Final Sacrament (Clarenceux Trilogy) (38 page)

Thursday, March 13

It took them a full twelve days to bring the cart as far as Exeter. Near Chippenham they lost a wheel as a tire came loose, and the spokes and rim fell to pieces. Mending that took two days, as a wheelwright had to be brought out to measure the old one, and then he had to return to town to make a replacement. Awdrey and Thomas took the girls on to Bath, to show them the hot thermal springs where physicians recommended ill people bathe for their health, but when they arrived they did not like the smell or the look of the water—or the look of the ailing multitude who were already bathing. Fyndern remained with the cart, which gave him the opportunity to practice his card skills in the inns and make a little money, which he then squandered on entertaining a succession of women of various ages, some of whom fell for his charms and some of whom charged him for theirs. For her part, Awdrey began to worry about the amount of money she was spending.

It was with relief they reached Exeter and found themselves at the house of another friend. John Hooker was deeply grateful for the manuscripts they brought and was both shocked and saddened to hear of Clarenceux’s death. He had received a note from him recently that gave him some information about the barony of Idrone. Clarenceux had also said that he hoped he would look after his wife on her forthcoming journey to see her sister. When Hooker expressed his regret and sorrow in the most heart-rending words, Awdrey was again conscious of how fortunate she had been in her marriage.

“But of course,” said Fyndern mischievously, “Mr. Clarenceux directed us only to call on the people who would speak well of him—all the people he mentioned in his will. It was not as if he was without enemies.”

“It is ironic that in death he has no enemies when in life he had so many,” observed Thomas.

***

The next and final day of their journey was the hardest, going west of Exeter. As Hooker had remarked, “Exeter is the edge of the civilized world. Beyond here you cannot travel by coach unless you are on one of the two principal highways, either to Plymouth or to Launceston. Cross the Tamar and the people don’t even speak English. The way you are going, I predict your cart will break a wheel or an axle on the granite-strewn tracks.”

It was the perfect place to hide away, thought Awdrey, knowing that if her husband
had
survived the fire, this would be where she would find him.

They proceeded into a mild drizzle for most of the day, and a wind from the west made that drizzle soak through their traveling clothes. Either side of them, the wind tossed the trees—and as they came to the boulder-strewn ford across the fast-flowing River Teign, they decided that Hooker had been right: the cart could go no farther. A miller was persuaded to shelter it and the table in a barn while they proceeded on the horses to find the house where Awdrey’s sister and her family lived.

The road reached up a steep-sided gloomy valley, between trees that were ancient and wild. Such woods seemed mysterious and the girls were frightened. Even in the daylight shadows loomed. Few people took this road, and those they passed seemed unwilling to do more than nod acknowledgement and walk on. In many places oaks leaned over the track, their trunks and boughs covered in green lichens and moss. Fallen trunks were completely covered in moss, with last year’s bracken and dead leaves around them. The steep rise of the road between the granite boulders was also difficult, but once out of the wood, where the road leveled, the brightness of the place was noticeable. Snowdrops broke the ground here and there, and birds sang continuously above them. The hedgerows were green with grasses and brambles, and punctuated by rabbits’ burrows and holes large enough to be badgers’ setts. Ivy hung from the trunks of oak trees. For Annie and Mildred it was an adventure: a revisiting of the Garden of Eden—except with drizzle and a cold westerly wind.

Late that afternoon, they arrived at the old granite manor house, set in a sheltered nook of a hill, with mullion windows on the ground floor and two huge granite chimneys rising through the whole building. Awdrey’s sister and brother-in-law and their six children and three servants had heard in advance of strangers coming their way, and stood at the front to welcome their visitors. Awdrey saw them as she rode into the yard and searched for William’s face. She could not see him. Living on the moor had given her sister a healthy, ruddy complexion, and she smiled as she saw her, but even so, Awdrey looked away, still seeking William. Annie and Mildred wasted no time going off to play with their cousins, but Awdrey dismounted half in a dream, or a daze, and walked forward close to tears, to kiss her sister and brother-in-law.

After the greetings, Mr. and Mistress Holcroft led Awdrey and her servants into the hall. A large fire was blazing away in the immense granite fireplace. Candles burned on both sides, their wax dripping fat down into the rushes. Awdrey took off her wet safeguard and handed it to one of the Holcrofts’ servants and warmed her hands. She stared into the flames, swallowing back the disappointment, unable even to look at Thomas.

“We knew you would come soon when we received a letter from your husband,” said Mr. Holcroft. “He enclosed one for you too.”

He held it out to her. The paper looked yellow in the candlelight. She felt the beating of her heart quicken and her chest tighten. She could not say a word. But, watching her own hand, she saw herself reach out and take the letter and open it. She took a deep breath, said a few words of prayer, and started to read.

My dearest heart,

I hope you never read this. I am only writing it out of fear that something will go wrong with my plan. You will know by now that the letter I left with Sir William Cecil was a message of love—but it was also one of hope. The time it will have taken you to get here should have given me plenty of time to reach this lonely, lovely place in the moor. But if you are reading this, it is a journey I will never make.

