by Anna Castle
The parsonage was a rambling cottage, two stories tall at one end with small windows scattered at irregular intervals. A thatched roof hugged the upper contours like a thick gray blanket. The front door opened into a long room with a table set ready down the center. Savory aromas of roasting fowl and freshly baked pies made Tom’s belly rumble.
Mrs. Wingfield stood beside the wide hearth stirring something in a big iron kettle. She looked up as they entered and set her spoon in its holder. Wiping her hands on her apron, she stepped forward to be introduced to Tom.
Her given name was Sybil. Unlike her namesake, she spoke nary a word. She was a mousy being who kept her eyes on her husband. The Clarady smile couldn’t work on a woman who wouldn’t look at him. Tom was spared the labor of finding a topic to draw her out when the parson drew her aside for a whispered consultation, after which she vanished through a rear door.
“Shall we sit?” Parson Wingfield gestured at the table with outspread arms. “My wife informs me that dinner is ready to be served. She herself is fasting today. A penance.” He beamed at them and moved to the head of the table, from whence he directed the seating: the man from Emmanuel College, Barrow, Abstinence, and Diligence on his right; Jenney, Grady, Tom, and Tribulation on his left. Steadfast sat at the foot. The middle children — Resolved, Obedient, and Prudence — acted as servers. Humility, the youngest, pattered after his mother as she brought dishes from the pantry.
As Tom took his place on the bench, he found himself directly across from Abstinence. He couldn’t have chosen a better seat. Every time he raised his eyes, he met her heavenly visage.
The parson led them in a lengthy prayer, after which the children brought forth an astounding assortment of dishes: three pigeon pies, mutton in pottage, roast rabbit with asparagus, a great bowl of stewed greens, loaves of dark bread, and a large cheese tart. Tom had been girding himself for a lesser meal. Now he grinned at the plenitude being set before him.
The parson noticed. “My parishioners bring me these tokens of appreciation on Sundays. They vie with one another to prepare the most attractive dish. I try to discourage them but without raising up more strife.” He raised a finger and quoted, “‘If a wise man contends with a foolish man, whether the fool rages or laughs, there is no peace.’“
“Amen.” Tom tucked into a slice of pigeon pie. He wished his college had such contentious cooks. This pie was as juicy as could be and liberally laced with parsley and minced mushrooms.
Conversation ebbed and flowed as they focused on the food before them. Tom kept his ears pricked for coded directives from Parson Wingfield, but he seemed to be absorbed in reviewing his sermon and its reception.
“We had a goodly number,” Jenney said. He nodded his head, his sausage curls bobbing. “I was surprised to see so many university men today. And rather more from the surrounding parishes than I expected.”
“Especially on one of their heathen holidays,” Tom said.
“Oh, come now, Tom,” Barrow said with a wink. “I can easily see you as a youngster, hop-step-hopping in a pretty morris dance. Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy them!” A broad grin creased his freckled face.
Tom grinned back to show he could take some teasing. “I loved all the pagan holidays; the more wanton the celebration, the better. I was a foolish boy, no question. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.” He glanced at Abstinence, who blinked approvingly, slowly lowering her lovely lashes and raising them.
“I strive to convey that message to my congregation,” Parson Wingfield said. “By showing them my own struggles, I hope to strengthen them in theirs.”
“You certainly succeeded with me,” William Grady said in a blatant effort to curry favor. As if it would help. His beard might look full and curly from the front, but seated next to him, Tom could see how weak his chin was. Practically nonexistent. He was short too. His children would be dwarves with necks like turtles. Was that what Abstinence wanted? He sincerely doubted it. Let him save his watery-eyed adoration for some lesser object.
“— in July,” Jenney said.
Tom’s attention snapped back to the conversation.
“We know we can count on you,” Barrow said, speaking to Grady and the other man from Emmanuel College.
