Final Sacrament (Clarenceux Trilogy) (26 page)

Clarenceux was one of the first out of the church, anxious to get back and see whether there was any news about his wife. He had left Fyndern and Thomas at home in case of a message. Every moment he was not there, his mind kept flicking back to the possibility that, in his absence, a ransom note might have been delivered. As soon as that happened, he could do something—and Cecil could act too. In the meantime, there was nothing. All he could do was get home as quickly as he could and ignore the sad frowns of the houses looking down on him as he walked where he had once walked every Sunday with her.

“Is there any news?” he asked Thomas on his return.

“No, Mr. Clarenceux. I am afraid not,” replied the old man.

Clarenceux entered the hall. Everywhere he looked, he could see dust and disorder. No women to do the cleaning, no lady of the household to direct that it be done. He walked to the table, running his fingers through the dust. “I suppose there is no food in the house?”

“Fyndern attempted to bake bread,” replied Thomas, looking toward the back stairs. “He asked me not to tell you. I don’t think it went well.”

“Good that he tried,” replied Clarenceux. “He has both wit and application, that boy.”

“Not to mention his other skills.”

Clarenceux shrugged. “He won’t have those for much longer. When he falls in love, he will lose that fineness of judgment. His sensitivity to the truth will be overwhelmed by his greater emotions, like a man whistling in a thunderstorm.”

He gazed at the portrait of his wife hanging beside the door. “In church this morning, I looked at the space where the rood cross used to be. And it struck me that the authorities are not just changing the ways we pray; they are taking away the very things we should pray to. Now I find I am losing the things I want to pray
for
, as well. When I look at Awdrey’s image there, I see I am not just losing my way of life; I am losing the reason to be alive. If it weren’t for Annie…”

He let his voice trail away and sighed. “I will go to see her this afternoon. Maybe soon she will be well enough to return home.”

Thomas was surprised. “Do you think that wise? She would be too vulnerable.”

“I need her here, Thomas. I need my family. In church they say ‘God so loved the world that He gave his only Son.’ If God had truly loved Christ as I love my family, He would have given the world for His son.”

“And that includes the document?” ventured Thomas.

Clarenceux nodded. “That includes the document. God knows, I don’t want to cause a civil war but I would rather all the forces of the world were unleashed against each other than I lose my family.”

Monday, February 3

Sarah Cowie did not wait at the window that morning. Instead she stirred the cauldron of pottage that was to provide the dinner for them all, kneeling by the fire. Tears constantly ran down her cheeks and she snivelled, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“In Jesus’s name, stop it!” snapped Joan from the back of the hall, where she was in her shift, washing her dress in a tub of steaming hot water.

“You cold-hearted bitch,” muttered Sarah.

“What was that?”

Sarah said nothing, hearing the bell across the fields: the knell of ten o’clock. He would be here soon. When he came, would it be to return Awdrey to her family? Would it be to say Mr. Clarenceux had responded to the ransom note and delivered the document to Buckman? She wiped her sleeve over her face again, sniffed, and gazed down into the cauldron, watching the onions, beans, peas, and oats turn over one another. The peas, hardened from the autumn, were finally softening.

Her mind went back to her own childhood, when she had tended the pot for her mother. That was what she should be doing now—teaching her daughters how to cook, how to sew, in the hope that each girl might get herself a husband. A hard-working man who would provide for her and look after her, and instill in her the fear of other men, and never allow her to get so desperate as to venture to steal from the wealthy, not even when the opportunity seemed there for the taking.

The latch snapped open and Greystoke was there, with Helen Oudry. Sarah was pleased to see Helen and smiled at her. “Good day,” she said. But Helen gave her only the most cursory of nods.

“I have found a more reliable keeper,” Greystoke said as he entered, shutting the door behind him. He came over to the cauldron. “You’re coming back to do the washing for the men at the house in Fleet Street.” He took the wooden ladle with which she had been stirring the pottage and scooped out some of the broth, raising it to his lips, blowing on it until it was cool enough. He drank with a slurp and threw the ladle back into the cauldron. “That’s piss poor,” he said. “Put some meat in it.”

