Sacred Treason

by James Forrester

  Cecil glanced at Walsingham and noted that the sword he had worn so ostentatiously earlier had gone. He cleared his throat. “Mr. Walsingham, Mr. Clarenceux, Mr. Fawcett. I do not wish to prolong this business any longer than is necessary. As far as I can see, all that needs to happen now should be a simple handing over. Given the emotions and reputations involved, I suggest we exchange as few words as possible. Mr. Clarenceux, I believe you should be the one to take matters forward?”

  “Thank you, Sir William. Mr. Walsingham, you and I had an agreement, to exchange the chronicle of Henry Machyn for all the prisoners surviving, together with the restoration of all our property, including mine. I understand that Daniel Gyttens and Henry Machyn are now dead. Even so, I believe that there were seven other Knights of the Round Table. You said five survive, apart from Henry Machyn’s widow. Where are the other two?”

  “The identity of one man eluded us. I cannot answer for Lancelot Heath either. My men never found him. We searched his house and his brother’s inn by London Stone, but there was no sign of him.”

  “And you arrested no one else in connection with him—his brother or sister, for example?”

  “No.”

  “Then that leaves five men and Rebecca Machyn. Present them.”

  Walsingham turned to two of his own guards. “Bring them.” Clarenceux waited patiently as the footsteps sounded on his staircase. The prisoners filed into the room and stood in a group in the middle. They looked like beggars, such was the filthy state of their clothing and bodies. Three faces were new to Clarenceux: Nicholas Hill, James Emery, and Robert Lowe. Michael Hill, in an old black tunic, looked thin and very frail. Although only a few days had passed since Clarenceux had considered him still handsome for a man of sixty years, his face was now drawn and full of bewilderment. A younger man had had his arm around him as they had entered; Clarenceux guessed this was his son, Nicholas Hill. In a fawn doublet with leather lacing on his cuffs and brown hose, he was powerfully built and had a look of efficient service about him. James Emery wore a long black coat that was now in tatters. Rebecca’s brother—the blacksmith, Robert Lowe—was recognizable from his huge chest and his burnt and callused hands. William Draper stood slightly apart from the others, his face still badly disfigured where Clarenceux had broken his nose.

  Rebecca looked worst of all. The joy had gone out of her face. Her long hair was dirty and lank; her dress more torn than when he had last seen it. There was dried blood on her filthy hands. For an instant Clarenceux’s heart tightened in a fist of rage, then he relaxed. It is over now.

  Clarenceux reached forward and lifted the book from the table. He held it up for Walsingham and sensed a sneer in the small man’s face. Walsingham had been humiliated, and his protector had failed him. He, Clarenceux, had played tricks on them. Walsingham must have been wondering how Cecil had been manipulated. But he knew he had to accept the chronicle.

  Walsingham stood in front of Clarenceux. He reached forward and took the book from his hands. “This is still evidence.”

  Cecil answered. “It is also still the property of Mr. Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms, to which you have already done enough damage. I trust you will return it to its rightful owner when you have had sufficient time to examine it, in line with your agreement with Mr. Clarenceux to restore all the prisoners’ property.”

  Walsingham said nothing. He turned and marched out of the room with the chronicle under his arm, followed by his guards.

  “That, I believe, concludes our business,” said Cecil. He rose to his feet. “Gentlemen, Goodmen, Goodwoman—I will leave you now. I hope that this affair is soon forgotten and that those of you who have recently been intimidated by the late Sergeant Crackenthorpe, acting beyond his authority, live the rest of your lives free from the taint of treason and heresy.” Then, turning to Clarenceux, he bowed. “Sir, your circumspection has saved the day. You have my deep respect. My salutations to your wife and daughters, when you next see them.” He paused, then he too walked to the door, his men following behind. “Good day to you all.”

  And then he was gone.

  Julius came forward. “William, I too must be going. It will be dusk in half an hour. And although we will be riding by moonlight, we have been up all night. So…”

  Clarenceux struggled to his feet. Julius tried to stop him and then realized he would not be stopped. The two men embraced.

