Sacred Treason (31 page)

Thursday, December 23

The stay at Sheffield Manor had been extraordinary from almost the very moment of their arrival. The strangeness did not lessen at their departure. Lady Percy embraced them both in the hall and gave Clarenceux a purse containing more than twenty pounds to cover the expenses of their return journey— “including horse hire, should you need it.” A new riding horse was provided for Rebecca. The dowager countess put her hand on Rebecca's arm just before she mounted and made a point of telling her that she could trust Mistress Barker—the purpose of which neither Rebecca nor Clarenceux could fathom. But when Clarenceux inquired as to her meaning, Lady Percy shook her head.

“Secrets are like daggers, Mr. Clarenceux—best kept hidden until you need to use them.”

“Then tell me, why you are helping us? What do you have to gain from this? Why are you still concerned, so many years after Lord Percy and Anne Boleyn died?”

“That is a simple question to answer, Mr. Clarenceux,” she said with a stiff expression. “Anne Boleyn ruined both my life and my chances of having children. She had a daughter; I did not. Her daughter is now queen—and a Protestant, an enemy of my faith. She not only has no place in my physical world, she deserves no place in my spiritual one either. I am an old woman now and doomed to purgatory, or worse; but if there is anything I can do to end the plague of vice and heresy that that godless woman Anne Boleyn spread across England, then I will do it. Dead or alive, my soul will not rest until England is once more within the fold of the true faith and its illegitimate queen and her ilk dead and buried. God does not approve of kingdoms ruled by heretics and bastards, Mr. Clarenceux.”

Clarenceux nodded, saying nothing more on the subject. He bowed his final farewell, then turned and led Rebecca out of the hall and into the courtyard, where the ostler and stableboy were waiting with the horses.

***

Their journey back south was much faster than that going north. The disappearance of the snow and a few dry days meant that the roads—although still thick with mud—were much easier. There were very few other travelers with Christmas almost upon them. Most people were at home preparing for the end of the Advent fast and the twelve-day feast. In addition, the moon was now past its first quarter, allowing them to consider riding beyond dusk, confident that they would find their way to the next inn when darkness fell.

The mood of their journey was a mixture of urgency and anxiety. To Rebecca it seemed ironic that their destination was a place of great danger and yet they were struggling to get there as fast as possible. But she too was eager to push on: to discover the whereabouts of the document that her husband and others had died protecting. There would be no peace of mind until it was found. And when it was in their possession—what then?

“What are you thinking?” she asked Clarenceux as they rode through a ford overshadowed by trees in a thickly wooded part of Nottinghamshire.

“How bitter Lady Percy was. I was contrasting her motive—hatred of Elizabeth and everything the queen stands for—with that of your husband. I remember when he came to me that night, he said to me: ‘One can only remain faithful to the queen
and
God if the queen herself is faithful to God.' And I clearly remember him saying: ‘At some point you will have to decide whom to obey: the Creator or His creation. Are you prepared to live your whole life in fear of that moment?' Your husband was not a bitter man. His motives were much more earnest, honest, and honorable than those of Lady Percy.”

Rebecca rode on a little way. “Henry wanted to obey what he thought was God's will. Lady Percy wants to impose it on others. You and me included.”

He looked at her. “When we find this document, I am not sure I want to put it to the uses that Lady Percy hopes I will.”

“I can hear Henry saying that that makes you more of a coward than a Catholic. But he didn't see the bitter creature she has become. He would only have seen the countess in distress all those years ago, when he came to her to ask for advice. Myself, I am glad you feel as you do.”

“What about you, Rebecca? What do you hope for?”

“For life to return to normal. I don't want to start a revolution. I don't want to be stopped from praying in my own way. But nor do I want to see a Catholic woman on the throne if she is going to set about burning people on account of what they believe. God moves all our hearts, and if He moves them in different ways, who among us has the right to burn a fellow Christian for it? The sin lies in the lack of understanding, not in the divergence of faith.”

“You are a good woman, Rebecca. Your goodness deserves respect.” But as he said these words he was thinking,
Your
goodness
is
a
threat
to
those
in
power. It gives you the moral strength to refuse their orders. I pray that the Lord watches over us and saves us. For I do not believe this is going to end well.

Walsingham stood with a piece of paper in his hand, looking out of the window at the walls of the Tower. “Give me one good reason why I should spare you.”

Crackenthorpe was sweating, even though the room was not warm. “I have done my best. I have taken risks—but only because you wanted me to.”

Walsingham turned to face him. “Risks? You have no idea what you are talking about.” He noticed Crackenthorpe looking at the piece of paper. “You want to know what this says, don't you? You are wondering whether it is a warrant for your execution.”

Crackenthorpe said nothing.

“Did Gyttens say anything useful before he died?”

