Final Sacrament (Clarenceux Trilogy) (10 page)

Mary Vardine sat on the bed in the chamber where she had been locked for the last two days. She did not know the name of the house where she was being held, but it clearly belonged to a wealthy and influential man. She had seen a wide stone front with huge glass windows when she had been brought here, in a cart. There was glass even in the window of her chamber and rush matting on the floor. A latrine adjoined the room, with a green baize seat and a blue cloth-covered cushion over the hole. Her bed was soft, and the sheets were clean and made of something much finer than the canvas she was used to at home. The clothes she had been given too were of good quality—better than she would have bought for herself. A surgeon had come to see her for the first two days and then again yesterday; he had applied ointments to her skin, which had healed quickly. Every mealtime she had been given good broths containing lamb, chicken, or rabbit. A woman had come to wash her hair in a brass basin on the third day. A week ago she had been hoping to die before they could burn her alive. Now she did not know where she was—only that she was imprisoned. The physician and servants who came to her room clearly had instructions not to speak to her about anything other than her physical condition.

She had lost track of time in the jail. But she was aware that something out of the ordinary was happening in the house. She had heard a lot of clattering earlier, and someone had been shouting in the stable yard, which was visible through the glass of her window. Beyond the stables she could see the rise of a hill; a hunting party had ridden that way in the early morning sun. Now she felt hungry.

Soon she would hear footsteps along the corridor and the sound of the lock turning. The door would open and one man would place a bowl of pottage and a hunk of good bread on the table while another man stood outside the door. Then they would close the door and lock it until dusk.

Today, however, when the door opened, there was no food. Instead, one of the men spoke to her. “Your dinner is served in another chamber.”

She followed the guards along a corridor with bare floorboards and plain plastered walls, wondering if now they were going to take her somewhere to burn her. She doubted it. There was no need to send a surgeon to heal a condemned person. After descending a narrow servants’ staircase to the first floor, she found herself walking along a corridor with a much higher ceiling. Here the leading guard stopped and unlocked a door.

Mary entered a high, long chamber with a fire burning in a hearth to one side. The ceiling was decoratively plastered and painted with heraldic symbols and semi-naked figures, some with weapons. Huge glass windows allowed light to flood into the room. Two servants stood by a door on the far side, and in the middle was a long table, laden with food. Two women were seated there, looking at her. They were not wealthy-looking—quite the opposite. They were women like her, who had looked old from the day they turned twenty-one, having seen enough hardship in those first formative years to mark them out forever. One had a fine face but a cold eye and a sneer; her blond hair was unkempt and uncombed, her fingers callused. She was about thirty, and hostile-looking. The other woman looked to be a similar age. She had freckles and reddish light-brown hair. She did herself no favors by breathing through her mouth, so it was always open and her bottom lip protruding.

The woman with blond hair leaned on the table with one arm. “It seems we three are required to share this Christmas dinner together. Only Mr. Richardson said to wait until our host has arrived with the chaplain.” She gestured at the cuts of meat and the cheeses, the salad dish and the saucers. There were near three-dozen dishes on the table.

Mary too looked at the table. “I have not seen such food since…” She could not remember when she had seen so much meat set out before her.

The freckled woman openly snatched a piece of chicken. “I’m not waiting,” she mumbled, putting the meat in her mouth. “And what is anyone going to do? Kill us? We’re already sentenced to die.”

“You are?” asked Mary.

The freckled woman shrugged as she ate, chomping on her food.

The door at the far end of the room opened and the guards stood to one side. A man in a rich suit entered, with a white satin jerkin trimmed with brocade. He turned and bowed, and in came an old woman in a black satin dress, wearing an expression that would not have looked out of place on a judge. Her skin was very pale and wrinkled, her forehead knit in a deep frown. She walked with a pair of sticks. A priest followed her, and behind the priest came four more men.

“You are seated,” she said, looking at the first two women. “You have not got to your feet. And
you
have started eating despite my orders to wait.”

Mary watched her, scared, even though she was not talking to her. The woman’s unblinking eye was hawklike; she looked at Mr. Richardson, who had led her in.

“Punish her.”

Richardson gestured to two of the guards, who stepped forward quickly. The woman started to get up from her seat and shouted, “Don’t you come near me!”

