Sacred Treason (16 page)

There were two rooms on the ground floor of the Bull's Head Tavern. Clarenceux and Rebecca entered through a low oak door and found themselves in what had once been a long hall but had now been divided by a partition with a large fireplace on either side. In this first room a man was playing a fiddle while a woman beat time with a tambourine; several men and women stood watching, holding wooden mugs and pewter tankards of ale, tapping their fingers. Dogs scampered, chasing each other among the watchers' legs. In a corner there were four men playing cards, sitting on low stools and casting their cards onto the rushes on the floor; two women were with them, cradling their cups, helping to shoo away the dogs when they came too close. A couple of bronze cooking pots were lying on their sides by the fireplace, waiting to be taken out and washed up. A boy attended a spit loaded with a hunk of roasting meat in the fireplace, despite it being Advent. The boy turned to play with a small puppy after every turn.

Clarenceux frowned at the smell of the meat and led Rebecca through to the next room. Here were three tables with linen cloths. A group of men were seated at one, leaving their shop work in the hands of their apprentices. A woman in a bright red bodice, with a young child on her lap, sat at the next table; as Clarenceux watched she passed the child to a much older woman seated on the other side of the table and went to speak to one of the two men standing by the fireplace with mugs of ale. Above them joints of salted meat, branches of bay leaves, and baskets of fruit hung from the beams.

Clarenceux looked around for the taverner. After a short while he emerged from an inner door, dressed in a leather apron. He was about forty and bearded, with a wide ruddy face and a thick mop of golden hair that curled above his ears. He held a linen towel over one arm and spoke amiably to his customers.

“My good man,” said Clarenceux, stepping toward him. “I am led to believe you have an upstairs room here.”

“That depends, sir. I do have an upstairs room, but it is let to a gentleman. I don't believe I can oblige you—unless you are a friend of the gentleman.”

“We are looking for a man called Heath.”

The taverner was unmoved. “What sort of night are you expecting, you and your lady wife?”

“We are not married,” interjected Rebecca.

Clarenceux suddenly understood. “A Green one.”

The taverner looked at Clarenceux. In a low voice he asked, “You are with Henry Machyn?”

Rebecca broke in, “I am Rebecca Machyn, Henry's wife. This is Mr. Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms.”

The taverner nodded and threw the towel down on a nearby bench. “Lancelot is expecting you. Follow me.”

They went out of the tavern hall into a passage and up a narrow stone staircase. In places there was barely enough light to see that the plaster walls were flaking. At the top of the stairs was a small landing: two doors faced them. The floor creaked as the taverner walked toward the right-hand one. He knocked three times and waited. Then he knocked once more. Almost immediately there was the sound of a key in a lock and the door opened to a warm chamber.

A disheveled golden-haired man with blue eyes bearing a strong resemblance to the taverner stood there. His bearing was awkward and ill-at-ease; he seemed to be struggling to cope with his straitened circumstances.

“Mr. Clarenceux is here.”

Lancelot Heath clapped the taverner on the shoulder. “Thank you,” he muttered. “Heartily you are welcome, Mr. Clarenceux. And you too, Goodwife Machyn.” He beckoned all three of them into the room and locked the door. “Please forgive the precautions. You know how dangerous things are.” He indicated the tavern-keeper. “This is my brother, Gawain. A trustworthy soul.”

The room was stone-walled, part of an older building. It was heated by a large fireplace above which was an old rack intended for longbows and muskets. Just one bow lay there now. To the right was an imposing old tapestry of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The rest was plain whitewashed plaster. There was a small bed on one side, a couple of chests, and a table and seat. The remains of a meal lay on a pewter plate on the table. An old stone-framed window overlooked the roof of the tavern, invisible from the street.

Clarenceux bowed politely to both men. “Greetings and well met. An Arthurian family indeed—Lancelot, Gawain. Are there other knights in your family?”

“My father, the late John Heath, was a lover of the old romances. We have a sister Iseult in Mile End. Another sister, who died some years ago, was called Guinevere. Hence the tapestry and, of course, the Knights. I presume you have come to talk about the latter.”

