Clarenceux turned back to Cecil. “It is the lies that disturb me most. You discovered the threat from the Catholics and you chose to deceive me. You never gave me the benefit of the doubt. You could have asked me for the document and that would-”
“You would never have given it to me,” snapped Cecil. “Besides, how was I to know you were not complicit? You favor the old religion. The Machyn woman was complicit, so why not you?”
“She was only playing for time,” said Clarenceux. “She was scared. For herself. For me and my family too.”
“Where is Awdrey?” asked Cecil.
“Safe. Where is Nicholas Denisot?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Someone I know wants to meet him.”
Cecil looked at the rain hitting the gray water of the river. “He is in Ireland. I sent him there so no one could connect Captain Gray and the Davy with me.” He put his hand to his face and rubbed his forehead. “I cannot apologize for taking measures. You understand that.”
“You could have taken measures that would safeguard more people, that would have at least protected me and my family, and Rebecca Machyn. I expect you to apologize for risking so many lives.” They were passing London Pool, the main docks just east of the Tower.
“How much do you want?” asked Cecil. “Every man has his price. You have reason to feel aggrieved. Tell me how much you want in compensation.”
“Sir William, you know me better than to ask such a thing. Every man may have his price, but a man’s beliefs are beyond purchase. If something I had done had hurt so many people, I would feel it a sin. A black stain on my soul. In your shoes, I would feel that what I had done was enough to damn me to hell. It would not matter what I had hoped to do or what my intentions had been. I would want to atone for my sin-not with money but with something more meaningful. If I have a price, it is your soul.”
“Have I been tricked aboard this boat just to hear a sermon? Or do you have something more practical in mind?”
“There are some men at Wapping due to be hanged as pirates. They were taken there by Sir Peter Carew-they arrived yesterday. One of them is already dead; I arrived too late to save him. But I want you to see him nevertheless. I want you to pardon him and his companions.”
“You have lost your mind.”
“No. I arrived yesterday morning, as the men were being led out. I had forged a letter from you, staying their execution until they could receive a trial. I said you would come along today in person to grant them a pardon. You are going to do that.”
“I do not have the authority to grant a pardon. It has to be done under the royal seal. You know that. I do not have the seal with me.”
“No. But I do.”
“What?”
Clarenceux reached inside his doublet and pulled out a large leather pouch six inches in diameter. He opened the drawstrings and pulled out the gilt bronze die that was the royal privy seal. “I watched you leave Cecil House. While you were at my house, I was in yours.”
“Is there no end to this? How did you get in?”
“Through the garden.”
“I will not do it. I cannot free men just because you think I have committed a sin.”
“And yet you can still send them to their deaths? Your morality astounds me, Sir William.”
They neared Wapping. Clarenceux looked behind; Cecil’s men were still following, but they were a long way back. They had chosen a boat with only two oars.
Three minutes later they landed. There was another rumble of thunder as Cecil and Clarenceux disembarked. John and Tom dragged the boat a little way up the shingle bank and Cecil followed Clarenceux to the line of gallows in the heavy rain. Six men were dangling from ropes, dead. The stench here was nauseating, that of moldering gray death-old death, not a fresh kill. As the river rose it soaked their lower parts, so that fish ate the flesh of the dead men for several hours a day. Eventually their maggot-infested corpses fragmented into the river.
“Look at him,” said Clarenceux, approaching the second man in the row. The corpse was still intact. Cecil retched, retched again, and then was sick with the smell. “Damn you, look at him!” Clarenceux shouted, his hair and clothes soaked. “His name was John Dunbar. He was a Scot, a master gunner, captured at sea and forced to serve on the Davy. He was on board when you sent the ship to Southampton. All he did was follow the orders of his English captain-orders that you gave to that captain by way of Nicholas Denisot.” Water ran through Cecil’s clothes, cold. It poured from Clarenceux’s grief-stricken face. “When the ship changed hands again-when Carew took over-Dunbar was given one chance to flee. He stayed aboard with the men he knew rather than be cast ashore in England. He was no pirate. He simply was shoveled from one ship to another. Thus he had to defend himself when Sir Peter Carew attacked the Davy. Many more men like him died in the waters of the Solent. You did not see that-I did. I watched them die. Women too. I blew a hole with a cannon in a boat carrying men who were coming to kill me. You cannot know what it was like. You are just the chess player; we are the pawns in your game, unable to retreat.”
