by Sam Burnell
Lizbet sniffed and nodded.
“I’ll sort him out; we’ve not the time to treat him like a child.” Jack said, looking down at his brother he rubbed his hands over his face. “Get up, face me and face the world.”
He received no response.
Next he delivered a kick to Richard’s boot. It was a warning, and not heeded. He kicked him again. Still there was no reaction.
“I warned you.” Jack leaned down, took a fierce hold of Richard and hauled him to his feet. “Face the bloody world. Do you hear me? The lass deserves better from us. Do you hear me?” Jack held him up, his face close to Richard’s.
Something flickered across Richard’s face, his eyes focusing on Jack. It was as if he’d just become aware of him and he stared at his brother in confusion.
“Do you hear me?” Jack said again, adding a violent shake to reinforce his words.
“Jack, don’t!” shouted Lizbet behind him.
Richard looked between them, then peering at Jack’s face, he asked quietly, “What did I do?”
Jack still had a tight hold of his brother, but he could feel Richard supporting his own weight now and he lessened his grip. “You don’t know?” Jack sounded incredulous.
Richard’s face was answer enough and Jack let him go.
†
The journey that morning was both sombre and long. They stopped eventually at a small town, Jack telling Lizbet and Richard to wait whilst he made enquiries.
“Wait here with him. I’ll go and see if I can find news of Andrew passing through here,” Jack said, looking around the marketplace.
“Don’t leave me with him,” Lizbet said, quietly so Richard didn’t hear.
He’d already lowered himself to the ground and sat with his back to the wall and his knees drawn up.
“He’s alright now. He’ll be no trouble.” Jack squeezed her arm. “I just need to clear my head, and some time out of his company would help.”
“Alright,” Lizbet accepted, adding, “but don’t be long.”
Jack smiled. “I won’t.”
Lizbet sat next to Richard in the shade on the edge of the market and watched Jack disappear from view. From a broken loaf in her lap she passed a hunk to Richard. Absently he shook his head and Lizbet sighed. “You need to eat more. You’ll be nothing more than skin and bone soon.”
His unshaven face disguised how much weight he had lost, the angular cheek bones seeming to provide a fragile framework for the tanned skin.
When she didn’t get a reply, she continued, “He needs you.” Lizbet swallowed her mouthful of bread. “We both need you.”
Those final words did get a reaction and Richard turned to regard her closely for a moment before lowering his face into his hands. “I don’t know if I can believe again,” was all he said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Lizbet said quickly.
Richard laughed harshly. “The price of the lesson was too high.”
“It wasn’t a lesson…”
Richard cut her off. “Don’t pick over my soul like a raven on a carcass.”
They sat in silence after that.
Richard raised his head from his hands and stared across the marketplace. It seemed a long while before he had a sense of what he was staring at. Opposite them, on the other side of the marketplace was a church. White limestone walls shone in the sunlight, its two high arched towers dominating the centre of the small town. Whether it was to avoid any further comment from Lizbet or whether he genuinely wanted to cross to the church, he didn’t really know. Richard pushed himself up from the floor, and strode away from Lizbet into the crowd in the marketplace. He didn’t want her company. He didn’t want any company.
The steps up to the church were busy. The market stalls butted up to them on either side, breaking for a short distance only to allow access to the church. On the bottom step was a row of town beggars who had taken up a strategic position. The only way up the steps was over them, and they could ply their trade on the faithful who had to press closely to pass them.
Pronouncing the words of a psalm in Latin, and using a stick with alarming accuracy, a priest rattled shins, bestowing bruises on arms and heads as he cleared the beleaguered beggars from the steps. Richard was pushed to one side as two of the men, who had looked close to death’s door, leapt up and scampered neatly away before the priest could deliver a second chastening attack upon them.
As if sensing Richard’s eyes upon him, he turned and met the grey assessing gaze. He said in Italian, “Beggars on the steps are bad for the business of the Lord, get you gone, wasters and thieves the lot of you.” Advancing towards Richard, he waved his stick threateningly in his face.
“Does that not deny the proverb that says, whoever is generous to the poor, lends to the Lord?” Richard said, holding his ground.
Lowering the stick the priest looked him for a moment, then suddenly his face broke into a huge smile. When he spoke again, it was in English. “Come in. The Lord’s house is blessedly cool.”
Richard answered in the same language. “I was undecided. But it seems that now you have cleared a path for me it would a shame not to use it.”
The main door stood solid, dusty and closed. Following the priest up the steps it became obvious that the entrance to the left of the main door stood open. As soon as Richard entered the shade afforded by the huge doorway, he could feel the cool air rolling from the church’s interior in tempting invitation.
How long had it been? Six months? No, more like nine months, since he had walked up the aisle, and nearly collapsed in St Ethelrede’s in London. Richard had to admit he did not feel much steadier on his feet this time either, and his steps down the side of the church were equally as heavy.