The noblewoman shouted in a shrill voice over her. “You are a condemned woman. You are beneath the law. You would be dead if it were not for me. You owe me your life—yet you cannot obey a simple order even to delay eating.”

The guards tore the woman’s dress as she tried to beat them off. Her breasts and back exposed, she struck out at them, knocking one to the floor. She sprawled on the ground after him. Several pewter platters went flying as the men lifted her and forced her across the table, facedown. Another man came forward with a wide length of leather, like a sword belt, with a buckle in it. The noblewoman nodded, and he brought it down across her back with as much force as he could manage, leaving a great red weal and a deep cut. A second time he struck her, with the same results, and a third. Then the noblewoman held up her hand, and he stepped back. The half-naked woman remained where she was.

“Two of you are sentenced to hang, one of you to be burned to death. I know all about you. I know where you are from, I know where you lived, and I know the people who condemned you. I know your families, your children, and your enemies. And like three of the first four women I snatched from the hangman’s grasp, I am going to give you a chance to live again, to regain your liberty. But I require total obedience. One woman was not obedient. I ordered her fellow prisoners to kill her there and then, with their bare hands, in this very room. One brave woman did so, and I was most pleased. I would ask the same of you—except for the fact that today is Christmas Day. There will be no killing today.”

There was silence for a long time. “What do you want us to do?” asked Mary eventually.

The noblewoman looked at her. “To reclaim a piece of property belonging to my late husband. A document, to be exact. A vitally important document—one for which I would gladly kill a thousand men.”

“Who was your husband?” asked the blond-haired woman.

For this question she was given a stare of contempt. “I was married to Lord Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland.” Lady Percy turned her attention to the freckled woman, who was still lying across the table. “You, Helen Oudry, sit down. The surgeon will see to your wounds later. First, grace.” She raised a hand and, without turning around, beckoned the priest forward. “Father, if you would be so kind.”

The priest bowed and uttered a short blessing in English, appending a short Latin grace. He bowed again and stepped back.

“Thank you, Father. You may leave us.” She looked at Mary. “Are you going to stand there all day? Let us eat.”

Mary took her place on the bench opposite the other two women. She began by helping herself to some chicken breasts that were on a nearby dish. But she hesitated. Like the freckled woman who breathed through her mouth, Lady Percy ate very noisily, as if she was putting as much effort into opening her mouth as closing it. The noises distracted her for a moment until the juices of the roast meat proved too pleasing.

“I want to forgive you,” Lady Percy said. “You don’t have to answer. But I do expect a modicum of gratitude for saving your lives.”

“A modicum?” asked the blond-haired woman.

“I do not expect more. I do not expect your love, Ann Thwaite. Besides, what I have done for you in sparing your miserable lives is nothing by comparison with what I hope you will do for me. Succeed, and I will give you gold as well as your liberty.”

“And if we fail?”

Lady Percy stretched over to a plate on which a roast partridge lay. She picked it up and broke it in half with her fingers, put half back, and sliced some meat off the half she had taken, picking up the pieces and dipping them in the nearest sauce. “That depends on how you fail. You all have children. Ann, six; Helen, three; Mary, two. They are the reason you are still alive. If you give your life trying to fulfill my request, then I will release your children and entrust them to those who will look after them. If you deliberately fail—that is to say, if you desert the cause—I will hang all of your children in those woods you can see over there.” She pointed through the window.

“But they are children!” exclaimed Ann Thwaite.

“And you are felons. The cause of the Holy Catholic Church is greater than that of the children of felons. Your lives are forfeit, and the lives of motherless children are short. I want that document, and I want the traitor who hides it dead. England has a new heir in Charles James Stuart of Scotland. I will have his grandmother Lady Margaret Douglas released from her wrongful confinement in the Tower. And I will have the Catholic religion restored to every altar of every church in the realm.”

Mary had stopped eating. The countess’s words had suddenly made the food in her mouth taste dry and unappealing. Lady Percy noticed. “Mary Vardine. I know you have already killed a man, and that you are sentenced to burn. I have a special plan in mind for you.”

Clarenceux stared at the piece of paper by the light of the candle on the table in his study. Even though he was wearing a thick robe he was cold, shivering. The fire in the hearth was almost out, and apart from a few loose sheets of paper, he had put nothing on it for an hour. He should have fetched a Yule log, he thought, and lit it with the remains of last year’s log for luck. Instead, he had burned the carefully saved remains of last year’s log downstairs at suppertime, with nothing for next Christmas.

