Sacred Treason (14 page)

Clarenceux rested against the bridge over the Fleet and looked toward the city wall and the gatehouse. It was a cloudy day, and he wished for his furred robe. And he felt cold in another way, like water splashing on a newly made steel blade.

Someone
will
pay
for
Will's murder.

He looked down at the swirling water and reflected that he owed Goodwife Machyn his life.
If
she
had
not
removed
the
chronicle
when
she
did, I would never have seen the light of day. Walsingham would have had me beaten to a pulp and then hanged—or worse.

He looked at the gray skies, glad to be alive, and started to walk alongside the city wall. A breeze ruffled his hair as he passed beneath the arch of Ludgate. He was not sure how he would identify Mistress Barker's house but it had to be within sight of Henry Machyn's. He could ask people in the street for directions.
That
might
be
dangerous. If Walsingham discovers that I have been asking for Mistress Barker, she too will be in danger.

He pressed on. Every time he felt the pain, he commanded himself to overcome it. He cut through St. Paul's Churchyard and made directly for Maidenhead Lane, thinking all the while about what he would do to Crackenthorpe if he could get hold of him.

On Maidenhead Lane, he stopped and pulled himself to his senses. He knew he was losing himself in bitter feelings of revenge. And all for what? His purpose was to find Goodwife Machyn. If he did so, he could find out where Sir Lancelot was and call together the Knights of the Round Table. Then he would discover what all this chaos was about.

When he came to the corner of the street where Machyn lived, he paused. The house was no longer boarded up. No one appeared to be guarding it. He was anxious to go ahead and knock on some doors, looking for Mistress Barker, but at the same time he was worried that he might have been followed. Although he had checked several times and could see no one obviously following him, he was not certain he was not being watched by Walsingham's spies. After all, Walsingham had taken a big risk in letting him go. He trusted him to return with the book. But surely he must suspect he was not going to return? Walsingham would not be so foolish as to let him out of the sight of his spies.

The sky was heavy with gray clouds; it was about to rain. A maid reached out of an upstairs window and closed the shutter with a bang. There was a dog barking in a backyard. Two servant women were chatting as they swept the street outside their adjacent houses. A linen-coifed woman with a basket on her arm and a concentrated frown on her face was approaching at a fast pace. When he saw that the basket contained many fish, Clarenceux made a quick assessment. The fish suggested she was catering for a substantial household. Her fast pace told him she was a dutiful servant. It seemed a risk worth taking.

“Godspeed, my good woman. Can you tell me which house hereabouts is that of Mistress Barker?”

“Can't say I've heard of her,” she replied, hardly slowing her step. “I'm not from this parish. Good day, sir.”

Clarenceux looked about but could see no one else whom he felt comfortable asking. The servants sweeping the street would be too easily questioned by Walsingham's men. He turned back to Machyn's house. He walked past to the next residence. The front door had a solid bronze handle for pulling the door to. He pushed it. Locked. He reached for his knife and found it missing. Cursing, he lifted his arm and hammered on the door with his elbow. Although he waited and repeated the knocking, no answer came.

Nervous, he looked back up the street. He could not see any sign of anyone watching him. He turned around, about to cross to the neighbor on the other side of Machyn's house—a taller, more handsome building with a carved cherub's head on its corner post. But at that moment, he heard the click of a key turning in the lock in the door.

A soldier stepped out from Machyn's house: very tall—taller even than Clarenceux—with lank brown hair and slow, heavy-lidded eyes. Clarenceux recognized him as one of the men who had come with Crackenthorpe to arrest him the previous evening.

Clarenceux froze, aware that he was unarmed and in a weakened state. The soldier was surprised to see a tall man, whose face he could not immediately place, standing right in front of him, staring at him strangely. A moment later, he remembered both the face and the previous night and recalled what had happened to the boy in the kitchen.

Clarenceux threw himself forward, reaching for the man's side-sword. The soldier instinctively put his hand down to protect it but Clarenceux was half a second faster. As he drew the blade, he sliced through two of the soldier's clutching fingers. The soldier twisted and yelled in pain and rage, then turned and swung his arm at Clarenceux. He missed and lunged, trying to grab Clarenceux's throat. Clarenceux stumbled backward, looking for space to wield the sword, but the man was already on top of him. He heard a woman's scream and the sound of running feet, and then he was suddenly falling backward, the soldier tumbling with him. Only the instinct not to land flat on his back made him turn as he came down, forcing himself away from the soldier by pushing at him with the sword, trying to twist in the air and thrusting the sharp blade through the soft flesh of the man's groin and against the bone.

Clarenceux hit the ground hard with his shoulder. The pain in his knee, which was jolted by the fall, made him grit his teeth. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a second man—the man who must have tripped him—swinging an iron-rimmed wooden pail. Clarenceux lifted himself, trying to regain his feet. The man swung the pail with force and connected with the side of his head. The blow made Clarenceux cry out, laying him back on the ground. The man swung the bucket again and brought it down toward his head, but Clarenceux saw it coming and rolled sideways. He looked upward as the man threw the pail hard toward him. Instinctively, he raised an arm to break the force of the throw and the bucket hit his elbow, jarring the bone. He tried to get to his feet, feeling the pain in his knee, but before he could rise, the man drew a long dagger and lunged forward, the point toward his throat. It was all Clarenceux could do to throw himself out of the way, guarding against the thrust with the sword in his own hand. The man immediately turned and came after him again, jabbing forward at Clarenceux's face as he scrambled about in the mud of the street, trying to use his left leg to force himself to his feet. Clarenceux crawled backward, using both hands behind him to move, unable to wield the sword. Again the man jabbed the dagger toward him. Clarenceux kicked out with his left leg. As he did so, he felt a doorstep with his elbow and used it to lift himself into a crouching position while he brought his sword forward. Two, three thrusts he parried, and then he finally was back up on his feet.

