“Oh, heavens above! What are you talking about?” Rebecca pleaded. “What is it that is so serious that you suddenly can’t talk openly in front of me? And you won’t lend him a horse? Mr. Clarenceux, not so long ago we lay side by side together in a bed. That speaks of a certain degree of trust, no? And yet you will not tell me something that makes your friend shout at you and refuse to lend you a horse. What is it? What makes you so fearful? Tell me.”
Clarenceux and Julius looked at one another. Julius shook his head.
Clarenceux began to speak. “The man we are talking about, Lord Henry Percy—the man who seems to lie at the heart of this conspiracy, your husband’s legacy, call it what you will—was widely believed to be the first husband of Anne Boleyn, mother of our present queen. Indeed, until the old king decided he wanted Anne for his own bedmate, it was said to be an open secret that Lord Percy and Anne Boleyn were man and wife. As Lord Percy was still quite young and in Cardinal Wolsey’s household, they did not live together, although they were deeply in love. Then the king took an interest in Anne. He had no qualms about bedding another man’s wife—and no man was so foolish as to stop the king from taking what he wanted—but Anne herself insisted on only sleeping with her husband. That was a challenge for King Henry. He put all his efforts—both charm and threats—into making himself her husband. He forced Wolsey to separate Lord Percy and Anne, and then he married Anne. And when he grew tired of her, and took a fancy to Jane Seymour instead, he had Anne beheaded. Her brutal killing was one of the reasons for the Pilgrimage of Grace—Aske himself petitioned Lord Percy to lead them in revolt against the king’s tyranny.”
There was silence.
“What William is failing to make clear,” added Julius after a little while, “is that there are those who believe that Lord Percy was not only the love of Anne’s life, but also the real father of our present queen. If proof of that relationship were to be found, it would naturally bar her from the throne.”
Clarenceux nodded. “So a secret that will affect ‘the fate of two queens’ and centers on Lord Percy points in that direction. Hence our concern for the—”
“Concern?” interjected Julius. “You use a very slight word for it. You are talking about high treason—no, the very highest treason. If you get caught, your fate will be the same as all traitors’—you will be drawn, hanged, and quartered. Except that they don’t quarter women.”
“What do they do with them?” Rebecca asked.
“Need you ask?”
“They burn them alive,” said Clarenceux. He made up his mind. “I will go alone to Sheffield. Rebecca, you will stay here. Thanks to you we understand the acrostic—your part is done. Now it is clear what I have to do.”
Rebecca looked up with shining eyes. “You are not going alone, Mr. Clarenceux. Do not even think of it. I am coming with you even if I have to walk behind you all the way.”
Julius shook his head. “Goodwife Machyn, you are talking about pursuing a line of inquiry that is sufficient in itself to send you to the stake. Neither of you should do this. William, you cannot risk being killed for a plot that does not concern you, especially when you have a wife and young children. And as for you, Goodwife Machyn, you cannot even think of inviting such a terrible fate. You know what it is like; we have all seen men and women burnt to death. You’ve heard the screams and smelled the burning flesh—and no doubt you’ve seen that people do not die immediately in the flames but can survive even after their skin has burnt away and the bloody fat is dripping from their legs. Nothing is worse than that.”
“Perhaps.” Rebecca looked defiantly at him. “But death does come eventually, and the pain passes and the soul ascends to heaven. The chill of regret lasts much longer.”
“I will not allow it. Not for either of you.”
“Julius,” said Clarenceux gently, “we are not asking for your permission. We are asking for your help. Neither of us will rest safely in our beds until this matter is ended. If you won’t help us, then I will have to find someone else who will.”
Julius stared at Clarenceux. “Would you help me into my grave, if I asked you?”
“No, but I would help you do God’s work, even if it meant you put yourself in grave danger.”
“God’s work?” said Julius, looking down at the table surface and then the chronicle. “You call it God’s work. Others will call it treason.”