Reaching out a hand for the carved wooden end of the pew, he leant heavily on it, his heart hammering in his chest and his throat dry and tight. Stepping sideways, Richard lowered himself onto the wooden seat, raising his eyes to the image of Christ on the cross hanging above the altar. Sunlight, piercing the windows high up in the walls, struck the gold leaf on the suspended carving, the bright light stabbing painfully at the back of his eyes. He changed his focus instead, watching the dust motes dance in the shafts of sunlight that poured from the windows down to the tiled floors.
“A long way from home?” The voice, that of the priest he had spoken to outside, came from behind him. “How long has it been?”
Richard was about to deliver a curt reply, but the question was softly put, and he even thought he detected a note of sympathy behind the words. The priest continued, “I recognised your accent. I’m from a village a little way north of Hexham if you would believe it, and I’ve not spoken English in so long… it would please an old man to talk to you.”
Richard turned in his seat. The priest was indeed, on close inspection, older than he would have first guessed. The face beneath the brown tan was creased with age, the skin wrinkled around the smiling eyes.
“North of Hexham,” Richard echoed, “that’s a rough part of England to come from.”
“I left when I was boy, went down to Durham, from there to Canterbury and then here. My ageing bones are not regretting swapping English winters for Italian ones,” he said smiling. Then suddenly he laid a light hand upon Richard’s shoulder and said, “Do not think there is a sin on earth I have not heard, in English, or Italian.” He rose without waiting for Richard to answer. “Come, let me ease your soul. That is why you came in here?”
“Some souls are beyond redemption,” was all Richard said in reply.
“That I cannot believe. The dust will fall on the earth and the spirit will always return to God who gave it,” the priest stated quietly.
“Ecclesiastes,” Richard replied, distractedly.
“Whatever your sin, it cannot place you beyond salvation.”
Richard reached out for the back of the pew in front with both hands as his head swam. Maybe it was the thick incense. The priest was still talking to him, but the words were j
ust noise, order-less noise, soothing but without any sense or meaning.
Richard was never sure exactly how he made the journey across the church. The next time he was aware of his surroundings, they had changed to the inside of the small dusty confessional, which seemed to harbour an even stronger scent of incense. Eyes closed, he saw again the bodies laid in the street, smelt the rank burnt flesh, heard the wails and pitiful choking screams of those caught within the buildings, looked again for the last time into Mat’s clouding eyes. A tight breath caught in his throat. A half gasp, half sob escaped as he screwed his eyes tight shut against the image in his mind, his nails biting into the palms of his hands. There was silence only from the other side of the screen as the priest waited patiently for him to begin.
“God forgive me for I have sinned,” he managed on a hoarse breath.
The words of the priest issuing his penance were still filling Richard’s head when he left the cramped confines and made his way back to the pews in the middle of the church. “For such a sin as the one you carry on your soul, the penance must be a weighty one. Look for the innocents you can save. Return them to the Lord, and he will grant you salvation from your sin.”
†
Jack couldn’t find him. He had only left them for a few minutes, and he could not believe Lizbet had let him walk alone into the crowd. Swearing loudly at her, he cast his eyes over the crowd for sight of Richard, before sending Lizbet to search in one direction while he took the other.
It was a flower seller who remembered seeing him talking to the priest on the steps of St Maria’s. She had no idea where he had gone after that. Jack looked wildly up and down the street and then at St Maria’s. Could he be in there?
He took a path straight up the steps. Heedless of the beggars who had to scramble out of his way, he strode through them and finding a side door open, ducked into the dark interior.
It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the dim light inside. There were people scattered around the interior. Jack moved to walk down the aisle, not caring about the noise his boots made on the flagged floor, or the incongruous metallic clank that came from the sword tethered to the belt at his waist, the sound rattling around the vaulted ceiling. In a moment he had made it to the pew where Richard sat, Jack dropped heavily next to his brother on the narrow bench.
Richard, head still bowed, eyes closed, said, “You couldn’t sneak up on a deaf man.”
“I wasn’t intending to. When I make an entrance I expect people to notice,” Jack said none too quietly.
“Oh, they notice,” was all Richard said wearily.
“What are you doing in here?”
“It’s a church,” Richard supplied, as if that was answer enough.
Jack looked around him. “Yes, I can see that, so why are you here?”
“I know you don’t believe you have an immortal soul, but some of us are not blessed with your self assurance, I am afraid,” Richard said, icily.
“Ah,” was all the reply Jack made, then leaning over, he placed a hand heavily on Richard’s shoulder and asked, “Did it help?”
Richard stood suddenly. “Has anyone ever told you how insensitive you can be?” He spoke loudly. It earned him several stern glances from those in the church, along with a loud shush from a nun trimming flowers near the Lady Chapel.
Jack frowned. “Not recently.” Then smiling, he put a guiding hand on Richard’s arm and began to lead him down the aisle towards the door. “But someone did tell me I was in charge. And I don’t remember telling you that you could absent yourself without notice on the grounds of your eternal salvation. Next time, tell me where you’re going.”
Richard pulled his arm from his brother’s grasp, and, squinting against the noon light, stepped outside the Church. Jack ducked to avoid the low lintel and followed him.
†
Meanwhile, in London, another difficult conversation was taking place. One in which the name of Fitzwarren featured, heavily. The lawyer Clement’s filed petition had come to the attention to William Cecil.
