Love's Alchemy

by Bryan Crockett

  Jack removed his boots and eased into the hallway. He thought about stashing them somewhere until he came back but decided there was little to gain by doing that. Holding the boots in one hand and taking care to make no noise, he descended the stairs as quickly as he could. From the sound of the voices he could tell that Eleanor and the two men had gone to rejoin the pursuivants in the entryway. That was good; he could retrieve the letters without being seen.

  The papers still lay under the pillow where Eleanor had left them. He picked up the letters, folded them hastily, and slid them back between the leather plies of his boot. Then he crept toward the stairs. At that moment he heard someone coming. He flattened himself against the wall next to the doorway to the hall, standing still while two men passed within view: one thick-boned, bald, bloody, and red-bearded, the other slack-faced and greasy. Had either of them turned his head to the right, he would have seen Jack there, barefoot with boots in hand. But neither of the men turned. They headed up the stairs.

  Now Jack had scant hope of escape. Even if he made his way back to the room with the jakes without being seen, he could not risk the noise it would take to move the jakes with the men so near. Nor could he risk dropping from the sitting-room window and into the moat: there would no doubt be more pursuivants posted outside to watch the grounds. He would have to destroy the letters. They had proved useful, but if found they would whet the pursuivants’ appetite for hidden Catholics. Eleanor and maybe even the Earl would be in danger. Jack’s mother was free from such trouble while she remained in Antwerp, but only if the Catholics held the city. And there would be danger, possibly arrest and torture, for Jack himself. He drew the letters from his pocket and prepared to eat them.

  Then he thought of an easier way. The kitchen was as safe a room as this, and there would still be live coals in the fireplace. He passed quietly into the kitchen and worked the letters into the embers under the kettle of stew Burr had been cooking. The paper burst into flame.

  Footsteps were now converging, from opposite directions, on the kitchen. Jack hastily pulled on both boots, moved to the fire, and stood stirring the kettle as the constable and Ridgely froze in the doorway. Jack said, as calmly as he could, “Would one of you tell me why you have drawn me from my studies with noises that would wake the sleepers in their graves? I ask out of mere curiosity.”

  The constable had drawn a sword. “Name yourself,” he said.

  Jack looked steadily at the man. “Why should I name myself? My mother named me long ago.”

  “I’ll have none of that, whatsoe’er your mother called you. Now reach me that blade.”

  Jack unsheathed his dagger, took it by the point, and extended it, handle-first, to the constable. “I’ll have that back from you when this business—whatever business you’ve come on—is over. Mind you take good care of it, or you’ll answer for it.”

  The constable scoffed. “And who is it will make me answer?”

  “Lord Robert Cecil.”

  The constable’s eyes narrowed. “Lord Cecil, you say.”

  “The same. I am here on his business. As, I take it, are you, though you probably take your orders from some underling. You needn’t have battered the house into flinders; I have already found out all there is to find.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Jack turned his back to the constable and stirred the stew in the kettle.

  “And what is it you have found?” the constable asked.

  Jack dipped up some of the stew in the long spoon, tasted it, and seemed to approve before saying, “Someone was here: maybe a priest, maybe some other Catholic, maybe some lawful visitor. But whoever it was has been gone two days.”

  “And when did you arrive to find this out?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “How did you get here?”

  Jack turned and looked at the stone-faced constable. “On horseback. Would you like some stew?”

  The constable ignored the invitation. “What manner of horse?”

  “A big bay mare.”

  “And who rode with you?”

  Jack saw where the question led. The pursuivants no doubt knew Eleanor Vaux’s horses and had already looked into the stables to find the two new animals Ned Tidwell had unsaddled and fed. “The boy who lives here,” Jack said, “young Ned, who should be tending this pot. Where is the little mitcher?”

  Without taking his eyes off Jack, the constable said to Ridgely, “Go fetch him.”

  “Who?”

