The Roots of Betrayal (8 page)

James Emery sat hunched in the wherry, listening to the ripples of the Thames. He drew his cloak close around him—partly because of the cold but more because he did not want to be seen. It was illegal to use the river after curfew. Although there was no moon, the sky was clear and filled with stars. The waterman spoke low. “We are nearly at Queenhithe.”

They moved closer and closer to the bank. The waterman drew in the oars and let the wherry drift toward the quay. Fortunately the tide was not yet full; as they came closer to the quay, they slowly disappeared beneath its shadow. The waterman carefully brought the small boat up to the steps.

“Good luck to you, Mr. Emery,” he said in a low voice.

Emery crept up the steps. He checked that there were no watchmen and made his way across the quay to the shadow of the warehouses. Walking briskly, he went north to Thames Street and then over, into Little Trinity Lane. Here, with the overhanging stories of the houses darkening the whole street, he was relatively safe. At Mrs. Barker's house he knocked at the door, just loud enough for his signal to be heard. The door opened; a small lantern light shone from within.

“My name is Sir Yvain. I have an urgent message for her ladyship.”

“Come in,” replied Father Tucker, who had opened the door. He closed it quickly, then raised the lantern to see Emery's face. “There is bad news. I will leave Mrs. Barker to tell you.”

James Emery was led to a chamber on the first floor of the house. Three candles on a stand illuminated the paneled room. Otherwise it was empty but for two short benches along one wall. Mrs. Barker entered in a long black dress with an upright collar, wide stiff skirt, and long hanging cuffs that revealed an orange silk lining. Her hair was tightly tied back. She sat at one bench. Father Tucker stood beside her.

“Mr. Emery, you may speak.”

“Thank you,” said Emery. “Mr. Clarenceux came to see me at my house this morning. He was most aggressive. He wanted to know where Widow Machyn has been taken.”

“What did you tell him?” Mrs. Barker asked in a curt voice.

“Nothing—nothing that he had not already worked out for himself.”

“What had he already worked out for himself?”

Emery glanced at Father Tucker, and then back at Mrs. Barker. “He forced me to admit that we had agreed to ask Widow Machyn to acquire the Percy-Boleyn marriage agreement.”

“That is regrettable but perhaps inevitable. However, your coming here is timely. Mr. Clarenceux is only one of our worries. Widow Machyn and the document have gone missing. She was meant to sail with Robert Lowe from Queenhithe yesterday morning, to change ships at Sandwich. Neither she nor her brother was there. The shipmaster waited three hours, then he sent word. No one knows where they are.”

Emery's eyes widened. “For whom has she betrayed us?” he eventually asked, turning from Mrs. Barker to Father Tucker, then back again.

“I would very much like to know that myself,” answered Mrs. Barker. “You don't think it was Clarenceux?”

Emery shook his head. “No, no. When he came to my house, he seemed quite upset by the thought of her betraying him. He was violent, forcing his way in, drawing a sword, overturning my table. Robert Lowe was no friend of his—it doesn't make sense.”

“His violence may have been pretense,” suggested Father Tucker. “If I wanted to give the impression of being upset, overturning a table and drawing a sword would be the way to do it. He did not actually use the sword, I assume?”

“No,” admitted Emery. “But he was earnest.”

“What else did he say?” inquired Mrs. Barker.

“He knows that someone was giving her money,” said Emery. “He wanted to know where she had gone and where his document was.”

“It is not
his
document!” shouted Mrs. Barker suddenly, getting to her feet and starting to walk up and down the room. “He knows she has taken it. He knows she has betrayed him. He knows that she has received money and that you and the other Knights agreed that this should happen. But does he know she has betrayed us too? If he does, maybe he also knows for whom.”

“I said nothing about your house.”

“It doesn't matter,” replied Mrs. Barker. “He knows too much already.” She paused and looked at Father Tucker. “But precisely because he knows so much, we can predict what he will do. He will come here. Or, having failed to find out where Widow Machyn is from you, he will try Nicholas Hill. Whatever Hill says, eventually Clarenceux will come here.”