“I would if I had some,” she replied.

He glared at her but said nothing. He put his hand on his sword, unbuckled it, and threw it to her, and she caught it. “Come and look after the child,” he said to her, stomping up the stairs.

In the dark chamber, Awdrey was tense. Every muscle in her body was tautened against the touch of the man, every part of her set to recoil. Mildred was fearful of her mother in such a state and had backed away. It was not what Awdrey wanted, but nor did she soften. Her mind was focused on the man and what was to come. Clutching hold of Mildred had not saved her the first time. Lying there inert and not responding to him had not saved her the second—if anything it had made her more sick with herself. This time she would fight. She would get hurt, she knew, but anything was better than feeling she had to accept this.

When the door opened, Greystoke and the woman stood silhouetted against the light, while their eyes adjusted to the dark, as she knew they would. After a few seconds the woman walked across the room, seized Mildred, and left the room without looking at Awdrey. Mildred protested loudly and started crying as the woman took her outside. Awdrey heard her cries growing weaker and she suddenly panicked.
What
if
they
are
taking
her
away?
She started to get up but Greystoke was there, the door open behind him. This was her chance; her eyes could see better in the darkness than his. She ran for the door, trying to avoid him, but he backed toward it and stopped her.

Downstairs, Sarah stirred the pottage. Awdrey was clearly putting up a struggle like never before. She heard her scream and then she heard Greystoke swearing and shouting—and although at one point it sounded as if Greystoke had managed to get his way, after several loud thumps on the floor, he cried out again—this time in agony. It was an awful, inarticulate sound. A moment later he appeared, clutching his jaw, blood pouring down it. Awdrey had torn his mouth, so that his lip was hanging down on one side. He would need to see a surgeon to stitch it up.

“Call Helen back in,” he mumbled to Joan, who was still in her smock. “I want that bitch to regret this. I want her to hear her child scream. I’m going to hold her arm and put it in that cauldron—and let her mother hear the consequences of what she has just done.”

“Why has Mr. Clarenceux not responded to the demand?” Sarah cried. “This would all be unnecessary if he had done so.”

Greystoke looked at her, mopping his lip. “He has not yet been given a demand. We’re making him sweat first.”

Sarah was stunned. She stared about her, seeing shapes but recognizing nothing. With tears in her eyes she looked at Greystoke, and at the stairs, and at the door. She had to leave this hellish place, now.

She started walking to the door.

“Where are you going?” shouted Greystoke.

“To do the laundry at the house in Fleet Street,” she shouted back. “That was what you told me to do.”

At Sheffield Manor, Benedict Richardson waited behind the servant with the wine glass and flagon while a second servant opened a door. Lady Percy was sitting in a wooden chair by a fireplace, reading. Her sticks were propped up against her chair. At her feet lay two of her dogs, their paws stretched out on the woven rush matting.

“The wine you called for, my lady,” said Richardson, with a bow.

She looked up. “Thank you, Richardson. Put the flask on the table. I’ll take a glass now.”

“There is news as well, my lady. A man in the kitchen has brought word from Father Buckman. Apparently—”

“He was not followed, was he? Did he take care?”

“My lady, he took the usual precautions. Father Buckman’s words were passed to him at an inn in Hertford. If anyone was following Father Buckman’s man, they will have followed him straight back to London from Hertford.”

“Good. What does Buckman have to say for himself?”

“Mistress Harley is in our custody. So too is one of Clarenceux’s daughters. They were taken off the street into a safe house, and then smuggled to Islington.”

Lady Percy was delighted. “After all these years,” she said, looking at him, “it makes my heart glad. Oh, the Lord is smiling upon us, Mr. Richardson. I might never have known the delights of a living husband, but I certainly have known the loneliness of being without one, and that is exactly what Mr. Clarenceux will now taste, in all its bitterness. He will soon cave in—if he has not done so already.”

“Indeed, my lady, we are in a commanding position.”

