The Abbey Close

by Steven Veerapen

  The Abbey Close

  Steven Veerapen

  © Steven Veerapen 2018

  Steven Veerapen has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2018 by Sharpe Books.

  Sharpe Books

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  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  If they found her they would kill her. The words echoed in her head like a motto. The fear sped up her heart, bidding her to move more quickly. If word of what she had done, what she had striven to keep secret for years, got out, they would mock her, beat her and put her to death. There would be an end to a life of pain and misery, but it would not be her on terms.

  She battled on through the dense undergrowth, forcing herself to take slow, measured steps. She halted as a hidden branch cracked underfoot, and the stupid beast whinnied. Anyone might hear it, might come upon them there in the woods and drag them back to the burgh, back to death. A light caught her eye and she stood locked in place. It was only the reflection of the moon, which had emerged from the clouds above. In its pale glow, the skeletal claws of the trees seemed to beckon her, silent and dead. She read it as a good omen. The moon was said to be a friend to women who had gone a little mad, and what she was attempting was surely a kind of madness. Still, the sensation of being watched was strong. Sweat burst out in little beads on her forehead, despite the chill.

  If she was captured, she would have to face what would be called good men’s justice, however unjust it had shown itself. The baillies, the Prior, the monks at the Abbey, all would cast her down. Where? Into a dungeon, perhaps. At first. Wherever she was put, they would want it done quietly, neatly, so as not to bring disgrace upon the damned burgh. And that loathsome creature would torment and make sport of her before breaking her neck. Well, she thought, stopping to let her heart slow, perhaps she deserved to live in fear. She had done things that Christian law judged evil. But courage had brought her this far and must carry her just a little further. Just a little further, and she would be free of her burden. Her nerve could not flee her now. To her surprise, she found her lips moving in prayer. Strange that she should pray to God now, despite all she had done; it would be better to pray to the other fellow. The fellow who embraced her kind. The fellow who made his presence known more than God seemed to.

  She had dressed lightly, and she shivered in the cold November air. Sweat prickled on her brow. It was not too far to the river. They had met in a little clearing near it. That had been clever. She could hear the black waters of the Cart tumbling and crashing, still wild from a summer of rain. When daylight came, if she had managed to free herself, she would be able to live at peace. Not at first, perhaps, but in time, when she had learned to live with freedom. If she were to be taken, captured, then it would be better to end her life herself, to dive into the river and turn her back on them all. Still, the shivering.

  She trundled on.

  It was later that night that a deer, escaped from the Abbey’s parklands, froze and pricked its ears at the sound of splashing and laboured, human grunts.

  1

  Our Cardinal stuff’d up wi’ sin

  Neglects to tend the poor

  Instead he lies abed each day

  Astride his arrant whore

  was scrawled on the paper in spiky, inked lines. It seemed pointless even tearing it down. Too many people had seen the words. They danced across the ice-flecked page, inviting laughter. It was fixed to the wooden boards of Glasgow’s market cross. Some ragged boys were standing nearby, chanting the lines in their west-coast accents, all battering-ram vowels and dropped consonants. Simon Danforth turned to them. ‘Get away from here, you wretches!’ Despite the cold, colour had risen in his cheeks.

  One youth, braver than the others, spat at the ground. ‘An Englishman, an Englishman,’ he cried, drawing laughter from his fellows. ‘Murderin’ basturt! English devil!’ Danforth’s colleague, Arnaud Martin, stepped forward.

  ‘Get out of here, you little shits! Away!’ His words came out in a fury of steam. He drew off a glove and snapped it in the palm of his hand. ‘I swear before God I’ll tan your arses.’

  ‘Aye, right! Mon get us then! Yer fat king’s on his way, ye’ll wantae make ready tae kiss his arse and burn us oot!’ called the spitter. But already the group was skipping away. ‘Devil’s dogs!’ was their leader’s parting shot. Martin turned to Danforth, his face apologetic. Danforth had seen the look before. He disliked it, disliked how people had an irritating need to apologise for others.