Jenney’s pig-snout nose flared. In excitement? Tom mentally kicked himself in the arse. What had he missed? Could he assume from the fragment he’d heard that the meeting was set for July? Jenney had named the month. Did that make him the organizer?
The chinless Grady said, “I’ll do anything I can, short of promising our chapel. I’m not sure our head would go that far.”
“He must be pressed,” Jenney said. “We need support from within the university. Our headmaster is useless. His only god is Mammon.”
“That’s a little harsh,” Barrow said. “The services in our chapel —”
“The services in our chapel are a scandal!” Jenney cried. “Nothing but book prayers, as if we were a college of illiterates.” Bright spots burned in his cheeks and tears slicked his black eyes. He speared a piece of rabbit with the point of his knife and contemplated it as sadly as if it had once been kin.
“Our chapel is too small anyway,” Tom said. He hoped they would think he was only pretending to know what they were talking about, not that he actually did know. How could he know? No one had told him anything yet. He itched with impatience, longing to take a bigger step forward yet fearing to risk too much too soon.
He glanced at Abstinence to see if she was impressed by his boldness. She was busy brushing breadcrumbs from her chest in soft strokes of her thumb, causing her full breasts to bobble under her partlet. Time stopped until the crumbs were gone and she once again took up her spoon.
William Grady emitted a sigh. Tom’s nostrils flared. He nearly bared his teeth at the clown.
“— Emmanuel. We want to be in town, close to the official functions.”
God’s bollocks! He’d missed something crucial again. Worse, he hadn’t caught who’d said it. Someone opposite: Barrow, Jenney, or the man from Emmanuel. Or the parson?
Fragments, cursed fragments! He couldn’t write a report full of crumbs. Bacon would rightly demand to know what was wrong with his wits. He wouldn’t understand about the thumb and the partlet and how a ripe breast in motion draws a man’s attention like a fish on a taut line.
But if Tom filled in the gaps with guesses, he might send the wrong man to the gallows.
Chapter Thirty
Clarady:
You have proved yourself, more than once, to be a willing partisan. Easter, May Day, Rogation; you have followed whithersoever they have led. I believe the time is ripe for you to say, “I can be trusted. Let me be of service.” We hope they will employ you as a messenger, thus enabling you to obtain proof in the seditioner’s own hand of his treasonous intentions.
If Wingfield is the center, Steadfast must be well inside the circle. He is your friend and peer. I would suggest you declare yourself to him first.
“Be strong and of good courage, and do it: fear not, nor be dismayed . . . until thou hast finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord.” 1 Chronicles 28:19-21.
From Gray’s Inn, 20 May 1587
Fra. Bacon
P.S. Have you heard nothing from your uncle about that knot? Or found a chance to look inside the bursar’s desk? I am unhappy about the lack of resolution of Leeds’s murder, even though I know it cannot be our first concern. Aeschylus noted a thousand years ago that in war, truth is the first casualty. Perhaps justice is the second.
Chapter Thirty-One
The following Sunday, Tom was invited to dinner again with the Wingfield family in Babraham. The parson also asked the chinless William Grady and another man with skinny legs and a wart on his nose, who posed no competition and could thus be ignored. To his further relief, Tom found himself seated opposite Abraham Jenney. Facing a pig in a wig rather than a beauteous woman, he could focus better on the talk.
Tom broached the topic of the conformation of the ideal church, hoping to stimulate a revealing remark. He earned himself a genial lecture from John Barrow on the hierarchy of congregation, classis, and synod. Informative, if rather abstract. Francis Bacon certainly knew these things already.
Bacon had told him to push harder. The time was ripe and the need was great — Tom’s own, as well as his spymaster’s. He wanted action, forward motion. Something definitive.
He decided to push. Leaning forward over the table, he looked directly into Jenney’s beady black eyes and said, “You can trust me. I’m ready to serve however I can.”
