Sacred Treason (35 page)

It was going to be a cold night. The sky was deep blue already, the last light of day fading fast. There were few clouds. The road was clearly visible in the moonlight, like a steel blade across the hills ahead of them, and the puddles they approached reflected the silver-touched wisps of clouds.

The guards roped Clarenceux's hands together in front of him but took away his gloves. They tied a cord to the reins of Clarenceux's horse and fastened the other end to Crackenthorpe's saddle. A noose was placed around Clarenceux's neck. Crackenthorpe held it loosely in his hand.

Clarenceux wanted to lead them away from the route he had actually taken with Rebecca, so he directed them along the road to Kingsland and from there up to Newington Green. The tall shape of the house in which Lord Percy had died stood there, severe in the moonlight, overlooking the green. They rode through Islington and then past the inns gathered around the Angel.

Crackenthorpe was silent. He only spoke when he saw they were approaching the city. “You did not bring us by the most direct route. We should have gone down the highway to Bishopsgate.”

“No one told me I had to come by the most direct route, Sergeant Crackenthorpe. That did not form part of the deal.”

“If this is a trap, you can guarantee I will tighten this rope around your neck. With great pleasure.”

Clarenceux searched for a strategy. Riding through the moonlit city—seeing the lines of roofs and the stationary carts outside the shops, the barrels of water, the puddles in the center of the muddy street—he knew that he had only a short time to detach himself from these guards. Even in the moonlight everything seemed more real; the darkness was death itself, closing in on everything he could see. With his hands tied together he could not bend down and reach his boot knife. Every time they passed into the shadow of a house or a wall he worked furiously at the knots binding his hands, and little by little they grew looser. But still they were too tight for him to slip them and rid himself of the noose around his neck.

Keep
calm. Opportunities will arise. There are still twelve miles to ride before we come to Summerhill.

At Bridge Gate there was a moment's chance. Crackenthorpe had to dismount and explain his business to the captain of the guard. But the men accompanying Clarenceux moved him into the moonlight and watched him closely. One, Christopher Fraser, forced him to hold out his hands, so they were not concealed by the folds of his robe. Unable to see the marks where the twisting rope had bitten into Clarenceux's skin, he nevertheless held onto the ropes around his reins and neck. Eventually Crackenthorpe reappeared, and the five men rode across the eerily empty darkness of London Bridge. With the moon almost directly ahead, shining down the street, there was no shadow from the high houses on either side. Clarenceux's knots remained tight.

Moonlight reflected off the high roof of Southwark Abbey and the whitewashed frontages of houses on the road south. It touched the leafless branches and twigs of the trees on either side of the road; no tree cover concealed Clarenceux for long enough to work on loosening his hands or reaching his knife. He tried to think ahead—was there a curve in a road around a hill? Or a valley? But he could not think of any place where he could lead Crackenthorpe to escape the glare of the moon. Some other distraction was required.

“How did Henry Machyn die?” he asked as they approached Peckham.

Crackenthorpe said nothing.

“How did Daniel Gyttens die?”

Still no answer.

Clarenceux could sense the seething hatred. The very fact that he had asked such direct questions seemed to create waves of anger within the man. He felt the rope about his neck and knew that Crackenthorpe could simply pull on it, hard, and strangle him, and until he could get his hand on his boot knife, there was nothing he could do to stop him.

He persevered. “You must have served in someone's company—if only in the militia. How come you and I are so implacably opposed? We have much in common. Were you at Boulogne?”

Still Crackenthorpe said nothing.

“What have I done that has so offended you? Even between thieves there is respect. Yet you plainly have no respect for me. Or for Goodwife Machyn.”

Silence. Just the steady sound of their horses' hooves as they passed between the houses on the highway through the village. But Clarenceux was twisting his hands to and fro every time he passed into the shadow of a house, pausing when the moon shone again on him.

“Earlier, when we were in the church, you said you knew from experience what it is to have the soul tortured, and that you derive satisfaction from inflicting pain on your enemies. What was it that made you so? What hurt you in the first place?”

