‘Yes. It has to be. The Church accepts no dissent, no separation. You are loyal to the Church. What other choice do you have? In the end you will come to it.’
‘I have always been loyal to the Church,’ he said.
‘That is true,’ Ben agreed. ‘But you used to have hopes you could bring me back to it.’ Ellyn’s hand was still on his arm and he covered her fingers with his, patting them gently, but his attention never wavered from Richard.
‘You didn’t visit me all those times in prison because you enjoyed my company. You came because you thought you could save me and take me back inside your fold. But now things are different. You know that’s never going to happen. You know there’s no hope I will ever go back. I will never return to your Church. Never.’
The cruelty of the accusation almost took his breath away. ‘I visited you because you were a brother to me.’
‘And in brotherhood you thought to win me back.’
‘Yes, but it was not only for that I came. I thought … I hoped … my visits brought you … comfort, pleasure even. Did they mean nothing to you?’
Ben hesitated. Then he said, ‘Yes, they did. And I was grateful. But now I think my comfort is no longer of much concern to you. You have bigger fish to fry.’
‘I wish you only well, Ben. I would have you go somewhere safe away from all of this, where you can worship as you will, unhindered, free.’
‘And if I don’t you will betray me. In the end you will betray me.’ It was not a question.
‘You cannot stay here. You will never be safe.’
‘Because of men like you?’
‘Because of the law. Because the king demands conformity. You would disobey your king?’
‘Yes. If he puts himself above the Law of God.’ He pushed himself away from the sideboard, the muscle twitching in his jaw, his chin in that combative tilt Richard had seen so many times before.
Richard said, ‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers: for there is no power but of God …’
Ben’s response was quick. ‘We ought rather to obey God than men.’
‘Stop it!’ Ellyn pleaded. ‘No good can come of this. You can argue Scripture all night and what good will it do?’
Ben turned his face away. ‘Forgive me, Nell,’ he murmured. ‘I should not have come here. And you …’ He flung the words at Richard. ‘You have no right to come here like this, to my sister’s house, to her husband’s house. How dare you come here with your false friendship, your offers of help. No one is fooled by you, Richard. We all know why you came. So go. And let’s have no more of this pretence at friendship.’
Richard lowered his eyes so as not to see the hatred in the other man’s face, and to hide the tears that prickled behind them. It was a hard test that God had set him, this choice between love for a brother and love for the Church.
‘Please go,’ Ellyn said, stepping forward towards him. She stood before him, waiting for him to lift his face. Their eyes met for a moment, long enough to see each other’s pain. ‘Please go now, Richard. There is no more to say.’
He nodded and got to his feet. Then he bowed a brief farewell and crossed to the door. There, for an instant, he paused, wishing there was something else he could say, something that would make Ben understand, but there was nothing, and so he stepped out into the cool gloom of the passage and hurried down the stairs and away.
He had failed. He had known it was a slender hope when he set out – Ben’s mind was not easily turned from its course. But now the future was set out before him and the day would come when he must make his choice. And all the while a memory of his dream flickered at the corners of his mind, Ben in chains and Richard on his knees, pleading for forgiveness. The image had lingered in the months since his illness, catching him at unexpected moments, vivid and unwelcome. He shuddered at the choice that lay ahead and wondered if his faith was strong enough to bring his friend to that. He walked slowly through the sultry roads, sweat in his back and under his hair. A cat, sleeping on a doorstep, lifted its head at his passing, eyes glinting in the lantern light. It watched him for a moment, then turned its gaze away, without interest. London’s stench hung poisonously in the humid air and by the time Richard got home he felt sick with it.
At the window of the Kemps’ house Alice’s face was dimly lit by the glow of the candles in the room behind her. She jumped up as soon as she saw him approach and disappeared from view. A moment later the door opened wide to let him in.
‘You shouldn’t have waited up,’ he said. ‘It’s late.’ He had wanted to be alone with his thoughts, in peace to pray for guidance.
‘I wasn’t tired,’ she replied.
He followed her into the hall and after she had straightened the curtains to hide the room from the view of the outside world, she poured him wine and they sat before the unlit fire, the hearth the centre of the room that drew them to it regardless of the season. The great stone fireplace stared back at them, cold and grey and empty. He stretched out in the chair, rolling the tension from his neck, the cup held loosely in in his fingers.
‘What happened?’ she said. ‘Did you speak with him?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded, straightening himself in the chair, resigned to the conversation. ‘I spoke to him. He told me he was here to see his new niece and that he had argued with his father.’
Disappointed, she lowered her eyes, searching across the pattern of the rug that lay on the boards between them. He watched her, remembering the way her eyes had used to follow Ben, her feelings for him plain across her features. He wondered if she still felt the same, or if time and lack of hope had killed such pointless longings.
Becoming aware of his scrutiny, she lifted her face towards him, the groove between her eyebrows darkening as she struggled to see him through the gloom. ‘Do you think it’s the truth?’
He took a mouthful of wine before he answered. ‘I think …’ he began, then stopped for a moment, undecided how much to tell her. ‘I think he might be in some kind of trouble but I do not know for sure.’
