’s verse swooped and soared. Bodies soaked in chicken’s blood piled up on the stage; like mules, the kings of Asia dragged Tamburlaine’s victorious chariot and Zenocrate pleaded for her father’s life. In the audience, the smell of blood-lust and excitement was palpable, it swept Tom along with it. When the play ended, he felt at the same time elated and wrung out. To his relief, far from discouraging him, the experience had filled him with determination.

  Outside, the weather was changing. Over towards Limehouse, a bank of storm clouds loured. Tom turned up his collar and struck out across the fields in the direction of Bishopsgate. The sails of a windmill he passed creaked in the rising wind. Soon a sheet of rain swept in. It quickly turned to hail, stinging his face and bouncing off the grass. A herd of cattle stood close together under an oak tree, steam rising from their flanks.

  By the time he reached Angel Lane, he was soaked through and the sun had almost set. To his surprise, the windows on the ground floor of the tenement were dark but the door was not locked. He frowned. Janey and Bel would have lit a candle by now if they were in. Perhaps Jack was on his own and sleeping. If Janey found out, he’d get a clip around the ear.

  Peering into the gloom, he went in; suddenly a light flared. Huddled by the fireplace, he saw Janey, Bel and Jack looking at him with frightened eyes. There were three strangers in the room too. It was a moment before Tom realised they all carried muskets.

  Bewildered, he stared at them, the one who seemed older than the rest spoke first.

  ‘Tom Goodluck?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Before Tom had time to move, the other two men had his arms pinioned. ‘What’s happening?’ he gasped. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  The eldest man gave a bark of laughter. ‘That’s what they all say.’ A portentous note crept into his voice. ‘Tom Goodluck, in the name of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, I arrest you for the murder of William Kemp of Salisbury.’

  The blood roared in Tom’s ears. ‘William Kemp murdered? But I know nothing of it. I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘The court will decide that. Until then, you’ll lodge in Newgate.’ He nodded to his companions. ‘Bring him along.’

  ‘Go to Master Lamotte at the Unicorn, Jack,’ Tom shouted as he was dragged struggling to the door. His heels bumped over the threshold. ‘Tell him everything.’

  *

  Within Newgate’s forbidding walls, Tom soon lost count of the iron gates they went through. Manhandled up and down dark stairways and along narrow corridors, he felt as if he were being sucked into the entrails of some monstrous beast.

  At last they reached a small, bare room illuminated by a single candle. A burly gaoler with the long, lugubrious face of a bloodhound sat at a table slicing the raw onion on a plate in front of him. The pungent smell assailed Tom’s nostrils, mingling with the reek of wet wool he and his captors had brought with them. His stomach churned and there was an acid taste in his mouth.

  The gaoler speared a slice of onion with his knife and surveyed Tom. ‘Well, lads, what have you brought me?’

  ‘Thomas Goodluck – charge of robbery and murder.’

  The gaoler slid the onion slice into his mouth and chewed it slowly. He nodded at the purse hanging from Tom’s belt. One of the guards unfastened it and dropped it on the table. The gaoler loosened the drawstring and tipped out the coins.

  ‘Won’t buy much in here,’ he remarked, scooping the coins into a drawer.

  ‘Maybe he’ll swing ’fore too long and save himself some money,’ one of the guards sniggered.

  The gaoler pared another slice from his onion. ‘Fifth cell along: solitary.’

  As they went along the corridor, Tom’s ears rang with the commotion. Men of all ages with ravaged faces and haunted eyes jostled to be first at the bars of their cells, cursing and pleading, shaking the bars with grimy hands. A greybeard spat at the guards and one of them smacked his stick over the old man’s bony knuckles. He recoiled, howling.

  The cell they stopped at was smaller than the others with space only for one man. The guards pushed Tom in and the door clanged shut behind him. The echo of their footsteps faded and with it, the brightness of the lanterns they carried. It was some time before Tom’s eyes adjusted to the dim light coming from a slit in the wall above his head.

