After a long pause she said, “I think things that I should not think and feel things that I know are wrong. You are more honorable than me.”
He was uncertain what to say. “I have often thought tenderly of you.”
Rebecca shifted onto her back and looked at him. “And I of you. You know that.”
He looked at her face upon the pillow, at her hair, and imagined reaching forward to touch her. He had done so once before, when he had touched the mole on her face. But he had done that then without thinking; it had been natural. If he did the same thing now, he would be a changed man. Not changed like Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, but into a more loathsome thing: a guilty man, disgusted with himself. What he truly desired was wrong—and the fact that she knew it too both burnt in his heart and made him strong. She trusts me not to touch her, and that trust is what gives me the strength to resist. And I know it is the same for her too; she knows I trust her.
“Let us sleep now, Rebecca.”
65
Monday, December 27
Cecil looked out of the window at the boats moored on the Thames and saw the sun bright on their masts and rigging. A barge was being rowed up the river, taking someone from the Tower to Westminster. He heard the clock in his chapel chime. Eleven o’clock. Where is Walsingham? Two hours late—this is not like him. He strode from the writing chamber through the next room and to the top of the stairs overlooking the courtyard of his house. “Where’s Walsingham?” he called to the groom waiting at the foot of the stairs. The young man looked terrified and shook his head. “Go and find him.”
Days of anxiety had come upon him and weighed him down. While there had been progress he had been calm, thoughtful, methodical. Now it was almost two weeks since they had last heard news of Clarenceux’s whereabouts. And Cecil was torturing himself with one thought above all others. Clarenceux has taken the chronicle out of the country. I have failed.
He returned to the writing chamber, to go through his list of consequences. He had written two sides of paper, thinking through each eventuality; but as he knew only too well, the truth was probably stranger than anything he could imagine. He set down the papers again and let his mind return to the problem of Hackney Church.
It had to be Hackney. The names of the Knights all pointed to Lord Percy, and now he could see that the dates suggested June 1537, the date of the late earl’s death. Alnwick, Wressle—these places might have once been Percy’s favored homes but this was very definitely a London plot. The search of Percy’s old house at Newington had revealed absolutely nothing. Nor was there much advantage in going to Sheffield. The dowager countess had never loved Lord Percy, never even spent much time with him. The tomb had to be the key.
But it was now the twenty-seventh. Walsingham had had men located in Hackney, near the church, for a full week. And there had been nothing. Any news would have been better than this silence—even if Clarenceux had been marching on London at the head of an army, that would have been something to work on. But no. The plot had simply dissolved and Clarenceux had disappeared. Somehow the wily herald had eluded him.
Cecil sighed again, shut his eyes, and tried to calm himself. He could feel his heart beating like that of a man facing the gallows.
He picked up another piece of paper, containing the epitaph on Lord Percy’s tomb. It had been very carefully transcribed but there was nothing surprising or suspicious about it. On one side it said:
Here lieth interred Henry Lord Percy, Earle of Northumberland, Knight of the most honorable Order of the Garter, who died in this Towne the last of Iune, 1537, the 29th year of Henry ye 8th.
And on the other side of the monument there was a quotation from the book of Job, chapter seven, in which Job explains his desire to die. How apposite for the earl of Northumberland, who certainly wanted to die after the execution of Anne Boleyn. But it had nothing to do with a Catholic conspiracy or a chronicle.
“Mr. Secretary, sir. He’s here!”
The groom he had asked to find Walsingham came into the chamber followed by Walsingham himself. Walsingham was filthy from the mud of the roads but he strode in despite his dirt, holding his hat in one hand. He had not even bothered to remove his sword.
“Summerhill, in Chislehurst, Kent,” he said. “Clarenceux has definitely been there—with the Widow Machyn. They left together on the sixteenth, according to the report of one of the cottagers on my cousin’s estate.”
“The sixteenth? Eleven days ago? And no word yet from the ports?”
“None—unless it has arrived since I’ve been in Kent. I came straight here.”
“Who owns Summerhill?”
