The Roots of Betrayal (15 page)

Friday, May 12

Clarenceux awoke on a wooden floor and was relieved to find that he was no longer trapped. His body hurt where it had been beaten—bruised to the point that even to think about the pain was to feel it again. He gasped as he rolled over, feeling the stinging of whip marks and cuts on his legs as well as the agony of his inflamed testicles. He had been given a shirt, which seemed to be his own, and a pair of breeches, which were not. They were too small.

It was early in the day, not long after dawn. He blinked. The room was empty. There was an iron bar across the window and no doubt the door was locked. Nevertheless, he stood up and tried it. Not even to try would have been the worst failure of all.

He turned the handle. The door was indeed locked.

He sank down, trying to recall the events of the previous day. Some came easily to mind; others were lost. The order of events too was beyond him. Whatever intoxicating elixir his interrogators had used in the holy bread, it had left him unable to remember much of what had happened. One thing stuck clearly in his memory. The Knights did not know where Rebecca was. Nor the document. They thought he knew. In fact, they seemed to think he was concealing her, and working with Cecil to discover more about the plot.

He looked at the bloody mess on the ends of his fingers. Then he remembered: after what had felt like eternity, there had been a commotion downstairs. Shots had been fired and those in the attic had left. A short while had passed and then someone else had entered. With a strong London accent, he demanded to know Clarenceux's name. About five minutes after that Walsingham had spoken to him. He remembered the nails being levered away from his chafed wrists with a crowbar and a man throwing the breeches and shirt at him. He had been helped down the stairs and out into the night. A cart had been waiting. It took him to a house in sight of the Tower. Walsingham's house.

It had been a series of disasters from the beginning. And it was not over yet. Walsingham had been surprised to find him in Mrs. Barker's house—and even more surprised to find him nailed naked to the floor. Immediately that had raised questions in the man's weasel-like mind. Why were they torturing him? What did he know that they did not?

Clarenceux rose to his feet again, supporting himself with a hand on the wall. He ached, he was bruised, but no limbs were broken. He could walk, if he could bear the pain from his swollen testicles. He could run, if he had to. He gripped the door handle tight, then tightened his grip further. The pain rose and subsided in his fingers: if he had to hold a sword, he could. He was not finished yet.

He moved close to the window, reached past the iron bar, and pushed the shutter fully open. The chill clean air of early morning was welcome.

Carew liked to stand on deck with the wind ruffling his hair and the sound of the gulls in his ears. He liked the smell of the sea and the spray as the ship crashed into another wave and danced along the tides. He especially liked this ship, whose full sails pulled so well. She felt solid, compact, and durable—and she was maneuverable. Every detail had been carefully seen to, from the rigging to the oven in the hold. As for the guns, they were spectacular. There were only twelve of them, but as John Dunbar had pointed out, they were all of a standard caliber. Therefore the cannonballs all fitted perfectly and the charges were all a regular quantity. Dunbar and his two companions could easily teach Carew's men to fire them. In his old ship, when a cannon ran out of shot, it was useless. When its gunner was killed, leaving no one to calculate the correct charge, it was almost useless. Sometimes to fire another gun in the same direction required the whole ship to be turned. These guns allowed the ship to fire in all directions until the last shot had gone and the last able man was dead.

Luke came down from the rigging. “Cold up there,” he muttered.

“Bracing, not cold,” said Carew, slapping him on the back. “Besides, you shouldn't say a word against the wind. High seas have saved us on many occasions. When the wind drops, we are simply waiting to be attacked.”

“Why are we going to London?”

“To find a man called Clarenceux, who will tell us where Denisot is.”

“I know that—you told us. But why? London is dangerous. They will recognize this ship.”

Carew continued looking ahead. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“Why are we going then?”

Carew looked into Luke's green eyes, gauging whether this was a sign of doubt in his command. He had been expecting it. “You know that feeling when you have an itch, and you want to scratch it, and you just can't quite reach it, and it infuriates you?”

“Yes,” replied Luke.

“Well, this is nothing like that. This is more like you'd put a bullet in your own flesh rather than suffer the itch a second longer.”

Luke wiped the sea fret from his face. “I still don't understand why.”

Carew put a hand on his shoulder. “Just think of it in terms of completeness.”