***
Once again Clarenceux and Julius stayed up talking and drinking sack after Rebecca had gone to bed. She was exhausted and was glad to lie down in the warmth. But then she could not sleep. Too much was happening around her. She was no longer in control of her own fate.
She heard a noise on the stairs, footsteps on the landing.
“Mr. Clarenceux, is that you?”
There was a pause. “Yes, Goodwife Machyn.”
“What are you doing, standing outside my door?”
He said nothing for a long time. She lay with her eyes open in the dark.
“Mr. Clarenceux?”
“Yes?”
“Will you promise me something?”
“What?”
“That you will not leave without me in the morning.” There was another long pause.
“Good night, Goodwife Machyn.”
56
Thursday, December 16
Clarenceux woke at dawn. He felt the chill in the darkness as he pushed back the sheets and blankets. When he made his way across to the ewer and basin, the cold of the water was a shock.
He walked to the door and paused before putting his hand on the latch. It is better that Rebecca stays here, for I will be traveling with the chronicle. Julius will look after her. Just as it is for the best that Awdrey and my daughters are far away. I must put distance between myself and everyone dear.
He closed his eyes and said a prayer as he stood there—for his wife and family, for Rebecca, for Henry Machyn’s soul and that of Will Terry. And he said a brief prayer too for the souls of the two men he had killed. He crossed himself, said “Amen” quietly, and lifted the latch to go downstairs.
The door opened suddenly, seemingly pushed toward him. He looked down and saw, in the dim light, a figure lying on the floor. Rebecca had been sitting there, leaning against the door.
“Good morning,” she said wearily. “I presume it is time?”
“Rebecca, it is time for me to leave.”
It took her only a couple of seconds to come to her senses. “I know where you are going. Unless you are planning to lock me in irons, I am coming too.”
Clarenceux had no answer. He watched Rebecca get to her feet and turn to face him, pushing her hair out of her face, struggling to see his expression.
“It’s not what you think. I mean that…It’s just that I have no guarantee otherwise that I will see you again. You could just be running away, for all I know. Saving your own skin. Then what will I have? Fear. Fear of Walsingham and Cecil. They won’t spare me; they will torture me and not even give a thought to my suffering.”
Clarenceux shook his head and made his way to the old stone staircase. He touched the wall to steady himself, his mind turning still between tiredness and bewilderment.
Rebecca followed him. “Ask yourself this, Mr. Clarenceux. If it is God’s work that we do, what right have you to forbid me to assist?”
Clarenceux stopped at the foot of the stairs. She is right. What right have I to appropriate God’s work to myself? Is it rather fear of her that makes me say she should stay here?
She was there behind him. “You must follow your calling and I must follow mine,” she said. “God puts these things into both our hearts. And though they may be dangerous, we are good Christians if we obey.” She paused, looking at his figure in the dim light, and added, “It is a good thing too, for we understand each other’s obeying.”
Clarenceux turned to face her. He remembered finding her in the graveyard when he feared he had lost her. He remembered his realization that God alone is not e
nough. His mind went back further too, to his suffering in Walsingham’s cellar, and how he had realized that he would rather die as Clarenceux than live as Walsingham. And at that moment, standing there on the stairs of the tower, it did seem to be God’s will that they should be together. If what they were doing was called treason by some men, it did not matter, for it was sacred.
“Very well, Goodwife Machyn,” he said. “If you believe it is the will of God, then let us ride to Sheffield together.”
***
They took their leave of Julius and his wife later that morning. Julius had ordered his servants to pack extra clothes for them both the night before, having guessed that Rebecca would be traveling with Clarenceux. The chronicle was safely encased in wooden boards wrapped in canvas and bound firmly to Clarenceux’s saddle. His sword was given an old scabbard and hidden among the traveling bags placed on a sumpter horse. As they prepared for the long journey in the stable yard, Julius handed him a leather purse.
“I wish I could spare more,” he said.
