A Crowning Mercy (42 page)

'How can I tell, Sir Grenville? Give me the girl's natal date and I will answer, but it will take time! Indeed time! The charts, the influences.' He shrugged. 'All of us must die, nothing else is so certain, but whether it will be tomorrow I cannot tell.'

Sir Grenville rocked back and forth in his chair, hands clasped on his great belly. 'There's nothing in my chart?'

'Of course there is! But no feminine influences. You might assume the lack of them to be the affirmation you want.' Barnegat allowed himself a smirk. 'I cannot imagine Sir John Henge showing mercy to Dorcas Scammell.'

'No. And the other matter?'

Barnegat sighed. 'There are a thousand other matters. Which one?'

'An enemy across the sea.' Sir Grenville sounded positively humble in the presence of the famous astrologer. Septimus Barnegat was not an easy man to approach; he turned down the majority of applicants. Now he frowned, stared at the beautifully drawn planetary chart and nodded slowly. 'You have an enemy across the sea, yes. Matters fall into alignment, indeed they do.' He pursed his lips. 'He is to the east.'

'You're sure?' Sir Grenville leaned forward eagerly. The east was Holland, and Holland was Lopez; he did not fear the Jew as much as the enemy to the west.

Barnegat shook his head wearily. 'If I am not sure, I say so. If I do not know, I say so. You have no need to ask me if I am sure.'

'Of course, of course.' Sir Grenville took no notice of the reproof. 'Will he be coming to England?'

The science of astrology was not easily mastered. No King, no statesman, no banker, no merchant in Europe would dream of taking action without first consulting the heavens, but not one of them truly understood the intricacies of the astrologer's work. It was a mystery, confined to those practitioners who had given their days and nights to the study of the delicate and beautiful movements of stars and planets. There were some, a few, who scoffed, but as Septimus Barnegat was fond of saying, if the science did not work, why did the astrologers not starve in the streets? Yet sometimes, and this was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the science, it was easier to seek answers of an earthly origin than go through the painstaking, time-consuming endeavour of plotting the harmonious spheres.

Septimus Barnegat, as befitted a man of his wealth and reputation, took some earthly help. He paid his monthly retainer to Julius Cottjens, as did all the better London astrologers, and he paid for any news concerning his clients.

Barnegat knew about Sir Grenville's fear of Lopez. He knew, too, that Lopez was ill. He traced a tobacco-stained finger along an elliptical line. 'I detect sickness. Yes.' He glanced up at Sir Grenville. 'I think there will be no voyage across the sea.'

Sir Grenville smiled. Cottjens's news was safely confirmed. 'And from the west?'

'Nothing. A void, Sir Grenville.'

'Excellent, excellent!'

Sir Grenville truly was happy. For months now, Barnegat had reported a tangle of influences, but now the truth emerged. Sir Grenville was safe. No enemies across the sea, and, though the astrologer had not confirmed it, the certainty of the death of Dorcas Slythe. The two men talked as Barnegat rolled up his charts and put almanacs into his case. The astrologer believed, as Sir Grenville was beginning to believe, that the Presbyterians were losing ground. The Independents, the radicals of the revolution like Ebenezer Slythe, were in the ascendant. Barnegat, who was consulted by some of the Independent leaders, offered Sir Grenville the news that soon they would be seeking money.

'A lot of money?'

'They wish to raise their own forces,' Barnegat sneered. 'A fervent army of rabid Puritans, doubtless chanting psalms as they lop heads. They could be formidable, Sir Grenville.'

'And victorious.'

'If they raise the money. At present they feel the Low Countries might be more friendly towards them.'

Sir Grenville knew he was being sounded out. He nodded slowly. 'They might save themselves a journey, Barnegat. I will be happy to talk.'

'Many of them want no king.'

Sir Grenville smiled. 'At present we have no king. The sky does not seem to have fallen in.' He did not bother to ensure Barnegat's silence. The astrologer was not a man to betray his own clients, and Sir Grenville's slow defection from the Presbyterians, who would keep a figurehead king, to the Independents, who thought the ship of state would sail quite well without one, was safe in Barnegat's memory. Nevertheless, Sir Grenville knew, he had put out a secret hand of friendship to the turbulent Puritans of the revolution. 'We'll meet next week?'

'Indeed, Sir Grenville. The same time?'