Late that morning, two guards took Clarenceux from his cell and led him, slowly, down to Walsingham's great chamber on the first floor. Clarenceux remembered the room: the last time Walsingham had brought him here, six months ago, he had had him beaten with an iron bar.

It was warm in the room; a small fire was on the hearth. Opposite was a wide, glazed window, facing south. Walsingham was seated on a large chair that made him look even smaller than he actually was. He was wearing the skull cap that covered his widow's peak, and his habitual black clothes. In front of him was a wide oak table. Piles of papers were neatly arranged at various places across it. A silver tray of sweetmeats was there also.

“When I was told that you were being tortured in Mrs. Barker's house,” Walsingham began, “I was astonished. I wondered whether I had made a mistake. On the grounds that my enemy's enemies are my friends, I should have thanked Mrs. Barker and her companions, not arrested her. But of course, I had not made a mistake. She too is my enemy. In this line of work, one has no friends.”

Clarenceux did not want to speak or even listen. He was tired. He wanted to sit down.

“Are you going to tell me why you betrayed her?”

Clarenceux remained silent.

Walsingham tapped the top of the table with his fingers. “Mr. Clarenceux, I know you well enough to expect you to be difficult. But let me be clear. What she started I will readily carry on. And judging from some of those marks, I can apply a more expert pressure to your body. You will talk. And this time Sir William Cecil will not save you.”

Still Clarenceux said nothing. He was mindful of his bruises. He was hoping that his wife and daughters were safe. Walsingham knew Julius Fawcett's house, where they were staying, having grown up in Chislehurst. He had sent men to search it in the past.

“What did she want to know?”

Clarenceux closed his eyes.

Walsingham slammed his fist down. “For heaven's sake, man. Don't play dumb with me. It is about the Percy-Boleyn marriage agreement, is it not? Mrs. Barker wants to know where it is as much as we do.”

Mention of the marriage agreement was like one more punch in the gut. “How do you know that?” Clarenceux blurted out. His throat was parched, his voice was a croak.

Walsingham almost smiled. “Sir William Cecil told me. He knew you had it.”

Clarenceux shook his head, unable to believe that Cecil had revealed this information to anyone, let alone Walsingham. It implicated Cecil himself. Perhaps Cecil was planning to place all the blame on him, Clarenceux, and protest ignorance. Either way, it was not good. Cecil had chosen to betray him to Walsingham.

Clarenceux turned toward the wall, clenching his damaged left hand as he leaned against the painted plaster. His fingertips hurt; he used his anger to fight the pain.

“There was a letter,” continued Walsingham. “It was addressed to Lady Percy, telling her that Widow Machyn had agreed to hand over the Catholic Treasure. You are not going to tell me that you do not know what the Catholic Treasure is, are you?”

Clarenceux clenched his left hand harder.

“So, why were they torturing you? Widow Machyn has betrayed them, it would appear. Either the two of you are working together or she has rushed off on her own, with that extremely dangerous piece of vellum. Clearly Mrs. Barker believes that the former is true. I am inclined to agree.”

Clarenceux shook his head. “She betrayed me,” he said hoarsely. “If she has betrayed Mrs. Barker and the Knights of the Round Table too, that has nothing to do with me.”

“From the look of you, they spent some considerable time trying to get you to talk. I suspect you are lying.”

“Heaven curse you, Walsingham!” rasped Clarenceux, turning around fully to face the man. “As God is my witness, she and I are not working together.”

Walsingham got to his feet. “A moot point. God is not your witness. At least, I would not rely on Him to testify on your behalf.”

Clarenceux put his head in his hands. His fingertips hurt even touching his forehead. He felt tears come to his eyes and struggled to prevent them. He bit his lip. “Christ help me,” he muttered under his breath.

Walsingham walked toward the window, looking out briefly over the Tower moat toward the walls. “Betrayal—I see it every day. A critical moment in a man's life—maybe even signaling the end of that life. While for me, it is just another small mark in my notebook.” He turned around to face Clarenceux. “But now I think about it, I might have made a slight error in your case. I presumed that, because you were still nailed to the floor of that house, you had not talked. That you had
not
told them where Widow Machyn has gone. But maybe you did.” He paused, considering the situation. “I really cannot let you go now, can I? You have put in me in a very difficult position.”

“I have put
you
in a difficult position?” Clarenceux was struggling to control himself, biting back the words. If he attacked Walsingham, he was lost.

