Love's Alchemy

by Bryan Crockett

  The priest did not appear to be listening. He mumbled, “I must dissuade them.” Turning to Jack, Garnet said with more conviction, “I will not allow it. The Holy Father will not allow it. I will . . . I will write to him.”

  “There is no time. The Holy Father is in Rome, and the new Parliament is upon us.”

  “Then I—”

  “Will Catesby listen to you? Will Fawkes? They’ll chain you to a printing press first.”

  “I fear you’re right. Perhaps I should turn myself over to Cecil and tell him all. Another could tell Catesby and the rest to take to their heels.”

  “Madness, Father. You are a Jesuit. Cecil would hand you over to Topcliffe, who would slowly flay you alive and feed your flesh to his dog while you watched. No, you cannot go to Cecil. And you need not.”

  The priest was beginning to sweat. “What is your counsel?” he asked.

  “Seal this letter well, and let me deliver it to Monteagle. If Monteagle stays in Hoxton, that’s one Catholic spared, at least.”

  The priest nodded. “But you are hurt. Can you make it even as far as Hoxton?”

  Jack had wondered the same. But what he said was, “Of course I can. I know my strength.”

  “Well. I’ll work what I can. The good Lord knows this land is ruled by evil men, but Catesby is no such. I will confess to you that when I suspected he might do harm to Cecil, I did too little to dissuade him. But so much gunpowder. . . . We cannot allow this thing.”

  “Believe me, Father, this letter is the nearest way to stop it.

  Do you know this man Monteagle?”

  “Not well, no.”

  “I do. In better times I worked with the Lord Keeper, and I often corresponded with Monteagle in matters of state. If ever a politician knew how to butter his bread on both sides, it is Monteagle. I’ll wager he will take this paper straight to Cecil.”

  “And if he does not?”

  “Then we’re no worse off than now, and he is spared. Only set me free, and I will go to Hoxton. I will give the letter to Monteagle. Then I’ll watch from a distance. If Monteagle goes to Cecil, I will come directly back to you. Or if that’s not safe, I’ll post on the undercroft door a warning to Catesby and the rest, telling them they are discovered, and their only hope is to flee. In the meantime you need to clear as many people from this part of London as you can.”

  “This part of London. . . . Do you mean this gunpowder has that much force?”

  “Father, I have been in the wars. I have seen what ordnance compounded can do. That much gunpowder will leave a smoking hole where the heart of London used to be. Thousands will go up in the blast and the burning thereafter, and then thousands more in the bloodshed to follow. Just free me from these fetters, and I’ll set about the task.”

  The priest looked dismayed. “I cannot set you free. Guido brought a smith here who heated an open link and then closed it as the last ring on your chain. There is no lock.”

  A wave of nausea passed over Jack. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “Father, do you not understand? Fawkes and Catesby do not mean to free me. When that powder is touched off, I will be blown into so many shivers the Lord himself will take half an hour to find them on the Last Day.”

  The priest paled, wiped his brow, and said, “What should I do?”

  “If I cannot be freed, the first thing is to find a courier you can trust. Send him to Monteagle in Hoxton with Tresham’s letter.”

  “I will. What else?”

  “Say little or nothing to Fawkes or Catesby about this. In fact, say nothing to Fawkes at all; I think he is beyond all cure. Your hope lies with Catesby, though he suspects you. Father, you may be sure that in the dungeon I said nothing of what you wrote in your letter to me, but told him only that you sent greetings and prayers. So: get Catesby alone and try his faith. Learn whether he will be ruled. If you cannot move him at the start, leave him to God. Your only hope then is to save as many souls as you can by moving them out of the way. Begin, I pray you, with old Mrs. Aylesbury.”

  Half-distractedly, the priest said, “Yes, I know her.” He crossed himself, as did Jack with his free hand. Garnet was reading Tresham’s letter again as he left the room.

  Jack did his best to ignore the pain on the side of his head and along his neck as he sat up. He carefully turned to see just how he was fettered to the press. The chain was securely linked around the metal framework; there was no freeing himself that way.