  The cell was just deep enough for him to lie straight. Its walls glistened with damp and the air was rank with the smell of stale urine and excrement. Dazed, he sat down on the hard ground. The heavy irons around his wrists and ankles cut into him and his jaw ached where one of the guards had hit him. His mind raced. William Kemp murdered? Who would have wanted him dead? He had been alive the day before Tom left Salisbury. When had it happened?

  Desolation swamped him. He understood enough about the law to know how hard it was for a poor man to prove his innocence. Suppose he could not do so? What then? Remembering the guard’s grim jest, a chill crept over him. The cold seemed to invade his bones and his feet and hands were numb.

  The sound of heavy footsteps in the corridor roused him from his lethargy. Half blinded by lantern light, he saw a shadowy face on the other side of the bars. A leathery hand with grimy nails pushed a metal pan through the small gap at the bottom of them.

  ‘Gruel, and be thankful, you’re lucky to get it at this hour,’ a rheumy voice muttered.

  ‘How am I to eat it? Will you take these irons off?’ Tom held up his chained wrists.

  The guard gave a wheeze of laughter that dissolved in coughs. ‘You’ll find a way when you’re hungry enough. The irons don’t come off until the guvnor gives the nod, and that costs money.’

  ‘But you’ve taken my money.’

  ‘Entry fee and the gruel.’

  Tom struggled to get up but then stumbled and, unable to put out a hand to save himself, fell down again hitting his head on the wall.

  ‘You can’t hold me here,’ he gasped. ‘I’m innocent.’

  ‘’Course you are, just like everyone else in this hole. Well, you better hope some friend of yours will find a way to prove it.’ The guard slouched away, taking the light with him.

  Tom jerked himself away from the wall and edged across the floor to the gruel. Eventually he managed to get the bowl to his mouth. The sloppy mess was bland and cold but he ate it up to the last scrap. Afterwards, a sudden urge to piss seized him. He doubted he would be allowed out of the cell for that either without paying.

  He tottered to his feet, shuffled to a corner and fumbled with the strings of his breeches. When he had finished, he went back to the bars and huddled up against them. Closing his eyes, he fell into an exhausted sleep.

  *

  The toll of a bell woke him from a fitful doze. He blinked at the misty grey light in the narrow window. It must be dawn.

  ‘What did the bell mean?’ he asked the guards who arrived later with a cauldron of some evil-smelling brew.

  ‘Death knell: it’s always rung at dawn ’fore a prisoner goes to Tyburn. This one slit his old lady’s throat.’ He jerked a thumb at his mate. ‘Walt here knew her, says she was a shrew, but murder’s murder.’

  He sniffed the air. ‘You better learn to keep your water in till the yard unless you want to live in your own filth.’

  ‘The yard?’

  ‘Twenty minutes you get. You’re a lucky one too,’ he went on, ‘someone’s paid for easement of irons for you.’ He opened the door. ‘Walt stays out here so don’t try anything clever.’

  He bent to unlock the irons and removed them. Tom rubbed his sore wrists. Red weals encircled them and in places the skin had broken. He put one to his mouth and tasted the mineral tang of blood.

  The guard stepped out smartly and the door clanged shut once more. ‘Now push out your tin,’ he said.

  The broth he ladled into it was thin with soggy lumps of turnip and a few grains of barley floating under its scummy surface. Ravenous, Tom wolfed it down in
spite of its rancid smell. As he wiped his lips he wondered if it was Lamotte who had paid the money. He doubted the family at Angel Lane could have found enough to satisfy the gaoler. Perhaps that meant Lamotte would come soon. A glimmer of hope entered Tom’s heart.

  ‘When are we let out?’ he shouted after the guards but there was no answer. There was nothing for it but to wait.

  Not long afterwards, he was taken from his cell and roped in a line with six other prisoners. At an awkward trot, he stumbled along the corridors behind an old man with ragged hair and shrivelled arms and legs protruding from tattered clothes.

