Final Sacrament (Clarenceux Trilogy)

by Forrester, James

  “Why not help the girl?” asked Thomas. “The boy means well.”

  “Jesus, I will pay for her, if he’s that desperate.”

  There was silence from downstairs now. Clarenceux walked to the hatch door, opened it, and descended, with Thomas following. Opening the door, he saw that only about twenty people remained in the candlelit hall. Fyndern was one of them, anxiously looking toward the closed door of the buttery. Clarenceux said nothing but passed the chronicle to him.

  “Try the latch, Thomas,” he said.

  The latch lifted and stuck open—but the door remained closed. Thomas tried shoving the door; it gave slightly, as if someone was holding it shut.

  Clarenceux glanced at Fyndern. “Your instincts had better be correct,” he said as he stepped back and suddenly charged into the door, putting all his weight and rage behind his right shoulder.

  The man holding it shut had been wholly unprepared for the force with which Clarenceux struck it. He went sprawling as the herald burst into the room, looking in the light of the candles from the naked girl to the shocked faces around. “Get out of here!” he shouted with the full force of his herald’s voice. “Get out, get out!”

  As the strong smell of stale beer and hops hit him, one robust stubble-faced jerkin-clad man stepped forward. “And who are you to tell us—”

  He got no further. Clarenceux swept back the hem of his cloak to reveal his sword, which he drew. The blade flashed close to them all in the buttery. “I am William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms, herald to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth by the grace of God Queen of England. Leave this place now or die here—I do not care which you choose. I no longer care about anything.”

  65

  Wednesday, February 5

  As soon as Clarenceux was awake he got up and knelt on Awdrey’s side of the bed, praying for her. The ewer was empty, the basin filled with dirty water. The shirt in which he had slept was also several days old; he threw it in a corner—only to pick it up again when he remembered that there were no clean ones left in his clothes chest. Having put it on and fastened his breeches, he left the chamber.

  On the landing he listened for any sign of the girl, Alice, who had come home with them the previous night. Silence. He went down to the hall. Fyndern’s bed had been tidied away and there was no sign of him either. Thomas had stacked his bedding to one side and was lighting the fire in the hearth.

  “Where’s that boy?” asked Clarenceux. “I’ll hold you a shilling that he’s wasted no time with that strumpet we brought home yesterday.” Thomas brushed the old ash dust off his hands. “He is down in the stable, I believe.”

  Clarenceux went down the back stairs. The back door was open, and Fyndern had already unbolted the stable door. Clarenceux’s suspicious mind took him in that direction. Neither of them were in the stable, however, nor even in the stable loft. Brutus snorted in his stall and Maud took some fresh hay from the supply in her manger. At least Fyndern saw to the horses first.

  He returned to the house and went into the kitchen, where the smell of bread baking greeted him. Fyndern’s curly brown hair was near the floor, and the girl’s long dark hair not far from his. There they were, both down on their knees scrubbing. Immediately Clarenceux felt guilty; judging by the extent they had already cleaned, they had started before dawn. A burning candle stood on a table and another in a holder against the fireplace. The fire was alight too.

  “Good day, Mr. Clarenceux,” said Fyndern, smiling brightly. “Alice is showing me how to bake bread.”

  The girl rose to her feet and bowed. “Good morrow to you, Mr. Clarenceux,” she said, with what seemed to Clarenceux to be a Yorkshire accent. “I am grateful to you for bringing me home.”

  Clarenceux hesitated. “If you can bake bread and clean you are welcome,” he said, ashamed of his earlier thoughts. “Where is your home parish?”

  “I was raised in Halifax, in my father’s tavern,” she replied.

  “What brought you to London?” he inquired.

  “A man who claimed to be a friend of my mother’s. He found me begging after my mother died and promised he would marry me, if I came with him to London. That was last autumn.”

  “Where is he now?”

  She shrugged. “Drunk. Dead. Dead drunk. I neither know nor care. He deceived me.”