Clarenceux looked at the river. The boat with Cecil’s men was coming into the bank. One jumped out and held the prow of the vessel as the others disembarked. Thunder rolled overhead again, almost immediately after a flash of lightning.
“Tell them to go back to Cecil House,” said Clarenceux. “If I am not alive and at liberty to prevent it happening, copies of that letter you received, each with a copy of the text of the Percy-Boleyn marriage agreement, will be sent to Robert Dudley, Lord Winchester, and Robert Throckmorton. Your career will be over-and perhaps your life too. It will be of small comfort to you that you acted as you did and told so many lies, for the sake of steadying the ship of State.”
Cecil waited in the rain as two of his men seized Griffiths and Gotobed. The other four rushed toward Clarenceux. When the first two were about to seize him, Cecil raised his hand. “Leave him be. He is a friend and a kinsman. We are both supporters of her majesty the queen. Let his oarsmen go too.”
The men to whom he addressed his remarks were flummoxed. “Sir William, are these truly your orders?” asked one.
“They are,” he said. “Wait for us. Find some shelter from this rain, all of you.” Then turning to Clarenceux, he added, “Show me your pirates.”
When they had found the jailers, Clarenceux and Cecil were led to the makeshift prison where Skinner, Bidder, and the others were being held. It was made of wood, huge oak bars, sunk into the ground. The men inside were up to their knees in watery mud. One man was dead, lying face down in the brown water. No one spoke inside. The smell of feces was as strong as that of decomposing bodies drifting over from the riverside.
Cecil took one look at the limbs hanging on to the beams of the cage and asked, “How many of them do you want?”
“All those who were aboard the Davy,” Clarenceux replied.
“You, open the door,” Cecil commanded one of the jailers, as the thunder crashed again. “Bring them out one by one.”
“For Christ’s sake, let them all go,” muttered Clarenceux.
“I will pretend I did not hear that,” replied Cecil, as the first man was led out of the waterlogged pit. He had suffered a huge cut on the side of his face. His shirt was almost torn entirely from his shoulders; what remained was a filthy rag. His breeches were covered in mud and excrement. “Was this man on the Davy?”
“He was,” replied Clarenceux. “Stars Johnson is his name.”
If Clarenceux found the sight of Johnson traumatic, the following men were even more disturbing. Francis Bidder’s arm had been broken, and the bones had ruptured the skin. The wound had begun to rot, and blood poisoning seemed to have taken hold. He was unable to stand, barely alive. “Mr. Clarenceux, are you saving us or turning us over to the Devil?” shouted one man. “Will you join us at the water’s edge?” yelled another. “You fired the cannon too,” cried a third voice. Clarenceux said nothing. Even wor
se were the screams of those who had not been aboard the Davy, whom the jailers thrust back into the cage.
When the last of the Davy’s eleven surviving crew members had been removed from the pit, they were led-carried in Bidder’s case-to a dry room in a house a hundred yards further inland. Sir William Cecil stood before them and addressed them. “As her majesty’s Secretary,” he began, “I am going to draw up a pardon for you all, in line with the demands of this man, your erstwhile companion, Mr. William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms. Your crimes committed to date are forgiven, your punishments outstanding revoked. I will deliver the collective pardon, sealed with her majesty’s privy seal, to Mr. Clarenceux.”
A murmur of appreciation gave way to voices of relief and even surprised happiness. “With all thanks to you, Mr. Clarenceux,” said one man. Skinner made the effort of bowing low. Stars Johnson fell to his knees, in tears.
