A Crowning Mercy (44 page)

Harries held a hand out to Wellings. 'The warrant.'

'Sir.'

Colonel Harries turned his single eye on the newcomer. 'Who out of hell are you?'

The red-faced colonel frowned. 'Prior.'

Harries looked round at the soldiers. 'This is a warrant requiring the Papist witch to appear before the Committee of Safety. This,' he touched the seal, 'is the seal of Parliament, put there this morning by the Speaker of the House of Commons. If any of you wish to dispute the warrant, tell me now!'

No one seemed likely to dispute anything with Colonel Harries, but Prior tried a feeble protest. 'She's to be burned this morning!'

'She can burn another morning.'

'But the crowd!' Colonel Prior waved a hand at the archway beyond which the baying and chanting was rising to frenzied pitch. The soldiers, guarding the roadway, were struggling against the mob's impatience.

'Good God Almighty.' Harries leaned forward in his saddle. 'In 1629, you worm, I held a fortress for nine months against the armies of the Holy Roman Empire. Are you telling me you can't hold the Tower of London against a rabble of women and apprentices?' He looked at Captain Wellings. 'Don't stand there, filth! Take her off the cart!'

The soldiers, crowding the space between the outer walls of the Tower, muttered protests. As Wellings helped Campion forward the mutterings became louder and Harries stood in his stirrups. 'Silence!' He looked about him, waiting for quiet. 'You're not damned children! You'll see her burn, but not today!'

'Why not?' a voice shouted from the back.

'Why not? Because, you bastards,' Harries was angry again, 'she was tried for witchcraft and murder, but no one thought to ask about the damned crucifix she was carrying. Suppose it came from Rome or Spain. Do you want to be fighting the Pope's armies as well as the damned King?' The soldiers listened reluctantly. Harries tried to placate them. 'She'll be back for her warming, but first we want to ask some questions. We'll help her answers out with a little torture.' He twisted about. 'Shut those gates!'

Harries's promise of torture and the undoubted veracity of the seal of the House of Commons, which had been passed to Colonel Prior, seemed to mollify the troops. They grumbled, but Harries promised she would be back within the week, and that would mean a second holiday for them. Faithful Unto Death Hervey demanded to see the warrant, but when Harries scowled at him he swiftly backed down.

'Sir! Boat's here, sir!' Harries's trooper had returned.

'Bring the girl, Mason.' Harries swung easily off his horse. 'You two! Take the horses and meet us at Westminster.'

'Sir!'

Suddenly all was activity. Two of Harries's men turned their mounts, took the other horses by the reins and spurred towards the closing Tower gates. The crowd's fury was filling the air. Wellings lifted Campion down, trying to be gentle, and his solicitude earned a sneer from Colonel Harries. 'You fancy the witch, Wellings?'

'Her hands are tied, sir.'

'She can jump, can't she? Christ! You new soldiers couldn't fight a damned elf. Come on, girl.' He took her shoulder, pulled, then looked at Colonel Prior. 'Is Ebenezer Slythe here?'

Colonel Prior frowned, but Faithful Unto Death knew the answer. 'He's on the ramparts.'

'Making sure of the best view, eh?' Harries laughed. 'I can't wait. Move, witch!'

Harries and Mason took her under the Bell Tower and down to the slopping, smelly Water Gate. The Traitor's Gate. A large boat was floating amid the rubbish that was trapped inside the tunnel leading to the steps. Six oarsmen waited in the boat, their faces nervous, for these steps led only to the axe, noose or fire. Harries pushed her down the stone steps. It was low water and the bottom of the stairs was treacherously slippery. 'Get in.'

Colonel Prior had followed them. He frowned. 'You'll not clear the bridge, Colonel.'

'Of course I'll not clear the bridge!' Harries snapped. London Bridge's narrow archways could only be passed by boats at high water, and even then the passage was dangerous. 'We've got a damned coach waiting at Bear Wharf. Do you think I was going to take her through that bloody mob?'

Mason, the trooper, sat her in the stern thwart. Colonel Harries dropped beside her, his scabbard rasping on the boat's planks. He nodded at the oarsmen: 'Go!'