  Clarenceux looked at Fyndern, who was gazing at the girl. Asking her to stay was tempting fate, but the opportunity seemed too good to miss. “Can you wash linen as well?”

  “Do you have soap?”

  Clarenceux pointed to an earthenware pot on a shelf. “Up there. If you will work, I’ll pay wages of a shilling a week, with meals and a bed in the attic.”

  The offer was half as much again as most women earned in service. Alice bowed once more. “You are very kind.” She smiled.

  Clarenceux could see that she was even younger than she had first appeared in the inn—as Fyndern had said. He took off his dirty shirt and placed it on the stone drainer to his right. “As soon as you can—I have run short. There are more in the buck basket in my daughter’s chamber too. Fyndern will show you where.”

  Thomas came into the kitchen as Clarenceux, semi-naked, left. If the first sight did not surprise him, the second certainly did: Fyndern on his knees. “There’s nothing like a doe to make the heart leap,” the old man muttered. Then he said to Alice, “Watch out—he will have you dancing again in that black smock.”

  ***

  In his study Clarenceux looked at the piece of paper on which he had charted the comings and goings of men in the house opposite. The very sight of it taunted him; he screwed it up and threw it into the cold fireplace. My Etheldreda, my love. The coldness of the room and the house touched him physically. He had no urge to soften it with warmth; he deserved the cold.

  Taking another piece of paper, he started to write a few notes toward his plan for exchanging the document for his wife, but however he arranged things, it seemed awkward. Soon that paper too was in the fireplace.

  It all came back to Thame Abbey. He was unable to rid his mind of the strategy that he had first thought of when reading Henry of Abingdon’s chronicle. It was the way forward: to take his enemies there, into the refectory with its wooden floor, give them the document, and let them send word for Awdrey and Mildred to be delivered to safety—and then to destroy the place, reducing all of them to ashes, as well as the document. But that secret place in the abbey described in Henry of Abingdon’s chronicle—what were the chances that it would outlast the smoke and fire?

  It would take courage. The chances were that he would die in the flames. He shut his eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like. Many in the last reign had felt it—and some had even chosen to suffer death in that way. There was the case of John Badby in the reign of Henry the Fourth. He had been put on the pyre, and when he was screaming and his flesh turning black and the fat sizzling in his arms, Prince Henry had ordered the faggots pulled away and had offered him a pension and a pardon if he would renounce his heresy. Badby was just an ordinary craftsman who openly refused to believe in transubstantiation—and yet he would not admit he was wrong. Even when the prince told him they would pile the burning faggots around him again, he refused to accept the pension and the pardon, choosing to be burned to death. That was how courageous some men could be in the heat of the fire. But could he do it? Could he do anything like it?

  He had been thinking about what he had to do, turning it over and over in his mind for more than an hour when he heard steps on the staircase and Alice knocked on the door of the study. She entered bearing a cleaned and folded shirt. She held it out to him. It was warm.

  “How did you dry it so fast without making it smell of smoke?” he asked.

  “In the oven,” she replied. “A trick my mother taught me.”

  Clarenceux stood up and put on the clean shirt, feeling much the smarter fo
r it. He looked at Alice. “How long were you at the Black Swan?”

  “Three or four weeks.”

  “Then you must have become well acquainted with Maurice Buckman?”

  “The priest? He did not often show his face.” She noticed the collar of Clarenceux’s doublet was not straight, and reached out and corrected it.

  “What about John Greystoke? Tall thin man with white hair, in his late twenties or early thirties—usually wears a sword.”

  “No.”

  “A dark-haired woman called Sarah Cowie? Ann Thwaite? Joan Hellier?”

  The girl’s humor diminished with all the questioning. “I know none of those women. I just danced there for money and slept in the hall. May I go now, please?”

  The city bells began to ring the hour. It was time for him to see Annie. “I am sorry for all the questions, Alice. I’m just a worried old man who needs to know more than he can remember.”