I have little time to write and so many things I would like to say to you. One is that it is perhaps better this way. You would not want to live your life hiding out in the granite clefts of Devon. Nor would you wish to be tied to an old man hiding in such a remote place. You are young, and you can yet make another man happy, for you are the perfect wife. No man could wish for more. Mourn no more than the requisite year, and marry again with my blessing, as I said in my last letter.

For the sake of the reassurance that human memory offers, make a small monument somewhere with my name on it. What you write shall be your choice of words, but if you would do me one final kindness, inscribe my motto on it somewhere: In all our struggles, the last word is hope. For those words have given me much strength over the years, when times have been hard.

Kiss our dear daughters for me. Bless them.

And now, for the last time and forever, good night my sweet Awdrey, my Etheldreda, my love.

Three weeks & four days earlier
Monday, February 17, in the refectory of Thame Abbey

Coughing, and with his eyes stinging as the smoke poured around and into him, Clarenceux felt Alice tighten her grip on his hand. She was as low as she could go, panicking, shouting. He loosened his grip on her wrist and let her fall the rest of the way down the shaft. Then he crossed himself, said, “Go with God,” and pulled himself to his feet.

The heat from the fire was terrific, and growing rapidly. He could see nothing except smoke and flame in the room, and could not even tell if the floorboards between him and the fireplace were still able to hold his weight. Tentatively, keeping one foot on the stone floor of the latrine alcove, he stamped on them. They held. The stone itself to which he was clinging was hot now. His eyes and his wounded cheek were stinging terribly, his naked skin burning with the heat. The time had come for him to make his decision. He could either follow Alice down the shaft and live, and face the next attack when it came, or he could take refuge in the monastic hiding place and bring the whole cycle of fear to an end, as he intended.

Stepping onto the floorboards, and trusting God to help him, he crawled into the stone fireplace, his hands and face burning with the extreme heat that rose through the floor. He reached up into the fireplace and found the protruding stone he had discovered when he had first made this climb, when he had come here with Sir Richard Wenman. It was harder with the pain of his wound and the blindness of the smoke, his eyes shut, coughing, and constantly wanting to be sick. But up he went, his fingers grappling for the stones that he could be sure would hold him. As he rose inside the chimney itself, he felt the heat and smoke rushing past him, as he knew it would, reaching for the light and the sky above, which was a mere gray-brown patch at the top of the chimney. He retched and almost lost his grip, pulling his heavy, tired body up toward the wooden door that was set back into the side of the stonework fifteen feet above the base of the fireplace. Up he hauled himself, until his fingers finally reached the sill of the small doorway. Pressing himself back against the narrowing wall of the chimney, he brought his leg up and found a secure foothold, then moving higher, he pushed open the door. It gave way to a small windowless chamber. With a final effort, panting and gagging, he heaved himself half into the chamber, and then drew up his legs, kicking shut the six-inch-thick oak door behind him.

He listened to the roar of the fire, lying in the darkness of the chamber. It was built within the thickness of the double-wall between the refectory and the chapter house, and measured just six feet in length, five feet in height and four feet in breadth. It was only large enough to take two men, but it was secure. Surrounded by a mass of thick stone, it was impossible to see even when looking up the refectory chimney, due to the constant blackness of the soot and the setting back of the door. It was also designed so that the smoke would rush up past the door, allowing the occupants to breathe. As Clarenceux knew, the flames and smoke would rise past the door regardless of whether the fire below was small enough to fit in the hearth or large enough to engulf the entire undercroft. The fire would burn for days—he estimated three—but all he had to do was to lie here and wait. He had some bread in a pocket to help with the hunger.

He coughed again in the darkness and waited, thinking ahead. Walsingham would have to pass on the news that the building had been engulfed by flames and he had been inside at the time. The complete destruction of the building would mean that Awdrey would be told that he was dead, and she would read the letter at Sir William’s house. She would recognize the route they had taken two years ago, or Thomas would; and it would take them three weeks from now to cart that table all the way to Devon. By then he would have reached the house and could rip up that last letter. Even though it would be advisable for him to have his face stitched up, he could have that done in Oxford. After three days, he would wait until nightfall, and then let himself down the chimney; bathe and wash his clothes in the great fishpond as best he could; dress himself; and head into Oxford across the fields. He had enough money for new clothes, food, and the surgery bill; he would not need to leave a name. He would dress like a husbandman and sleep rough on his journey to Devon. It would take him seven or eight days.

The roaring of the fire was growing. The speed of the draught and smoke ascending the chimney gave the impression of being at sea in darkness, in the belly of a ship. Clarenceux held the door shut with his foot and looked forward to the darkness and the noise being over.

The first hour gradually passed. His attention turned to his face and how much it stung. He held his cheek to make the wound close up. The events in the refectory returned to him, and he reminded himself how he had stabbed Joan Hellier in blindness—not in order to revenge Rebecca, but to keep the document safe. To preserve the queen. To prevent a war. He was glad it had been that way—Rebecca would not have wanted him to be vengeful. But by the same token, he was glad that he had been able to kill Greystoke, even if the man was already dying from Alice’s shot.