They shoved off, using their oars to pole the boat through the dark, dripping tunnel of stone and beneath the great portcullis that could slam down to bar the gate. Campion saw the bow go into the sunlight, then the warmth was on her face and the oarsmen were turning the craft upstream. They leaned forward into their stroke, pulled, and the boat left the Tower wall behind.

'Look, witch!' Harries pointed to his right. He seemed to be laughing beneath the steel bars of the helmet.

Campion saw the crowd on the hill, a great mass of people through which the road was carved which should have led her to the piled timber and stake that was clearly visible at the hill's low summit. The noise lashed at the boat, a growl that seemed to spread across the city. The sight made her shiver.

Harries plucked at her cotton shift. 'I see you're dressed for a warm day.' He barked out a laugh. The oarsmen grinned as they leaned forward in unison.

The Customs House hid Tower Hill from her view, though still the baying of the mob came after her. She was shivering uncontrollably now. She had escaped the fire, but for what? What irons and spikes and flames would rend her now?

The oarsmen bent towards her, pulled, and their eyes never seemed to leave her. She was crying, though whether with relief or whether because her ordeal was not to be ended in swift horror but prolonged, she could not tell. Sun glittered on the water. The high houses built on London Bridge loomed ahead.

'Bear Wharf!' Harries growled.

The starboard oarsmen backed water for one stroke, the boat turned, then headed towards a decrepit timber pier on the city bank. A sailor, pouring slops from a Dutch sloop, stared down at the small boat that went beneath his ship's stern.

'Come on, witch!' Harries hauled her on to the pier, tossed a purse to the stroke oarsman and led her swiftly to a waiting coach. The leather curtains had been nailed shut. A man waited on the driver's seat and Mason climbed up beside him while Harries pushed Campion into the dark interior. They lurched forward.

She could not tell how long they travelled. It did not seem long. She heard the driver shout at obstructions, felt the swaying turns as the coach negotiated the narrow city streets, and sometimes, as the coach went into the sunlight, she would see the narrow strips of brightness thrown from the slits at the curtains' nailed edges. She did not know if they went north or south, east or west, she only knew that she was being carried to new torments.

Then a gate slammed on the sounds of the street, she could hear the hooves of the horses loud on stone echoing from walls, and Harries pushed open the door. The coach stopped, swaying on its leather springs. 'Out.'

She was in a courtyard of stone. The walls were windowless. A single arched doorway led into a dark interior.

'Inside, witch.'

Campion thought of the book of martyrology she had been given as a child. She knew she would not have the bravery to endure the pincers, fires, claws and racks of truth. She cried.

Harries pushed her down a long, chill passageway. His boots echoed from the stone walls. Campion shrank from the pain that awaited her.

Colonel Harries stopped at a doorway. He took out a knife and cut the bonds that still bit into her wrists. She heard him grunt as he sawed with his knife. The leather gloves were rough where they touched her skin. He pushed the door open. 'Inside.'

A fire burned. It waited for her.

A bed waited. There were new clothes, food and wine. She expected rough hands to seize her, but it was a motherly woman who came forward and cradled her in comforting arms. The woman soothed her, stroked her hair, held her tight against the horrors. 'You're safe, child, safe! You've been rescued!'

But Campion was past understanding. She wept, collapsed, and her head was filled with the fire that had reached up to burn her, and which, though she had not yet comprehended it, had been cheated of her. She was safe.

23

Colonel Joshua Harries was an aide to the Earl of Manchester, the general who commanded the army of Parliament's Eastern Association, the army that had done most to win the battle of Marston Moor. Thus, when Colonel Harries had requested a warrant from the Speaker so that the fighting men could discover whether the Dorcas Scammell mentioned in
Mercurius
was part of a Catholic conspiracy to bring fresh enemies against Parliament, the Speaker had small option but to agree. The army that was winning the war had to be indulged, and the Speaker reflected with relief that it was not he who would have to explain to the howling mob on Tower Hill why their entertainment was delayed.

Yet the Speaker might have been a good deal less complacent had he known that on the day fixed for Campion's execution Colonel Joshua Harries was in the great Minster of York, giving thanks for the Roundheads' successful siege of that city.

The man who called himself Colonel Harries should also have been in York. He too was a colonel in Parliament's army, but, unlike the real Colonel Harries, he would not have been giving thanks to God for the Roundhead victory. Colonel Vavasour Devorax was a King's man serving with the enemy; in short, a spy.