Lady Percy picked up her sticks. “Come, this is not an occasion to be sitting down. Help me up, young man, help me up,” she said, waving one stick at him as she struggled out of her chair. Richardson helped her up and she took several paces forward. She stopped and lifted one of the sticks. “Clarenceux, you will surrender that document—if I have to cut off your child’s fingers to force you to do so. You will give me the means to destroy the line of that whore, Anne Boleyn!” As she spoke, she hit the wall with her raised stick.

Until that moment, Benedict Richardson had always believed that Lady Percy’s cause was a pious one. She wanted to expose Elizabeth as illegitimate so she would be replaced as queen by her Catholic heirs, the royal line of Scotland. But in those words and in that beating of the wall with her stick, he realized he had misunderstood her. To her, the Catholic cause was a means to an end. Lady Percy’s chief desire was not to destroy Protestantism; it was to get revenge on Anne Boleyn—the first wife and the one and only love of her husband, Lord Percy. Lord Percy had never entered their marriage bed, had never once been kind to her, because of his devotion to Anne. Even after the king took Anne for his own wife, Lord Percy had loved Anne, not her.

Lady Percy saw signs of her dead rival’s victory over her everywhere—in Anne’s daughter Elizabeth reigning despite her illegitimacy and in her chosen form of worship being denied her by the same queen. It was not enough that Anne Boleyn had been executed; Lady Percy wanted her daughter also destroyed.

“What’s the matter with you?” she barked, turning and seeing the expression on his face. “This is a cause for celebration. We have all but won.”

“I am just so…surprised,” he said.

“Why is that? You were the one who told me.” She narrowed her gaze. “Don’t tell me you are going soft. I thought you were a man of steel. Clarenceux deserves this.”

Richardson recovered his wits. He bowed. “Indeed, my lady. I could not agree more. But if I may intrude upon your happiness for a moment, to remind you of the matter of the daughters of the deceased agents in London; we cannot keep them forever. Would you have me return them to their families? Jane Carr has a sister, she told me before she left, and Ann Thwaite a brother.”

“Yes, yes. You are tiresome. Let them go. Let all of them go. I have no further need of them—not now we have Clarenceux’s wife and daughter.”

Richardson hesitated. “All of them? Even those whose mothers are still alive?”

“Why not?” said the old woman, sitting back in her seat by the fire and placing her sticks beside her. “It’s time someone else paid for their keep. It is not as if I was truly going to hang them—not unless their mothers were openly rebellious. I’m not a brutal woman. Pass me that wine, if you please.”

Richardson picked up the wine flask. “What about Mary Vardine?”

“Ah, her. No, she is a different case. Keep her.”

Tuesday, February 4

Clarenceux was in his chamber getting ready to go to see Annie when the knock came. He did not hear it himself but he heard Thomas’s shout, “I will see to it, Mr. Clarenceux.” He descended the stairs, crossed the landing, and went through the hall—and was just about to go down the front stairs when he heard Thomas answered by a gentleman whom he should have expected.

He looked out and saw Dethick mounted on a huge Neapolitan courser.

Closing his eyes and cursing, he hurried down to the front door. “Sir Gilbert, I am truly—”

“You gave me your word, Clarenceux, that you would set out today. Can I not trust you even to keep your own promises?”

Sir Gilbert seemed to have dressed especially for this occasion. His silver-handled sword flashed in the morning light; his embroidered waistcoat was visible beneath the front of his doublet. He was wearing a wider ruff than usual, starched and pleated. His black breeches were of velvet and his hosen were sewn with patterns of gold leaves. His boots were black leather with a silver buckle.

“Sometimes one’s promises are thwarted by events,” said Clarenceux. “In this case my daughter has been ill with a fever, and it only broke three days ago. I despaired of her life.”

“I despair of you doing your duty,” replied Dethick. “I despair of the next time you tell me that you give me your word. If you have not set out by the end of the day, I will make this a case for the Earl Marshal to adjudicate. And that will not be to your benefit, I can assure you.”

Dethick kicked his horse’s flank and the beast took off a little more sharply than its rider had anticipated. He rolled back in the saddle before he regained his balance.