“You or any of your friends might find that document as soon as I release—”

“God's wounds, Walsingham!” Clarenceux stepped forward, reached for the table and held on to it. “Lock the whole population up, why don't you? What kind of monster are you? You have no trust, you lack compassion. Are we just latitudes on a chart that you can cross off once you have sailed past us? The Lord knows I despise the people who tortured me, and I want to stop them; but I despise you more for suspecting me so much—so much—that you will not even tolerate the thought of me being loyal. Like them and like you, I want to know where that manuscript has gone. I do not know—but I do know this: if you want to stop whatever plot is in progress, you must find out who is keeping it and where they are, not punish and victimize your personal enemies.”

“You are not my personal enemy. You are an enemy of the State.”

“Wrong. On both accounts,” said Clarenceux.

Walsingham frowned. “Personal enmity is the one privilege I cannot deny you. Why were you at that house? Did you go there voluntarily?”

“You know the answer. I went there to seek information, just like you.”

“But you were the one who ended up nailed to the floor. If you went there to extract information from them, why was it not one of them who was nailed there?”

The question was absurd. “You might have noticed that I am not the sort of man to extract information from people by torturing them. I certainly would not think of torturing them in their own homes in front of—”

Walsingham waved his hand in the air as if he was not interested. “I have already spoken to those who were in the house last night. It seems that you went armed with two pistols, a sword, a dagger, and another knife in your boot.”

“I needed to be prepared.”

“For what?”

“For…for…” Clarenceux tried to remember. “I thought there would only be three or four of them there. I was planning to threaten to shoot Mrs. Barker, forcing the others to tell me where Rebecca Machyn had gone.”

“Pah!”

“Then tell me, in God's name, what should I have done? What would you have done, if you had been me?”

Walsingham leaned over the table, looking Clarenceux in the eye. “You should have come to see me.”

“Do you really think I trust you enough? After you struck me with a bar, almost crippling me, last time I was here? Or Sir William Cecil, after he charged me to keep that document and guard it with my life?”

The words hit Walsingham in the face. They hit him in the spine and the heart. Eventually he looked down, his head shaking slightly. “Did Sir William himself
ask
you to keep that document?”

“He did not tell you everything then.”

“No, he did not,” said Walsingham angrily.

“Let me see him,” said Clarenceux, calmer now.

“No, I will go to Cecil House and see him.”

“He has obviously betrayed you just as Rebecca Machyn betrayed me. Let us see him together.”

Walsingham walked around the table. “I will go there now. We will have the truth out.”

Walsingham rode to Cecil House in a foul temper, shouting at people to get out of his way as he struggled through the crowds in the city streets. The more he thought about the deception, the more furious he was. Had he not done everything that Cecil required of him? Had he not served him day and night, working to discover meanings, plots, and conspiracies? Had he not run terrible risks on behalf of the security of the realm—only for Cecil quietly to take all her majesty's praise and win her trust?

He arrived in the courtyard of Cecil House with a clatter of hooves. “Where is Sir William?” he yelled at a servant who ran out from the front door to attend to him.

“He is in attendance on the queen, Mr. Walsingham, at Richmond,” shouted the servant.

“Hell's devils,” cursed Walsingham. It was a nine-mile ride to Richmond. Turning his horse, he spurred westward and started to gallop along the Strand.

His anger did not abate with the journey. If anything, it grew worse. As he waited for the ferry at Putney, he rehearsed the grounds of his dissatisfaction with his patron. On the far side, he forced his horse again to gallop, kicking up mud and dust behind him. When a wagon on the road was in his way, he bellowed at the driver until he was allowed to pass. It took him over an hour to get to Richmond Palace—by which time his horse was covered in sweat and he himself was furious.

He could not gain access to Cecil. “Sir William says he will come to you as soon as he is dismissed from the queen's presence,” explained a thin-lipped gentleman usher of the royal household. Walsingham was directed to wait on a stone bench at the end of a marble-columned corridor.

He could not sit still. He stood up, paced around, sat down. He stood up again and paced further. An hour passed before a door banged open and three courtiers strode out. Behind them was Sir William, a sheaf of papers under his arm. “I am sorry to have kept you, Francis,” he said as he approached. His voice echoed in the corridor. “You know how it is with her majesty.”

“I know exactly. You have told me often. It is one of the things you never fail to tell me.”

“Is something the matter, Francis?”

