A Pack of Lies

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  Eleanor heard voices in the hall, and ran to greet her betrothed. ‘Richard! What brings you here, sweet friend? Are they the men you command — those men in the yard?’

  Richard Eliott revelled in the warmth of the greeting. ‘To say true, my business brought me by your door and I thought to bring you a present as I passed.’ He snapped his fingers and two soldiers poised at the tail of the cart heaved a carved wooden chest on to their shoulders and brought it into the house. ‘A press for your marriage trousseau, mistress, since such you must have now that you have consented to be my wife. Shall it be set down in your chamber?’

  Eleanor clutched her fingers to her mouth in an ecstasy of delight. ‘Oh my dear Richard! Yes, yes, have them take it up. What a sweet gentleman you are indeed to be mindful of me when you are about your business. I shall soon believe that you love me,’ she added flirtingly.

  ‘Oh believe it, lady! Believe it! My heart is yours entirely and you are never far from my mind working or waking, sleeping or stirring.’

  ‘But where does it come from? Where did you find it? Such pretty carving!’ she exclaimed, as the chest rocked and jarred its way up the narrow stairs. ‘Are you escort to a cargo of furniture, my dear?’

  ‘Confiscated!’ he declared proudly. ‘I come from raiding a den of heretic Catholics where I cornered a foul Jesuit priest. See him bound there in the cart!’

  Eleanor peeped nervously past her fiance at the black-clothed prisoner wedged between the furniture. ‘Oh well done, Richard! Good work! Do you hear that, Mother! Richard has caught a Jesuit!’

  Eliott coloured deeply with pride. ‘I confiscated the furniture from that den of vice and wickedness — but I paid in cash for the press: I would not have you think I pilfered it from the State!’

  ‘I would never think that, Richard! Indeed I would not. You are a kind, good, honourable man and I thank God that he has brought me such a husband.’

  Much as he would like to have stayed, Richard Eliott’s duties urged him to hurry away with his soldiers and his prisoner and his confiscated goods, and Eleanor hurried upstairs to rejoice in the gift from her betrothed. A press for her trousseau! What a dear, chivalric thought, and on a day when he had other such important work in hand! She ran her fingers over the birds and animals carved in oak. The hasps were undone. There was no padlock to it. She lifted the lid and found that it was not empty. ‘Linen too!’ After all, linen is an important beginning to any bride’s home-making. She fingered the sheets, her heart stuffed with tender sentiments towards her beloved Richard.

  Then she drew back the top sheet and found the one below red with wet blood.

  The horror snatched her breath away. As she jumped back, she caught her foot in her gown and stumbled and sat down. Her eyes were on a level now with the press as the bloodstained sheet was thrown back over the side and an elbow flapped vainly to hook itself over the rim and a bloody hand dropped limply on to her knee.

  ‘Magna est veritas et praevalebit … Non omnis moriar … Water, for the love of God.’

  She thought to slam the lid and run for help. But to reach the lid she would have to lean across the man in the press. Her legs seemed to have turned to water, and every time she tried to rise, her treacherous petticoats ensnared her feet and overbalanced her. She tried to scream, but it was as though her vocal cords had been plucked out. The question kept struggling for a place in her mind: Why had Richard presented her with a man’s body in a chest? It must have some meaning. She stared at the hand on her knee and it gradually tightened into a fist, clasping her dress.

  ‘God forgive me for a coward, but I fear to die in a linen press. May I not be shriven!’ A head emerged a few inches from her own. It was a face of absurdly childlike innocence, not above twenty years old. The boy looked about him in astonishment. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘This is my chamber.’

  ‘Then why am I in it?’

  ‘That’s what I asked you!’

  The conversation congealed again, like a stream refreezing into ice. They stared at each other until gradually understanding dawned on Eleanor. ‘You were hiding in the chest. You’re a Roman Catholic! You’re a Jesuit!’

  ‘A member of the Society of Jesus, yes mistress.’ His eyes gleamed with pride.

  ‘But you were captured! I saw a priest in the cart yonder! Richard captured you!’

