Final Sacrament (Clarenceux Trilogy) (23 page)

“‘Naked I came out of my mother’s womb and naked I shall return thither: the Lord gave and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord,’” said Lady Cecil, quoting the Book of Job.

“‘In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly,’” added Sir William, picking up on his wife’s quotation.

“But why do the righteous suffer?” said Clarenceux. And he too quoted from the Book of Job: “‘My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.’” But as he spoke the words, he knew that it was not what he believed. He could never believe in a lack of hope. Not while there was breath in his body.

“There will be a demand,” said Cecil gravely, placing his hands flat on the table. “William, I cannot allow you to keep that document. The stakes are too high.”

“They have never been higher. But we have already been over this. Even if I give you the document, that will do nothing to help me or my family. And now it is all I have.”

“Giving it to me will stop you being the center of their attention. It will relieve the pressure.”

Clarenceux looked at Cecil. However kind his eyes, however intelligent, he could not trust him. Cecil was doing what he had learned to do through many years of political survival. He was raising the drawbridge, to protect himself. Sir William Cecil was personally threatened now, and friendship was always going to be a secondary matter.

Clarenceux looked from Sir William to Lady Cecil. She was stony-faced. Fiercely clever, she was on her husband’s side in all things. “If Annie dies,” said Clarenceux slowly, “I intend to lead my enemies into the place where that document is hidden. And when they are there, I will destroy the place. I will blow it apart. If I am destroyed, the captors will have no reason to keep my wife and sole surviving daughter. I will never willingly surrender that document to anyone.”

“That would be an extreme action,” said Lady Cecil.

Clarenceux got up from the table and walked to the window. “You are right. There will be a demand. I will wait until I see that before deciding what I shall do.” He bowed to each of them politely. “Take care of Annie, please. I will be back to see her tomorrow.”

***

Greystoke threw his sword down on the table in his chamber and poured himself a goblet of wine, which he drank. Through the window he watched as a shutter closed in Clarenceux’s house.

Tom Green entered. “What did Mr. Walsingham say, sir?”

Greystoke turned to face him. “Cecil has mobilized half the city to search for Awdrey Harley. He has also authorized the search of all the houses along Fleet Street. We will move her this evening.”

“Not tomorrow, as planned?”

“This evening.” He poured more wine into his goblet. “Separate them and take the girl on ahead—Sarah is the more maternal, give her the child. As for Mistress Harley, don’t take her through the city. The gate wards have all been primed. Best to take her down Water Lane and then by boat to Limehouse now, before nightfall. It’s the long way but we cannot risk her being found. Gag her and have her wear a scarf over the gag. Tie her hands and use a safeguard to cover her arms. She will come quietly enough if you tell her how expendable her daughter is.”

“And what about you, sir? Will you be joining us?”

“Tomorrow. I have some more protecting to do first.”

***

The anguish of Clarenceux’s soul had called for drink, and he had mollified it with wine. Now his head ached. It was late, but he had no wish to retire. He simply sat at the elm table in the hall with a flagon and a pair of candles burning, and the Old Testament open before him. He had been reading the Book of Job once more, reminding himself of the passages and the sufferings.
Why
does
the
righteous
man
suffer?
After a while he would lose concentration and his mind would wander. But then, like a blind creature that does not know it is in a cage, it would bump into the reality of his situation. He too was caged, between the absence of his wife and daughters, the killing of his servant, the killing of Rebecca Machyn, and his lack of direction.

It was late—past nine o’clock, when Greystoke called. Thomas answered the door.

On hearing the knocking so long after dark, Clarenceux had suddenly been sharp, hoping for news of Awdrey. He was disappointed to see Greystoke in the light of Thomas’s lantern. He was even more disappointed to find that the man had come to offer him sympathy.

“What use are you?” he demanded, after Greystoke had said how sorry he was to hear the news. “Walsingham tells you that my wife has gone. Damn it—why did he send
you
to protect us? Your sword is less use than a blade of grass. First you failed to protect my daughter, then you failed to find how the attackers broke into the house. Now you have failed to protect my wife and younger daughter.”

“With respect, Mr. Clarenceux, if you had wanted your family to be safe, you should never have accepted custody of that document. I cannot be everywhere that—”

“Did you see anything?” interrupted Clarenceux. “Were your eyes open? Or were you just too busy defending your own great dignity?”

Greystoke said nothing.

“I have had my doubts about you, ever since you killed that woman who shot at my daughter. Too fast you were. Too quick to kill her. The same thing the second time—you killed her so I could not find out how a deranged woman was able to enter this house unseen.”

“You are drunk, Mr. Clarenceux.”

“I have lost my wife and my child! This house is empty. I think of them and I cannot imagine life without them. I cannot see their faces without hearing their laughter. ‘There is no greater sorrow than to be reminded of a happy time in one’s misery.’ What do
you
know of that? You know only the words. Allow me to translate them into the feeling, so you can see what your friend Dante really meant.”