“I have had my fill of your deceit, your covering up, your covert betrayals.”

“That's enough,” said Cecil in a warning tone. “Remember to whom you are speaking.”

“I dislike you saying that to me too. I always remember to whom I am speaking. You do not seem to remember to whom
you
are listening.”

“I said enough. What is the meaning of this?”

Walsingham took a deep breath. All the speeches he had prepared in his head disappeared. “I have dedicated my life to the pursuit of conspiracies and plots, as you bade me. And yet the most important document of all, one that demonstrates the queen's illegitimacy—”

“Keep your voice down, man!” Cecil tried to take Walsingham's arm and steer him down the corridor but Walsingham shook him off.

“Not only did you not tell me about it, you asked Clarenceux to guard it for you. Who is the plotter I am meant to be tracing? Who is it, if not you? You have acted in a deceitful manner. You have formed an alliance with that herald, a suspected traitor. How am I to separate the traitors from the loyal men when no one is being honest with me, not even you?”

“I see. You are right, of course. But this conversation should be conducted far away from here, as you well know. I am riding back to the city now. Let us discuss this on the way.” He spoke louder. “Did you know that the Byzantine merchants in India are seeking English help in resisting the advances of the Portuguese—in spite of our ancient peace treaty with the Portuguese? In Constantinople itself, a Greek man has been tortured for declaring Christianity a finer religion than that of Mahomet.”

Half an hour later, they were riding side by side, with Cecil's clerks and servants following at a distance.

“Why did you not tell me?” asked Walsingham.

“Clarenceux would never have given it up. I did the next best thing I could: I made him guard it with his life.”

“That should now be forfeit.”

“It would achieve nothing. If he has lost the document, then he is more useful alive than dead. He will try to find it.”

“I found him last night in the attic of that house in Little Trinity Lane. He was pinned to the floor, badly bruised and cut.”

Cecil drew in the reins to his horse. “They tortured him? What did he say?”

“I don't know. He claims to have told them nothing. But it seems Widow Machyn betrayed him at their request and then she betrayed them too—at
his
urging. They say they do not know where the document is, nor where the woman is hiding. He claims the same ignorance of both matters.”

“Everyone is betraying everyone else,” said Cecil, looking across the meadows to the slow-flowing river.

“Not everyone,” protested Walsingham. “I have served you many years and never withheld information from you. Yet you have lied to me. You have embarrassed me and compounded the betrayal of your deceit by concealing how you knew about that document.”

Cecil started to ride on. “I did hope that, if my actions were revealed to you, you would understand.”

“Understand? Sir William, I am very grateful to you for all you have done to advance me. But if I cannot trust you, her majesty's Secretary, I cannot trust anyone. I have given my life to your service, every waking hour; I will not be treated in such a manner.”

“We are all puppets, Francis. We are all dependent on the higher authorities who pull the strings. The queen pulls my strings and I pull yours, and you pull those of your men, and they pull the strings of the ordinary men and women in the street…”

“And who pulls the queen's strings? Dudley?”

“No. God.” Cecil looked ahead at a couple of low cottages by the side of the road. Two men were leading a cart along a lane to a large field. “You could say that you and I do too. The puppet, being strung to the puppeteer, controls him. The men and women in the street have a hold on your men, and your men have a hold on you, and you on me, and all of us on the queen…”

“And the queen on God? I do not think so.” They rode on in silence.

“I am sorry I did not tell you,” said Cecil after a short while. “It was most unwise of me. I should have realized that your spymaster's intuition would eventually determine that, as I knew that document existed and was in Clarenceux's possession, I had a role in him keeping it.”

“I thank you for your apology. But I am still angry. This has wasted time. I should be interrogating Clarenceux, not hearing apologies from you. When Clarenceux says he went to Mrs. Barker's house willingly, to confront them, he is only half telling the truth. They lured him there. They know Widow Machyn is working with him. They know he knows where she is.”

“I too want to know what Clarenceux has to say for himself. Will you bring him to Cecil House tomorrow afternoon?”

Walsingham looked at him suspiciously.

Cecil glanced back and understood his expression. “I promise I will keep him as securely as you would in your own house.”

“If you are going to question him, I want to be present.”

Cecil nodded. “Good. I would value your contribution. Let us set a time on it. Three of the clock. We will both have words with Mr. Clarenceux. We will both hear what he has to say for himself.”