“If you had grown up on the Marches of Scotland, in Westmorland, as my brothers and I did, you too would have seen many atrocities. You too would have preferred to commit acts of brutality than to suffer them.”

Clarenceux passed another house and wrenched his hands a fraction of an inch further apart, stretching the rope and giving his fingers that bit more freedom, but tightening the knots a little more. Then the moon was on him again.

“Most people would have learned to sympathize from such an experience.”

“It is weakness—and weakness is common.”

“So, do I understand? You are afraid that you would be of no value to Walsingham if you did not derive satisfaction from inflicting acts of cruelty?”

“Walsingham himself told me how he relies on me to push my prisoners for information further than he dare go.”

“And if you kill a man and get caught for it? Does that not concern you—that you take the blame for his commands?”

“I am proud that I serve.”

“You are a bloody fool for it.”

Crackenthorpe did not answer. He just yanked hard on the rope around Clarenceux's neck—so hard that Clarenceux choked and started to fall, unable to help himself. He landed heavily on his shoulder on the frozen ground. Suddenly he felt the rope pulling his neck: Crackenthorpe was dragging him along the ground, throttling him, as if he were on the gallows. Frantically Clarenceux clawed at his neck with his tied hands, trying to grasp the rope, feeling the ground slipping away beneath his robed shoulders, and trying to stop the deadly knot biting into his throat. So tight was the noose that his cold fingers could not find a grip. Eventually he forced them through, as the terror of asphyxiation gave way to waves of nausea.

Crackenthorpe reined in his horse. Clarenceux lay panting behind him. He pulled the rope from around his neck and gasped. And in his gasping he rolled onto his knees and reached down to his boot, drawing out the small knife tucked inside. He slipped it into his right hand, slowly got to his feet, and walked toward his horse.

“The rope, sergeant,” observed one of the men.

“Pick it up and put it back around his neck.”

Clarenceux took a deep breath and leaned forward for the rope to be replaced. Crackenthorpe immediately pulled it tight, almost pulling Clarenceux over. He stumbled forward. “For pity's sake, let me breathe,” he shouted, reaching up to loosen the knot and turning around to prevent the moon from revealing the tip of the blade in his hand.

“I have no pity for you. Nor for that whore, Machyn's widow.”

Clarenceux mounted his horse. “She is no whore,” he muttered.

“Not anymore she isn't.” They started walking forward.

“What do you mean?”

“She is dead.”

Clarenceux felt the fear rise up, overwhelming him like an excruciating noise. He had to struggle to make his voice heard. “Walsingham's part of the deal was to release all the surviving prisoners. He said that I had until midday to return with the chronicle.”

“I am not going to let you return by midday. They are all going to hang. As for the whore—Walsingham was never going to release her. He waited until I had removed you and then hanged her at the Kingsland crossroads. That was why he accepted your deal.”

Clarenceux passed into the shadow of a house. He did not try to loosen his bonds or even maneuver the knife to cut the rope. All the life had gone out of him. He remembered the last night of their journey, when she had fallen asleep on his breast.

“There have been too many deaths,” he said, staring at the moonlight on the leafless branches alongside the road. “Too many people have died. You kill and kill; you are cruel, vindictive—a despicable dreg of humanity.”

Suddenly Crackenthorpe's voice was furious in the silence of the night. “And was it me that did all the killing? What about you, a heretic and a murderer? How can you preach to me like this when you killed my brother?”

Clarenceux swallowed, remembering the two men he had killed. “Your brother?”

Suddenly he realized just how cold the night air was, how cold his hands were, how cold the stars, how cold the world.

“Now do you understand why I want to hurt you?”

Clarenceux said nothing. The desolate landscape within him was changing fast. The barren rock was melting in the flow of hatred and the instinct for survival. So, Rebecca was dead, united with her husband. But he would show her departing spirit that he would avenge her death. He would avenge all the deaths—including that of Crackenthorpe's brother, for he too had been a victim.