“A Catholic sympathizer—or so I suspect—by the name of Fawcett. My cousin says there have been priests in the area in the last twelve months, and although no one knows where they go, Summerhill is the most likely place. It is an old house, with many nooks and corners.”
“Have you arrested Fawcett?”
“No, he seems to have disappeared. Which is suspicious in itself.”
“Probably hiding in one of his own priest holes,” said Cecil, putting down the paper containing Lord Percy’s epitaph.
“I will send Crackenthorpe to search the property with his men. They will find him, if he is to be found.”
“No doubt. But we want this man alive.” Cecil poured two glasses of white wine from a flagon on the table and handed one to Walsingham. “I have to say I am worried, Francis. I am beginning to think I have been wrong. All the time you have believed that Clarenceux is the ringleader of this plot, but you did not convince me. I was waiting for some certain evidence, and none was forthcoming. But evidence is not truth; I should have remembered that. I suspect I have given Clarenceux the benefit of the doubt too often and for too long. Now we have eliminated almost all the others from any real culpability: only Clarenceux and the mysterious last Knight remain at large.”
“He has been to Scotland, France, Spain, and the Low Countries in the course of his career.”
“Quite. He could be anywhere in Europe. I suspect you have been right all along; he is the protagonist. And to think my wife and sister-in-law stood as godmothers to his daughter…I have been too trusting.”
“Sir William, you should not be so hard on yourself. You have done all you could, I am sure.”
Cecil stiffened. “I’ll thank you, Francis, for not patronizing me. You know as well as I do that if one works as hard as one possibly can, and still fails, then there is no merit in the work or in oneself. It is only success that matters. If you and I foil nineteen plots out of twenty to kill the queen, we will have failed.”
“Do not worry. We will not fail.”
“Good,” snapped Cecil. “Looking at your filthy state, I trust there is something more substantial than wishful thinking and womanly compassion underlying that rhetoric. You can begin by renewing the guards watching the south coast ports, including the quays and hythes of London. If Clarenceux has tried to leave the country, I want to know. If he has already sailed, I want to know when he left and where he was going. As for Summerhill—search it all the way down to its foundations.”
66
Clarenceux and Rebecca rode into St. Albans at dusk. The dark clouds and the lack of moonlight discouraged them from pushing on too far. After supper at an inn, the Fighting Cocks, they removed themselves from the hall and went to their chamber in silence. Both were mindful that this was their last night on the road. Both were thoughtful. The candle of their time together was about to go out.
There was little to do but be together. Rebecca washed in a basin of warm water brought by one of the inn’s servant boys and Clarenceux talked to her from where he sat on the bed, looking up from the transcripts of the letters he had made at Sheffield Manor. Afterward they spoke of their childhoods and experiences in later life—from hardships to past Christmases, diplomatic missions, and marriage. Both of them had to admit that, in comparison to Lady Percy, they had been lucky.
At tha
t, they fell silent. Rebecca was quiet as she climbed into bed. Clarenceux knew she was thinking about her husband. He wanted to comfort her, and the fact that he could not hurt him. He could offer her no real solace at all. He stayed sitting on the edge of the bed.
“We need to plan for tomorrow,” he said. “From here to London is twenty-one miles. If we leave at eight of the clock we will be there just after noon. We could go straight to Hackney, skirting around the city. Or we could return the way we came and place the chronicle in safekeeping with Julius. Or we could go to what is left of my house and hide the chronicle in the remnants. Having been ransacked once, it is probably safe.”
“You decide. You’re going to decide anyway.”
“I’d like to hear your opinion.”
“We should go straight to Hackney. Find the key to the chronicle as quickly as possible.”
“Interesting.”
“That is your way of saying you disagree.”
Clarenceux turned and smiled at her. “You are getting to know me too well. I thought the same thing—but has it not struck you as strange that no one has stopped us on the road?”
“What has that got to do with it?”