“Mr. Walsingham, the man said everything—repeating what the other Knights said about the chronicle, about the Arthurian names, about his—”

“So why did you have to kill him?”

Crackenthorpe ran his fingers through his hair and felt his hand shaking. “He knew about the chronicle, where it was being kept. He said that the Machyn woman had mentioned that they had to go back to somewhere to look at it. The place was called Summerhill but he would not tell me where that was—which county or which town. It could be a dozen places. Please, Mr. Walsingham, I have not done anything but what I have done in pursuit of your instructions.”

“That's enough. Don't bleat at me. I know that you were following my orders. And personally I am glad you exceeded them. When a man is killed and someone has to take the blame, that person is you, not me. And when you have transgressed so far that I have to let you go to the gallows, I shall be glad that you are going to be hanged, because otherwise it would be me. The same will be true of your successor. It is a difficult balance—between a powerful instrument who is prepared to torture a man to death and one who is so fearful of the law that he is ineffective.”

Crackenthorpe simply stared at Walsingham.

Walsingham scratched his beard. “It is just possible—
just
possible—that that word
Summerhill
has saved your life.” Walsingham folded the piece of paper in his hand twice and placed it carefully in the fire. He remembered the days of his youth at Scadbury Park, and the old crumbling house on the side of the hill and its eccentric old-fashioned inhabitant.

“Has anyone visited Lord Percy's house?”

“No, Mr. Walsingham.”

“What about the tomb in Hackney Church?”

“No one has been there, Mr. Walsingham. At least, not Clarenceux.”

“Keep your men watching. In both places. I am going to Chislehurst, to make some inquiries of my own.”

Sunday, December 26

It was late. They were tired, in the chamber of an inn in Bedford. They had spent four days riding, even traveling on Christmas Day itself after attending a church service in the morning. They had avoided the processions, with their antler headdresses, costumes, and mummings, and kept on, riding despite the cold in their hands and feet.

“Within two days we will be in London,” said Clarenceux quietly as he unfastened his doublet and hung it on a clothes rack before the fire.

It was a somber moment, the recognition of just how soon they would be at the end of their journey.

“I feel like saying that I want to run away from it all, that I just want it to be over,” said Rebecca. “But I suppose that's not true. The last thing I want you to think is that I am a coward.”

“I would not blame you if you ran away,” he said. “But I cannot back out now. I don't know whether it is a matter of pride or honor but there is no doubt in my mind. Too many people have died. People I love depend on me. And I need to clear my name.”

Rebecca continued to undress. “Pride, I think, is the way people see themselves. Honor is the way other people see them, no? I think you want to bring this dangerous time to a conclusion because you are an honorable man, not because you are a proud one.”

Clarenceux stood in his shirt, feeling the cold of the room. “Maybe.” He watched her as she removed her gown and stood in her shift. “There are plenty of things I do not feel proud of, and things I would like to do that would make me feel ashamed, but perhaps I can console myself that I have at least acted honorably.”

She picked up her gown and looked him in the eye. “You could have acted otherwise, less honorably. Many other men would have done. That is something you can be proud of.”

With that she came over to the bed and lifted the bedclothes and got in. She lay there watching him. His legs still showed signs of scratches and cuts, but he had regained his strength. His shoulders looked huge, his arms strong.

Clarenceux pulled back the bedclothes. She turned over onto her side, away from him.

He settled himself into the bed, aware of her motionless silence. “What is the matter?”

After a long pause she said, “I think things that I should not think and feel things that I know are wrong. You are more honorable than me.”

He was uncertain what to say. “I have often thought tenderly of you.”

Rebecca shifted onto her back and looked at him. “And I of you. You know that.”

He looked at her face upon the pillow, at her hair, and imagined reaching forward to touch her. He had done so once before, when he had touched the mole on her face. But he had done that then without thinking; it had been natural. If he did the same thing now, he would be a changed man. Not changed like Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, but into a more loathsome thing: a guilty man, disgusted with himself. What he truly desired was wrong—and the fact that she knew it too both burnt in his heart and made him strong.
She
trusts
me
not
to
touch
her, and that trust is what gives me the strength to resist. And I know it is the same for her too; she knows I trust her.

“Let us sleep now, Rebecca.”

Monday, December 27

Cecil looked out of the window at the boats moored on the Thames and saw the sun bright on their masts and rigging. A barge was being rowed up the river, taking someone from the Tower to Westminster. He heard the clock in his chapel chime. Eleven o'clock.
Where
is
Walsingham? Two hours late—this is not like him.
He strode from the writing chamber through the next room and to the top of the stairs overlooking the courtyard of his house. “Where's Walsingham?” he called to the groom waiting at the foot of the stairs. The young man looked terrified and shook his head. “Go and find him.”