  ‘Ignore them, Mr Danforth. Wee devils. Lucky for them they ran.’

  ‘They’re frightened,’ said Danforth, his voice above a whisper.

  ‘Eh? What’s that?’

  ‘They’re frightened, Mr Martin. Every man, woman, children too – all afraid.’ He glanced around at the now quiet cross.

  ‘No excuse. They’ve no damned respect.’

  ‘The likes of them respect no man,’ said Danforth. ‘True Scotsmen know not all Englishmen are King Henry’s spies.’ Martin nodded, his eyes drifting, but Danforth had already turned his attention back to the scrap of paper. That was his business, after all. His fists were balled at it, not at the worthless youths. ‘It is another one, for sure. Put up when I was at Mass and you in your bed, when the town was otherwise occupied.’ To his disgust, he saw that Martin was stifling a grin. ‘Mr Martin, do you find amusement in this ... this violence?’

  ‘To be honest, I find it lacking in wit compared with yesterday’s,’ said Martin, stamping his boots on the ground. The first real cold of the season had set in, the air thick with the autumnal smell of invisible bonfires. The dirt of the market cross had been turned to hard, close-packed grit. Shop doors were closed against the chill. ‘Doesn’t even call his Grace “Cardinal Sins”. Our friend’s slipping.’

  For week, slanderous little verses, handwritten and anonymously posted, had been appearing in Glasgow’s market cross. The libellers were clever. They worked in secrecy. Yet their victim was always the same: Cardinal David Beaton, the sprightly, good-humoured face of the Roman Church, and Danforth and Martin’s master. The day before he had been ‘Cardinal Sins’: the epigram beneath had charged him with ‘keeping whores within his doors to satisfy his lust – outside the poor will starve or burn because he says they must’. An older paper had proclaimed that ‘all the jades of St Andrews work to delight what’s in his trews’, whilst ‘the commonwealth cries out in shame at men of God who take no blame.’ Such insults were not to be borne. An attack on Beaton was, as the Cardinal himself had protested, like a dog raising its leg and pissing upon the hem of the Pope’s robes. And here was Martin, smiling.

  Danforth turned his irritation into what he hoped was a look of steel. ‘If you find wit in violence, you lack wit yourself, you really do. You are like Nero, fiddling as the flames lick at his feet
.’

  ‘I don’t know any Nero, nor any fiddlers. It’s a poor profession, that,’ said Martin, wiggling a ring off so that he could replace the gloves and still display it.

  ‘As you are a poor man.’

  ‘Not in his Grace’s employ I’m not.’ Martin patted the breast of his doublet: like Danforth’s, it was the Cardinal’s livery, but Martin had decorated his with glittering buttons and slashes. His ring glinted in the pale sun.

  ‘Oh, do be quiet. The Cardinal shall hear of your lightness. I shall tell, you see if I don’t.’ But in response, Martin widened his eyes in mock horror. Danforth tutted.A strutting peacock was a poor excuse for a partner. The sooner they caught the libellers the better. A hanging would be good. Or a burning. A bit extreme, perhaps, but all the more powerful for it, all the more likely to encourage the crowd to pity the sinner and hate the sin.

  Danforth reached up and gripped the paper with numb fingers, tearing it from its nail. He folded it and deposited it in the pocket of his doublet, next to the weather-beaten and faded papers already taken down. He breathed out, as though to shrink his chest away from contact.

  ‘Instead he lies abed each day astride his arrant whore,’ sang Martin, a smile on his handsome face.

  ‘Hush your mouth, you ass,’ shot Danforth, looking around to see if anyone had heard. ‘It is enough that the verse has lain here like ... like a naked harlot all day. You think it right that you should quote it?’

  ‘My voice was low,’ said Martin, holding up his hands. ‘These Glasgow folks have sharp tongues, but I doubt their ears will match them.’

  ‘You are a fool. I cannot think why the Cardinal esteems you; some sudden weakness of the mind, it must be.’

