The Roots of Betrayal (16 page)

Clarenceux listened to the thin trickle of urine fall the two stories to the stone-lined vat in the basement. He adjusted his clothes, replaced the cushion over the opening, and prepared himself for what he would do next. He said a prayer, crossed himself, and left the closet.

The single guard accompanying him was waiting by the door on the far side of the chamber. He was a fair-haired youth of average height and, apart from the knife at his belt, he did not appear to be armed. Walsingham seemed to trust Clarenceux's wounds to restrain him. But this was the weakness in the plan.

“All done?” The fair-haired man smiled and gestured for him to go ahead.

Clarenceux could not bring himself to respond positively. He shuffled across the room slowly, reaching out for the doorframe, emphasizing his crippled state. But as he left the room, he lurched to the right, grabbing the latch and throwing the door back into place, almost shutting the guard on the inside. The guard was not so slow and managed to place his boot in the opening. “Hold fast!” he shouted. “Return to your room. You cannot get away…” He wrestled against the door, which Clarenceux was holding firmly. Both men struggled with it until Clarenceux let go and ran, as fast as his wounds would allow, toward the staircase. He did not take the stairs leading up to his chamber but those that led down to the front door. The guard was after him straightaway.

Clarenceux rushed down the stairs, hearing the younger man just behind him; he managed to reach the bottom first, without falling. “Stop! Stop him!” yelled the guard. Clarenceux saw a chair in the hallway and seized it, flinging it around desperately at his pursuer, catching him on the side of the head. But he did not knock the man to the ground. The act of turning had delayed him. There was no time for him to reach the door. A moment later, three other men had appeared in the hall from various rooms. Clarenceux was thrown against a wall. Holding him by the throat, they tied his hands and marched him back up the stairs to his cell on the second floor. They flung him on the floor and left him there, locking the door behind them.

Saturday, May 13

Carew had been awake most of the night. At dawn he was on deck with Stars Johnson, watching the depth of the heavens disappear behind the shallow light of the new day. They had made good progress, with the steady wind straight up the Channel. Now they were less than fifteen miles from Dover.

Carew had already examined almost every inch of the ship. When galleons were first launched, they were sometimes found to be unsteady, and the hull needed to be widened slightly through the insertion of wooden pegs between the ribs and the strakes of the vessel. The result was always a loss of speed and a little more seepage of water. But the
Davy
was a beauty; whoever had planned her had known his job perfectly and had made no error. She balanced in the water, turned easily, and had never needed modifications to her hull. He had been aloft too, and inspected the sails and rigging entirely, from the crow's nest to the stays. Whoever maintained her had been conscientious in his attention to detail, with no slack ropes nor any too taut or too frayed. It was a good sign that there were spare sails stacked in the orlop, but they would not be needed for a while yet as the existing sails were in good condition. It was reassuring; one storm could change everything. Whoever owned this ship was keen to make sure that his investment was safe. He had taken every precaution—all except that of the ship itself being taken by outlaws.

“What is the business with the girl?” Johnson asked. “Won't it delay us?”

Carew looked at the shore, with the deep-blue sky above it. “It's the moral of the thing, Stars. We take what we want. We kill men like that captain where we will. But if those are things we can justify, then we must stick by that code. And my code says we should protect women and children.”

Johnson laughed. “You tell all the new ones to throw the religion overboard, but you've got more moral scruples than a priest.”

Carew looked Johnson in the eye. “I should hope so. That's the point.”

The bell in Cecil House rang four o'clock. Clarenceux had been standing for an hour in Sir William's study, his hands tied behind his back. He was dressed in spare clothes from Walsingham's house, worn-out items that the servants did not need. His shoes did not fit properly. He was tired, in pain, and exhausted, but still he refused the offer of a seat. He would stand until he collapsed.

“I don't understand,” Cecil said to him. “You went to the house in order to interrogate Mrs. Barker and the Knights of the Round Table as to the location of the document. But they ended up interrogating you regarding that very same thing. Very well, Widow Machyn has betrayed you both. But you already knew that. Why did you go there?”