  “Thank you for helping me,” whispered Clarenceux, clutching his friend tightly.

  “Thank you for trusting me,” Julius replied. They broke away, each man looking at the other. “When you are well, you must come down to Summerhill.”

  “I will, gladly. I look forward to it.”

  Julius turned and approached Rebecca Machyn, still standing with the men in a silent, uneasy group. He took her hand, even though it was covered in dried blood, and kissed it as if she were a lady. “My blessings and my gratitude, Goodwife Machyn. Thank you for all you have done for my friend. My house will always be open to you—I will not forget that you are a keeper of my secrets.”

  When Julius’s men had left, there remained only the Knights of the Round Table, Rebecca, and Thomas. Michael Hill, James Emery, and Nicholas Hill embraced one another. William Draper walked away from them and stood by the wall. Rebecca did not move at all. The fact she did not come close to Clarenceux worried him.

  “Goodwife Machyn, now that Sir William has gone, please, take his seat.”

  She came forward without a smile and sat down.

  “I know you will all want to go home. But first I would like to say a couple of things. The Knights of the Round Table is no more. Forget your Arthurian names and dates. They mean nothing now. Such organizations are dangerous. What began as a means of keeping some information alive turned into a wave of fear that nearly destroyed us all. Mr. Draper, I can see that you only tried to save your own neck. I cannot blame you for that. But you did betray your fellow men—including me—without warning us. You let Henry Machyn go to his death. You were prepared to let men die, you informed on your fellow Knights, and you spoke unwisely at Holyrood and in London. You are free to go now. But I hope our paths never cross again.”

  Draper did not move. “My face, my rib—you did these things to me.”

  “No, you brought them upon yourself. And if you wish to compare wounds, then let me show you the stabbing in my gut, the gash in my thigh, the deep cuts on my arms and shoulders. These wounds were inflicted by Sergeant Crackenthorpe because of information you provided. Do not even think of blame or revenge; God will surely crush your soul. If anyone in this room has a right to vengeance, it is this good woman, for the loss of her husband. Now, you have one chance to leave without the enmity of us all. I suggest you go now.”

  Draper hesitated. Then he went.

  “My friends, you are free,” said Clarenceux. “And you have your property back. I am glad for you.”

  None of the four men said anything until Nicholas Hill stepped forward. “It is fine for you to say it is all over, Mr. Clarenceux, but speaking for us, it is not. We undertook once, many years ago, to guard a document with our lives. If we lose that document and have no control over its whereabouts, we will have failed.”

  Clarenceux had not expected this. He took a moment to collect his thoughts. “You are living in a daydream, Mr. Hill. The majority of this country has turned against the old religion. They will not accept a Catholic queen now. Their experience of the last one—with all the burnings and killings in her name—has shown them that whatever the faith of their queen, it is peace that matters most of all.”

  “But it is God’s will! It is a matter of legitimacy, the right line,” insisted Nicholas Hill.

  “I would strongly counsel you not to make an enemy of Sir William Cecil. Today he saved all our lives, mine included. He could just as easily reverse that.”

  But Nicholas Hill was angry. “You talk about Mr. Draper betraying us—but you have betrayed us, Mr. Clarenceux. You gave the chronicle
to Francis Walsingham. We could have hidden it; we could have fought…”

  Clarenceux slammed his fist down on the table. “Don’t be a fool! Do you think that that book is worth all our lives?”

  “But you gave it up,” said the blacksmith Robert Lowe. “Walsingham has it now. What is to stop him simply picking us off one by one?”

  “It looks as though you are the fool, Mr. Clarenceux,” said Nicholas Hill.