Greystoke stiffened. Tentatively, his left finger reached for his sword, just to reassure himself of the angle of the hilt.

“Mr. Clarenceux,” said Thomas, putting his hand on Clarenceux’s arm but not taking his eyes off Greystoke. “It is getting late. It is time to let Mr. Greystoke go home.”

But Clarenceux was too drunk to catch the subtle meaning of Thomas’s warning. “It is not just the timing of the attacks. You knew the name of one of the women—Ann Thwaite.”

Greystoke’s hand was now resting openly on the hilt of his sword.

“Mr. Clarenceux,” he began, “you are upset that I have spied on you. I understand that. But it was always for your protection. I have failed in my duty, and for that I am deeply sorry. I did what I could. As for the name of the woman who attacked you, as you know, I heard that from the coroner.”

Greystoke paused, waiting for an answer that would tell him whether he needed to draw his sword.

No one spoke.

“I will continue to do my duty, as Walsingham bade me,” he added.

Still no one spoke. Far away down the street, someone slammed a shutter.

Greystoke stepped back, as if to depart. But he added, “It pains me to think that you are so suspicious of me, and that however much I have tried to help you, I have been held at arm’s length. I will not trespass on your time any longer.”

He did not bow. He simply walked back across the street.

“He is lying,” said Thomas.

“I know,” replied Clarenceux.

Thursday, January 30

In the morning, Greystoke waited until Clarenceux departed for Cecil House. Seeing that Fyndern was watching from the hall window, he took a wherry along the river rather than walk through the streets. The tide being high, the waterman ferried him with no difficulty beneath the great arches of the bridge to Lyon Quay, and there he waited again. Sure now of his free passage, he made his way along Botolph’s Lane and Philpot Lane to the Black Swan.

Buckman greeted him as an old friend, embracing him, a sparkle in his bespectacled eyes. “So you have succeeded in wresting Mistress Harley from her husband, and his daughter too. Most well done.” The priest pulled over a bench for Greystoke to sit on in the candlelit garret.

“The constant surveillance paid off,” said Greystoke, putting his foot on the bench and leaning with his elbow on his knee. “His wife was tricked by a fake message, delivered by a fake manservant, relayed to her by Cecil’s trusting ushers. All we had to do after that was to wait. She is now in the old stone farmhouse in the fields near Islington. There it does not matter how loudly she cries; no one will hear.”

Buckman smiled and blinked. “This calls for a celebration, a toast.” He reached for a pair of turned wooden cups and poured some wine into each one. “I will send to Lady Percy with the good news tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s to our success.”

Both men drank.

Greystoke leaned forward, cradling the cup in his hands. “Wooden cups. An unlit garret. No one can say you are a hypocrite, Father, in your hermitage in the city. I like that. Luxuries are for other people.”

“What I have is plenty in the eyes of the Lord.”

“Has Lady Percy sent more women?”

“Three. Of whom two made the grade.”

“And the third?”

Buckman gestured to the two large oak chests. “These old trees can be very useful. Especially when weighed down with stones. People expect them to be carted to the quay, and for them to take two or three men to lift.”

Greystoke set his cup on the table beside the burning candlestick. He paused, about to speak.

“Yes?”

“I need to ask you a question, Father. If it is expedient and dutiful in God’s sight to kill those who threaten our project, are there aspects which…” He hesitated again. “Are there acts which normally would be abhorrent that are permissible for the greater achievement?”

“You are being evasive,” said Buckman. “Just because it is necessary to eradicate the threat of a woman going to the authorities does not automatically justify all other moral crimes.”

“But some others?”

“Such as?”

Greystoke ran his fingers through his white hair. Eventually he said, “The woman, Awdrey Harley. She is deeply devoted to her husband. And she very probably knows where he has hidden what we seek. Now, we could use painful devices, but such is her devotion that I think we would have more success if we threatened her virtue: by filling her womb with the seed of another man. The prospect of that might turn her.”

“I see.” Buckman thought long and hard. He started blinking, then reached forward and refilled his cup and Greystoke’s too.

Greystoke felt obliged to justify his suggestion. “I know the Commandment about not committing adultery, and this woman is married. But it would encourage her to speak the truth.”

“You are right to point to the Commandment. But you are not married—and I presume it would be you who is taking charge of this responsibility. Are you familiar with Deuteronomy, chapter twenty, verses ten to sixteen? ‘When coming to a city of thine enemy, first proclaim peace.’ In my understanding, that is what you have done already, seeking Clarenceux’s friendship. ‘If the city makes war with thee, then thou mayst besiege it. And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it to thee, then thou shalt smite all the males with the edge of the sword and take all the women, the children, and the cattle for thine own.’ It seems as though the answer to your question is whether you believe the siege yet to be won. Has the Lord delivered the city to you—or just the woman?”