Clarenceux's mind was numb with tiredness. “Why did Walsingham go there? For the same reason, I imagine.”

“I doubt it,” replied Cecil.

“I wanted to find out where she went, where she took the document.”

Cecil said nothing. He glanced at Walsingham. “I think we had better show him the message,” he said. Walsingham watched as Cecil walked to the side of the room and reached into a wall cupboard, taking out a piece of paper. “We have been watching Mrs. Barker for quite another reason.” He handed Clarenceux the transcript. As Clarenceux read, Cecil added, “We ascertained that the bearer of that message, which was originally in code, was a servant in Mrs. Barker's house. So you see, the question is: how did
you
know Mrs. Barker was involved?”

Clarenceux read the words with grief. Rebecca Machyn had given her assent to a plan far larger than anything he could fight alone. According to this document, her brother had taken her by ship from London to Sandwich and then on to Scotland. She was beyond his reach now.

“Are you going to answer me?”

“I acted on a suspicion,” he said. “I knew that Mrs. Barker had provided Rebecca Machyn with shelter in the past. I paid a visit to her house last Tuesday evening. Mrs. Barker told me the Knights of the Round Table had persuaded Rebecca to assist them in recovering the document. She suggested that I meet them.”

“So you admit it,” began Walsingham. Cecil silenced him with a gesture.

“Why was she so helpful at that time?” asked Cecil. “Why did she not take you and torture you then?”

Clarenceux shrugged. “I took her by surprise. Perhaps at that moment she did not know that Widow Machyn had betrayed her. Or perhaps it was bait—to make me return when the others were there.”

Cecil turned to Walsingham. “Has Mrs. Barker said anything yet? Or any of her men?”

“She has said very little. My plan is to interrogate her further when we have extracted a confession from Clarenceux.”

“Has she said as much to you as Clarenceux here has admitted she said to him?”

“No.”

Cecil looked at Clarenceux. “Isn't that curious—that she should be so frank with you and then torture you?” He waited for an answer. None came. He continued, “What exactly did you intend to do with the document?”

“To look after it safely, as you bade me. I was acting out of loyalty to you.”

“Highly commendable, do you not agree, Mr. Walsingham?”

“Not if he failed.”

“Precisely. And because of that failure, Clarenceux, I cannot offer you my protection. Not now—at least, not outside this house. The best you can do is hope for a reprieve when this is all over. And retire quietly with your family to a provincial town.”

“I cannot do that,” said Clarenceux.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I cannot give this matter up,” he replied. “Thousands will die, don't you see? I do not want there to be a Catholic insurrection. Every time there is a rebellion in the name of the old religion, the persecution grows worse. Property is confiscated. Houses are searched. Men and women are rounded up, imprisoned, tortured, flogged. Books are burnt, priests hanged, chapels desecrated. I cannot stop all this. I am on your side in wanting it not to happen, even though I do not share your religious outlook. The only way to bring an end to this reign of terror is for the rebellions to stop, so that Catholics are no longer a danger to the State. You have to help me find Rebecca Machyn!”

Cecil listened without gesture or expression. “You did not hear me correctly. To allow you to search for Widow Machyn in order to prevent a Catholic plot would be like allowing a wolf to guard the chickens lest a fox come and eat them. You are just as untrustworthy as she is.”

“But thousands will die,” Clarenceux pleaded.

Cecil nodded. “So you keep saying. And you are right. But it does not take a brilliant mind to come up with that prognostication. I am sorry. I will keep you here in this house until further notice. You will not be ill treated—I will make sure of it.”

Walsingham stood up. “It would be more suitable if I were to guard him. You never know when he might try to escape. Last night he tried to run from my house while using a latrine—”

“Then it sounds as if your house is not secure,” retorted Cecil, not looking at him. “This is a modern house. I have a first-floor room designed for accommodating distinguished guests of dubious loyalty. It has a closet attached. I can't guarantee that Mr. Clarenceux will be comfortable, but most certainly he will be safe.”