Cecil cleared his throat. “Lest there be any doubt, this pardon does not extend to any crew members of the Davy who are not here, nor to any crimes you commit in the future. In view of this, I will need a list of your names.”
One by one Clarenceux gave the names, which Cecil wrote on some paper provided by the jailers’ clerk. Cecil looked down the list when it was complete. “I do not want them to re-enter the city. If there is trouble, I will hold you responsible.” He looked Clarenceux in the eye. “Is that all?”
Clarenceux shook his head. “That is all with these men, Sir William, but not for you and me. Not by a long way. I want to believe I can trust you again. I want you to trust me. And I don’t believe that that will be possible until we are entirely honest with each other. Even now, we are evading each other. You still have the document at the heart of all this. The root of all this betrayal lies in your distrust of me.”
“Come outside, Mr. Clarenceux,” said Cecil.
The two men left the building. Immediately, despite the pouring rain, Cecil rounded on Clarenceux. “Listen to me,” he began, but at that moment there was a flash of lightning and the thunder crashed and rolled, silencing him for several seconds. “I will never forgive you. Never. This humiliation is…unsupportable.”
“By God’s wounds, Sir William. What crime have I committed that was not in self-defense and an attempt to right wrongs? What have I done? I kept the document as you ordered me to. I guarded it with my life. It went missing and you led me to believe that Rebecca Machyn had stolen it. You even told the ship’s captain that Rebecca was being sent to Southampton by Percy Roy-knowing full well that I would equate those initials with the Knights of the Round Table: Sir Percival, Sir Reynold, Sir Owain and Sir Yvain. You deliberately misled me. Nevertheless, I did all I could to recover that document in good faith. I risked death. I went to Mrs. Barker’s house and I was tortured. I was taken by Walsingham and locked up. You too imprisoned me. Almost immediately after escaping, I was captured by a pirate who believed I could lead him to the traitor Denisot, whom I now discover is in your pay. I was stabbed in the hand, dragged behind a ship on a rope, and forced to fight for my life against Sir Peter Carew. I ended up at Calshot being imprisoned by Captain Parkinson and had to fight for my freedom. In all that, what have I done that deserves your condemnation? Nothing! You on the other hand, were making me look after a document that was your insurance in case a Catholic queen should come again. If there had been an invasion, and if it had gone the way of the Queen of Scots-you would have called for that document. Publishing it would have been your glory and the final nail in the hopes of our present queen. She would have gone the way of her cousin Lady Jane Gray to the block. You may keep the document now if you feel you must, but it is not with my blessing. I have suffered too much.”
Cecil shook his head. “I do not have it.”
“What?” Clarenceux did not believe Cecil and simply stared at him. But he saw no evasiveness. The man was telling the truth.
“If…you didn’t take it, who did?”
“Your wife.”
The word hit him. He felt suddenly weak. He wanted to sit down. “I don’t believe you.”
“I am going to say this just once,” said Cecil, his face soaked with rain, “and then I am going to walk away. You and I will not see each other nor speak to each other. You will send your letter to no one and I will take no action against you. You will say nothing against me nor I against you. This matter ends here.”
Cecil took a deep breath. “I knew Lady Percy would never let matters rest, so I had Walsingham put a watch on her house. That coded message from Mrs. Barker, who is Lady Percy’s sister living under cover in London, was brought to me on the fifth day of May. I recognized the code as a cipher instantly and I stayed up late that night, after Walsingham had left me, working out its true meaning. I deciphered it that same night-long before Walsingham. It told me that Rebecca Machyn was acting with the Knights of the Round Table and was going to deliver the Percy-Boleyn marriage agreement to them. I believed that that meant you were also in accord with her decision. I could hardly ask you to your face. The message also told me that she would be taken by ship with her brother two days later to Scotland.