As Clarenceux watched him go, a woman suddenly ran out of the house opposite. Her long dark hair was hanging loose, and she had a troubled look about her. Her shoes were muddy and falling apart; she wore no jewelry, no ruff—nothing fancy at all. She looked as if she were in her early thirties. Her breasts swayed beneath her dress as she ran—straight toward Clarenceux.

“I must have words with you, sir, it is important,” said Sarah Cowie. Her blue-gray eyes had the watery look of someone who has not slept for days.

“And who might you be?” He glanced at the windows of the house opposite. Only one was open.

“I must speak to you privily about your wife and daughter.”

“Come in,” he said quickly, standing back to allow her access to his house. He looked up and down the street, to make sure she was not being followed.

In the hall he shut both doors, so they were alone. “Be seated,” he said, gesturing to the bench by the table, feeling the heavy nervousness in his arms.

“I prefer to stand,” she replied, her hands folding over each other repeatedly, like the headless bodies of two worms.

“Well?”

“I do not know how to say this, so I will just say it. Your wife is being treated poorly and I know where. If you will give me the document that Mr. Greystoke so badly wants, I will tell you where they are keeping your wife.”

“Awdrey is being maltreated? In what way? Where is she? Is my daughter Mildred with her?”

“They are together, in a darkened room, in a house outside London. That is all I can tell you—unless you give me that document.”

Clarenceux could feel his pulse racing. “Do you know what document they seek? Do you know what it is?”

“A marriage agreement,” replied Sarah, “between Lord Percy and the queen’s mother. I have heard Mr. Greystoke speak about it. And I can read, so do not try to pass off something else on me.”

“You can read?” Clarenceux took in the disheveled look and unwashed smell. If this woman had had an education, she had fallen a long way. “How is my wife? Is she well?”

The dark-haired woman looked at him strangely. “Her life is at stake, Mr. Clarenceux. Of course she is not well. She is being poorly treated all the time by John Greystoke.”

“Poorly treated?”

“He has taken his pleasure of her body at least twice, if not more times. She is spending all her days and nights in an unlit, unheated room, waiting for the next time he will demand that she—”

“Stop it!” Clarenceux felt as if he had been hit. He reached for the table and sat down on the bench. His failure to protect Awdrey tore him apart and left him unable to think logically.

“He has raped her?”

“The first time, he forced himself on her. The second time, she did not put up a fight. The third time, she resisted. I don’t know what happened after that.”

The volcano erupted. He got to his feet and advanced upon the woman. Grabbing her around the neck, he shouted, “Tell me where they are! Tell me where—
tell
me!
”

Sarah Cowie was terrified but did not struggle. “I cannot,” she choked as he loosened his grip enough for her to speak.

“You mean you
will
not. When did you last see them?”

“Yesterday.”

He seized her shoulders and threw her against the wall. “Tell me where they are, or I will make you sorry you were ever born.”

“You cannot make me regret that any more than I do already, sir. I ran away from the house to tell you. I do not want to think of what he is doing to her.”

“You women—he has you all under his control, he can tell you when to appear and then he cuts your throats, as if he can command your lives. What hold does he have on you?”

Clarenceux let go of her and stepped away, covering his face with his hands. “Oh Christ! Oh God help us!” For a long while he stood, just praying. “Why do you and the other women all do so much for Greystoke? What hold does he have on you?”

“Not him—Lady Percy. She has our daughters. And she will hang them in our places if we do not complete the task.”

“In your places?”

Sarah sat down on the bench. “All of us have been found guilty of some crime or other. Some of us made one mistake and were told we would pay for it with our lives. I only ever stole once in my life, it is true, I swear it; but that was enough. I was sentenced to hang.”

“What did you steal?”

“Five pewter plates, a salt cellar, and a candlestick.”

Clarenceux got up and walked across the hall. Thomas was right: he could not risk bringing Annie home to this house. He looked at the portrait of Awdrey and closed his eyes. She was suffering. Through no fault of her own. Through no fault of his—except a willingness, long ago, to help an old friend.

“Did you kill Rebecca Machyn?” he asked.

“No, not me.”

He looked at her. “Who then, if not you? Give me a name.”

“Joan Hellier. She killed her.”

“I presume she is another of Lady Percy’s women, with a daughter in jail?”