  “The lad Sam laid out, you mooncalf.” Ridgely went to collect the boy. The constable said to Jack, “If the cub lives here, why was he away riding a horse with an agent, as you claim to be, of the Lord Cecil?”

  Jack shrugged. “I heard Mistress Vaux wanted a horse, so I gained entry to the house by sending her word I had a gelding to sell. She sent the boy to find me in Warwick and have a look at the animal. Then we rode here together.”

  During the exchange the constable had gradually slackened his right arm until the tip of his sword rested on the floor. Jack was sure he could disarm the man and easily dispense with the frightened-looking youth who had just left the room. But then there would be more pursuivants to contend with—at least two others in the house and probably more on the grounds—and even if he overpowered them all, where would that leave Eleanor Vaux? Jack himself could escape, but more agents of the Crown would arrive, mounting a massive search of the house. He could not betray the priest, Owen, and Burr.

  The constable took a step back, leveled his sword at Jack, and shouted, “Sam! The kitchen!”

  A few seconds later Jack heard two men descending the stairs. When they arrived at the kitchen, the red-bearded man said, “Ah, so you’ve found one.”

  “He says he’s here on orders from Lord Cecil.”

  “Does he, now.”

  “He claims that boy you hit—but here he is. Bart, bring him in.”

  Ridgely prodded young Ned into the already crowded room. Eleanor moved in behind them. She stared at Ridgely, who said, “I found her with him.” He avoided meeting Eleanor’s eyes as she gave him the look of a mother deeply disappointed in her child.

  “Take her back out, and keep her well clear of this room,” the constable said. “Later we’ll see if the tale she tells is the same as we hear from the lad.”

  One side of the boy’s face was badly bruised, his left eye swollen almost shut. The constable waited until Ridgely had led Eleanor some distance away before turning to Ned and saying, “That gelding in the stable. Who rode him here?”

  Ned turned his good eye to Jack, who subtly lifted a finger and pointed back at him. To his relief the boy said, “I rode him myself. And why shouldn’t I?”

  “And why were you riding him?”

  Jack broke in: “Can’t you see it pains the boy to speak? He’s confirmed it; he rode here with me yesterday.”

  After Jack’s first few words the constable shouted for him to stop. Jack did not obey. The man put the point of the sword in his right hand to Jack’s chest and with his left held the dagger to his prisoner’s throat. The constable said menacingly, “Another word, and I’ll have your tongue out with your own blade. I’ll ask the questions, and you clamp your chops. He turned back to Ned. “And why were you riding here with this man on a horse not your own?”

  Jack could see the boy was thinking quickly. This time he could only hope Tidwell’s lie fadged with his own. “Mistress Vaux bought the horse. Or I think she did. That was between her and Master Donne here.”

  Turning to Jack, the constable said, “Ah: Donne, is it?” Tidwell looked pained he had revealed the information. “Well,” the constable went on, “now we have a name for you, whether it be your true name or no. We’ll soon see if the Mistress tells the same tale as the two of you.” He turned back to the boy. “And have the horses been stabled since yesterday?”

  “Aye,” Tidwell said. “Stabled and fed.”

  “Ah. Then answer me this: if you and Master Donne rode the horses yesterda
y, why were they still wet from the ride when we saw them today? And the saddles wet too.”

  “I know not,” Ned replied. “Things stay wet in that stable.”

  “You lie,” the constable said. “You see, here’s the hard thing: the stirrups on both saddles were set for men half an ell longer than you.”

  “I don’t use stirrups,” Ned said. “I don’t like them. Nor do I even like saddles, but it was to be bought with the horse, so I rode on it.”

  “Well, I see ye’ve a lie to fit every question. But that last were one lie too many. Bart, bind this man Donne’s hands behind him, and do it snug. We’ll see what other filthy papists lie hid in the house—a whole nest of ’em, I’ll warrant, and this one wouldn’t fit with ’em in the priest-hide. If there’s a true tale in him, we’ll have it out.”

  The red-bearded man looked at Jack with a broken-toothed smile.