There was a silence as she considered his words. Men’s voices raised in laughter drifted in from the road outside. He drank more of his wine and felt a tiredness seeping through him, emotion draining.
‘So you cannot help him?’ she asked.
No, he thought, I cannot help him. But he said nothing. If Ben had chosen to stay, then he, Richard, must also make a choice. His friendship or his Church. Love or faith. What then should he do?
He spent the night on his knees. He prayed for many things, but most of all he prayed for an end to the conflict inside him. His faith wavering, he was tossed by the wind, and he begged for certainty to anchor him. Andrewes, Ben – opposed but never doubting, prepared to suffer for their faith, never fearful of the rightness of their path. Why did God withhold the same conviction from him? Why must he always walk in fear he was mistaken?
But no answer came, and when the Abbey bell tolled six and he got off his knees, he was still filled with uncertainty, his faith in his Church still torn by his love for his friend. Stiffly, with painful knees, he got to his feet and crossed to the window, looking out through the dark blank panes to the street below. He was getting too old for so many hours at prayer. Perhaps there was something to be said for Ben’s Church, refusing to kneel. He gave himself a wry smile. Beyond the window, lanterns burned at the doors of the houses but the street was already astir, the sun almost up.
If only Ben had stayed in Aleppo. If only he would leave again. He must know where staying in England would lead him, so why had he chosen to remain? That he might pay for his faith? As Barrow had. And Cecily. A memory of Ben’s grief cut across his thoughts, his friend’s body gaunt and childlike on the prison cell floor, huddled in pain.
Cecily. He guessed the answer lay with Cecily: Ben’s refusal to seek safety was an expiation for her death, his guilt and grief a cross he would always carry. He had wanted to die all those years ago in the Fleet, all faith lost in th
e blackness of his desolation. He had found his faith again, in time, but perhaps the desire for death remained, the only way he could atone.
Weary now, and still grieving for his friend, he lay down on the narrow bed and gave himself willingly to the oblivion of sleep.
Chapter 20
Summer 1606
If the world hate you, yee know that it hated me before it hated you.
(John 15:18)
* * *
Ben left London before the dawn. He took his time on the northward road: he was in no hurry to face what awaited him at his journey’s end. But it was better to hand himself in than give either Richard or Bancroft the satisfaction of betrayal. He no longer doubted that Richard would betray him – the conviction of the translator’s faith demanded nothing else. But he had seen the struggle, the conflict within, and he regretted it.
He broke his fast at a roadside inn, unhurried, both horse and rider still spent from the southward flight. He sat at a bench in the yard in the still cool morning, the heat of the day yet to come, and picked at the bread and mutton before him. Weariness had taken his appetite and he thought of the soft bed he had left at his sister’s with a vague sense of longing. Ellyn would be about her household tasks by now, a busy housewife, but her dark eyes would be dimmed today from the sleepless night and the tears she had wept for him.
They had fought in the early hours, Ellyn sensing a turning point, using his fears to try and tip the balance. He had been almost tempted to relent.
‘What good is served by your imprisonment?’ she had questioned. ‘How can it help your Church for you to be in prison?’
‘We must be steadfast in our faith,’ he had replied. ‘Christ was hated also.’
‘But you can be steadfast somewhere else. It doesn’t have to be here. You could go to Holland and be safe. Do you not want to be safe? To worship unhindered, without hiding, looking over your shoulder all the time?’
‘Of course I want to be safe.’
She pressed on, standing close. ‘There would be no Bancroft in Holland. No one threatening irons or the noose, no danger of being betrayed by friends.’
‘I know.’
‘So why do you still refuse to go?’
‘Because I can’t run away all my life. Because we are a congregation, a community, and we must stand together. I cannot just leave the others to save my own skin.’
‘And if Cecily were still alive?’
‘Cecily is dead!’ He spat out the words, furious she would try to use Cecily against him, opening wounds that had never fully healed.
His sister was undeterred. ‘And if she weren’t? What would you do then? What would Cecily want you to do?’
‘What difference does it make?’ He turned away from her and crossed to the fireplace, standing with his back to the room, putting distance between them. She followed, slowly, and stood beside him again. When she spoke her voice was gentle, coaxing.
‘She would want you to be safe. That’s all she ever wanted for you. For both of you.’
‘You know nothing about it,’ he hissed, without turning to look at her. ‘You were barely more than a child.’
‘I know that she loved you.’
‘Yes. She did,’ he agreed, ‘and she understood me better than you. She would not have told me to go.’
‘Then she would have been as big a fool as you are.’
Ben swung towards her at that, the muscles working in his cheek, fists balling and flexing as he fought to control his rage. The pain of her words almost took his breath away – it was he who had been the fool, and Cecily had followed him, reluctant and with little other choice. His foolishness had cost her her life, and her memory was sacrosanct: he would defend it to the last breath in his body. When, finally, he could speak, the words came as a whisper, forced through lips drawn tight with fury. Ellyn shrank back, afraid of his anger.
