Sacred Treason (23 page)

A flickering torchlight appeared behind them on the spiral stairs.

“Don't fear them,” he urged, finding the door and fumbling for the latch.

The door was unlocked. Clarenceux opened it. The shadows of the chill night revealed that they were in a brick courtyard at the side of the house. There was only one obvious way out: through a gate ahead of them, beneath an arch. It was the only thing they could see—it was too dark to see any other doorway. But the gate was wide enough to allow delivery carts, and that meant it had to lead to the street. Clarenceux pulled Rebecca toward it.

“Hold there!” yelled a voice behind. The light of a flaming torch fell on the gate. But Clarenceux was not turning back now. By the torchlight he saw the handle in the center of the gate, grabbed it and turned it, and pulled the left-hand side open to allow Rebecca through. He followed her as the pursuers rushed toward them, shouting, and slammed the gate shut behind him, holding the metal ring of the handle on the outside of the door.

“Go down the lane,” he gasped, holding the door firmly shut despite the attempts of the men within to open it. “Turn right and keep going. I'll see you at the back of St. Michael's Church.”

Rebecca hesitated. There were people all around them in the street, hooded shadows moving here and there, a few with lanterns but most simply returning from the markets.

“Go on! Run!” he shouted as he fought to hold the handle of the door.

Rebecca turned and ran.

He had only seconds now to make up his mind what to do next. A sudden forceful effort from those within pulled the door open a couple of inches; Clarenceux hauled it back but could not shut it. He could see the flickering of a torch through the narrow opening, like the flames of a pyre, and the light that was cast on his gloves.
Crackenthorpe's men are probably running through the house now, about to come around from the front and trap me.
Again there was a great pull from those inside. Clarenceux turned and frantically looked for somewhere to hide, knowing he could not outrun the guards. But there was nothing to see—it was far too dark. But as he looked at an approaching group of hooded figures, their faces invisible in the near-darkness, he realized what he had to do. He waited another moment, and another, as several lanterns came toward him, and then let go.

***

Holding a flaming torch in his left hand, the huge figure of Richard Crackenthorpe yanked open the front door with his right and jumped down the steps into the snowy street. He drew his sword as he turned to the outer gate, expecting it to be closed and to see Clarenceux there. But there was no one. The door was open, yet there was no fighting. There were just the shadows of his men.

“Where is he?” yelled Crackenthorpe to the crowd in the street. A woman screamed when she saw the sword, and all the figures in the lane backed away from him as he swirled between them, pushing back the hats and hoods of those nearest him. “Where is he?” he shouted into the faces of the three watchmen who had come out through the gate. “He cannot simply have disappeared.”

“We could not see,” explained the man who had passed through first. “When we pulled the door open it was too dark to recognize anyone. And then you appeared, and the torchlight reflected on the snow.”

“The pox and the bloody flux upon you.” Crackenthorpe took a deep breath. “Damn you! I want you to pursue…No.” He stuck the sword in the snow. “No. The city gates are shut now. They will try to leave the city through the blacksmith's yard by Cripplegate. Two of you will stay here to guard Draper—I do not trust him. You two, come with me.”

“Why bother guarding Draper? Didn't you see? Clarenceux bloodied his face.”

“But he left him alive. If Draper had betrayed me like that, I would have slit his throat.”

Clarenceux ran on in the darkness for as long as he could. His whole body had taken too many blows—not just his bruised knee. He ached; he just wanted to lie down and sleep.

But he was alive and free.

On he went, pushing hard on his leg.
It
will
not
defeat
me. Today, nothing will defeat me. A left turn, then a right, and I will be heading straight for St. Michael's Church in Wood Street. Where will Rebecca be? At the back, I said. In the churchyard.

Clarenceux slowed. Another group was approaching with a lantern, and they were not on their way home; they were official watchmen. For a moment he felt the irony of escaping from one danger because he had no light and then being arrested for nightwalking. He stopped and backed into the side of the street as the swinging light and shadows passed.

He felt the still falling snowflakes cold against his neck and the wet fur of his collar. He pulled the robe closer and limped on, bumping occasionally into carts, barrels, and the other jetsam of the back streets of the city. Soon the tower of St. Michael's Church showed against the dark sky. Coming to the wall of the cemetery, he felt with his hand all the way around to the lychgate and went through.

His cap was soaked now and melted snow was running down the inside of his shirt. The city was almost silent. Only the occasional shout of watchmen in neighboring streets disturbed the peace, or a father shouting at his children behind the shutters of a nearby house. He heard the screeching of cats fighting not far away. Then it was silent again.

“Goodwife Machyn?” he called quietly. But there was only silence in the churchyard.

Where
is
she? I said the back of the church. Surely she must have understood that to be the churchyard? The church itself will be locked at this hour.

“Goodwife Machyn?” he said a little louder. “Rebecca?”

His shoe caught on a recently dug mound of earth; he stumbled forward, his gloved hand burying itself in fresh snow. He got up, shook it, and moved on.

Nothing. Just cold silence. And the smell of wood smoke. The church rose in stone before him.

She
is
not
here.

What
if
they
caught
her?
Clarenceux's thoughts began to gnaw at him.
If
she
has
been
arrested, what should I do? I have no way of finding her. If I go and take shelter in the stable lofts of the tenements near Aldersgate, she will never find me.