Vavasour Devorax had discarded the thin, leather half-mask by the time he returned to Campion's room, yet, even without the patch, his face was frightening. His eyes were grey and cold, his skin tanned and lined, while on the right side of his face, running from the steel-grey beard to his hairline, was a jagged, ridged scar that narrowly missed his eye. Vavasour Devorax had a hard, bitter face, a face suggesting he had seen everything and that there was nothing left in this world to surprise him.

He stood beside the girl's bed. 'What did you give her?'

'Laudanum.' The woman had a strong foreign accent.

He looked at Campion in silence, staring at her. One hand fidgeted with the hem of his greasy, filthy leather jerkin. He stared a long time, then looked at the woman. 'I want you to cut my beard off.'

'Your beard?' She sounded surprised.

'Christ, woman! Half the army's searching for a man with one eye and a beard.' He looked at Campion, eyes shut in sleep. 'And all because of her.'

'You think she's not worth it?'

'Who knows?' He left the room.

The woman looked at the shut door. 'Get drunk, Devorax.' The dislike was strong in her accent.

Vavasour Devorax would get drunk, too. His face had been ravaged by war, and further by alcohol. He was sober most mornings, sober through most days, but it was a rare night when Vavasour Devorax was not drunk. In company he could be boisterously drunk, but most nights he was morosely alone, savage in his drinking.

He was not without friends. The men who followed him, the men who had ridden desperately for London after Devorax had read the
Mercurius,
were all soldiers who were proud of him and, in their way, friends. They too were adventurers, mercenaries from the European wars of religion, and their allegiance was to neither King nor Parliament, only to Vavasour Devorax. When he ordered, they obeyed.

Devorax in turn had a master whose orders he obeyed. He was the Jew's man, though none knew why. It was rumoured that Mordecai Lopez had bought the Englishman out of a Moorish slave galley. Others, more fanciful perhaps, said that Vavasour Devorax was the Jew's bastard son, whelped on a Gentile woman, but no one had ever dared ask Devorax if that were true. Only one thing was certain; Devorax obeyed Mordecai Lopez's wishes.

Marta Renselinck, the motherly woman who nursed Campion out of her terrors, did not like Vavasour Devorax. She resented his influence on her master, hated his savage moods, and feared his careless, biting tongue. Marta was Lopez's housekeeper, devoted to him, and the only servant who had crossed the North Sea with him to London. The other servants in Amsterdam had been instructed to say that their master was dangerously ill, and in the meantime Lopez had taken the first available boat that sailed to England. He carried papers that identified him as an agent of the Bank of Amsterdam, come to negotiate one of that bank's loans to Parliament, and the false papers had taken them swiftly past the soldiers who guarded London's docks against Royalist agents. The two, master and servant, had come straight to this house and here, for the first time since Lopez had read the
Mercurius,
he seemed to relax. 'Vavasour is here, Marta, he's here. Everything will be good now!' Lopez had been pleased, confident that the girl would be freed, and Marta, to please her master, hid her dislike of the big, crude, English soldier.

It took three days for Campion to recover. She was slow to trust her rescuers, slower still to persuade herself that she was truly safe, and in those three days only Marta tended her. It was not until the third evening that Marta finally persuaded Campion to meet the man who had sailed from Amsterdam on her behalf, the Jew, Mordecai Lopez.

Campion was nervous as she dressed, hardly aware of what clothes she put on, thinking only of the distrust she had for all the seal-bearers. Marta Renselinck laughed at her fears. 'He's a good man, child, a kind man. Now, sit down while I arrange your hair.'

The room into which Marta showed her and left her was magnificent. It faced the river and, for the first time, Campion realised she was on the south bank of the Thames. To the right she could see the Tower of London, its highest ramparts touched with the sun's dying light, and to her left was the great bridge, rearing high above the water. The room itself was dark-panelled, its floor covered with eastern rugs, while one wall was covered with bookshelves, the gold-blocked spines of the packed volumes glinting from the light of the few lit candles. She moved nervously towards the wall of windows, towards the magnificent view, and then started, cried out, for a shadow moved in an alcove among the books.