  ‘A fault,’ said Martin, ‘in our Cardinal? Hold your tongue, sir, or I shall drag you before him as art and part of this business.’ Danforth only scowled. Martin’s manner was intolerable. Some men were not worth insulting – it just bounced off them.

  ‘I will hear no more of you, sir.’ Danforth’s nose rose in the air. ‘Until we reach the Bishop’s Castle. There, I regret, we shall have to appear united.’ It was their second day in the town. It was time to confront the Archbishop of Glasgow for his laxity in condemning the criminals. He turned away.

  ‘Hold on. What’s this?’ Martin reached out and plucked another paper down. It was older, tucked away between a call to muster and a faded note bearing the emblem of the silversmith’s guild.

  ‘None of ours. Leave it. Only matters touching his Grace touch us.’

  Martin ignored him. ‘Says here a girl is stolen away. “Most wickedly handled, ravished, and stolen away by evil persons unknown.” Kateryn Brody, from Paisley, the monastic lands. Her father, writing under another hand, asks the baillies and good men of Glasgow to take up any strangers if they be in the company of a strange girl, and to report any such capture to the Paisley baillies. Odd sort of hue and cry. Stolen away.’

  ‘Aye, I saw it yesterday, it is none of ours. Put it back or cast it away. Rubbish.’ Instead, Martin slotted the paper into a pocket.

  ‘Strangers, eh? I hope we’re not taken up, Mr...’

  Danforth was already marching towards their horses, his back poker straight. ‘Ho, Woebegone,’ he called, clapping the beast’s chestnut flank before lumbering onto the saddle. The former plough horse, old and cheap, did not move. ‘Come on, come on, you old fool.’ Danforth stuck the back of his heel into its side. ‘Let us go,’ he called down. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Martin. The younger man let his hand rest on the pocket with the note about the missing girl. Whistling, he sauntered towards his own horse. As the pair departed, groups of people began to converge again. ‘Eh Cardinal, stuff’d up wi’ sin’ echoed. ‘Sin, sin, sin’. Hooting laughter followed Danforth and Martin as the residents of Glasgow, bundled in their furs, enjoyed a scandal.

  By English standards Glasgow would have been little more than a village with ideas above its station. All that elevated it were its great Cathedral and its university. The university had merit. During his time at Christ Church – before Henry of England had suppressed it – Danforth had enjoyed three years as a university man, absorbing wisdom and reading for a degree, unachieved, in the liberal arts. That was over ten years past. In that time, he had seen a queen die, a prince born, and England’s ancient Catholic faith chopped off with Thomas More and John Fisher’s heads. And of course, he had seen his wife and child die. He turned his mind away from before the images took root. Dark memories, he found, were like uninvited guests: once given lodging they wouldn’t leave.

  Instead he rode through Glasgow, Martin being – for once – silent. Only when they crested the hill on which the Cathedral lay did there seem to be evidence of human activity. Beyond it was the Bishop’s Castle, its tall frontage and pointed roof soaring above the walls. As they approached, Danforth turned to Martin.

  ‘I shall speak for us.’

  ‘Ah, so you can speak?’ Danforth ignored him and veered Woebegone right, into the crumbling gatehouse. From under the chipped stone arch slouched a liveried guard.

  ‘We come on the Cardinal’s business,’ said Danforth, producing a letter bearing the Cardinal’s great seal from his cloak. He flashed the array of titles before tucking it away again. It was a gamble. The Archbishopric of Glasgow did not have to answer to the authority of Cardinal Beaton. Danforth held his breath as the gatekeeper gaped at them. After a few seconds, he shrugged, scratched himself, and waved them through. Danforth’s shoulders relaxed as he shook the reins and spurred Woebegone on.

  The courtyard was thronged. Danforth caught snatches of conversation: ‘It’s getting’ caulder,’; ‘My fingers are red-raw,’; ‘Upstairs floor needs fresh rushes, will you dae it?’. Two priests were arguing in a corner, one of them waving his arms whilst the other tried to calm him. A groom, no more than fourteen, came forward. Danforth and Martin dismounted, the former slipping a coin into the boy’s grubby hand. In return he smiled, revealing broken teeth. Danforth looked away.