  This news struck horror into the young man. ‘Ah! Father Hart was taken, then? God be with him. God give him patience to make a good end … He was so much better hidden than I! He was so much better a man than I! He converted me to the True Faith. He was one of the Mission of Fifteen sent by the Holy Father himself from Rheims. I was nothing but the idle son of a good Catholic house until Father Hart came to us and preached. I begged him to admit me to the Society and he agreed and heard my vows - and now he’s taken and I’m not!’ He made an effort to climb out of the press, but slumped back, panting with pain and frustration.

  ‘How came you hurt?’ she whispered, thinking he had perhaps attempted suicide, that most unforgivable of sins. Who knew what these devilish spies might not do?

  ‘The pikemen. They drove pikes into the chest. I pray their idleness in searching has delivered me into gentler hands. Are you a friend of the Widow Tyford? Did she convey me here? Am I to escape after all?’ Large tears filled the young man’s eyes at the shock of sudden hope.

  ‘No! Widow Tyford is a Catholic! We never speak her name in this house!’

  The realization that he was in the hands of a Protestant after all dealt the boy a bitter blow. ‘So be it,’ he said and mumbled something in Latin.

  ‘Here. Lean on me. You must lie on the bed while I fetch a surgeon to you.’ Eleanor said this as coldly as possible and felt quite polluted by the touch of his heretic hand on her shoulder, more so by the blessing he clumsily offered her with one bloodstained hand as she helped him to the bed.

  As she turned to go she asked, ‘What will become of the Jesuit - the other one, I mean?’

  ‘He will be put to the rack - as if the rack could stretch the law of God out of its true shape! But he will never recant! He will never betray his mission! And if his soul is patient and his tormentors merciful, he will be hanged soon.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Of course.’ The Jesuit seemed puzzled by her surprise. ‘That antichrist Eliott - ‘Priestcatcher’ they call him - he’s sent four saints to the rack and the rope this very year … Now I must steady my mind to bear my own fate patiently.’

  She was by the door now. ‘What is your name, Jesuit?’

  ‘Peter … Father Kirby, mistress,’ said the boy, who was so new to his vows as to forget his brotherly title now and then.

  ‘I shall go now,’ she said, though her hand rested on the doorhandle for a long long time.

  Five minutes later she returned with a ewer and basin and set to tearing into shreds the sheets which had come in the oak press.

  Eliott laughed at the informer. He laughed at him and then he knocked him down and had him thrown in gaol for trying to pervert the course of justice. He kept the grin on his face afterwards. It gave the lie to a horrible coldness that pressed against his heart.

  Eliott slapped his palms on his thighs decisively. He would ride over to Eleanor’s house at once and tell her the comic business of the informer. Eleanor a covert Catholic! Ha! Eleanor shielding a priest! It was the funniest thing he had heard for a year. He laughed out loud to prove it.

  He rode at full tilt, wanting to surprise Eleanor: it is always fun to startle a kitten. He was so impatient to tell her the joke that his wait at the door seemed endless. He banged loudly.

  Then Eleanor’s mother opened the door. She must have mistaken him for someone else in the bright sunlight, for she went ashy pale. He cut short his greeting and hurried by her, explaining, ‘The strangest thing, mistress! Such merriment we had this morning! I must tell it to Eleanor before the mirth
splits me!’ He looked around the living room, but there was no sign of Eleanor - only a pair of candles smoking on the table and Eleanor’s father staring at him as if he were some strange intruder. ‘Forgive me if I startle you, sir. Where’s my lady?’ (Candles lit in sunlight?)

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  So Richard leapt up the stairs and knocked on her chamber door. ‘Good morrow, sweet lady. Such merriment we had this morning …’

  She snatched the door open and gazed up into his face as if he were a fiend out of Hell. His heart stumbled in its beat. Such a look! ‘Did I affright you, maid?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, yes, you affrighted me, Master Eliott. What do you want?’

  So uncivil? He eased his way into her room. ‘Such merriment we had this morning …’ he began again to say. ‘A villain came and informed that your family was a nest of covert Catholics, ha! ha!, that you even had a Jesuit hidden away in this house of papism and heard mass and were … preached to … by …’ His sentence bled to a stop as though it had been pressed to death by the weight of his heart. For out of the closed chest, between lid and side, hung a corner of black cloth. As his eyes rested on it, it was slowly drawn inside and disappeared. She saw his eyes go to the chest.