“Yes. She is guarding your wife for Greystoke now, as we speak, with another woman called Helen Oudry. But Joan is of the real criminal community. Helen and I are not used to the life they lead.”

“I do not care about the life you lead,” Clarenceux replied. “I do not care about anyone but my wife and my daughters and the safety of those in my household.” He paused, thinking. “How does Lady Percy tell you what to do?”

“It is Father Buckman who tells us.”

Clarenceux hit the table hard. “Greystoke betrayed Buckman to Walsingham: Sir William Cecil told me. If he is working with Buckman—it doesn’t make sense!”

Sarah simply shrugged.

He rested his forehead on the palm of his hand. “Let us imagine that I were to surrender the document,” he said carefully. “To whom should I give it? Would you take it to Lady Percy yourself?”

She nodded. “I would not trust Greystoke with it. He is a deeply selfish man.”

“It would be your death warrant. You would never get to Sheffield. If Greystoke didn’t cut your throat for it on the way, Walsingham would. He has men watching Sheffield Manor. This priest, Buckman—do you know how to find him?”

She rose to her feet. “I will call for the document. You will give it to me. I will pass it on to Father Buckman—it is my risk after that.”

Clarenceux looked up at her. “I am not giving the document to you or anyone else. As you know, it is not in this house. You said you can read—there can’t be many condemned women who can—which makes me fairly certain you were the one who went through the books and documents on my desk when you were staying in the garret two doors down the road.” He saw the startled look on her face. “Yes, I have been there. I have seen the marks on the walls by the window where you took signals from Greystoke.” He paused but she did not answer, remaining standing in front of him. “You might be able to tell me where my wife was yesterday—but is she still there today? You have nothing to offer me. And now I am not sure that Greystoke will treat you any better than he is treating my wife for betraying him.”

Sarah walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” Clarenceux asked.

“Can you guarantee my safety?”

“No. No more than I could that of my wife.”

“I have just told you many things. Greystoke will kill me, as he did the others. I don’t want to die. I want to see my daughters, Catherine and Elizabeth.”

Clarenceux noted the names: one Catholic, one Protestant. This woman was not part of a religious conspiracy of her own volition, that was clear.

“Take me to Buckman,” he said.

“I cannot. I haven’t been there, and he would—”

“You ‘haven’t been there’? Then you know where ‘there’ is. Tell me.”

She shook her head. “Not unless you give me the document.”

“We will go to see him together.”

Sarah opened the door and went down the stairs. Clarenceux got up from the bench and followed her, slowly. He watched as she wrestled with the handle to the front door and stepped down the stairs. “Tell me, where do I find him? If you have any sense of justice, or injustice, you should tell me.”

“You cannot help me.”

Clarenceux reached behind the cloak that was hanging on a peg at the foot of the stairs and took hold of the sword that was concealed there. He drew it from its scabbard. “The door is locked.” He tapped with the point of the sword on her shoulders, as if knighting her from behind, then rested the flat of the cold blade against her cheek. “I mean you no harm, but I have to know where she is. Or I have to know where to find Buckman. They will never find that document, not in a thousand years. If you want to see your daughters again, you have to do what I say.”

Sarah stopped struggling with the door. She knocked the sword blade away and turned to face Clarenceux. “You will find Buckman at the Black Swan in St. Dionis Backchurch. You must ask for a tankard of a beer called Old Faithful. Give him the document and he will tell Greystoke to release Awdrey and the girl. Do it quickly—and bring this to an end, for all our sakes.”

Clarenceux put the sword blade back against her neck. “And my wife?”

“I am sorry about your wife.”

“Where is she?”

“I cannot tell you. If I do, you will not surrender the document to Father Buckman. It does not matter what happens to me now. Someone is going to kill me. Even if I flee, the constables will take me back and hang me. But if you see Buckman with that document, at least my Catherine and Elizabeth will have a better life.”

Clarenceux withdrew the blade. “Tell me your name, and you can go.”

She looked him in the eye. “Sarah Cowie.”

“You are a strange mix of courage and fear, Sarah Cowie.”

“We all are. Are you any different?”