'Of course!'

Sir Grenville waited for his next visitors, men with whom he would talk politics, and stared at the river which went past to the Tower. He smiled. The girl would die tomorrow, and he, Sir Grenville Cony, would continue to take the income of the Covenant. Some he would pass to Ebenezer, as he had passed some to Ebenezer's father, but not even Ebenezer Slythe, a subtle young man, would ever know just how much was never passed on.

Sir Grenville had two seals, and no one could take them from him. His enemy across the sea, the one man who could rescue Dorcas Slythe, was ill. As Septimus Barnegat had said, all was indeed well in Sir Grenville's heaven.

--<<>>--<<>>--<<>>--

All was not well in the heaven of the Reverend Simon Perilly. Lady Margaret had asked him to travel to London, a dangerous business, and there find a lawyer who would defend Campion.

Sir George's old London lawyer, on hearing the request, developed a sudden and inconvenient illness. Another man, whom Perilly had thought a friend, threatened to report Perilly's presence to the authorities. He could be arrested as a spy. The Reverend Perilly had failed miserably. Now it was too late and he could see no way to save the girl.

He must travel back to Oxford, taking a circuitous route, to tell Lady Margaret that he had failed. She had moved to the King's capital, preferring other Royalists about her to refuge in the Parliamentary house of her son-in-law, and Simon Perilly knew how desperately she wanted Campion's freedom. To Lady Margaret, Campion's survival would be a blow against her enemies. Yet she would be disappointed.

He called on one last friend in London, a man he had known since Cambridge, and a man he knew would not betray him. Luke Condign was a lawyer, but of no use to Perilly, for he worked to the Commons. His office was in Westminster itself and it was there, in the very heart of the enemy stronghold, that Perilly found Condign. The lawyer was gloomy. There's nothing to be done, Simon, nothing.'

'It's so unfair. So unfair.'

Condign shrugged. He doubted there could be smoke without fire, but he did not wish to disappoint his friend. 'I'm sorry.'

'There is one thing you can do for me.'

Condign was wary. 'Tell me.'

'Can I send a message to her? I suppose it's hopeless trying to see her.'

'Not unless you want to take her place, my friend.' Condign smiled. 'Yes, I can get a message to her.' Each evening an official bag of papers went to the Tower. Some were letters to embassies abroad, sent from the Tower wharf, while others were orders for the movement of armaments from the Tower's armoury. A few were letters to prisoners. 'You know they'll read it? They won't give her anything which they see as unfriendly to Parliament.'

'I know.' Simon Perilly took the offered paper and ink. He sighed, thought, then wrote swiftly, 'Toby is well, recovering the use of his arm. He is in Oxford at Lord Tallis's house. All there pray for you.' He wondered briefly whether he should put down that they would meet in heaven, but decided it might be inappropriate. 'Be strong in the Lord.' He signed it, sanded the ink, then pushed it to his friend.

Condign nodded. 'They should allow that. You know that my Lords Fleet and Atheldene pleaded for her?'

'I know.' Lady Margaret had written to her friends and acquaintances, begging help.

Luke Condign sighed. 'Strange days, my friend, strange days. There was a time when the Commons beseeched the help of these Lords, but now?' He shrugged again. 'You'll sup with us tonight? Grace will be delighted to see you.'

'Of course.' The Reverend Simon Perilly had done his duty. He had done all he could, and the rest was up to Sir John Henge.

--<<>>--<<>>--<<>>--

Judge Sir John Henge, tyrant of lawyers, groaned with the pain of the stone that he refused to let the doctors cut out.

The trial, he reflected, had been more tiresome than he expected. Caleb Higbed, forever smiling ingratiatingly and bobbing up and down like a pigeon, had been overlong. At least the prisoner had not had a lawyer, but that had not stopped her making protests at the proceedings. He had growled her into silence.

The jury now had the girl's fate in their hands. Sir John had no doubt what that fate should be. He had known from the moment she had entered the courtroom, flaunting herself in a scarlet dress cut so low that he half expected her breasts to ride over the neckline with every breath she drew. She had tried to pull the dress up, but the jury, all Protestant men of property, had frowned at the harlot costume.

Sir John's troubles had begun at the opening of the trial. That fool Higbed had assured him there was a confession, but Sir John, who prided himself on his thoroughness and his meticulous application of the law, had found an anomaly. 'It says here her name is Dorcas Campion Scammell. That's not the name on the charge.'