“I was rather expecting you to inform me. Henry Machyn gave me his chronicle and the name King Clariance of Northumberland. He also gave me a date. He told me to find you and ask you to summon the Knights of the Round Table.”

“I thought he would. But it is not possible, not now. All the old plans are in disarray. They were laid down years ago, by my father, together with Henry and Sir Arthur Darcy. Gathering the Knights is no longer so straightforward. I do not know them all, or where they all are.”

“But who are they?” asked Rebecca. “And what did they have to do with my husband? What was the purpose? To me it seems like a game, an indulgence.”

Gawain Heath caught his brother's eye. “At this point I will leave you,” he said. “I will do what I can to help, Lancelot, but the less I know about our father's business in this respect, the better for all concerned. Good day, Mr. Clarenceux, Goodwife—”

“Before you go, Goodman Heath, I want to ask you, is it with your blessing that the meat is roasting in the hall downstairs? Given that your brother is a fighter for the old religion, I am surprised you do not observe the Advent fast.”

“No doubt you are, Mr. Clarenceux. But my customers want it, and I do not believe the new religion condemns it. Besides, it is a perfect cover for my brother here. Is it not a most un-Catholic smell?” He smiled, bowed, and went to the door, unlocked it, and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

Lancelot waited until his brother had gone and then went over and locked the door once more, leaving the key in the lock. “Be seated,” he said, turning and gesturing to the bed. He himself took the bench from the table, set it in the middle of the room, and sat down.

“Where to begin? It is difficult, because I was not the first generation, as you are aware. My father and your husband held some great secret—a document. I think it concerned our present queen and her brother Edward, the then king. They talked to Sir Arthur Darcy about it, and it was agreed that they should form a fraternity, the Knights of the Round Table, to guard the document and to use it when the time was right. They hid it and encoded the means to find it in a chronicle. There were to be nine knights guarding it, and each one had an Arthurian name and a date. No one was to reveal their date to anyone else except when they were all gathered together. I have the name Lancelot by baptism, as you know, and my father chose the name Sir Lancelot for himself. His idea was that, if he died, I would be the bearer of that name. Henry Machyn always intended you, Mr. Clarenceux, to be the inheritor of his name, and so he chose the name King Clariance, which I believe he has passed on to you.”

“He gave it to me, yes. Go on.”

“There is not much more to tell. The last time all the Knights met together was shortly after my father's death, ten years ago, just after Queen Mary came to the throne. My father left money in his will for a dinner at my brother-in-law's tavern at Mile End—you will find it mentioned in Henry's chronicle—but since then the Knights who have died have not done the same. I think they have lost interest. Although Henry has urged them to protect the document, it is not important to them. When he called the Knights together to witness his will recently, only five of us attended. I myself was not particularly concerned, although I understood that the event was connected with the document, and the chronicle might yet become important. Then some soldiers came looking for me a few days ago, asking questions about Henry. They tore everything in my house apart in their search for the chronicle.”

Clarenceux nodded. Now he knew why Lancelot's wife had been so keen to be rid of him the day before yesterday. “Who were the Knights who witnessed Henry's will?”

“Myself, Michael Hill and his son Nicholas, Daniel Gyttens, and William Draper, the merchant taylor. The strange thing was that Henry had written that he was of sound mind but ill in body. But he seemed to me to be as hale and hearty as ever.”

“These men, what are their Arthurian names?”

Heath shook his head. “William Draper was Sir Dagonet, but the rest I do not know.”

Clarenceux remembered the night in the rain when Crackenthorpe had mentioned Sir Dagonet. “Where do they live?”

“Nicholas Hill lives in St. Dionis Backchurch and his father in St. Mary Woolnoth, opposite the church. Draper's house is that big brick one on the left as you go up Basinghall Street. Gyttens—I don't know.”

“And the others?”