Sunday, May 14

Clarenceux slept unexpectedly well. He had been taken straight from Cecil's study to a small room on the first floor at the back of the house. Like Walsingham's secure chamber, this had bars on the window. Once inside, they had untied his hands. There had been the last vestiges of the evening sun when he had arrived, but he had not bothered making use of the light to investigate his new surroundings. He had seen the bed—there was nothing else in the room apart from a pewter ewer and basin on the floor—and had stumbled across to it, laid down, and been asleep within seconds. He did not wake until the early hours, when he realized with a pang of guilt that he had not said a prayer for his wife and daughters.

It was thus at dawn, after his prayers, that he set about discovering the room. The door was secure and seemed to be fitted with more than one lock. The bars on the window were solid. Between them he could look out across Cecil's formal garden, with its intricately arranged beds of ornate shrubs and flowers in the early-morning light. Beyond were the graziers' fields north of the Strand, where the Convent Garden used to be before the Dissolution. There was a mist across the grass now. Above it, he could just see the top of Southampton House, to the east of the village of Holborn. Nearer, on the right-hand side of the garden, was Drury Lane; if he craned his head around to the right, he could see Drury House and Lincoln's Inn Fields. The wall between the garden and Drury Lane was quite high, but there was a door halfway along that seemed to lead out into the lane.

The house was still quiet. He wondered if he could use a part of the wooden bed frame to lever the door open, but it was as solidly constructed as the door. The wall too was plaster over stone—not a plaster and lath partition. He turned his attention to the door to the closet but here too the quality of the recent workmanship meant that there was no chance of him working loose the hinges or a section of the door itself.

There seemed no chance of breaking out of the room. The door was hopeless. The barred window was solid. There was no other aperture into the room—except the latrine in the closet.

Clarenceux remembered a chronicle he had read; it had described how the French had captured the great castle of Château Gaillard by making a man climb in through a latrine chute. He looked at this one. There was no hope of climbing through: the aperture in the wooden seat was too small. Even if he could get through, there was a risk he would fall into the cesspit two stories below. Gongfermors sometimes died of the fumes when cleaning out cesspits and were found dead in them. He might knock himself out and drown.

The chute was his only chance. He could not see the bottom, but the brick lining was visible. There had to be fingerholds. As his eyes adjusted, he became aware of a vague lightness at the foot. This being a relatively new house, there would be a barrel positioned below, in the hope of catching all that fell from above. Emptying barrels was easier and cheaper than clearing out cesspits.

The seat was a single piece of planed wood, about three feet wide, smoothed around the hole. It was built into the wall. As he looked closely at the edge, he saw the plaster overlap and wondered if it had only been plastered into place rather than mortared in with the bricks. He heaved on it, testing its looseness, but it held firm. He needed a sharp edge to gouge out some of the plaster. Going back into the room, he picked up the basin, and having emptied the water in it down the chute of the privy, he placed it against the wall, at an angle. The metal yielded easily to the force of his foot. The crease in the metal made a sharp strong edge and with this he set to prodding and breaking the plasterwork around the seat.

At first it was difficult—a lot of work went into removing barely a thumbnail of plaster—but as the gash grew bigger, it allowed more and more purchase for the metal point of the basin. After ten minutes, large lumps of plaster were coming away from the walls. He threw them down the chute: judging from the “plop,” each piece seemed to fall into liquid several feet deep. After twenty minutes he had stripped all the plaster away from the walls along two sides of the seat and tried to lift the wood. It moved a little. Five minutes after that, he was able to pull it away from the wall altogether.

His bruises hurt, his fingertips were stinging, and he was panting—but he had done it. He was staring at a large square opening in the brickwork, about eighteen inches by twenty. He hesitated, mindful still of the gongfermors' fate. But, thinking of Château Gaillard, he knew that this was a lot easier than breaking into a castle by such a route—and facing a hostile army on the inside. He climbed into the chute, lowering himself at first and then using his feet and knees to jam his back against the stinking bricks.