Jenney blinked at him, at a rare loss for words. Barrow jumped in, answering with a warm chuckle in his voice. “Glad to hear it. Perhaps you could pass along that honey you’ve been hoarding.” He grinned. “We all trust you, Tom. I hope that means you trust us too. We support one another in our daily struggles. Isn’t that right, Parson?”
Parson Wingfield launched into an account of a period of diminished zeal he’d experienced yesterday and his efforts to revive it through prayer. Tom smiled through his teeth and passed the honey pot across the table.
Had they deliberately misunderstood him? Or deliberately deflected the talk? They claimed to trust him but kept him at arm’s length. He waited until the parson’s story wound down, then tried again. “I must tell you, Parson Wingfield, how much I admire the way you’ve planted a company of the faithful here in Babraham. We have righteous community knit together by the true Word, not fetched willy-nilly by command of man’s law. It’s as if you’ve built a church within a church.”
A ringing silence descended. Not so much as a spoon clopped against a wooden plate. The sound of sparrows twittering vigorously outside the open window filled the echoing emptiness left by Tom’s words.
Jenney wore the expression of a cow that has been struck between the eyes with a mallet. Barrow rubbed his freckled cheek with a broad hand, his lips pursed as if straining to press out some suitable response.
Parson Wingfield smiled blandly at Tom. “Yes,” he said. “The congregation is the church, each member a plank, our faith the nails. In that sense, I am its carpenter.” He frowned. “It seems overweening to compare myself to the carpenter. The shepherd of a flock . . . but that metaphor is a bit tired.” He frowned at the others, who regarded him with patient smiles.
Patience, colored with relief?
The tension in the air evaporated as the parson babbled on. “A rock in a harbor, perhaps. Or better — the harbor itself.” He shook his head. “Watery images. I do get thirsty. Would it be seen as Romish for me to keep a cup of wine in my pulpit? My throat does become dry sometimes, and I fear the people at the back might not hear all the words of my sermon.”
The man was so self-absorbed he was practically wan-witted. He seldom spoke of anything besides his own interior condition and how much people liked his sermons. Tom realized with a disheartening sense of work wasted that Parson Wingfield was no more the center of a Puritan conspiracy than the pope himself.
***
After dinner, everyone milled about the yard for a while, chatting. Tom lent half an ear to Tribulation’s story about a conflict among her hens while he watched guests and family members going in and out of the house to fetch something forgotten or bid Mrs. Wingfield good-bye. The parson wandered in and out, having brief conversations with this one and that. If he was not the chief seditioner, then it must be one of these other men, his closest colleagues.
Tom could walk back to Cambridge with them, at least. Perhaps that was their plan too, to wait until they were out on the open road to catechize him about his commitment.
Then Steadfast came up to him, shooing Tribulation away with a flick of his hand. “You wanted to perform a service, Tom; here’s your chance. We need a letter taken to a butcher in Dry Drayton.” He drew a packet from his sleeve and slipped it into Tom’s hand. He instructed Tom in the coded greeting to be used to identify himself and what reply should be given.
Here it was; the step forward he’d been wanting to take. Tom looked Steadfast in the eye. “You won’t be disappointed.”
Steadfast shrugged, but he also smiled to show he understood the threshold being crossed. “Be sure to say good-bye to my father before you leave.”
***
Abstinence met Tom at the edge of the yard. “I’ll walk with you to the road, if you like.”
“I do,” he said. “Very much.”
Instead of going directly across the fields, she led him toward a path running through the small woods that lay between her father’s land and the neighbor’s. As they walked around the woodshed, they passed out of sight of the house and yard.
She led him a little farther along the winding track. Tall, skinny trees contended for the light, their canopies waving in the winds high above their heads. A few patches of bluebells lingered here and there. Small white flowers dotted the briar twining thickly over heaps of fallen branches.
Abstinence seemed to be aiming for some particular spot. Tom saw nothing to distinguish the place, but when she reached it, she stopped and turned to face him. She ducked her head, bit her lip, and studied him through her thick lashes. “I think you like me, Thomas Clarady.”