“Again, I do not know. You must understand that I did not agree to witness Henry's will because I was one of the Knights but because he and my father were old friends. It was only in the course of the meeting that Henry told me that all of us present were Knights. He added that it was important that we observe the clause in his will concerning the chronicle. He willed it to you, you see. That dinner at the sign of the Rising Sun in Mile End ten years ago remains the only time I have met all the Knights. I cannot now remember which names I heard that day and which I simply know from being surrounded by Arthurian things. I do know that one Knight was special—Henry said he was not even to repeat his name. I think I heard someone call himself Sir Reynold, but I can't be sure. The only name I can be sure of besides my own is Sir Dagonet. I remembered that one because it was so unusual—I had never heard of a Sir Dagonet.”

“He was the jester at Arthur's court,” Clarenceux said with an uneasy, sickening feeling rising in his stomach. He had assumed that finding Lancelot Heath would relieve him of the burden of responsibility, at least in part. Lancelot would summon the Knights and they would go into action, for better or for worse; he would join them or not as he saw fit. But now he saw the whole set-up was chaotic.

He rose from where he was sitting and went to the window. “This is impossible,” he said, looking out. “We have all had our lives upturned. Your house has been ransacked. Mine has been rendered uninhabitable. Henry Machyn has gone missing, my servant has been murdered and I have killed a royal officer. We can hardly leave things as they are. What do we do now?”

“Mr. Clarenceux, you know as much as I do.”

“Tell me the date. Your Arthurian date.”

“Henry said not to reveal—”

“Goodman Heath, someone has got to find out what is going on here. We are not playing boyish games anymore. Our lives are at risk. We need to share what we know. The date he gave me was the twentieth of June 1557. It relates to a date in his chronicle, but the entry doesn't make sense. Something about a sermon by the abbot of Westminster at St. Paul's Cross.”

Lancelot still hesitated. He looked from Clarenceux to Rebecca.

“Mr. Clarenceux is right,” she said. “We need to work together. Our lives are already at risk—sharing this information will not help our enemies but it might help us.”

Lancelot stood up and went to the wall, thinking. “It's the date I told you, the first entry in the book. June the thirteenth, 1550. There. Now what do we do?”

Clarenceux nodded. “Thank you.” He glanced at Rebecca, disappointed. “Had it been any other date, I would suggest that we go and look it up in the chronicle, but seeing that we already know what that entry says, it is hardly necessary. We have two dates and three or four names. And I am at a loss.”

Rebecca broke the silence. “Can we get some food here, Goodman Heath? And some hot water? Mr. Clarenceux has a nasty wound to his head that needs cleaning.”

“Of course. Gawain's wife is in the next room. I will ask her.”

“We are going to need money too,” added Clarenceux. “Everything I had in my house has gone. I don't know whether my wife took it or Sergeant Crackenthorpe's men. But I have nothing. I don't even have an eating knife.”

Lancelot paused at the door. “Money I can help you with. In fact, it's your own money,” he said, looking at Rebecca. “Henry deposited a sum in gold—twenty pounds, I believe—with Iseult and her husband, John Crawley, in Mile End, to be collected at an unspecified time by King Clariance of Northumberland.” He went out of the room.

Rebecca lay back on the bed and yawned. “I could go to sleep here, it's so quiet and warm.”

Clarenceux listened to the vague sounds from the tavern downstairs. The high notes of the fiddle came to him, and distant laughter. But even though it was not silent, she was right. It was quiet.

“Don't,” he said.

“What are we going to do?”

Clarenceux felt his bruised knee and flexed it. “What do you think we should do?”

“We are not safe here. We would not be safe anywhere in the city. All I know is that I must do what I can to find Henry. And save ourselves. That is all we can do.”

Lancelot came back into the room carrying a knife, a pail of warm water, and a sponge. Clarenceux looked at the pail. “It was one of those that did the damage in the first place,” he muttered. Lancelot handed the knife to Clarenceux and placed the bucket beside the bench. Clarenceux sat down and Rebecca began washing his head around the wound.

“Some pottage, cheese, and bread will be coming up in a minute,” Lancelot said.

Clarenceux felt the warmth of the water, and its sting on his scalp. He felt Rebecca's firm but careful touch. She had saved him by removing the chronicle—an act which, although it had had disastrous consequences, was well meant. She had led him to safety after the fight. And she needed him to help her find her husband. He could not abandon her and go down to Devon now—no more than she could abandon Henry.