Father Tucker spoke. “My lady, we could ask Hill to supply him with misleading information.”

“No. Clarenceux would see through him straight away. But we do have the element of surprise. You realize what we have to do, don't you?”

Father Tucker nodded. “We must put some questions to Mr. Clarenceux, some very searching questions—and something to loosen his tongue.”

“Might we accomplish such a deed without drawing attention to ourselves?” she asked.

“Yes, as you said, he will come here. He is bound to. When he does, we will be able to trap him easily.”

“How?” asked Emery.

Father Tucker looked at him. “We will take advantage of his faith.”

Tuesday, May 9

Clarenceux jolted awake. It was dark. He had fallen asleep in the kitchen and the wine had slipped out of his hand, wetting his knee. He stood up in the fireplace and felt his way around the corner to the kitchen door, then up the two flights of stairs to his bedchamber. It felt cold and unwelcoming without his wife. Normally when he retired for the night, there was a golden glow in the alcove above their bed. Now even the sheets were cold. He let himself fall onto the mattress, still clothed, and waited to sleep in the darkness.

He did not fall asleep. In the course of walking up the stairs his mind had fastened on to the realization that, although he did not know who Sir Percival was, the three other Knights did. Nicholas Hill would definitely be the hardest man to make talk. He was physically tough, strong-minded, and younger than Clarenceux. Most of all he believed in the Catholic cause and the idea of using the Percy-Boleyn document, having it proclaimed immediately. Robert Lowe was different. A blacksmith in his thirties, he was probably as tough as Hill physically, but he was not so fervent. At least, he had not been so ardent in December. James Emery was the easiest of the three. But he had been forewarned.

Clarenceux sat up in the darkness. Feeling cold, he got off the bed and went to the window. The shutters were still open. Looking out, he could just make out the faint start of the dawn, a lightening of the darkness. The stars were beginning to fade.

He went to his clothes chest and rummaged, feeling for an extra garment. He found another doublet and put it over his shoulders. Rather than go back to bed, however, he leaned over the window ledge, watching the dawn seep into the landscape. From here he could see across the roofs of neighbors' houses, all dim in this early dawn light. He breathed in the cold morning air and heard a seagull call, disturbed from its rest.

Eleven miles to the south, Awdrey and his daughters were asleep. Did thoughts and prayers pass through the night? Perhaps if he thought of her, and Annie and Mildred, he might enter their dreams. Who could ever know? Only God, he reflected. Unto Whom all desires were known and from Whom no secrets were hidden. And Rebecca—did God see
her
heart? Of course. Then why did He not return her here? Clarenceux shook his head; it was more than he could understand.

A cat screeched in a fight in a yard not far away. He could see the Thames and the outline of the houses on the great bridge. Here and there were the masts of stationary boats moored on both banks. In the still-dim light, he thought he saw one move. That would have been against the ordinances and laws of the city. There were more than two thousand boats on the river; it was the easiest way of crossing the city quickly. Perhaps, if it was a boat moving, it was James Emery fleeing from the city?
Tiredness
is
leading
you
to
speculate
wildly. Get some sleep while you still can.

But still he did not move. The whole world seemed beautifully at peace. So quiet, and yet all nature was living and breathing. Cats were prowling the night, birds stirring from their rest. Men and women snoring. And every night it was like this: a perfect peace upon the whole world, with no light but the flickering of a candle before the dawn.
That peace is
like God. No one sees Him, no one notices. He is like a nighttime to us, coming among us when our eyes are closed, calming us, soothing us. In His world of night we need no food; we barely stir. We see nothing of Him and yet He is unholy real.

Clarenceux remained standing at his window until he could see the whole landscape of boats and houses. Later, he heard the shouts of fathers to their sons to be up and ready for school. He heard a woman scold a girl and people shouting orders at their servants as the first glimmer of sunlight neared in the east.

He would call on Emery again.

It was dawn. Harry Gurney looked up and stopped playing the pipe that Raw Carew had plucked from the sea a day and a half earlier. “Now God be praised for sending an angel to bugger the Devil and all his plans,” he declared in an excited voice.