  Clarenceux glared at each of the men before him. He started to undo his doublet, wincing with the pain in his shoulder and ribs. “I doubt that any of you would ever have discovered Henry Machyn’s secret. It was never in your grasp. If all of you had gathered together: Sir Lancelot, Sir Owain, Sir Reynold, Sir Dagonet, Sir Percival, Sir Ector, Sir Reynold, King Clariance, and Sir Yvain; and if you had realized that your names all spelled LORD PERCY; and if you had put all your dates together and realized that they pointed to the death of Lord Percy in June 1537; and if you had all agreed that the key to the secret lay in the wording on Percy’s tomb in Hackney Church, then you would still be none the wiser. You would not have found the document.”

  “How do you know?” asked Michael Hill.

  “How many of you can quote the book of Job to me in Latin? Chapter seven, to be precise, beginning at the first verse.”

  There was silence.

  “Any of you? No? Well then. There is a long passage of Latin on the side of Lord Percy’s tomb that ends with the strange phrase Numquid mare sum ego aut cetus quia circumdedisti me carcere. That means roughly ‘Am I a sea or a whale that you surround me in prison.’ Only if you had seen the chronicle would you realize that it had a sea and a whale embossed on it. But even that would not have been enough. Only if you were intimately familiar with the whole of that passage from the seventh chapter of the book of Job would you have realized that there was a mistake in one of the verses. It should have read cutis mea aruit et contracta est—‘my skin is wrinkled and contracted.’ The inscription on Lord Percy’s tomb does not. It reads cutis mea irrupuit et peccatum aperitum est—‘my skin is broken and a crime is revealed.’ Henry told me when he gave me the chronicle that only I would understand the secret—and now I see why.”

  “So,” snapped Nicholas Hill, “where is the document? You still gave Walsingham the chronicle. He will now find it…”

  Clarenceux pulled a large piece of vellum from his doublet. It was heavily folded and smeared with blood. “This is your document—the original marriage agreement between Lord Percy and Anne Boleyn. Witnessed by a notary public and two bishops.” He tossed it onto the elm table.

  There was silence. Each of the men peered forward, none of them daring to say anything or even to touch it.

  “Where was it?” asked Michael Hill.

  “Until this morning, it formed the vellum binding of Henry’s chronicle. Henry had it bound around a blank book to hide it in the year 1550. That same year, he started writing a day-to-day account of his life inside the book to ensure it and its precious cover would be kept in perpetuity. His chronicle did contain a secret—only it lay in the binding, not the text.”

  All four men approached the table. James Emery picked up the document and held it reverently. “This amounts to proof that Queen Elizabeth is illegitimate?”

  “Practically. It is proof of a pre-contract of marriage on the part of one of her parents—and that was good enough to remove Edward the Fifth from the throne eighty years ago.”

  “In that case, we should publish it immediately.”

  “Then you would be a fool. All of you would be publicly executed and so would I. And our deaths would amount to nothing—for Sir William Cecil would immediately deny that the document is genuine. He would simply label it a forgery.”

  “But it is proof, you said so yourself. It is true,” said Nicholas Hill.

  Clarenceux shook his head. “What is proof? You think it has anything to do with the truth? Believe me, no one has as little respect for the truth as those in power. Men like Sir William Cecil suppress unpalatable truths every day, and they only admit something is proof when it suits their purposes.”

  “Then what do you intend to do with it?” Emery asked, still holding the document.

  “Exactly what Lord Percy wanted.”

  “What was that? How can you know?” asked Michael Hill.

  “A fair question. The answer lies in the fact that the story behind this document is a tragedy. Lord Percy met and fell in love with Anne Boleyn. And she loved him. But the king stole her and she proved fickle. She grew to love the king because he wooed her with power. Lord Percy, who had known high status and power all his life, could see that she was being manipulated and knew that the king would tire of her one day, but she turned against him. It drove him mad, and the king started to manipulate him too in his madness. At the end, after he had been forced to sentence his own true love to death, he simply had one wish: that this story not be forgotten. He gave the document to Henry Machyn to look after, not so there would be a revolution against the king but simply so that someone would know that the woman he had loved all his life was his wife, that she had been stolen from him, and that once she did love him.”

  No one spoke.