  With Owen and the priest, Burr stood waiting under the house. Their narrow ledge rose just above the water’s surface. A little light sifted in through a few cracks in the foundation wall. To pass the time, Burr tried to imagine the process of the mansion’s construction. It was not as though the house had been built, then a trench dug in a ring around it for the moat; the water extended under the whole. The builders must have chosen a boggy declivity watered by a stream or spring in the surrounding hills. They temporarily diverted the stream and when the ground was dry further excavated the site into a sort of pit. The walls of the foundation were laid, their solidity now betrayed only by the few cracks in the mortar, and the house was built on these foundations. The workers erected a bridge from the house to the lip of the pit, then redirected the stream into the declivity. The Vaux family—or whoever had built Baddesley Clinton—had turned a bog into a fortress.

  The three men had dropped down the garderobe from the second story. Now they stood with the floor of the main level directly above their heads. Burr alone had to stoop to stand in the space. The ledge was not long enough for even one of the men to lie on it, let alone all three. Burr found he could stand with a crook in his neck, bend at the knees—which he could not keep up for long—or lean forward and stand with his hands on his thighs. Or, he supposed, he could sit on the ledge and let his feet dangle in the water. But over time he might regret letting himself get wet and cold. The ledge was too narrow—less than the span of his boot—to sit on it with his heels pulled up beneath him. For the moment he stood uncomfortably with his head bent to one side. Barely audibly, the priest murmured a Salve Regina.

  Despite his discomfort Burr smiled briefly as he thought how the three of them would look to anyone who could see them standing there: on one end the long old servant with cocked head, on the other the short, bandy-legged craftsman with muscled arms crossed, and between them the fat, spindle-legged priest with muttering lips.

  As the noise and clamor above their heads increased, the three risked a few quiet words. At first most of the talk was of why Jack had twice begun his descent, twice abandoned it, and then replaced the jakes. None of them had a good answer. Even so, Garnet seemed unworried. It was Owen who asked, “Can we trust him? Father, you heard his confession. Was there aught in it that would—”

  The priest cut him off. “You know I cannot tell you that.”

  Burr said, “Well, there is this. If he had betrayed us I think we would be in the hands of the pursuivants already.”

  Owen grumbled his reluctant agreement. Then he said, “Or. . . . Well, I know not.”

  “Keep faith,” the priest said. “Whatever befalls us, God is with us.”

  For a long time—long enough for the light that crept through the cracks in the mortar to fail altogether—they heard little or no noise overhead. So the three remained silent, standing in utter blackness. Burr wondered how they could get back up the garderobe. Once the pursuivants had gone and the jakes was slid away from its place again, he and Owen could probably climb up the way they had come. But Garnet. . . . Burr thought glumly that if the search lasted long, the priest might lose enough of his fat to make the climb.

  At length boots again clattered and floorboards creaked overhead. Burr asked, “How long will they search?”

  Owen said, “There is no reckoning. Once some other of us were down here five days. Sometimes they sit quiet and wait for us to come out. But we wait longer. Sometimes they break apart the house and leave. When the jakes is pulled back from the wall, then it will end; we are delivered or caught.”

  “If we are freed, how do we get back up?”

  “The way we came,” Owen said.

  The priest said wryly, “I wonder.”

  “Or,” Owen continued, “we go through the foundation wall.”

  Burr asked, “Is it not solid stone?”

  “All but in two places. The foundation has two openings well beneath the water’s crest, one at each end of the house. So the water can move. A yard below the surface at our feet I have attached a chain that extends underwater to one of the portals in the wall. All we have to do is hold our breath and pull ourselves along the chain. When we pass through the portal, we come up in the moat and swim across to the shore. Do you swim, Master Burr?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. We must wait here as long as we can, though. No doubt the infidels have men watching all sides of the house. Only if they discover that the jakes can slide or if they pry up these floorboards over our heads will we make the attempt. Or if hunger drives us. After a week, perhaps.”

  “A week!” Burr said in a harsh whisper.