  Then, without hint or warning, he heard a voice—or did not hear it, exactly, but the words somehow imprinted themselves directly in his mind as clearly as any sentence he had ever heard: The fire of adversity leads to freedom.

  As he was wondering what such a strange message could mean, something compelled him to turn farther around and look at the fireplace. His breath left him. There was Thomas More, or what was left of him, on the mantelpiece. The message had come from him: Jack was sure of it. He crossed himself. So the skull was the powerful blessing Eleanor Vaux had brought from Baddesley Clinton. More’s eyes, or the sockets where they had been, were staring directly at him. No longer did the bones look lifeless or vacant; it was as though More, in some form, had returned to speak to his descendant.

  “What do you mean?” Jack asked aloud. The skull stared at him sternly but made no reply. Jack turned over the words in his mind: The fire of adversity leads to freedom. Perhaps More, the one who had died so well, was simply preparing Jack for his own death. The adversity he had been suffering for months, the smoldering loneliness, searing betrayal, and soon perhaps infernal gunpowder, would result in his eternal freedom in the Kingdom of God. “Is that it?” Jack asked. Again, no answer.

  Below the skull the flames in the fireplace had already begun to warm the room. The wood, burning now in earnest, must have been touched off by live coals from an earlier fire, or it would not have sent out waves of heat so quickly. The fire of adversity leads to freedom. Then Jack had it. The message was no metaphor. He needed to work some part of the chain into the fire. But the room was large and the chain only four or five feet long; he could not get within three yards of the fireplace. With difficulty he stood. He had to pause and brace himself against the printing press to keep from fainting back to the floor. Soon, though, the blood returned to his head, and the pain it brought kept him alert.

  He slowly bent down and tried to lift the press. The strain made him feel as if someone had stabbed him behind the left eye. But still he bent all his strength to the task. The press moved, if only an inch or so. He waited to catch his breath, then lifted and pulled the press again. Three or four inches this time; he was already learning how best to use his leverage.

  In this way, over perhaps a quarter of an hour, he moved the press to within two feet of the fire. Through it all Thomas More looked down on him with something like satisfaction. At one point Jack asked, “Why don’t you help, then?” But he didn’t like the way he felt afterward. He needed to show reverence, not wit. And perhaps his kinsman had helped him.

  A large iron pot hung from a hinged steel arm angled away from the fireplace: someone had been heating a stew earlier, with the pot swung in over the fire. Jack looked into the vessel. Some of the cold stew remained. He tore off a large piece of his shirt, dipped it into the stew, and wrapped the wet cloth around his left hand and the first few links of the chain shackled to his wrist. He flicked the heavy chain whip-wise, three times, until a loop lay in the hottest part of the fire. Even with the wet cloth to shield his hand from the heat of the fire and the chain, he soon grimaced. The fire of adversity. The cloth was steaming, and no doubt drying fast. Without disturbing the loop of chain in the coals, he unwrapped the smoking cloth as quickly as he could, dipped it into the stew, and wrapped his left hand again.

  After doing the same three more times, he lifted the pot from its arm, set it on the floor, and tore off another piece of his shirt. The heat on his left hand and wrist was fierce. He dipped the cloth into the last of the stew, wound the
fabric around his right hand as best he could, and gripped the end of the hinged arm. He lifted, then pulled the steel toward the floor. Again and again he did this, trying his best to ignore the pain of the burns his left wrist and hand were suffering as he worked.

  At last he had pried the metal arm free of its mooring in the stone, so that he held a piece of stout steel with a hook at the end. He pulled the chain from the coals. Several links glowed bright red, one almost white-hot. He stood, worked the hooked end of the steel into that hottest link, moved back from the fire until the chain stretched taut, and leaned away from the press. He pulled hard on the hinged end of the steel rod and felt the softened link of chain give way. He kept pulling to be sure he had opened the link as far as he could, then slackened the chain and inspected the result. He had opened the link more than enough to set himself free. All that remained was to wait for the chain to cool enough to slip off the opened link.