Moving into the shadow of a dense copse, he shifted the knife in his hand and cut part of the rope binding his wrists. Gradually, inch by inch, he loosened the tied knot, keeping the rope in sight.

Only a mile to go now. But his heart ached. He thought of her—the last time he had ridden this road had been with her. What was the last thing she had said to him?
God
is
with
us.
And before that she had said,
We
will
fight
them
with
love. Be strong. Trust in the Lord.
She had knelt beside him just that morning in the chapel at Summerhill, and prayed beside him. Her absence burnt within him. The tears came to his eyes—he could do nothing to stop them.

Up the road toward Summerhill they rode, with the moon silvering the trees, the road and the old battlements of the great tower. Reflecting in the glass of a high window. Highlighting the wood of the gate.

Clarenceux's pulse was fast. Still he waited, each step the horses took being one step nearer the time of his revenge. He thought of touching the cold corpse of James Hopton the previous night, the man whose neck had been sliced. The killer was riding beside him—so close that he had to be vulnerable.

Another hundred yards to go, another fifty.

“We have searched this house already,” said one of the men. “Just yesterday.”

“The heretic murderer has been back here since,” answered Crackenthorpe.

Then all of them began to dismount. Clarenceux draped the reins of his horse around the post to one side of the gate.

“You, knock on the door. Rouse the gatekeeper,” ordered Crackenthorpe.

“No,” said Clarenceux. “No. That will not be necessary. The chronicle is not in the house. Follow me.”

Crackenthorpe's huge figure remained by the side of his horse, silhouetted by the moonlight. He considered the risks.

“Very well. Stephens, you will guard the horses, keep them ready. You other two will come with us. But first I want to fasten this rope tighter around the prisoner's neck.”

Clarenceux stopped and allowed Crackenthorpe to tighten the noose. He held his hands close against his body, so as not to let the rope around his wrists fall away.

“This way,” he said, leading the three men to the left of the gate and alongside the stone wall. He listened to the sound of their footsteps behind him in the frost-covered grass.

He was trembling. Here the path alongside the house was in shadow, and he could hardly see it. Nor did he know exactly where he was heading. All he knew was that the overgrown access to the tunnels beneath Summerhill was somewhere near, forty feet beyond the corner of the outer courtyard, as Julius had said. He trampled through the undergrowth searching for the darker shades, moving first this way, then that, following every possible pattern that might indicate the exposed rock and the tunnel entrance.

“Where are you leading us?” asked one of the men, stumbling through the bracken.

“To the chronicle.”

And then he saw it. Beneath the silhouette of a pair of trees there was a patch of complete blackness and overgrowth. The vague trail of a flattened path led in that direction.

“This way.”

Clarenceux walked onto the old path and approached the opening.
Sir
John
Fawcett…sixty-seven paces…
He reached for the side of the tunnel and brushed away some loose brambles and bracken. “It's in here.”

“We need a light,” said Crackenthorpe. “Do you two have a lantern?”

Neither of them did.

Crackenthorpe turned in the moonlit wood, sensing something was not right. “Why did you not say that the chronicle is underground? We could have brought lanterns.”

Clarenceux's heart was beating fast. “You did not ask. I do not need a light. I know where I am going.”

Crackenthorpe stepped closer to him. “If you try anything, I am going to break your neck. I'll find the chronicle when I come back—and then I will have a light.”

Clarenceux felt the rope bite into his throat and turned into the tunnel.

Sixty-seven paces
…

The three men were following him. The tunnel's width—it was about six feet wide—prevented them all walking together: two were immediately behind him and another at the rear. He guessed that Crackenthorpe was the one at the rear as there seemed to be very little slack in the rope around his neck. He tried to control his breathing, which was rapid and heavy; it seemed to echo against the chalk walls. He moved over to the right-hand side of the tunnel and in the darkness allowed the ropes to fall from his hands, trying to leave them where the guards would not step on them.