‘Don’t you ever speak like that about her. Never! You can say what you want about me, but you can never say those things about her. Do you understand?’
She nodded, her head lowered against the reproach, and her chest heaved in great breaths as she struggled not to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘But you are my brother and I don’t want to lose you. Not to a prison cell. Not to the gallows.’
He softened, rage ebbing as quickly as it had come. ‘That isn’t going to happen.’
‘Can you promise?’ Dark eyes lifted to him, tear-filled, pleading as she used to as a child: a secret told, an offered treat.
He swallowed. He could make no such promise. He took her hand and the skin was cool and dry even in the summer heat. His own palm was moist.
‘I cannot promise.’
She blinked hard against the gathering tears then stepped in close to him. He held her, his cheek against the sleek, smooth hair, the scent of her familiar as his childhood. Then abruptly she pulled back from him.
‘You’re going back to face them, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘I shouldn’t have run.’
‘What will happen to you?’
He shrugged. ‘A fine, probably.’
‘Even though you ran?’
‘I don’t know,’ he lied, preferring not to speak of what he knew was coming.
‘Well,’ she said, with a small attempt at a smile. ‘I hope God appreciates your efforts.’
He said, ‘Blessed are they which suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.’
‘Then you are indeed blessed.’
‘I do only as I must. I can do no other.’
Then he kissed her head and strode from the room, footsteps thudding on the narrow dark stairs as he had taken them two at a time. He had wanted to be away, back at Scrooby with his people, even though his punishment was waiting. Because there at least he was sure of the rightness of his path and no one had the power to make him doubt.
They caught up with him not far from Nottingham, four men in the crossed-keys livery of the Archbishop of York. He had been waiting, fearing every hoofbeat at his back, but still when they came he felt the instinctive fear of the hunted, the same impulse to run.
So Richard had betrayed him after all and the pain of his treachery hurt worse than Ben had imagined: in his heart, he had not thought it would come to this, believing, hoping, that their God-given love would spare him. But in the end, he supposed, Richard had little choice: he had sold himself to the English Church, and Ben’s head was the price for his place as translator.
Would Bancroft give Richard the news of the arrest himself? he wondered. A smile on the ruddy face, knotted hands rubbing in pleasure? And how would his old friend react? With delight at a job well done? His loyalty proven at last, welcomed back into the fold of the English Church? He doubted it; he knew his friend too well. Richard had tried to make him to leave, hoping to be spared the betrayal. Even now he could not picture his friend taking pleasure in it. But still the knowledge of Richard’s falseness turned heavily inside him, the bitterness of loss welling up with tears that stung behind his eyes. There could be no way back for them now: Richard had damned himself, and all they had once meant to each other was as dust.
He drew Bessie to a halt, and prayed for deliverance as the riders wheeled their horses across the lane in front of him, blocking his way.
‘Are you Ben Kemp?’ one of them said.
‘I am,’ he replied.
‘And where do you think you’re going?’
‘I am on my way back.’
‘Back where?’ the same man sneered. ‘To see your godless friends?’
‘To see the Archbishop.’ He kept himself calm with effort, instinct quickening his heartbeat, heat across his skin. The mare sidled under him and he fought to hold her to her place though his senses urged him otherwise.
‘The Archbishop, eh?’ One of the other men laughed. ‘Well, that’s right, that’s where you’re going now, whether you want to or no.’ He reached out and caught at Bessie’s reins, holding her s
teady while one of the others nudged alongside, a rope outstretched in his hands.
Ben swallowed, fighting down the impulse to run again, grief and fear turning to hatred. He struggled with the waves of his emotion, forcing them down by the strength of his will. ‘But I say unto you which hear,’ he murmured to himself, lips moving in silent prayer. ‘Love your enemies: do well to them which hate you.’
‘Praying’s not going to help you now, Kemp,’ one of the men said. ‘It’s praying that’s got you here in the first place.’
He said nothing. He had lived only as Christ commanded and God would deliver him. For it was written, Whosoever he be of you, that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. He could have done nothing different.
‘Give us your hands.’
Stretching out his wrists for the rope took all his strength, and the man wound it tight, tying it hard with cruel enjoyment. The jute was rough and chafed painfully against the scars. He laid his bound hands on the pommel of the saddle as one of the men lifted the horse’s reins over her head and tried to lead her onwards. She plunged, unused to being led and reluctant. Ben touched fingers to her neck and spoke to her, soothing. She steadied a little with his voice and the man had sense enough not to drag her on, riding alongside instead, coaxing her forward.
Helpless, bound, Ben was in the hands of God. With a silent prayer on his lips, he gave himself up to their control and let them lead him to his punishment.
In prison he sat in the stinking straw, his back against a heavy stone wall that was wet with the damp of centuries. In the light it would have been mottled green and black with mould and filth, but the light rarely penetrated the small barred opening, so he sat in the gloom and recited Scripture in his head.
We give no occasion of offence in any thing, that our ministry should not be reprehended.
The King James Men Page 25