“I had very little time to act. I knew your wife was coming to my house to see my wife and so I confronted Awdrey with what I knew. She declared that you would never betray me, that you would never give the document to Widow Machyn, even though she knew how fond you were of her. From this I established that she knew about it. That did not surprise me; a wife often knows more of her husband’s secrets than he realizes. I explained to her my fear that you would give it to Rebecca Machyn because of your love for that woman. I asked her to give me the document to prevent that happening. Still she refused to do so. She would not betray you, she said. Desperate, I made a deal with her that afternoon-the day we discussed you being ambassador to the Low Countries. I would arrange for Rebecca Machyn to disappear at the same time as Awdrey took the document and hid it. That way, the Knights would not get it, and you would believe that Widow Machyn had betrayed you, so Awdrey could be sure you would forget her. The pair of you would then leave the country and go to the Netherlands. As it was, you were just too suspicious and too attached to that document and to Widow Machyn for the plan to work. But the truth is that I meant it for the best-and so did Awdrey. She did what she did because she loves you. And she never wanted anyone to come between you-not Rebecca Machyn, not me, not even a document that could dethrone the queen.”
Clarenceux said nothing.
“Now, if you please, I will have the queen’s seal.”
With a shaking hand, Clarenceux reached into his doublet and pulled out the bag. He handed it to Cecil without a word. He stood still as Cecil walked back to the river. His eyes were unfocused as the man embarked on the covered boat, to return to the city. Nor did he acknowledge Griffiths when the man came to him, standing still and sodden, asking him if he wanted to be taken home. He started to walk to the river, water running down from his hair.
The storm moved away. Tom Griffiths rowed him back to St. Bride’s parish in the small boat. But the rain continued to run down his face long after the clouds had passed.
Epilogue
It was a difficult reconciliation. It took place in Chislehurst parish church on a bright afternoon on the last day of May. Clarenceux watched Julius walk with Awdrey across the common to the church and stop short, allowing her to come to him alone, as Clarenceux had specified in his letter. Without a word they had then gone inside, knelt and prayed together, and left, almost without a word passing between them.
The argument took place in the churchyard. It was an argument that had to happen-not for one side to win or the other to lose, but so both of them had a chance to say to each other what they felt, as firmly as they needed. Awdrey accused Clarenceux of being too close to Rebecca, and he had to confess his feelings were strong. But, he protested, he had never betrayed her, his wife. She maintained the same. “Nor did I ever betray you,” she said. “Sir William Cecil asked me to steal the marriage agree
ment from you and I refused him. I refused because I am your wife and I will always be loyal to you.”
“How did you know where it was?”
“There are two small holes in the door to your study. Through those holes I saw you often checking that chitarra. Once, when you were out, I put my fingers inside it and felt a document hidden there. But I never told Sir William. I never betrayed you.”
“You might not have betrayed me, but you misplaced your trust,” answered Clarenceux. “That is a betrayal of another kind.”
“And you misplaced your affections,” she responded. “That too feels like a betrayal.”
“That was not my fault. I can’t control my feelings…”
“And do you think I can control my trust any more than you can control your emotions?”
Clarenceux had no answer to that. Or, rather, he knew that the easiest answer was a false one. The truth was that they had somehow lost touch with each other. What bound them together completely encompassed them-so much so that they did not normally even think of their union. In being so much a couple they each had forgotten the other person. They had forgotten each other’s vulnerability. In their separate selves, they had grown apart: Clarenceux to dwell on the affection outside his married life, Awdrey on the stifled ambition in her husband-the man on whom she depended for food, warmth, money, status, and everything.
“I met a man,” he began. “A man who said he did not believe in God-who said there was no god. He was a pirate. He cut me and killed others, seduced women, stole, and thought nothing of these things. And I believed he was a godless man-a man without conscience. And yet this man risked his life for me. He saved my life, and in so doing lost his own.” Clarenceux sighed heavily, thinking back to the moment when Carew left him in Calshot. “If a godless man can do a godly thing, is there not room in the world for every sort of good? Certainly there is no good in Catholic and Protestants fighting one another. If Jesus were to return now, I do not believe He would be Catholic or Protestant.”
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