  “If it comes to that. Let us pray it does not. But it is good you can swim. Father here swims like a fish.”

  Garnet said, “I hope I am a fish and not fish-bait for these scabrous pursuivants.”

  Fish and bait. The priest’s image reminded Burr of a poem Jack had written for Lady Bedford just after he had lost her bracelet: lost it or, as was more like, sold it. Something about Lady Lucy’s being her own bait, catching the love-besotted fish called Jack Donne. Plainly she had been pleased by the verses, or she never would have shown them to her manservant.

  Burr knew Lady Bedford better than she thought. She would say, maybe even half-believe, that such verses as these were merely an artful example of poetic fashion. She would say a clever woman of her standing should support clever poets. Burr would not be taken in, though. He had seen the way she looked at this Jack Donne. Lady Bedford was no strumpet, but a poem like “The Bait” could open a way straight to her bed. As far as Burr knew, Jack had not made his way there yet. But the least provocation might land him there.

  Burr painfully shifted his weight. Uncounted times he had chafed at Lady Bedford’s imperious ways, but always he had kept his grudgings to himself. And what was his reward for all those years of faithful service? She had ordered him to travel with this Jack Donne. It was all Lady Bedford’s doing that her faithful old servant had just descended a sewage shaft and now stood in distress. Already the pain stabbed in his neck, his knees ached, and his hams were beginning to cramp. Crafty and fiery as Lady Bedford could be, he would give all the money he had hoarded in all those years if he could be back at Bedford House now.

  For a few minutes more he bore the pain, and then, as the pursuivants talked loudly while they walked overhead, he slipped into the water. Ignoring the fierce whispers of protest from Owen and the priest, Burr took a deep breath, dropped beneath the surface, and found the chain.

  Four days later Owen and Garnet still stood on the narrow ledge. During that time they had sometimes leaned against each other to relieve the burden in their legs and had occasionally sat on the ledge with their feet in the water. But the air and water under the house were cold, so they stood as much as they could, bobbing up and down on the balls of their feet to keep warm. For the whole four days they had eaten nothing. To quench their thirst they had dipped up handfuls of the murky water at their feet. No footsteps had sounded above them for the last two days, then light ones—Eleanor Vaux’s, or young Ned Tidwell’s, they
hoped. But the pursuivants had their tricks, and they were patient. If they found a Jesuit priest—especially Garnet, the leader of the English Jesuits—they would receive a rich bounty. If they learned Owen was a lay brother in the Jesuit order, even he would bring a good price.

  At last the two heard the jakes above the shaft slide from its place against the wall of the upstairs room. Owen waited until he heard three sharp taps against the stone at the top of the shaft. He held still for a few heartbeats, then heard two more taps. The pattern repeated. “That’s the sign,” he said.

  “Thanks be to God,” the priest replied.

  Owen pulled open the concealed, half-submerged stone door, then stepped down into the knee-deep water inside the shaft. “Clear,” he heard from above. It was Eleanor’s voice. Had pursuivants discovered the hidden shaft, they might have forced her to say such a thing. But she would not have revealed the coded signal of the taps against the stone.

  “We’ll soon be up,” Owen replied to Eleanor. Turning to the priest he said, “You first, Father.”

  “No,” Garnet replied.

  “I’ll go first, then, and pull you from the top.”

  “No, I say. Not again. My scrapes are sore, and have but begun to crust over. I am loath to tear them open again. I’ll take the chain to the moat; the pursuivants are gone.”

  “We don’t know that,” Owen persisted. “They’re out of the house, but it may hap they watch from the wood. And your flesh has fallen away somewhat in these hungry days. The shaft is safer.”

  “Even so, I have no love for tight places. I will try the moat.”

  “Think, Father, of what they will do to you if they catch you.”

  “I have thought, Nick, and I have prayed. I say I will try the moat.”

  Owen paused for a time, then said, “If you can wait another hour, I will go up the shaft and venture outside.”