  Alice bowed and went to the door.

  “Alice, one last question,” said Clarenceux.

  She turned around, still holding the latch with her right hand. “Yes?”

  “What is your surname?”

  “Vardine,” she replied.

  66

  Thursday, February 6

  The market traders in Cheapside were setting up their stalls at first light. As the shutters opened in the windows above, trestles were erected and table boards placed on top, ready for wares. Baskets were unloaded from carts and heaped on the tables—here, wickerwork filled with cabbages, onions, parsnips, and leeks; there, apples, dried plums, cherries, and pears. The winter season limited the fruit to only those things that could be kept for months, but at some stalls more adventurous traders displayed vegetables that had come from further afield. Several had edible carrots brought from the Low Countries; others had marrows. One even had a rarity that very few Londoners recognized, perched in a prominent position on his stall of vegetables: a cauliflower.

  John Greystoke pulled his hat low as he shouldered his way past the busy traders through to a back alley. Here, he entered a yard through a gate and went up the steps to the back door of the house. He knocked five times—paused—and then knocked twice more. The door was opened by an old woman in a plain black dress and shawl.

  “Is he awake?”

  “Yes. Waiting upstairs.”

  He said nothing more but moved through the darkness inside the house to the stairs and ascended quickly. At the door to the back chamber he knocked five times and then twice…and then lifted the latch.

  Maurice Buckman had his back to the window, which silhouetted his round head.

  “Someone talked,” he said coldly.

  “It can only have been Sarah Cowie,” replied Greystoke.

  “Where is she now?”

  “At the house on Fleet Street.”

  Buckman looked sternly at Greystoke. His expression, together with his spectacles, gave him the aspect of a natural philosopher who experiments on creatures, only in this case the creatures were human. “I suggest that you kill her. Soon. She led Clarenceux straight to the Black Swan. The innkeeper had to use the bell to warn me. But her treachery begs another question: how did she know to send Clarenceux there? Someone else must have talked too.”

  Greystoke was silent. “It could have been Jane Carr—any of the women who saw you.”

  “Or it could have been you,” said Buckman.

  Greystoke laughed. “Father, how long have we known each other—ten years? Do you think that, after all that time, I would betray you?”

  Buckman was unmoved. “You have repeatedly made use of the woman, have you not? Clarenceux knows.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The herald will soon be dead.”

  “You have given yourself over to debauchery. Your sinfulness endangers us all.”

  Greystoke lifted a hand in protest. “You yourself told me the Book of Deuteronomy permitted it. Anyway, threats have to be carried out or they are meaningless. You know that.”

  “I also know how near we are to winning—and losing—everything. Clarenceux entered the room from which I have conducted our affairs for the last three months—that is not to be tolerated. We will have to use different codes in future. It will take time to reestablish a secure system based on different texts with our friends in the North and in Scotland.”

  “I can see that.”

  Buckman moved away from the window and went to the bed. He lifted the mattress and took out a purse. “Clarenceux wants us to exchange the woman near Great Milton, in Oxfordshire.”

  “It’s a ruse.”

  “Regardless, we will have to prove his wife and daughter are alive, so you will have to take them.” He counted out two gold and four silver coins and handed them to Greystoke. “Travel as man and wife, now that you’ve started treating her as one. You’ll excite less attention with the girl. And take the women to help.”

  67

  Clarenceux and Thomas arrived on horseback at the King’s Gate of Whitehall Palace at three in the afternoon. The fine morning had given way to patchy gray skies; a rare shaft of sunlight beat down for a moment, then disappeared behind a cloud. One solitary boy, Ralph Cleaver, was on duty, standing by the gate, warming his fingers under his arms. Clarenceux dismounted, gave the reins to Thomas, and addressed the boy.

  “I need to speak to Sir William.”

  Ralph bowed. “I do not know where he is at this exact moment, sir, but I can escort you to the door, where you will be attended. What is your name?”