Greystoke felt a stirring in his body. “The Lord saw fit to deliver her into my hands.”

“I would caution you: if you do this act, self-indulgence will imperil you—all of us. Be pure, my son. As you observe in the way I live here.”

Greystoke nodded. He lifted his foot off the bench and walked slowly across the garret, thinking. “Clarenceux said that the document is in Oxford, in St. John’s College. He may have been lying but, at the time he said it, Ann Thwaite was holding a knife to his wife’s throat.”

“He has said on another occasion that it is in Oxfordshire,” replied Buckman. “Helen Oudry overheard him talking to his manservant. Perhaps he is telling the truth. See if you can wheedle confirmation out of him.”

“It is too late,” said Greystoke, shaking his head. “He knows.”

Buckman blinked and adjusted his spectacles. “How can that be? Who told?”

“No one told. He notices things. He watches us day and night, as we watch him. He is the sort of man whose suspicions linger in his mind; he’s a man who likes his suspicions, who nurtures them. He picked up on the fact I knew who one of the women was. But the pretense lasted longer than we thought. It served its purpose.”

Buckman was silent for a long time. “This puts a different complexion on things. Do not risk confronting him again. I will wait, and let him sweat for a few days, before I send word to him. In the meantime, do what you must with his wife.”

Clarenceux bent forward and kissed Annie on the forehead as she lay in the bed. Placing a hand on her cheek, he whispered a prayer for her. He tried to think of her gasps and delirium as diminishing, and rosy-cheeked health blossoming in her. It was a picture of a prayer. Then he made the sign of the cross and gestured to the servant standing in the doorway to lead him to Cecil’s study.

“William,” said Cecil as he entered, looking up from the pile of papers spread on the table in front of him. “Is there news?”

Clarenceux shook his head. “I was hoping that your searchers would have yielded some.”

“Apart from the dead body of the gentleman usher who accompanied Awdrey, nothing. No one knows anything; no one saw anything.”

“And Walsingham? What about his men? What use has he been?”

Cecil straightened his back and put his pen down. “Mr. Walsingham is doing all he can to ensure the safety of you and your family.”

Clarenceux raised a finger. “That is where you and I have to disagree. His man Greystoke is not trustworthy. You yourself cast aspersions on his integrity.”

“I simply reminded you that you should err on the side of caution.”

“Sir William, listen to yourself. One of your servants has been murdered. Your wife’s godchild has been kidnapped outside your own house, together with her mother. And that is not all. Greystoke was signaling to the women who attacked me…He used a mirror to flash the light into their chamber across the street. Twice he entered my house falsely to demonstrate his loyalty by killing them. He is cold and ruthless and he is against me—I know it. I
know
it. Walsingham sent a man who is working for the Catholic cause against me, to spy on me. Walsingham is being used.”

“Damn it, William. Have you quite had your fill? Because I don’t want to be interrupted when I say what I have to say.”

Clarenceux glared at Cecil.

“I asked Mr. Walsingham why he trusts John Greystoke, as you requested. Mr. Walsingham’s reasons were sound. They met years ago in Italy, in Padua, when the English religious émigrés were staying in the Republic of Venice. Mr. Greystoke came back to England when the queen ascended the throne. He has undertaken many missions for Walsingham and proved successful, even when in danger of his life. Most tellingly, it was Mr. Greystoke who told Francis about Maurice Buckman. Does that name mean anything to you? He also goes by the name of John Black. He acts as the go-between from Lady Douglas to Lady Percy. It was Mr. Greystoke also who told Mr. Walsingham about Lady Percy’s women. Without Mr. Greystoke, this investigation would be nowhere.”

“I do not believe that is the whole story,” said Clarenceux, walking across the room, clenching his fist.

Sir William rose to his feet. “Give me one hard fact, one indisputable piece of evidence that I can give to Walsingham to show he trusts the wrong man.”

“I do not understand you, Sir William. You yourself warned me against trusting him. Yet you will not question Walsingham’s trust. And you ask
me
to give you evidence. Why not ask Walsingham to produce proof that Greystoke is loyal to her majesty?”

“You could have made this much easier by handing over that document to me. Much easier for yourself and your family, and everyone else.”

Clarenceux said nothing. It felt as if the whole world was against him, and that Cecil was in league with Walsingham and Greystoke and even this mysterious priest, Father Maurice Buckman, alias John Black. But how could that be? Catholics in league with Protestants? Loyal men in collaboration with avowed traitors? The cold sickness of self-doubt muted his protests and forced him to think of home, and the loss of his wife, and the only people left to him now whom he could trust.

He swallowed. “I will go and bid farewell to my daughter,” he said.