  ‘Is your trousseau almost ready, mistress?’ He stepped towards the press.

  She darted in front of him, shielding the press. ‘Almost ready, my lord … But it is unlucky for a bridegroom to see his bride’s wedding clothes before time.’

  Eliott’s face broke into a snarl. ‘Why, you mean to wear black, lady?’ And pushing her aside, he threw open the lid and bodily lifted out the man hidden inside.

  For a minute, for a lifetime, the whole house fell silent. The door creaked, and when it swung open Eleanor’s parents stood outside, the wife clinging to her husband. They were a party to the treachery.

  Richard Eliott did not want to speak. He had no words in his head. But it seemed that if he did not, no new word would ever be spoken again: the world would lapse into everlasting silence. ‘Who … are … you?’ he mouthed into the face of the young man whom he held by the revers of his black gown. The boy dropped his eyes.

  ‘He is my lover,’ said Eleanor with slow deliberation. ‘I cannot marry you, Richard. I do not love you. I love this man and we mean to marry. So kindly unhand my betrothed,’ and she went and put her hand through Father Kirby’s arm.

  ‘I don’t believe you, mistress,’ said Eliott.

  ‘Why else should a young man be hidden in my chamber, hidden from you? I vow to you, he’s slept in this chamber every night for two months and this I swear to.’

  ‘He’s a priest, lady - a filthy, heretical, soul-stealing Jesuit — and you are a Catholic viper out of a brood of Catholic vipers.’

  She maintained her calm better. ‘Which would be worse, Richard? That this man was my lover or that this man was a priest?’

  ‘Oh, a priest, woman! A priest! This is the stuff of damnation!’

  She replied calmly, ‘Then I see my heart was wise to lose its love for you little by little. For you are a bigot and a mad zealot and love has no place in you.’

  ‘But I love …’ He seemed torn between fury and desolation. He paused until fury got the upper hand. ‘Very well,’ he said icily. ‘Let a minister of the Church be summoned and let him marry you here, before my face. Then and then only will I believe that this … this creature of yours has taken no priestly vows of celibacy and single life. Well, Jesuit? What do you say?’

  The boy was trembling so violently that he could not say a word. His mental struggle was written on his face. ‘My name is Peter Kirby, sir,’ was all he said at last.

  Eliott could have called for a bible then and there and got the boy to swear away his faith. But such was the confusion of misery in Priestcatcher Eliott that he was driven on as sure as a man laying a whip to his own back.

  The minister came. Eliott saw to it that bride and groom were never left alone together, had no chance for private words, though they sat together on the linen press like gauche sweethearts. But while Eliott told the flustered, dusty minister what was needed of him, Eleanor whispered into Father Kirby’s ear, ‘Never fear! After, you may escape abroad and return to your order.’ The boy only groaned and rocked to and fro and stared into her face as though she were too far away for words to reach.

  Richard Eliott never doubted that Kirby was a priest. But he saw his own torture through to the bitter end. No priest he had put to the rack ever suffered as he suffered, forcing his betrothed into marriage with another man, blighting all his hopes and happiness by his own spite. Every minute he hoped to hear the Jesuit break down and confess rather than betray his calling. But Kirby, it seemed, was too afraid, too terrified of torture and hanging to admit to his faith.

  When the ceremony ended, Eliott stood with drooping shoulders and a bent head and stared at the gaping wooden press he had intended for his bride’s trousseau.

  ‘Are you satisfied, Richard?’ asked Eleanor, and the eyes of the whole family told him to go, for he had no more excuse to stay.

  When everyone was gone but bride and groom, the boy sat down on the press, buried his head in his hands and burst into tears. ‘I have broken my vows! I’ve betrayed my calling and my order!’

  Eleanor began again to reassure him that he had not. ‘So long as we do not live together as man and wife …’ she said. ‘And it was no true marriage in the face of God because the minister was not of the true Roman faith! We aren’t married at all!’