“Take a look at this?” Cecil threw the folded velum, with the heavy lawyer’s seal, across the desk towards Morley.
Morley didn’t take it. “It will take me a more than a few moments to decipher this legal Latin. What is it for?”
Pulling his spectacles down his nose, Cecil observed Morley over the frames. “It’s Fitzwarren again,” he supplied.
“Which one?” Morley was forced to ask.
“Robert has applied for a writ of guardianship over Catherine de Bernay. Which strikes me as strange as she is no longer resident in his household.”
“I agree. Unless he knows where she is and believes he can extract her if he needs to present her to the Chancery Court,” Morley pointed out.
“Find out if he knows where she is. The fact that more than one person might be using her does remain a possibility,” Cecil said, removing his spectacles and rubbing at the glass with a cloth.
“I’ll go and see Robert again and see what I can find out,” Morley accepted, nodding.
“No need.” Cecil returned his glasses to his nose and looked quickly on his desk for the folded document he needed. “Robert Fitzwarren’s application has been dealt with a little more speedily than his lawyer would normally expect. He has been summoned to appear at the Court in a week with the de Bernay girl. So tighten your watch on her and attend this hearing.”
Morley scanned the document, making a note of the time and date for the hearing, before absenting himself to undertake his master’s bidding.
†
Clement’s face split into a wide, and unusually genuine, smile when he received back, sooner than he would have ever anticipated, a reply to his petition for a writ of guardianship for Catherine de Bernay. It would be the turn of at least one of the Fitzwarren’s to suffer, and that, as far as Clement was concerned, was a good start.
Penning a letter himself, Clement enjoyed the process of letting his esteemed client, Robert Fitzwarren, know that he had pressed his case in Chancery as swiftly as he could, and the de Bernay case was set for a preliminary hearing the following week. This would, he advised his client, be all very routine, however Robert Fitzwarren and the subject of the writ, Catherine de Bernay, would be requested to attend the proceedings. Clement assured his client he would meet them at the Court to assist him through all stages of the proceedings. Clement finished by signing his own name with a little more flourish than was usual. He would not be suffering next week, oh no, now it would be Fitzwarren’s turn.
His thin reedy voice called in his secretary, Marcus Drover.
Marcus, bent over a desk copying out Clement’s fearful scrawl, swore silently as he heard his master’s summons from the adjacent room. “Coming, master,” he called back obediently as he pushed himself from the chair and made his way to the dusty confines of Clement’s office.
Clement was already proffering the sealed note across the desk to Marcus. “See this gets to Robert Fitzwarren, don’t trust it to a servant. I want you to go yourself and make sure he gets it. Do you hear?” Clement ordered.
Marcus nodded in ascent, groaning inwardly. The Fitzwarren house was on the other side of London. This errand would take him the best part of half a day just to get there and back. It was hot and the city was at its most putrid. Everything smelt rank. The population sweated inside clothing that was more suited to the cooler months, the river festered between cracked dried banks and the fumes rising from the gutters and slop heaps were eye watering. Marcus Drover had no desire at all to spend a day amongst the heat and smell of London in August.
The journey was worse than he expected. He hired a horse from the Swan’s Neck Inn, a dozen doors away, and with the thinnest cloak over his shirt he could find, Marcus set out for the Fitzwarren’s London house, Clement’s note in a bag slung over his shoulder.
Marcus cursed his master vocally after half an hour. He had managed to pick the one day of the month when the pig market was he
ld at Smithfield. His journey necessitated him crossing Chardwell Street, which was now packed with swine being driven down the sweltering street to the pens. As far as Marcus could see up Chardwell Street were pigs being herded by their shouting jostling owners.
A fight, someway further down the street, had broken out between two of them. Several lots of pigs had become mingled together, and an argument broke out as to who actually had the rights to the largest sow in the group. A good-natured crowd had gathered to listen to the men first trade insults and then blows.
All this led to Marcus being forced to sit on top of an agitated horse that was up to its hocks in a tight press of hairy pig flesh. Just when Marcus was convinced his stomach was going to rebel against the smell from the snorting squealing mass, the argument resolved itself, and the pigs pressed on slowly down the street. It was another half an hour though, before Marcus could navigate away from those bound for Smithfield, and turn his horse into the relatively clear Sandpike Lane.
Arriving at the house, Marcus knew his place. Dismounting, he went towards the back where the gates stood open.
The stable yard was swept clean, the cobbled yard showing barely a wisp of stray straw. It was empty, apart from a young lad. He was bent over a horse’s hoof clamped between his knees, with a bone pick in one hand.
“Hold still, old lad, will you?” the boy was saying to the horse as he sought to retain the hoof and lever from it one last pebble that was wedged between the hoof and the shoe. The pebble, once pried loose, rattled off one of the cobbles and the boy released the horse’s hoof. Rising, he patted the animal affectionately on the neck before noticing Marcus standing by his own mount, watching him.
“I’ve a note for Master Fitzwarren,” Marcus stated, then said to add weight to his words, “It comes from his lawyer.”