He heard footsteps ascending the stairs. The door creaked open and he saw Awdrey’s face, golden in the light of her candle.

“You are not working now, are you?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Dethick wants me to complete this visitation of Oxfordshire by the end of February. He expects me to start as soon as the Christmas feast is over. Part of me says I should go, and you will be rid of me and the risk, and part of me says exactly the opposite: that I should stay because you will be vulnerable.”

“Have you considered coming to bed?”

“I cannot sleep.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that you should sleep.”

He smiled, then closed his eyes. He did not know what to say. In truth, he did not desire her at that moment—he desired her safety more. But she came toward him and set her candle down on the table. She leaned over him and kissed the side of his face, his ear, then his cheek. “We have to live,” she whispered, “and there is much more to living than constantly avoiding death. Besides, you’re worrying so much you’re almost killing yourself. Soon there will be nothing left of you but an epitaph. ‘Here lieth William Harley, a worried man.’” She kissed the side of his face again. And again. After several more kisses she started to kiss the other side of his face and saw the tear in the candlelight. She kissed that too.

“If we are to be parted,” he said, “whether that be through your death or mine, I want you to know that I love you. I know I have not always been the most faithful husband, and that I have at times been distracted. But they were, and are, just other stars in the firmament. You are my Pole Star, and you always have been. You are the guiding light of my life.”

She kissed his hair. “We Pole Stars have difficulty making you sailors follow our light. You wander about until you are threatened by darkness, then you look for us. I know you. You are a man, and men lie in their words—but not in their deeds. I want you to show me that you love me more than everything you fear out there. Show me, do not tell me.”

He put a hand to her face. “Bless you, Awdrey, my Etheldreda, my love.”

John the Egyptian reached out in the darkness and felt Joan lying beside him. He ran his hand over her clothed body, over her breasts. She lay awake, not moving, not wanting him. She wanted only to sink in the straw and find herself anew, somewhere else. She turned away from him.

“What is the matter?”

“What do you think?” she replied.

“I was the one who killed her. I did it for you. You owe me something.”

She turned back over, angrily. “I owe
you?
Do you mean…Oh, let me not waste my breath.”

John reached out and held her wrist tight. “I used to break into houses, lift clothes through windows with hooks, and trade stolen goods in markets. I used to take horses, play with false dice, and trick travelers out of their money. I did not kill women just because some haggard old countess wanted them dead.”

“Don’t pretend that you were an innocent. It makes no difference—theft or murder, you’ll still swing for it one day.”

“I had no reason to kill that woman. Jenifer is not my daughter. You owe me.”

Joan lay motionless on the hay. Suddenly she reached down, lifted the skirts of her kirtle and smock up high, above her waist, reached for his hand, and pulled it violently toward her, placing it between her legs, which she spread wide. “Go on, just do it, since you feel that I owe you. Get it over with. Me, I am thinking of my daughter. I am also mindful of that woman we killed. I can’t forget that her head is in a sack over there. You might have killed her, but it was me who cut her head off. Now do you still wish to use me for pleasure?”

John grabbed her thigh. He pinched it tightly as he moved over her. He put his other hand around her throat. “Yes, I do. Because I want you to know I am not just your tool in this matter. You are my doxy and you’ll stay that way, even after all this is done. Your daughter is your business, but you are mine. I am helping you, am I not? That is because I want you. I’ll help you all I can—but I will have you when I want you…” He let go of her neck and thigh to unfasten his breeches and push them down. Forcing his left arm under her back, he grabbed her left arm and pressed himself against her, pinning her right arm as well. Then he entered her. He was not violent in his movements, but she felt him bruising her left arm with his grip.

“This is good,” he said. “Oh, this is good…” But then he said nothing more until he had finished.

“You bastard,” she whispered. “It’s all the same to you, isn’t it? Killing and fucking and stealing. Always having things your own way.”

“I
am
a bastard,” said John between gasps as he recovered his breath. “I will always be a bastard. It is what I am. But when I have you, I don’t want to be anything other than the half-Egyptian bastard I am. I don’t want to be all-English, and I don’t want to be anywhere else, or richer, or dressed in fine clothes, or with anyone else. I just want to be naked, holding you, having you.”

“There are better sorts of loving,” she said, turning away from him.

“None more honest.”