Clarenceux felt the weight. “You are a kind man indeed, Julius, the most generous man I believe I have ever met.” He embraced his friend and held him firmly for a long moment before breaking away and mounting the palfrey that the stableboy was holding ready for him. “Thank you. With luck we’ll be back to share roast beef with you on Christmas Day.”
Julius smiled but said nothing. He turned to Rebecca. He took her hand, drew it to his lips, and kissed it as he would the hand of a lady. “Look after him, Goodwife Machyn,” he said. “Go with God’s speed.”
Both Clarenceux and Rebecca looked back several times before they passed out of sight of Summerhill, along the road toward Bromley.
***
The snow was beautiful at first—large flakes falling against the backdrop of trees on both sides of the road. The branches were soon laden so heavily with snow that they sagged, weighed down with the unexpected whiteness. But it quickly soaked their collars and clothes. It was difficult too for the horses to walk on the ice, and Clarenceux and Rebecca often had to dismount to dislodge compressed snow from their horses’ hooves. With less than five hours of daylight left, Clarenceux realized that even if they rode for an hour after dusk, the most they could hope to manage was twenty miles that day. Their journey was set to be a long, cold one.
Chislehurst was on the far side of London so, to travel north, they could either cross the river at Greenwich or take the ferry between Putney and Fulham. Clarenceux deemed the second route safer, but it took a long time—far longer than he had imagined. The main problem was the unevenness of the frozen ground. Turning the corner in the middle of Beckenham, by a thatched inn crested with snow, they gazed down the wide street to see it wholly churned up: huge ruts in the mud that had frozen solid overnight and now were covered with snow. The last thing they wanted was a horse with a broken leg. Clarenceux deemed it sensible to dismount and walk, leading the animals by the reins. At this rate we will be walking all the way to Sheffield, he thought as they left Beckenham, cursing the cold wind and the snow that had looked so beautiful when it had begun to fall.
It was well after noon on that first day when they crossed the river, and an hour later it was beginning to grow dark. Clarenceux urged Rebecca on, telling her they needed to reach Barnet by nightfall, knowing that their chances of doing so were small. They were still four miles away when the last color drained from the landscape and they were once more in a freezing world of dark and shadow. Rebecca said nothing but rode in silence, knowing that Clarenceux’s frustration would probably cause him to argue with her whatever she said. It was a blessed relief when, as they neared the looming shadow of a wayside inn, he suggested stopping for the night. Hunched in his traveling cape, he was obviously suffering from the bitter wind as much as she was.
Once more pretending to be man and wife, they hired a private room and dined on a mess of good pea pottage, bread, ale, and cheese. With a pair of candles burning and a fire on the hearth Rebecca felt comfortable. The change in Clarenceux’s mood was also a relief. On the road he had been desperate to push on, silent and moody, irritated that their progress was so slow. She suspected that he blamed her and that he regretted allowing her to accompany him. But all those fears and anxieties melted on entering the inn. The comfort of the fire was almost enough to make him smile too.
The clothes she had traveled in from Chislehurst were more practical than those she had worn last time she had stayed at an inn with Clarenceux, and she was able to undress herself that evening without having to ask for his assistance. Clarenceux divested himself of his clothes and retired wearing nothing but his shirt and a cap. Watching him out of the corner of her eye, Rebecca did likewise and swiftly climbed under the sheets and blankets. With one candle left burning she curled up on her side, facing him as he lay on his back. They lay motionless for a long time, in silence.
At last, he turned to look at her in the candlelight.
Without thinking what he was doing, he reached forward and moved the dark hair away from the side of her face with one finger. Running the tip over her cheek to her mole, he touched it lightly. She said nothing and did not move.
The candle guttered, almost spent. It spoke of their being together, a companionship as they waited for the inevitable darkness. He looked away.
“Always waiting for the going out of the light,” she whispered.
The candle went out.
Now there was only the intimacy of speech and touch. But he dared not touch her, not in the darkness. In the light, intimacy was a sign of their closeness in the face of shared danger. In the darkness, it was like a whisper of lust.
“Let us sleep now, Goodwife Machyn. Good night.”