  His plan was to go to Cecil’s house and watch for a chance to kill the twisted little schemer, perhaps strangle him with what was left of the chain. He was nearly out the door when he heard the voice again—or apprehended whatever spirit it was that came to him more clearly than sound: Child, don’t be a fool. He stopped in mid-stride and turned to look at More. This time the skull watched him with tenderness, perhaps even a hint of amusement. Here was the other Sir Thomas More: not the formidable chancellor who refused to do the bidding of even the eighth Henry, but the More of wit, of learning worn lightly, of good cheer.

  But what could he mean? Jack approached him, knelt, and crossed himself. He said an Ave Maria and a Salve Regina. He stood and placed the palm of his right hand on top of his kinsman’s head. Thomas More would make his way back into Jack’s family, Eleanor Vaux had said: she was utterly certain of it. Now he trusted she was right. “I will welcome you,” Jack told him.

  Child, don’t be a fool. Well, Jack was, after all, More’s child—or great-great grand-nephew, at least. Fool. In his days on earth, More himself had punned on the nearness of his name to the Greek moros, fool. So Sir Thomas could be saying Jack, my son, don’t be like me. But how could that sort? Jack could hardly do better than his famous kinsman.

  Just before Sir Thomas sent or spoke the message, Jack had been bent on killing Cecil. As soon as the thought of strangling the little man with the chain had entered his mind, Jack’s veins had surged with murderous desire. Then a man dead these seventy years had directly told him not to be a fool. Sir Thomas More must be sending a message not to kill Cecil, not to send himself to certain death at the gallows. More’s death at the block had been a glorious martyrdom, an embodiment of steadfast faith that made the whole world take notice. Jack’s execution would be a mere waste.

  Of course. Of course More was right. Jack’s place was with Anne and their three little children. Surely Anne’s new marriage to the bunchbacked toad would not stand. Jack had not been through so much for so long to be kept now from rejoining his family. How could he have seriously intended to kill Cecil with his own hands? There must be another way.

  He looked at More again, then unstoppered the bottle of ink, took a piece of paper, and wrote a simple message: Listen to Monteagle.—Your erstwhile servant. He folded the paper and wrote on the outside URGENT: CONFIDENTIAL TO SIR ROBERT CECIL.

  So if Monteagle received Tresham’s letter and took it to Cecil, the little hunchback would know to take the warning seriously. Jack could then warn Catesby and the rest to flee. After the conspirators had abandoned their plot, the gunpowder would be discovered and the disaster averted. If Monteagle took the letter seriously and made some excuse to stay away from Parliament, Cecil would not know of Monteagle’s absence until the new session of Parliament began. Until then he would have thought Jack’s note meant Monteagle had something important to say in Parliament, perhaps in a speech. Now Cecil would know something strange was afoot. He would investigate all the possibilities, including Monteagle’s absence. Either way, Jack would have done what he could to make sure Fawkes never lit the fuse.

  On a different piece of paper Jack wrote, YOU ARE BETRAY’D. CECIL IS COMING. FLEE!

  His black, broad-brimmed hat lay under the writing-table next to his satchel, his black leather jerkin neatly folded beneath the hat. He put on the jerkin he had purchased just after his escape from the dungeon and tucked the letters into one of the three hidden pockets he had asked the tailor to stitch into the jerkin’s lining. The hat he fitted tenderly onto his head. Despite the swelling around his left temple, the hat was not too small; Jack even fancied the pressure on his temple relieved the pain there somewhat. He retrieved the satchel.

  When he left Mrs. Aylesbury’s room to search the undercroft, the satchel had contained only her lantern and the generous supply of money Lady Bedford had given him when he departed Coombe Abbey. The lantern was gone, but remarkably, the purse filled with gold coins still rested in the satchel.

  So these militant Catholics were, in their odd way, honest men. They would enfetter one who meant them only good, would blow him to bits in a Satanic blast. But they would not steal his money. These terror-merchants aimed to bring England to her knees and subject the whole land to foreign rule. Yet they would not take a man’s money even when it would go up with him in an explosion such as the world had never seen. Once again, he had to admire the conspirators. But he also had to stop them.