  ‘Where might we find the Archbishop,’ he asked a serving woman – one who looked respectable and orderly. She pointed at the central tower, saying nothing.

  ‘Friendly natives,’ remarked Martin. ‘Sociable. Merry. You been giving them instruction?’

  ‘I shall instruct you to hold your tongue,’ said Danforth. He softened his tone. ‘This is a heavy matter. As the elder, I should speak to the man. I think his Grace shall be rather stiff, formal in his manner.’

  ‘Mmm. I can see why that might disturb a wild-man like you.’

  ‘See,’ tutted Danforth. ‘You cannot be serious, for even a moment.’

  ‘Well then let me be. He may have better faith in a Scotsman.’ Danforth frowned, and Martin held up a hand. ‘I don’t mean to offend. God’s wounds, was my own father not a stranger? No, but with things as they are, an English tongue might cause trouble. Especially if it tells the man news he’d rather not hear. It’s the way of it, no point complaining.’

  Danforth thought for a moment. Battle with England was looming, and the English were not popular. Still, Danforth’s Scots was impeccable; he had worked hard at it for years, ironing out his genteel London twang. Children were bairns and scuffles were tulzies, his brain always reminded him before he opened his mouth. He had lived in his adopted realm for the better part of a decade. And if being in the service of Scotland’s only Cardinal was not a sign of acceptance then nothing was. His hand went to the little medal of St Adelaide he wore around his neck: his talisman, the patron saint of exiles. Clasping it had become a ritual.

  ‘No, Martin,’ he said. ‘I want the measure of the man. He must see the violence in his parish.’

  ‘They’re only bills, papers – they’ll blow away in the first strong wind.’

  ‘And that is exactly why I should speak. Papers? Mere papers? They are like bullets fired from a musket. The damage they is just as bad, no physic can repair it. Besides,’ he added, tapping his chest, ‘I have
the commission. Are we clear?’

  ‘As the noon day.’

  ‘Then come.’

  ‘Ugh, fine. You’re so much the elder, after all. But wait, hold on,’ said Martin. He straightened his hat, sniffed at his gloves, and shook his cloak open to show more of his slashed doublet. ‘There. Better. Onward.’

  Danforth shook his head, drew his own cloak tight, and stomped the muck off his boots. Letting his features go blank, he stepped through the open door into an airy entrance hall, dominated by a carpeted staircase. They climbed to the anteroom at the top in silence.

  An open horn window admitted weak autumnal sunshine. A dumpy bespectacled man sat at a desk littered with a confusion of papers and inkwells. The desk was a barrier, set before the great doors of the Archbishop’s inner sanctum. The secretary looked up, the quill in his hand quivering.

  ‘Timid wee fellow,’ whispered Martin. Danforth hushed him with a hand.

  ‘Good morning, sir. We are come to see his Grace the Archbishop.’

  ‘Are you expected?’

  ‘I think not.’

  ‘What is your business.’

  ‘Our business is for the ears of his Grace.’

  At that the little man, who reminded Danforth suddenly of a mole, shot them a nasty look. ‘His Grace is not at home to unexpected guests. He is at prayer.’

  ‘We come from the Cardinal.’

  ‘Cardinal Beaton? Ah,’ said the secretary in triumph, his magnified eyes twinkling. ‘The Cardinal has no authority here.’

  Damn, thought Danforth, his mouth working as he tried to think of something to say. He did not want to spread the matter around. Secretaries were known for their loose tongues. He should know; he and Martin had begun in the Cardinal’s service as English and French secretaries.

  ‘Listen, you little nyaff,’ said Martin. ‘Do you want burst? We’re come on the Cardinal’s business, and the Cardinal acts on behalf of his Holiness in Rome. And our sovereign lord, too. I might tear your name from your lips and carry it back to the Cardinal. And he might carry it to the king.’ To Danforth’s horror, was sliding a glove off.