  “How long have you been here?” asked Clarenceux.

  “One week, sir.”

  “No gloves yet?” Clarenceux asked. But the boy said nothing. “Lead on, if you know the way.”

  Ten minutes later, he and Cecil were walking alongside the River Thames within the garden of the privy palace. Wherries and skiffs peppered the water. On the far bank, trees reached the waterline, adorning the graceful curve of the river.

  “I hear news of what will happen almost hourly,” said Cecil, leaning on a brick wall and looking across the river. “As things stand, we expect the royal couple to meet at Kirk o’ Field in four days’ time. If that holds true, then no doubt we will hear in eleven or twelve days that one has seized the other. After that, it will just be a matter of time before the victim dies mysteriously in captivity.”

  “Sir William, the Scottish royal family’s plots against each other have little to do with me. I expect not to be alive in eleven days.” He closed his eyes. Saying the words to Cecil made them true, and irrevocable.

  Sir William looked at him. “This is not like you, William, my friend. Are you ill?”

  Clarenceux shook his head. A tear escaped and he wiped it away, angry with himself for revealing this emotion. “No.” He paused while he regained his composure. “Not long ago, you said that one day I would write the letter that begins ‘Dear Awdrey…’ Tomorrow I am going to write that letter. I don’t know where she is, or even whether she will ever receive it, but I am going to write it. More than that, I am going to do my best, Sir William, my very best, to make good all the suffering I have caused her. Ultimately I was the cause of it all. I did one thing, just one thing—I accepted Henry Machyn’s chronicle that night three years ago—and all her anguish follows from that. The time has come to write that letter.”

  Cecil watched a swan gliding gracefully by. “I wish we had some wine.”

  “I apologize, Sir William. Sincerely I do. But it has to be done. I deluded myself once that at any time I could end all this by destroying myself and the document publicly. Then I saw that I could do so and take a few of my enemies with me. It was still something for the future, unreal. But having heard that Greystoke has raped Awdrey…” Clarenceux hit the top of the wall. “When I heard that, I knew that what had at first been just a wild fantasy had become the best strategy. If it works,
Awdrey will be free and well, and so will our daughters, who need her. And my family will never have to face this terror again.”

  “Don’t be a fool, William. Your daughters need you too. So does Awdrey.”

  “The only thing they need me for is to get them out of the trap that I—I, mark you—let them fall into. They might need me, but they need their freedom much more—and the safety in which to enjoy it.”

  The swan elegantly avoided a collision with a wherry, paddling to one side. “Don’t think like that. You cannot afford to.”

  Clarenceux stared across to the trees on the far bank. “You know how you live your life, daily, as if nothing changes, and then suddenly one day you realize that your way of life has become a denial: your life has changed. You have to adapt, suddenly. Whether it is because of growing old, or falling ill, or discovering that you have enemies or your wife does not love you, or another woman does love you—you change your life accordingly. And when it happens, you become aware that you cannot pretend anymore. Things that you once put a high value on have become meaningless. Pretense gets in the way of life; only the truth matters. You need to adjust to the new reality, to have a new way of settled living—until change is forced on you again.”

  Looking down at his hands, he saw his knuckles were scuffed and bleeding—he did not recall how or why.

  “I remember when all this started, and the reason I opened the door to Henry Machyn that day. I felt that I should not have to put up with the humiliation of running from the authorities on account of my faith. I thought that I should set an example and be true to myself. When Henry asked me to look after that document, it was my pride and sense of self-worth that made me accept.”

  “And now?”

  “That pride leaves me cold. It means nothing to me. My soul is a flayed thing, stripped of its skin, which was my hope. I am raw, naked, dying. Like a tree with no bark.”

  A breeze blew across the river and ruffled Clarenceux’s hair. From behind them in the palace there came the routine shout of a captain ordering a hesitant man-at-arms to do something. And then the silence was again broken by nothing but the wind and the lapping of the Thames.