  The yard was high walled and measured about forty feet on each side. Tom reckoned there were thirty men and a handful of women penned there. A cold drizzle fell from the leaden sky. He wrapped his arms around his body for warmth. Some of the other prisoners gave him curious looks but most ignored him, furtively relieving themselves against the nearest wall or simply staring up at the sky, oblivious to their surroundings.

  On the side opposite the door back to the cells was a kind of cage. Some of the prisoners were crowding around it noisily. When Tom moved closer, he saw it was full of people but from the way they were dressed, they were not inmates.

  Lamotte pushed his way through the crowd and grasped the bars.

  ‘Tom! Thank Heaven I’ve found you.’

  A violent trembling seized Tom. He fought to hold back tears. ‘Master Lamotte!’

  ‘Jack told me everything,’ Lamotte said. ‘I’ve paid for you to be moved to a better part of the prison. Tonight you should be given blankets, more food, soap and candles. I want to know about it if you’re not. It’s all I can do at the moment.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘I believe you. Do you have any idea who the guilty man might be?’

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘Was there anyone in Salisbury who wished you ill?’

  ‘Only the other clerk who worked with me at Lawyer Kemp’s.’ Quickly, he explained about Ralph. When he had finished, Lamotte looked grave.

  ‘I understood you left Salisbury because you feared exposure from some quarter was coming, but not because this fellow had actually threatened you with it. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Tom flushed. ‘I was ashamed that I let him beat me.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be. There was nothing you could have done. All the same, it doesn’t make Ralph Fiddler a murderer.’

  ‘No,’ Tom said unhappily, ‘it doesn’t.’

  A bell rang and guards moved in from their posts around the yard, sticks and halberds at the ready.

  ‘We’ll talk more of this,’ Lamotte called out as Tom was roped back into line with the other prisoners. ‘There’ll be a way to get you out of here. Until then, I’ll make sure you’re as comfortable as possible.’

  *

  In the hope of obtaining an audience with Walsingham, Lamotte left Newgate and hurried to Seething Lane. He was not as confident as he had pretended to Tom. Walsingham was not long returned from Fotheringay, where he had sat as one of the commissioners appointed to try the Queen of Scots for treason. He was likely to be angry that a verdict of guilty against his bitter enemy had not been reached and the proceedings had been adjourned. The evidence was to be reviewed at a later date in the Star Chamber at Westminster.

  ‘Sir Francis is out at Barn Elms,’ the servant who came to the door told him. Lamotte hurried home and called for his horse. It would be faster to ride than go by river. Hatless and throwing on the first cloak that came to hand, he rode to Mortlake.

  ‘The master is hawking in the park,’ said the footman who answered the door. Lamotte jumped back in the saddle and cantered away. Soon, the sight of a bird of prey soaring above a spinney then diving earthwards directed him to where Walsingham and his falconer stood.

  ‘Alexandre!’ Walsingham’s expression was surprisingly affable. ‘Come and see Artemis, she has killed four times today.’

  Lamotte offered up a silent prayer of thanks. The old spymaster was far more jovial than he had expected. It seemed the crisp autumn weather and his pleasure in hawking had put him in a good mood.

  The goshawk’s fierce, ochre eyes were trained on the bloody gobbet of flesh the falconer held out to it. It dropped the dead rabbit dangling from its razor-sharp beak and snatched the meat. With a deft movement, the falconer slipped the hood over its head and fastened the jesses to his gauntleted wrist.

  ‘Excellent work.’ Walsingham stroked the goshawk’s dappled plumage. ‘Enough for today,’ he said to the falconer, ‘you may take her back to the mews.’

  ‘Do you have some information for me?’ he asked when the man was out of earshot. The tone of Walsingham’s voice was sharper now they were alone. Once more, Lamotte felt uneasy, reminded that by coming uninvited without any intelligence Walsingham might want, he had put himself on uncertain ground. Still, Tom needed his help: he must press on. He swallowed hard.

  ‘I regret I’ve brought no information, my lord, and I hope you will forgive me for coming unbidden, but a young man of my acquaintance has been wrongly arrested.’

  The shrewd, dark eyes scrutinised him. ‘Wrongly arrested?’