  But he caught hold of her hands and wrung them violently, furiously. ‘No! No, you foolish woman! No! Don’t you understand yet? For why did I not speak when he forced us to a marriage? For why did I keep silent?’

  ‘For fear, I dare say, but there’s no shame in a man feeling …’

  ‘Fear? What has a true priest to fear from the likes of Priestcatcher Eliott? When I first came here and I thought you would betray me, I felt no fear, for I had the certainty of a place in Heaven. Oh Eleanor, fear didn’t seal up my mouth. It was Love, woman. Love. Because hiding here day by day, preaching to you, watching you and your family grow in the faith, I forgot to love you as a shepherd loves his flock and I found myself loving you as a man loves a wife. I didn’t speak because I wanted to be wed to you - because I love you above my immortal soul.’ He gave a bitter sort of laugh. ‘So you have betrayed Eliott. Eliott has betrayed his heart and I have betrayed God. A nice piece of work, lady. A nice piece of work.’

  And he kicked the carved wooden press as though it were a living thing and it too could feel pain.

  ***

  The lugubrious young gentleman in black was overjoyed. ‘I too have had my heart broken!’ he declared, slapping his hand to his chest in case they were in any doubt as to where he kept this unfortunate heart. ‘I shall place it in my rooms at college and fill it with poetry to HER, and when I die, SHE may have it and WEEP!’

  MCC grinned and shook his head and got up smartly from the bottom rung of the step-ladder to help lift the chese. The ladder wobbled, and Ailsa, reaching out a hand to steady herself at the top, pulled a span of books from the top shelf. They tumbled down the steps of the ladder, shedding covers and sleeves.

  Ailsa and her mother were presented with the sight of fifty-pound notes cascading like a waterfall from ceiling to floor - one from between every page of an epic hardback romance.

  Neither MCC nor the self-absorbed student looked round, but lifted and carried the wooden chest, with considerable grunting and panting, out to the boy’s expensive convertible sports car. Before MCC returned, alone, holding the student’s cheque, Ailsa and her mother had gathered up seventeen thousand pounds and were both sitting side by side on the chaise longue in a state of shock. He put the cheque in the till and, without seeming to glance at the fallen books or the trembling proprietress, said, ‘I daresay it’s the reason Birdman Sweeney was so very upset about the theft from his luxury penthouse. I suppose you moved the book off the little bookcase tha
t the police took away, and put it on the top shelf when you … you reorganized, Mrs Povey. You just happen to have chosen the book where Mr Sweeney kept his small change. I understand he is quite a successful gangster.’

  Mrs Povey wanted to return the money at once. She looked up Mr Sweeney in the telephone directory and went directly round to his luxury penthouse. But Mr Sweeney was not there to take back his stolen property.

  ‘Birdman was nicked this morning, missus,’ said the butler, peering round the door. ‘Latvian Johnny fingered him for the Mons Street job soon as he was collared by the Old Bill. No honour among thieves these days, as I sees it.’ And he shut the door in her face.

  She was all of a sudden, as MCC put it, unavoidably rich.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE LEAD SOLDIER:

  A STORY OF PRIDE

  The following evening Ailsa was lying in bed (wondering why her heart was still in her mouth despite the family business being finally secure) when she heard a noise downstairs which made her unaccountably burst into tears. It was the murmur of conversation between her mother and MCC, and she had not heard a man and woman talking downstairs since her father died. It was a good noise. She had not realized how much she missed it. A person could relax and stop worrying when there were coffee-cups and voices drowning out the tick of the handless clock and the clicking of the basketware chairs in the shop. She was too happy to sleep. She got up, washed her face and sat on the top stair with her knees drawn up to her chin. She could just see MCC over the rim of the stairwell, leaning back against the living-room table.

  The first thing she heard dispelled the magic.

  ‘It doesn’t mean you have to leave,’ said her mother’s voice doubtfully.

  ‘But you’d rather I did.’

  ‘It might be better. I mean you could take the money. It’s yours by rights. You bought in the book.’

  ‘I don’t want the money,’ he said impatiently.

  ‘Not even half? Well, we really ought to discuss wages at least. All these weeks you’ve been working here for nothing.’