He closed his eyes and lay still, seeing the two of them as small creatures in God’s vast world.
***
The daylight hours were a hard trek, battling against the snow, ice, and frozen ground. They pushed back the moment of stopping as far as it could go—even to the point of traveling by the thin moonlight that now was to be seen in the sky. The new moon had appeared on the fifteenth of December, the day before they set out, but such were the clouds that it gave them little help. On the evening of the seventeenth there was still enough light at dusk for them to ride on from the small town of Luton, confident that by following the snow-covered frozen road they could press on for another four or five miles. That left them in a quandary, for when it was properly night, they found themselves freezing in a sharp wind on Luton Downs, with little idea of where the next inn might be. In the end they led their horses to the nearest house and begged shelter. Fortunately the spirit of hospitality was not yet dead in this corner of Bedfordshire, and the yeoman gave them a chamber and a meal of cold ham, bread, and caudled ale in return for a few coins.
The following day they pressed on for another thirty miles, reaching Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire by nightfall. Long icicles hung from the eaves of the roofs fronting the empty, snow-filled marketplace. Following their experience the previous evening, they decided to stay at an inn rather than continue in the darkness.
Their second and third nights were like the first: anxious on account of the danger and cautiously intimate until the candle went out. Clarenceux began to wonder whether their increasing closeness made them more conscious of their vulnerability. To be together was a comfort, it was true, but it was also a reminder of the danger they faced.
The next morning they set out to travel to Oakham. It was warmer but blustery and overcast. Gray clouds swept across the sky and sent the piles of snow cascading from the boughs of trees. Not long after starting they came to a great oak that stood beside the road. One bough had been so heavily weighed with snow and ice that it had split and torn from the trunk and now lay across the road in a wreck of splinters, twigs, leaves, and mistletoe.
Then it began to rain.
Clarenceux fastened up his traveling cape against the weather and smiled at Rebecca. “It will be good for us, the rai
n,” he shouted over the downpour. “It will dissolve the snow. We will be able to ride faster.”
Rebecca looked at him askance, suspecting that he was being too optimistic. She was right. An hour later, they were both utterly drenched, sheltering from the storm in a barn near the road. The rain was indeed dissolving the snow—and rapidly—but in its wake it left huge stretches of mud. Wide puddles emerged in the road, and the sludge kicked up by the horses’ hooves soon had them dirty as well as wet. Far from allowing them to hasten ahead, three hours of rain left the ground too soft to ride fast and too dark with mud to be followed by the scant moonlight. At Uppingham they decided they could go no further. They were wet, miserable, shivering—and still short of their destination by six miles.
Clarenceux was despondent as he took off all his clothes except his wet shirt in the cold, small chamber of yet another roadside inn. He did not speak as he hung them over an old rail.
“They won’t dry quickly enough in here,” Rebecca observed.
“What else can we do?” he sighed. “There is no fireplace.”
“I’ll find one.”
Twenty minutes later she was back, with the innkeeper and two servants. The innkeeper bowed frequently, apologized profusely, and declared that had he known who Mr. Clarenceux was, he would never have presumed to give him an unheated room. Clarenceux found himself being hurried along a corridor in nothing but his linen shirt, then up a staircase and across a landing to a fine, paneled chamber in the main building of the inn, while the servants followed with their baggage. A fire was newly alight in the room and roaring magnificently, with a clothes rail placed before it. Four candles were burning around the room, and there was even a footbath of warm water ready.
Clarenceux sat on the bed in his shirt and watched the last servant close the door behind him.
“You told them my name?”
Rebecca stared at him. “Would you rather freeze to death in wet clothes? Yes, I told the innkeeper who you are. I said that you are conducting a visitation of these parts, and although you are not a demanding man yourself, and are prepared to suffer hard beds and little comfort, the gentlemen whom you meet are bound to inquire as to your lodgings. In all honesty you could not say you were well lodged here, without a fire. Pardon me if I was wrong.”
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