  “We will keep it from now on,” said Nicholas Hill coldly, taking the document from James Emery. “We were entrusted to guard it and we will continue to do so.”

  Clarenceux did not move. “No. You will leave it with me. I gave Sir William Cecil a promise that I would look after it in return for your lives and property. If it leaves my possession, none of us will be safe or trusted ever again.”

  Emery broke away from the group and walked across to the window. It was beginning to grow dark. Clarenceux glanced at Rebecca. She had not moved but sat staring ahead. Nicholas Hill looked closely at the document, but he could not read it in the dying light. He passed it to his father, who glanced at it and set it carefully back on the table in front of Clarenceux.

  “I think Mr. Clarenceux’s counsel is wise,” said Michael Hill. “We are not men of action. Nor are we revolutionaries. None of us can use this document.”

  Robert Lowe looked at Rebecca. “I wish you and your husband had never met. You and he have made me feel like a gullible, easily led man. I don’t expect to get an apology from you in this gentleman’s house, but next time we meet…” He looked at Clarenceux, bowed briefly, said “Good day to you,” in a polite but cold voice, then turned and walked to the door.

  In silence they listened to his rapid footsteps on the stairs.

  “I think we should leave too,” said Michael Hill, looking at his son. “Mr. Clarenceux, please forgive us for what must appear to you ingratitude. It’s just that for years we have prepared ourselves to face imprisonment and death for the sake of this secret. That gave us strength throughout our recent ordeals. Even in the Tower I knew that my suffering had a greater purpose—that it would bring about a change. It is difficult for me to accept that there will be no change. But I know that I should be grateful, and I am grateful—doubly so on behalf of my wife and son. On all our accounts, I thank you.”

  Nicholas Hill said nothing. He simply went to his father, put his arm around him to support him, and led him to the door. Emery followed them, without a word or a backward glance.

  Clarenceux and Rebecca listened to the men going down and the front door closing. The light in the hall was growing dim. Neither of them spoke.

  “Are you going to talk to me?” he asked after a while.

  “What is there to say?”

  “What happened in Hackney?”

  “I don’t want to tell you. What happened is between me and those men’s consciences. It is over. Forgotten.”

  Clarenceux leaned forward. With the light fading rapidly he could only indistinctly see her face. She was not looking at him. “Shall I ask Thomas for a light?”

  “No. The darkness is good.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it hides my tears.”


  Clarenceux felt reprimanded, chastened. There could be many reasons for her tears but the most obvious left him feeling guilty. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No.”

  He sat back again. “Rebecca, what is on your mind?”

  She sighed. “After it was all over they put me in a brick cellar. It was cold and damp. I wanted to die. And in those dark hours I saw myself as I truly am: a poor widow. I have no money, nor any trade. I cannot continue Henry’s business. No one would want to marry me with nothing to my name. My best hope is to become a servant in Mistress Barker’s household and there end my days.”

  She paused, wiping her eyes.

  “I realized there in that cellar how much I was fooling myself, being with you. You are married; you cannot protect me. I am no one’s woman: no one’s daughter, no one’s wife, no one’s mother. Any man with a knife and the inclination can violate me and walk away. Who will defend me? What is my word against a man’s when no one will speak up for me? I was fooling myself by pretending that you and I have something in common, that I could share something with you as my husband did. It wasn’t true, and it isn’t true.”

  Clarenceux closed his eyes. “You are not just a widow, Rebecca. You are a much-loved woman. And you have much love to give too. In the church, at Hackney, you said we would fight them with love.”

  “I am sorry for that.”

  “No. I am glad that you said it. I am glad of your closeness to me. Lying next to me all those nights, I wanted your respect so much that I never touched you, even though I longed to. And in the church, your words urged me to be strong—for you as well as me. I kept thinking of you on the way back to Summerhill. On that journey Crackenthorpe told me you were dead, and the very thought caused me so much pain, so much…”

  “What has happened to Crackenthorpe?”

  “He is dead.”

  “You killed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”