“I do like you, Abstinence Wingfield.” Tom bit his lip as well, wondering if he was finally going to get that kiss. “I think you like me too.”
They beamed at one another. That much was settled.
“Are you going to marry John Barrow?” he asked, wanting clarification on that point in particular.
“Not if someone else should ask for me.” Her tone made it clear whom she hoped the someone else would be.
Tom held her gaze, his sober expression a warning of the serious nature of his next words. “I am still subject to my father’s will, you know. I’m not free to choose for myself.”
Abstinence poked her pink tongue through her teeth. “I understand.” She took two steps and stopped in front of him, right under his chin, right up against him, smelling of soap. She tilted back her head and parted her strawberry lips.
He was a mortal man, made of ordinary stuff. He kissed her.
She wrapped her hand around his neck and kissed him back, filling him with molten sunshine. He filled his arms with her rich, warm body, pulling her hard against him, twining one hand in the silken flow of her hair. The cosmos whirled around them while they drank each other in. Tom felt his shirttail being tugged out of his hose. His fingers worked free the laces at the neck of her shirt and plunged inside to grasp a heavy breast.
“Yes,” she breathed against his neck, and her breath set his skin on fire. “Yes, Tom. I want it to be you.”
“Abstinence,” he moaned, and with the utterance of her name, his wits crashed back to earth. He broke the kiss and pushed her gently away, holding her at arm’s length. “We can’t, sweetling. We mustn’t.”
“What?” Her blue eyes slowly focused into a glare. Her lips, ripe and bruised, twisted into a puzzled frown.
Tom wanted to scoop her into his arms and start over, but he couldn’t. No gentleman could. He was a deceiver, a spy, here to expose her father, or at least her father’s friends. He could not abuse her girlish trust.
He took a deep breath, released her, and stepped back, holding up his hands to keep her at bay. “Abstinence, dearest, we must stop. You’re a maid, and I —” What could he possibly say that would make any sense at a time like this? “I have work to do.”
She gaped at him as if he were the most skit-brained nidget under the sun. Then she gave a furious little shriek, turned on her heel, and stalked away, tossing a last barb over her shoulder as she went. “You don’t have any idea what
you’re doing, Thomas Clarady.”
That much, at least, was certain.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Tom, still reeling from that earth-moving kiss, made his way to the main road and turned, he hoped, in the right direction. Dry Drayton lay five miles to the northwest of Cambridge, which was five miles yet from where he stood. He looked forward to the long, solitary walk. By the time he reached his destination, his wits might just have cleared.
He waited until he had reached the northern fringes of the town before scouting about for an old-fashioned alehouse — the humbler, the better. He found what he was looking for and ducked under the lintel into a low room, dark and smoky. Perfect. Neither godly folk nor university men were likely to patronize this establishment.
He found a table in the farthest corner and ordered a mug of ale and a jug of spring water. When those were brought, he sent the alewife back for bread and cheese, feeling hungry again in spite of the ample dinner. Then he called for a candle and carefully opened the letter, searching for traps — a hair under the seal, a dusting of flour in the fold — and found none.
The message, written in Steadfast’s bold hand, was brief: Round Church, Thursday, three. Urgent. Tell the others. He memorized it, refolded the page, and replaced the seal, warming it on the blade of his knife over the candle flame. When he finished his repast, he left.
He recognized the butcher in Dry Drayton from the Whitsunday service in Babraham. Tom uttered the words Steadfast had given him: “Our friends salute thee.” The butcher gave the prescribed answer: “Peace be to thee.” He took the letter and went back to his work.
Tom pondered the message as he made his way home. The Round Church was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, an ancient structure just past the point where the High Street met Bridge Street. An odd place for a meeting of the godly, being a stronghold of the most conservative members of the established Church and filled with idolatrous images. Perhaps that explained the choice. Who would look for radical nonconformists there?