As he went down, the smell became worse. He paid less heed to it, bothered more by the slipperiness than the stench and the slime. He descended slowly and prayerfully. He wanted to make the sign of the cross but he did not dare take his arms away from the walls. Down he went, whispering incantations to the Virgin, St. Peter, and the two saint-kings of England: Edward the Martyr and Edward the Confessor.

Slowly he descended into the rank darkness. Ten feet below the latrine seat, the brick was saturated with urine; it was both grainy and slippery at the same time. His legs hurt where he had suffered the lacerations on his thighs from the knives and whips. Down he went, another foot, and another. Eventually his foot lost touch with the chute, flailing in midair. He tried to look down, but the lack of space and the darkness prevented him from seeing anything. He moved his leg again—still there was nothing. He knew that if he fell now he would fall into several feet of decomposing excrement and urine. He waited and shifted his knees, so he could try with the other foot. He kicked with that one and heard a vague wooden thud. There was indeed a barrel. He inched down further and kicked again. It was a large barrel—larger than the chute—in order to catch everything that fell. But that meant the chute descended to a point just above the barrel.

Clarenceux lowered himself a little further and felt again with his foot. There was a space of about two feet between the top of the heavy barrel and the bottom of the chute. He would have to clamber through it. Gradually he maneuvered himself until his feet were on the rim of the barrel. He managed to put his hands on the slimy rim also, on all fours, retching at the overpowering vapors. He turned until he was able to slide off the barrel and through the gap into the basement.

He moved away from the barrel and chute as quickly as he could, stumbling across the floor. Now came the task of finding a way out. A man like Cecil would not want such a large barrel and its noisome contents carried through the house, so there had to be a door somewhere—and the lock had to be on the inside, to avoid thieves and spies being able to gain entry. Clarenceux walked with arms outstretched across the cellar, looking for any signs of light around the edge of a door.

When he finally found the exit, he heard footsteps hurrying across the floor above.
Pray
God, let them not find I have gone. Not yet. Not until I am out of this place
. He moved toward the day-lit outline of a large door—a double door, wide enough to move a large, full barrel. It was locked; a search with his hands revealed no bolts. The two doors were locked with a key—which was not in the lock. His heart thumping, cursing, Clarenceux felt around the edges desperately, hoping to find some way through. He tried lifting a door off its hinges, but each door was solid oak and fitted well within its frame. He felt around the tops: nothing. Then he felt around the bottom edges. One was bolted shut at the foot. He undid the bolt, allowing the two doors to move a little on their hinges. He held the ring handle that lifted the latch between them and pulled. More light shone through the crack between the two doors. He pulled again, even harder, so that he could see the silhouette of the lock between the doors. Again he pulled; this time he was able to slip his hand between the two doors and grab hold of its edge. Holding that and the handle, one last pull brought the lock's bolt out of its socket, and he staggered back into the cellar, blinded by the morning light.

He squinted. After a moment he saw a ramp to his right, leading up to the level of the garden. He went up it as quickly as he could, listening for shouts and warnings. Breathing deeply of the fresh air of the garden, he moved along to the corner of the house. Peering around it, he saw a tall wall that cut off the front from the back. Although there was an arch and a gate, this was clearly secured. Looking the other way, he spotted the small gate in the high garden wall that he had noticed from his window. The sun was beginning to rise, casting a long shadow from the wall over the dew-wet grass of the garden. He hastened toward the gate, hoping that no one in the house would notice him. To his great relief, the gate was secured by bolts: one at the top, one in the middle, and one at the bottom.

Undoing the bolts as quietly as he could, he stepped through into Drury Lane, pleased to feel the stones and grass under his feet and even happier to close the gate of Sir William's house behind him. Never before had he wanted to wash so much, so urgently. He started walking toward the graziers' fields to the north, to plunge his face in one of the dewponds there. And to hide. He would go home later, after Cecil's men had searched his house.