  Lamotte held to his resolve. ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘Murder, my lord.’

  ‘No light matter. What is he to you, this young man?’

  ‘A friend - his name is Tom Goodluck.’

  ‘Your reasons for being so sure of his innocence?’

  ‘Only my instinct, but I believe I can claim to be a good judge of men.’

  ‘And you seek my help? Why should I give that?’

  Lamotte looked down. He had been a fool to come. He had presumed too much.

  ‘Do you know where he is held?’ Walsingham asked more kindly.

  Lamotte’s spirits revived a little. ‘Newgate, my lord.’

  Walsingham pondered for a few moments. ‘I must not be seen to interfere in the process of the law but I’ll endeavour to make a few enquiries,’ he said at last.

  ‘A thousand thanks, my lord.’

  ‘I make no promises, you understand? Now I have business to attend to. I must return to the house. Farewell, Alexandre.’

  On his way home to Throgmorton Street, Lamotte rehearsed what he would say to Tom. It was important to keep the lad’s spirits up, even if it was impossible to banish his own anxiety. He was not confident they could count too much on Walsingham’s help.

  The strength of his own distress surprised him. He had met many young hopefuls in his years in the theatre, what was so different about Tom? He shook his head. Who could say why they felt a stronger attachment to some people than others?

  Except for a sleepy night watchman, the servants had gone to bed and the house was cold and desolate. Lamotte wished Amélie were there with her warm smile and wise advice. She had always known how to comfort him.

  10

  By early November Meg and Bess had moved to a different part of the woods with Sarah and her children.

  The ruins of a small chapel stood at the centre of the clearing in which they camped. It must have been beautiful once, a graceful arch, ornamented with delicate carvings of leaves and flowers, still remained although most of the walls had vanished. Andrew said the stones must have been stolen over the years since it had been abandoned. He mined the scattered heaps of blocks that remained to build shelters for them all.

  ‘It’s a strange place to have built something so fine,’ Meg remarked as she and Sarah sat together one morning by their camp fire. Tethered nearby, Samson cropped the grass.

  Sarah held out her hands to the flames. ‘I remember my father telling me that sometimes monks from the great abbeys would go into the forest to live simply. Perhaps that’s why it’s here. When King Henry closed down the abbeys, they might have lived on for years without knowing it, but as they died, no one would have come to take their places.’

  ‘How sad.’

  Sarah shrugged. ‘So many sa
d things happen. Our parents and grandparents saw a lot of changes in their lives. You and I have too, haven’t we?’

  ‘That’s true,’ Meg laughed. ‘In the old days, I often spent whole days doing nothing but sitting and sewing or gazing out of the window, but here we are always busy.’

  Sarah rubbed her red-rimmed eyes and coughed. ‘I’m not as busy as I should be.’

  ‘Oh, Sarah.’ Meg’s knife paused over the rabbit she was skinning. ‘You can’t help it if you’re not well. Why don’t you go and lie down? You were awake half the night. I can cook our meal.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sarah asked hesitantly. ‘I admit I’d be glad of a rest.’

  ‘Then have one.’

  After Sarah had gone into the hut, Meg stripped the last of the pelt from the rabbit and jointed the carcass. And that’s another change, she thought, wiping her blood-smeared hands on a rag. In my old life, I would never have done this.

  She sighed. Her journey to Plymouth with Andrew had been fruitless. They had enquired at the docks but Tom’s name was not on any of the ship registers and after a week of asking at every inn and tavern, she had despaired of finding him. If he had ever been at Plymouth, it seemed that he was not there now. Reluctantly, she returned with Andrew to Sarah and the others. Since then, it had been a strange existence, part of her distracted by the demands of her new life, part of her regretting the comforts she had lost, but the greatest part yearning for Tom. Waking or sleeping, his face was never far from her mind. Did he still carry her in his thoughts?

  Samson lifted his head and whinnied. Meg glanced up and saw Andrew walking across the clearing.

  ‘Did you catch anything?’ she called out.

  ‘A perch and two bream.’ He held out a basket of woven green willow.