The man delayed, hesitant at losing the advantage. Clarenceux watched him, his back against the wall, waiting for him to strike. His assailant would come at him with a sudden movement; he could anticipate that. He remembered a lesson he had learned on his sole military campaign, at the siege of Boulogne.
You
can
tell
more
about
a
man
from
a
minute
in
a
fight
than
from
a
year
in
conversation.
He knew he was not as good a fighter as this man. He had been lucky to wound his first opponent as they fell. He was unpracticed.

Suddenly there was an almighty scream from the soldier away to his left. A moment ago, the man had been lying in the mud, rolling around, clutching his guts, and cursing in pain. There were about a dozen people in the street, huddled on the far side, but they were only watching; no one was helping the wounded man. Now, however, he was on his feet and shouting, bloody, stumbling toward Clarenceux. Clarenceux waited, then darted a glance to him, knowing that the knife fighter would choose that instant to lunge again.

When the blow came, Clarenceux was already moving. He slashed back with the sword as he shifted his body to his left. The blade sliced the knife fighter straight across the middle of his face as Clarenceux threw his weight behind his shoulder and hit the advancing soldier in his bloody belly. He paid no attention to the scream of the knife fighter; he did not even hear him. All he heard was his own panic as he drove the sword home under the wounded soldier's ribs as he fell with him, twisting the blade, ripping it out, frantic. He fell on top of the dying man, then pushed the palm of his left hand into his face, lifted the sword, and stabbed him again through the chest. Only after he had plunged the blade into the man for a third time did he turn to look for the knife fighter. He was already twenty yards up the street and stumbling blindly, his bloody face in his hands.

Clarenceux stared at the blood on his own hands. He saw the glistening blood soaking the soldier's tunic and spreading in the mud. The stab wound in the man's groin revealed the glistening intestine.

Clarenceux felt sick. He tried to get to his feet but could not. The world was closing in on him, his head pounding with the pain of the blow from the bucket, his body aching. Suddenly the nausea rose within him and, unable to stop himself, he vomited beside the corpse, letting himself fall into the mud, beyond prayer, hearing his own panting, tasting bitter bile, and staring at the gray skies.

It started to rain. For a few seconds he lay still, feeling the cold droplets fall onto his face.

“My mistress bids me tell you come quickly if you want to live.”

Clarenceux looked up and saw the sharp features of a boy about twelve years old.

“For all our sakes, Mr. Clarenceux, please get up. Come quickly!”

Clarenceux was suddenly alert. He got to his knees, cursed the pain, then pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. The people in the street were watching him. They had seen him attack the tall soldier for no apparent reason. He had committed a hanging crime in front of all these witnesses—a whole jury's worth.

The rain started to come down harder.

“Please, Mr. Clarenceux!” He looked in the direction the boy was urging him to go. There was a door open on the other side of the street.

He took a look at the dead man and removed the sword from his chest. He threw it down beside the body, feeling disgusted, a stranger to himself.
I
should
say
a
prayer
for
his
soul. But I do not even know his name.
He crossed himself, said “Rest in peace, amen,” and turned to follow the boy.

Only when he had gone did the witnesses send for the constable, as the raindrops continued to fall on the bloodied corpse of John Crackenthorpe, Richard Crackenthorpe's brother.

***

Clarenceux followed the boy into the house and along a passage that led to a walled yard at the rear. Here was a small gate opening into the courtyard of the adjacent house, and that in turn led to the yard of the neighboring property. None of the gates was locked; the boy knew exactly where he was going and how to open each one.

Clarenceux followed in the rain. In the fourth and last yard was a ladder, propped against a wall. The boy climbed up it without hesitating and waited. Clarenceux went up step by step and balanced precariously on the top of the wall as the boy pulled the ladder up, then let it down on the other side and scurried to the ground. Clarenceux descended more slowly.

He stepped off the ladder and looked up. He was facing the elaborately carved rear wooden jetties of a handsome town house. Many glazed windows let in light to the rooms on the upper floors. Large lead cisterns around the cobbled courtyard caught the rainwater running off the roof of the main house and its wing. To one side were a stable and a gate leading through to the street. To the rear, beyond the curtilage wall, was a large, old building that Clarenceux recognized as Painter-Stainers' Hall.

Goodwife Machyn approached from the back door of the house, her fear and resolve both showing in her face. She had white linen towels on one arm. Clarenceux wanted to embrace her, to feel her warmth, but he knew he could not touch her. He could not touch anyone. It was not just the blood; it was the uncleanness. He had killed a man—it was not right that he share in any human warmth.

He realized he was trembling.
I
need
to
make
a
confession.

“Put this around your head.” Rebecca reached up and wrapped a linen towel around him. “Hold it in place. There.”

“I am in grave trouble, Goodwife Machyn,” he said as he followed her indoors.

“I know. I watched from a window. Is that man dead?”

“I believe so.”

“Let us not talk here. Let us get away as quickly as possible.” She led him into the house. They walked down a dark corridor.

“Where's the chronicle?”

“Hidden.” She turned and silently pointed up in the dimness. She put a finger on her lips.

“I need to see it,” he whispered. “As soon as possible.”

They entered a high stone-walled room with enormous fireplaces on either side. Steam curled in the light of the windows high above them. The late morning dinner was being cooked: pike for the lady of the house and her companions, pottage for the servants. Clarenceux could smell fried onions and garlic. Two kitchen boys attended to the fires, the spit, and the cauldrons while the cook recorded what had been spent in an account book. He glanced first at Rebecca and then at Clarenceux, who was still holding the linen towel to his head.