“Think of it this way. How long ago was it we were being chased around London? Nearly two weeks. How many Knights had Walsingham tracked down by the time we left? He got to James Emery before us. He got to Lancelot Heath too, remember, and searched his house—but Heath was wise enough to hide himself. Walsingham also knew about William Draper, of course, and your husband. If in the space of just a few days he managed to track down five men and search their houses, then he had a means to find all the Knights quickly. So, as we both realized some days ago, he has worked out the sequence of names and dates, and probably he knows that ‘Lord Percy June 1537’ relates to a tomb, not Sheffield Manor. We took a wrong turning there—and because we were wrong, we did something unexpected. I imagine he is fuming about the fact that he can’t work out where we are. But if we walk freely into Hackney Church, we won’t walk freely out again.”
“Then let us go to Julius first, and stow the chronicle safely there. It is nearly full moon. If it is a clear night we can ride on from London and travel to Chislehurst. Then we can go to Hackney the following day.”
He lifted the bedclothes and lay beside her. “That is what I was thinking.”
“Are you also thinking that the proof we are looking for is hidden somewhere in Hackney Church?”
“I suspect it is. And that we will need the chronicle to find it.”
“That will be very dangerous.”
“It will.”
“We could take it with us.”
“That would be even more dangerous.”
With that they both fell into their separate thoughts.
“What are you thinking?” asked Clarenceux after a while, as the candle began to splutter.
“I was thinking about the queen.”
“What about her?”
“Do you think Lord Percy was her real father?”
“No. He couldn’t have been.”
“Really?” She raised herself on one elbow and looked at him. “What makes you so sure?”
“While at Sheffield I checked Lord Percy’s accounts for the time of her conception, November or December 1532. He was in Northumberland. The queen, Anne Boleyn, was with the king, on his way back from Calais.”
“And you? What were you thinking about?”
“Similar thoughts. It is not fair to visit the sins of the father—or the mother—on the daughter. Seeing Lady Percy has shifted my heart somewhat.”
“You and I would make very bad revolutionaries.”
“Maybe. But as far as Walsingham is concerned, we will make very good ones after he has hanged me in chains and burnt you alive for treason.”
There was a silence. The candle went out.
Rebecca lay back on the bed. “Please don’t mention the burning again. Or your being hanged. Things are sad enough as they are.” After a while she asked, “Do you remember the first bed we shared together? The one at Mile End?”
“Trying to stay apart instead of rolling together in the middle. Yes, of course.”
“This is the last night of our journey. Tomorrow we will be back at Mr. Fawcett’s house, and then…”
Clarenceux understood. They were both fighting their instincts. He put his arm around her in the darkness and felt her put an arm around him, laying her head on his shoulder. For a time they listened to each other’s breathing. Clarenceux remembered how awkwardly he had held her before, not knowing what she expected of him. Now things were different. He was happy to be able to hold her, happy that she wanted him to.
“Good night,” he whispered, listening to her breathing.
“Good night,” she replied.
He kissed her hair.
67
Tuesday, December 28
The decision to go to Chislehurst first meant they had to travel quickly, so they pushed their horses hard over the first twenty miles, crossing the Thames at Fulham about an hour after noon. There were no guards on the ferry nor at the nearby tavern, the Swan, a possibility that had worried Clarenceux. After that they encouraged their exhausted mounts to canter down every slope, forcing them on for the last fifteen miles. Even so, it was dusk long before they approached the rise up to Summerhill.
As the skies began to darken, so did their mood. They began to note the looks of strangers on the way, the inquisitive glances that asked no questions but wanted to know their business. One gentleman on a horse saw them and kicked his mount into a gallop. Their thoughts began to twist into the shadows that loomed among the trees on either side of the road. Apprehension crept into the corners of their minds. For both of them this meant long periods of silence or short, terse conversations that betrayed their nerves.
“At least we can be sure of a warm hearth and a bed for one night,” said Clarenceux.
Finally, after many hours in the saddle, with the color drained from the landscape and cold biting into their hands despite their gloves, they rode up the long slope. They saw the black clumps of trees and noticed here and there the straight edge of a wall against the near-dark sky. And they noted too the silence, the absence of movement, the lack of light.