  Jack walked out into the night air. His breath fogged in the cold, then slowly faded; not a hint of a breeze pulled it one way or another. Nothing stirred in the cathedral yard. He looked at the stars through a gap between the shops: two or three in the morning. Probably the city would be awake and bustling by the time he accomplished his tasks.

  He needed to set about his work, but he stood motionless. Something was amiss. For a moment he thought it was a sound, but when he strained to listen, he heard nothing but the ringing in his left ear. Something or someone, though, was singling him out, as if by an internal summons. He turned. Without knowing why, he walked back to the room he had just left.

  He eased open the door and peered inside, half expecting Catesby or Fawkes to spring from the shadows and attack him. But everything in the room stood just as he had left it.

  It was then that he caught Sir Thomas More’s eye. Or More caught his. In any case the meaning of the strange silence in the wintery air now became clear. It was More who had called him back, More who had further business with him. With a sickening pang Jack realized what he had almost done; he would have left his venerable kinsman to be shattered in the blast. Or Cecil and his agents would find the skull when they ransacked the houses surrounding Westminster. Jack felt as if he had left his mother or wife or child behind. He crossed himself and said aloud, “I am sorry.”

  Sir Thomas did not reply, but Jack was sure his kinsman had already forgiven him.

  He looked around the room. The straw-filled mattress would have to do. He ripped open the fabric and shook the straw onto the floor. Then he tore the cloth into two pieces, one larger than the other. He carefully lifted Sir Thomas’s skull from the mantel and used the large piece of cloth to wrap it. He wrapped the jaw in the smaller piece.

  Jack distributed the coins from Lady Bedford among the jerkin’s three hidden pockets, took a little straw from the pile on the floor, and lined the bottom of his satchel. He laid both pieces of Sir Thomas on the straw, packed in a little more around the wrapped bones, and fastened the satchel’s clasp. Jack shouldered the bag and left for the second time.

  He crossed the yard to the locked undercroft door, took from a pocket one of the shards of steel he had bent to pick the lock, pierced the paper warning Catesby and the rest to flee, and wedged the shard between two of the door’s boards. Anyone approaching the door would immediately see the message and know to get as far away from the undercroft as possible.

  Then Jack hurried to the blacksmith’s shop where he had spent a groat on the steel for those same lock-picks. He looked about him. No constables, not even a drunken va
grant asleep on the street in the bleak chill of the night.

  Jack set down the satchel and backed away two paces from the locked double doors of the smithy, then lunged against the boards. He heard one of them splinter a little into the shop. He rubbed his shoulder, then made another lunge. After half a dozen more, his head blazing with pain, he had broken two boards enough to kick them into the smithy. He picked up his satchel and climbed through the splintered opening. In the near-total dark he felt for the blacksmith’s tools until he found a cold chisel and a weighty hammer. He remembered where the smith had mounted his heaviest vise.

  He clamped into the vise the bottom half of the chain’s nearest link, the one that looped into the holes in the hinged shackle on his wrist. He tore off what remained of his shirt, folded the cloth, and put it into his mouth to cushion his teeth.

  It was awkward work, but he bent down with his head sideways and held the chisel in his mouth, its bladed end against the link of chain whose top rose above the vise. He tried a few carefully aimed taps with the hammer. Then he began to strike the end of the chisel with more and more force. Only once did the hammer glance off the chisel’s head. Luckily it bounced away from Jack’s face; otherwise he would have shattered his nose. But the force of knocking the chisel off center drove its shaft sidewise between his upper and lower teeth, hitting hard against the back of his mouth.

  Renewed pain in his head, already swollen and painful from Burr’s assault with the brick, drove him to his knees. He tasted blood, let the cloth fall from his mouth onto the vise, and worked his jaw. Nothing seemed to be broken. With his left wrist still chained close to the vise, he dangled there for a few seconds before a surge of nausea rushed through him. He had time only to turn himself as far away from the vise as his left arm would reach, and vomited until he hung where he knelt, weak, clammy, and spent. He turned and sat, his left arm raised above him, as if he had made some abortive, half-hearted attempt to test himself in Topcliffe’s manacles. Breathe, he told himself. Breathe.