Days of anxiety had come upon him and weighed him down. While there had been progress he had been calm, thoughtful, methodical. Now it was almost two weeks since they had last heard news of Clarenceux's whereabouts. And Cecil was torturing himself with one thought above all others.
Clarenceux
has
taken
the
chronicle
out
of
the
country. I have failed.

He returned to the writing chamber, to go through his list of consequences. He had written two sides of paper, thinking through each eventuality; but as he knew only too well, the truth was probably stranger than anything he could imagine. He set down the papers again and let his mind return to the problem of Hackney Church.

It
had
to be Hackney. The names of the Knights all pointed to Lord Percy, and now he could see that the dates suggested June 1537, the date of the late earl's death. Alnwick, Wressle—these places might have once been Percy's favored homes but this was very definitely a London plot. The search of Percy's old house at Newington had revealed absolutely nothing. Nor was there much advantage in going to Sheffield. The dowager countess had never loved Lord Percy, never even spent much time with him. The tomb had to be the key.

But it was now the twenty-seventh. Walsingham had had men located in Hackney, near the church, for a full week. And there had been nothing. Any news would have been better than this silence—even if Clarenceux had been marching on London at the head of an army, that would have been something to work on. But no. The plot had simply dissolved and Clarenceux had disappeared. Somehow the wily herald had eluded him.

Cecil sighed again, shut his eyes, and tried to calm himself. He could feel his heart beating like that of a man facing the gallows.

He picked up another piece of paper, containing the epitaph on Lord Percy's tomb. It had been very carefully transcribed but there was nothing surprising or suspicious about it. On one side it said:

Here lieth interred Henry Lord Percy, Earle of Northumberland, Knight of the most honorable Order of the Garter, who died in this Towne the last of Iune, 1537, the 29th year of Henry ye 8th.

And on the other side of the monument there was a quotation from the book of Job, chapter seven, in which Job explains his desire to die. How apposite for the earl of Northumberland, who certainly wanted to die after the execution of Anne Boleyn. But it had nothing to do with a Catholic conspiracy or a chronicle.

“Mr. Secretary, sir. He's here!”

The groom he had asked to find Walsingham came into the chamber followed by Walsingham himself. Walsingham was filthy from the mud of the roads but he strode in despite his dirt, holding his hat in one hand. He had not even bothered to remove his sword.

“Summerhill, in Chislehurst, Kent,” he said. “Clarenceux has definitely been there—with the Widow Machyn. They left together on the sixteenth, according to the report of one of the cottagers on my cousin's estate.”

“The sixteenth? Eleven days ago? And no word yet from the ports?”

“None—unless it has arrived since I've been in Kent. I came straight here.”

“Who owns Summerhill?”

“A Catholic sympathizer—or so I suspect—by the name of Fawcett. My cousin says there have been priests in the area in the last twelve months, and although no one knows where they go, Summerhill is the most likely place. It is an old house, with many nooks and corners.”

“Have you arrested Fawcett?”

“No, he seems to have disappeared. Which is suspicious in itself.”

“Probably hiding in one of his own priest holes,” said Cecil, putting down the paper containing Lord Percy's epitaph.

“I will send Crackenthorpe to search the property with his men. They will find him, if he is to be found.”

“No doubt. But we want this man alive.” Cecil poured two glasses of white wine from a flagon on the table and handed one to Walsingham. “I have to say I am worried, Francis. I am beginning to think I have been wrong. All the time you have believed that Clarenceux is the ringleader of this plot, but you did not convince me. I was waiting for some certain evidence, and none was forthcoming. But evidence is not truth; I should have remembered that. I suspect I have given Clarenceux the benefit of the doubt too often and for too long. Now we have eliminated almost all the others from any real culpability: only Clarenceux and the mysterious last Knight remain at large.”

“He has been to Scotland, France, Spain, and the Low Countries in the course of his career.”

“Quite. He could be anywhere in Europe. I suspect you have been right all along; he is the protagonist. And to think my wife and sister-in-law stood as godmothers to his daughter…I have been too trusting.”

“Sir William, you should not be so hard on yourself. You have done all you could, I am sure.”

Cecil stiffened. “I'll thank you, Francis, for not patronizing me. You know as well as I do that if one works as hard as one possibly can, and still fails, then there is no merit in the work or in oneself. It is only success that matters. If you and I foil nineteen plots out of twenty to kill the queen, we will have failed.”

“Do not worry. We will not fail.”

“Good,” snapped Cecil. “Looking at your filthy state, I trust there is something more substantial than wishful thinking and womanly compassion underlying that rhetoric. You can begin by renewing the guards watching the south coast ports, including the quays and hythes of London. If Clarenceux has tried to leave the country, I want to know. If he has already sailed, I want to know when he left and where he was going. As for Summerhill—search it all the way down to its foundations.”