Higbed had half stood, half bowed and smiled. 'As your Lordship observes, it is the name she chose to sign herself.'

'But is it her name?'

'No, my Lord.'

'If this isn't her name, then this isn't her confession. I would have thought the rawest lad in the law would have known that, Mr Higbed.'

'As your Lordship pleases.'

It had not pleased Sir John, but the law was the law, and Sir John embodied the law, and so he had demanded evidence.

So the witnesses were called, the evidence laid damningly before the jury. Goodwife Baggerlie, coached by Caleb Higbed who had thought the confessions too pat to convince Sir John, swore that she had heard Campion declare she would murder her husband by witchcraft.
Maleficio
was established.

Ebenezer Slythe, his face pale, pleaded for his sister's life. Sir John interrupted him. 'I thought this witness was here to give evidence.'

Caleb Higbed smiled at Sir John. 'We thought your Lordship might listen to a brother's plea.'

Sir John groaned, shifting because of the pain in his guts. 'The time for a plea, Mr Higbed, is after the verdict, not before. Have you lost your wits? Or do you think I'm a fool?'

'Nothing is further from my mind, your Lordship.'

Ebenezer was dismissed. He stepped down with a smile. His plea for mercy was no more than a gesture to public taste, what the simpletons would expect of a brother. Higbed had assured him that Sir John Henge did not know the meaning of the word mercy.

Now, as the evening light dimmed the courtroom and shadowed the great royal coat-of-arms above Sir John's head, an escutcheon that kept up the pretence that Parliament fought not the King but his advisers, the jury whispered together on their benches.

Sir John did not like his juries to take a long time, especially after he had more or less dictated their decision to them. He growled, 'Well?'

The foreman stood up. 'We are agreed, my Lord.'

'All of you?'

'Yes, my Lord.'

'Well?' Sir John Henge wanted this over.

'On the charge of witchcraft, my Lord. Guilty.'

A buzz went round the spectators, quelled by an angry glance from Sir John. Caleb Higbed looked with relief at the darkening beams. Sir John had already written both verdicts in his book, but he pretended to make a note.

'And the charge of murder?'

'Guilty.'

Sir John half expected the girl to cry out, but she kept her composure as she had throughout the trial. Sir John looked at her. A pretty thing, he thought, but the devil often chose the best. He looked sardonically at Caleb Higbed. 'You had a plea, Mr Higbed?'

Caleb Higbed shook his head, smiled. 'The substance of the plea is already before your Lordship, unless you wish it repeated?'

'No, no!' Sir John closed his great book. He picked up his black cap and stared at the scarlet-dressed prisoner. A few seconds before, she had been on trial, now she was a witch and a murderess. Sir John's mouth curved in malevolent dislike.

'Dorcas Scammell, you have been found guilty of offences so vile that they defy Christian comprehension. You willingly entered into a pact with the devil and you thereafter used the sorcerous powers he gave you to murder your husband, Samuel Scammell.

'The penalty for witchcraft is hanging. Parliament, in its wisdom, decreed that should be so, but you have also been found guilty of your husband's murder for which the penalty is death by burning.' He shifted heavily in the uncomfortable chair. He hated trials in the Tower, a draughty, cold, inconvenient place.

'I would bring it to the court's attention, and for the edification of those lawyers here who will one day bear my responsibilities, that there was a hallowed belief in this land that witches should be burned. The purpose was not to give pain, but to prevent the spirit of evil from passing away from the body of the witch into her family. This seems to me to be a precaution worthy of this court. Therefore, using the discretion given me by your conviction of murder, I sentence you, Dorcas Scammell, to be taken tomorrow forenoon to a place of execution, and there burned to your deserved death. May God have mercy on your soul.'

There was a second's silence in the courtroom, every eye on Campion, and then a great explosion of exalted applause.

Campion, her face pale, her hands tied behind her back, did not move a muscle. She showed no shock, no distress, nothing. Then the guards turned her and led her away.

--<<>>--<<>>--<<>>--

The next day dawned as fine as any man could wish. There was a feeling of cleanness to the city, as if the rain had scoured it and the night wind aired it, and in the morning the burgeoning crowd on Tower Hill saw the last, high, ragged clouds fleeing eastwards.