They rode up to the gatehouse. Clarenceux dismounted and twisted the handle of the oak gate; it was locked. He pushed it but it did not budge at all. He knocked and he called, but several minutes passed and no one came. There was nothing but the bitter cold and the breeze shifting the leaves of the trees nearby.
“Do you still have money for an inn?” asked Rebecca.
“There’s money enough, certainly,” muttered Clarenceux. “That’s not the point. Julius has servants—a wife too.” He picked up a stone that he had just kicked with his foot and hammered repeatedly on the gate. “Julius! Julius!”
“Who calls?” shouted a thin voice from the far side of the courtyard.
“William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms, friend of Julius Fawcett.”
He waited, rubbing his gloved hands together. Rebecca dismounted. A shutter in the gatehouse above them opened, and someone looked out in the gloom. It closed again and they heard voices from within. There came the sound of a heavy drawbar being dragged across and the gate being unlocked. It opened a little.
“Mr. Clarenceux?” The man’s voice was frightened.
“Yes. And Goodwife Machyn. Let us in, please; I must speak to the master of the house.”
“Mr. Fawcett is not here. He…he has not been seen for several days.”
Whatever feelings Clarenceux had had on the journey, this surprised him. At the very least he had expected to find Julius here—not the cold darkness of an unlit house.
“Will you please let us in even so?” Rebecca asked. “We are returning two of his horses—and we need your hospitality for the night.”
But the reply was guarded, fearful. “How do we know you are who you claim to be?”
“What
is this? A trial?” snapped Clarenceux. “If you would shine a light, you would recognize me. We were here two weeks ago, guests of Mr. Julius Fawcett, whom I have known for upward of twenty years.”
There was a muttering in the darkness. One of the men—with a rasping, old-sounding voice, who had not previously spoken—said, “Very well, Mr. Clarenceux, we trust you. But you must understand, terrible things have happened here today. A man has been killed. We are all shocked. To tell the truth, we are at our wits’ end.”
The gate swung open. Clarenceux and Rebecca led their horses into the blackness and waited while the gate was shut and locked and the drawbar heaved back into place.
“We are sorry, Mr. Clarenceux,” continued the old servant. “Mr. Fawcett told us never to use a light if we are uncertain who is at the gate. He used to say the advantage lies with the—”
“The man with the sword,” Clarenceux interrupted. “Yes, I know. What has happened?” He emerged into the dimness of the courtyard and, having handed the reins of his horse to one of the servants, walked in the direction of the hall.
“Not that way, Mr. Clarenceux, please. The hall door is locked because of a terrible tragedy. James Hopton, Mr. Fawcett’s chamberlain, was killed by a royal sergeant-at-arms…” The old man’s voice faltered.
“Crackenthorpe?” asked Clarenceux.
“Sir, I do not know the man’s name.”
They entered the house by way of the kitchen, through a small door. The high room was mostly dark but the light of a fire on one of the great hearths and a single rushlight on the large round table in the center cast a faint gold glow upon their faces. The man who was talking to them was indeed old, thin-haired, and with missing teeth; they both recognized him from their earlier visit as one of Julius’s clerks.
“Whatever his name, he was the most brutal man I’ve ever seen. Like a soldier on the field of battle. He forced his way into the house this morning with a large number of men and proceeded to search every room. Mr. Hopton was one of the few of us still here. Mr. Hopton tried to stop the sergeant in charge but he simply took out a sword and held it against his throat as if to threaten him. And then, suddenly—without any warning—he sliced with the sword, cutting Mr. Hopton’s throat. We were too shocked to do or say anything. The strange thing was that it was almost as if the sergeant had not meant to do it. But he killed Mr. Hopton as he stood there. He killed Mr. Hopton. After that he calmly went where he wanted and so did his men—while Mr. Hopton’s body was left in the hall in a pool of blood. He and his men turned over furniture, ransacked Mr. Fawcett’s library, and ripped open cushions. He even stepped over Mr. Hopton’s body on the way out…Kicked it too, he did; he kicked Mr. Hopton’s body…”
Sacred Treason Page 29