The document was no more and his family was safe—those were the main things. Whatever happened now, he had succeeded.

He tried to take a deep breath and struggled to fill his lungs. The air was warming up now. From the great bonfires he had watched on Maydays in the past, he reckoned that the most intense burning would be over within four hours. He would just have to wait for a short while more. But waiting was getting difficult. He squirmed in the darkness, trying to fill his lungs again, and although he managed it, it left him feeling uneasy. He started to turn around in the room, taking his foot off the thick oak door for a moment. A red glow filled the space, which he could see was beginning to let in smoke. Hurriedly he slammed the door shut again with his foot. He felt himself start to panic. The chimney was designed so that the heat would drive the smoke upward; he had nothing to fear from a small amount trickling into the chamber through the gaps in the door. That was nothing. But his fear rose, despite his attempts to reason with himself. He was finding it harder to breathe.

He did not know it, but the outside of the ancient door was beginning to burn. Such was the heat coming up the chimney that the oak, which had dried out thoroughly over the last two centuries, was beginning to smolder. Its antiquity would be the death of him. The tar that blackened the outside of the door was now burning; the outside of the door itself was a sheet of flame. The air rushing up the chimney contained hardly any oxygen; and little by little, sip by sip, the flames were drawing the oxygen out of Clarenceux’s hiding place. The chamber that had no difficulty sustaining two men when there was a small hearth fire below now became less and less inhabitable. He felt his lungs tightening; there was no chance of him taking a deep breath. He tried to calm himself and started to pray, silently, so as not to use too much air, but the shortage of oxygen in his lungs made him more desperate with each breath. Eventually, terrified, he turned, keeping the door shut for the moment with his foot, hoping to open it just a little and suck in some of the air that he believed would be rushing up the chimney. He did so—and he saw the front of the door blaze furiously. He slammed it again, tears running down his face, smoke in his eyes and lungs. He could not breathe. He could not leave his place of suffocation.

He began to pray that the fire would die down, that God would help him in this, his hour of greatest need. But an image came to his mind. He had asked the question ever since the days of the old king, Henry VIII, how one man—albeit a king—could command the faith of another. He had wondered no less with the accession of Elizabeth. And now it was being shown to him. He began to understand. Fire needs air to breathe, and when he pinched out a candle he deprived it of air. The Lord Almighty was pinching out the candle of his life. The Church would pass to the next generation, and they would accept the new faith; his generation would be pinched out, one by one, like so many candles of the Catholic Church.

He could not breathe now. His lungs fought to open and to inhale the glorious air of nature, but there was nothing he could do. He could choose to suffocate or he could choose to burn. Many before him had chosen the latter; he could remember the screams. He chose not to move, despite the pain in his lungs. He was like a fish on land, flipping in agony, its gills struggling for the water. It hurt; his lungs were burning within him.

“Calm yourself,” he said. “The Lord Almighty will protect and preserve you.” As he struggled to breathe, he realized that the voice he had heard was not his own. It was a woman’s voice. He was dizzy and felt sick, but the nausea passed, and he heard the woman’s voice again. “There is a way out, through the back of the chamber.”

So real did her voice seem to him that he opened his stinging eyes and looked into the darkness. The chamber went back farther than he had realized. He moved away from the door, which fell slightly open, flames lighting the way. It was easier to breathe now, on account of a draught of air from the back of the chamber, and he was glad for that. More red light entered, letting him see the shades of a woman’s face in the darkness. He began to crawl toward the rear of the chamber, tracing the path of the fresh air. Someone took his hand and lifted it, gently pulling him to his feet. Although the chamber was low he found he could stand quite easily here. Still he could only see vague movements in the darkness of the woman who had spoken, who was leading him away.

Suddenly he stepped into brilliant light—glaring sunshine. The fresh air washed his face; even his wound no longer hurt. He was on the roof of the chapter house, in the afternoon sun. He saw the thick billowing smoke and the men around the building. Further away he could see Awdrey and Mildred with Thomas, setting out on the road to Oxford. He turned to the woman beside him, who was dark-haired and smiling. She was familiar—he had always known her. She was his conscience, his soul, his second self. It seemed strange he had never noticed her before. She had always been with him throughout his entire life.

He did not know what to say, but he did not need to speak. The breeze raised ripples across the surface of the lake, which caught the sunlight. Looking further, he could see the road to London, where he knew his daughter Annie was playing in the garden of the London house with Robert Cecil.

“This is a good way to die,” he said eventually.

“Are you ready to let go now?”

“Yes, I am ready.” He looked back over the trees of the parkland to where Awdrey was riding with Thomas for Oxford, with Mildred in the saddle with her. “In all our struggles, the last word is hope,” he whispered.

“But in the final struggle of all?” she asked.

He smiled. “In the final struggle, the last word is love.”