“At last,” said Carew quietly, pausing in his oar stroke to look across the water. It was calm now. He looked at the raft they had made, hardly able to believe it had held together. They had taken the masts, with the ropes still attached to them, and lashed them across the two skiffs. They had tied as many planks as they could on top of the masts. About half of the fifty-seven survivors were crammed into the skiffs; the remainder were lying on the planks. The ropes gave a little and the whole raft creaked with every wave. Several times in the night Carew had feared it would break up, but it had proved strong enough.

“You're a bloody angel, Raw,” said Alice. She was a corpulent, plain woman with a determined jaw, thick fleshy arms, dirty brown hair, and a strong West Country accent. Her eyes were her only beautiful feature, but they were buried deep in a face that was so much jowl that few people actually saw them.

Hugh Dean rose to his feet. He pulled out a pistol, which he tried to discharge into the dawn sky. It did not fire, but his enthusiasm was undiminished. “Let's hear some cheers for Captain Carew,” he roared across the masts and planks. “Let us applaud him—a man who can navigate for two nights and a day without stars, without a map, without a compass, and without a ship!”

Fifty-one men and four women responded with shouts of approval, despite their exhaustion and the cold. A young woman called Charity Pool was sitting with her arms wrapped around herself. “I never want to come to sea again,” she said. “There are too many ghosts out here.”

“There always were,” replied Raw Carew.

“It is different now. I know their names.”

Everyone was chilled to the bone and worn out. They knew that the men and women whom they could not see they would never see again. They had either gone down with the ship or fallen off the raft and drifted away in the night.

“The
Nightingale
was an ugly ship,” said Carew, trying to stop himself shivering. “We are better off without her.”

“No more water dripping all night from the deck,” said Luke.

“No more deck,” agreed John Devenish, pulling on an oar. “All that's left are the masts.”

“I've seen a ship without masts many a time but never masts without a ship,” said Skinner.

Carew was pleased to see that Devenish still had his Moorish blade strapped to his side. “We will not be long without a ship,” he said. “Alice, tell us: in what sort of vessel shall we sail out of Southampton? One with a big, fat hold? Or something sleeker, with all her firepower up top?”

“We'll have plenty of time to take our pick,” she replied. “One thing I know: we won't be leaving Southampton until every sailor here has ridden every whore in the town, both those with big holds and all the muzzle you could fancy!”

Three or four cheers followed this exclamation.

“What about you, Raw?” Alice continued. “Can you see that Amy yet? Is she waving to you?”

Skinner looked up. “Truth is, as soon as we are home, we'll be asleep. We won't be able to lift a leg to put one foot in front of another, let alone get a leg over.”

“Hark at you,” replied Alice. “Show me a strong young lad, stiff as a cannon, and you'll see if I sleep or not.”

“You'll be snoring along with the rest of us.”

“Won't stop him though, will it? I can sleep and fuck at the same time. Good thing for some of you that I can.”

A wave slapped against the side of the boat and a little spray hit those sitting there. “Alice is right,” said Carew, putting his arm around Kahlu's shoulder. “No matter how tired you are, you will want to eat and sing and dance and revel in being alive.”

He looked at the shape of the land. It was growing clearer. That was indeed the Isle of Wight and the opening to Southampton Water. There were two large ships visible. Was one a naval vessel? Perhaps he had rescued his crew only for them to be arrested and hanged. And supposing they made it to Calshot, how would James Parkinson, the captain of Calshot Fort, treat him this time? Carew had once fought a duel with him over his right to sail unimpeded up and down Southampton Water. On another occasion Parkinson had wounded him in the hand. But it would be worth fighting him again—to eat beef and spend a night in a dry bed with a sweet woman and a flagon of wine.

Soon color started to fill the outline of the horizon. Carew shouted to Hugh Dean, “We'll land to the west of the fort and cut the masts loose there. We'll take the skiffs past Calshot—and damn Parkinson. He's probably still asleep anyway. Those we set ashore will walk to town, but we'll all dine at the Swans this evening.”