The thoughts turned in his mind, leaving it as cold as a bone beneath the stars.
I
cannot
lose
her
now, not when we have come so far.

“Rebecca?”

Only the snowy silence answered, and the barking of a dog in the next street.

Clarenceux waited for twenty minutes, leaning against the wall of the church. His robe was soaking wet. He turned and placed his hands flat upon the cold stones. Holy though they were, he could find no consolation in them. All he could see in his mind was Rebecca. Somehow he had lost her. He rested his forehead against the stones and remembered his father's words years ago, a few days after his sister had died.
Gold, fame, and fine horses mean very little; this is what we learn when we lose a loved one.
His sister had been sixteen and he fourteen; all the laughter they had shared had vanished, never to come back. In the years since he had come to think of his faith as a consolation. Faith did not diminish with the loss of a mortal soul. But now he was not so sure.
Where
is
faith
now? What is God's consolation? If a man loses someone he holds dear yet can find consolation in God alone, surely that person never meant that much to him?

And then he shocked himself, profoundly.
If
the
spiritual
world
is
as
real
as
the
material
world, then one is meaningless without the other.

“God alone is not enough,” he whispered to himself.

Suddenly he was swimming in deep pools of truth. He felt sick as he started to walk alongside the church, steadying himself on the stones. He made the sign of the cross in the darkness.

God
alone
is
not
enough. Not enough.

Someone moved nearby.

“Is that you?” a woman's voice whispered.

“Goodwife Machyn?” He could hear the weakness of his voice.

A hand touched his arm. “It is me. Rebecca.”

“Rebecca.”

He held her hand in his and recognized the feel of her and put his arm around her, clasping her tightly and holding her cheek to his own.

“For a moment, I thought God had been cruel,” he said.

“God is never cruel. Only we are vulnerable. How did you escape?”

“I will tell you, but not here. First we must find somewhere to hide. I know a place not far away.”

He took her hand in his and led her through the darkness.

***

The stable felt warm as they came in from the cold. The smell and the heat of the horses was welcome after the ice and snow of the lanes. Clarenceux knew where to feel for the ladder in the darkness, and they climbed into the stable loft and lay upon a pile of soft hay, fragrant of a now-forgotten summer. They lay near each other and were quiet for a long time.

“So how did you escape?”

“The soldiers' eyes were used to the torchlight—I realized they would be plunged into darkness when they came out. Like moths, their eyes were bound to be drawn to the first lights they saw in the street. I guessed it would be two or three seconds before they could make out a human shape. That's enough time for a man in a dark robe and a black velvet cap to disappear in the shadows.”

“I was so worried. I went back to look for you—I thought that if you were caught, I needed to know. To try to find out where they took you, so I could tell Julius. But by the time I got there you had vanished.”

“All is well now, though.” Clarenceux leaned back in the hay and looked up into the darkness. “I think we have done all we can in the city. We know who the traitor is. No one has breathed a word about the last two Knights—not even their Arthurian names. It is time to go and check what dates we have against the chronicle, to find out what they mean.”

“Why do you think one of the Knights' names cannot be mentioned?”

“You knew Henry better than anyone else; why do you think?”

Rebecca was silent.

“Rebecca?”

She sighed—not with relief but with unease. “Why did they break Henry's legs?”

Clarenceux knew the answer would hurt her. It was an image which deeply troubled him too. “They have various methods of torture. It could be any one of several. But he is at peace now. It is over for him.”

“What he started, we must finish.”

“I feel as you do. We are resolved.”

“So the next thing is to get back to the chronicle,” she said, resting her head on his chest. “There's no point in leaving here before dawn. We cannot pick up the horses until after the inn opens.”

“No, but it might be easier to leave the city by night than during the day. Crackenthorpe knows we are still within the walls. He will have guards on every gate.”

“What do you suggest? Another exit?”

“Indeed. There is a gate in the backyard of a blacksmith by Cripplegate. Henry told me about it. I used it the night I called on your house.”

“I know it. The blacksmith is my brother, Robert.”

Clarenceux had not made the connection. “Of course. You said your maiden name was Lowe. I did not know you had a brother. You've never mentioned him.”

“We're not close. But Henry liked him.”

“Well, in that case, you know the place. From there we can find our way to my house and wait there until dawn. No one is going to imagine it needs searching again, not after the damage they did. And no one will be watching it; there is no one there.”

“Let's rest here first,” she said. “It will be safer in the streets in the middle of the night, and both of us are tired.”

As he lay there, feeling her head on his chest, he was glad.
God
alone
is
not
enough.

After a while she asked, “What do you know about the Pilgrimage of Grace?”

“Why?”

“Because Gyttens said it was the reason why the Knights started to meet. It was long before 1550, wasn't it? I remember people talking about a Catholic rebellion in the north, and a large number of men being executed—but I was only nine or ten, I think.”

“There was a rising of discontented followers of the old religion in Lincolnshire. It was in October 1536, after Henry the Eighth had broken from Rome and was determined to impose his will upon the English Church—as if its lands were his own to dispose of. The lords and gentry of the county, like the common folk, all agreed that what the king was doing amounted to heresy as well as tyranny. Their forefathers had founded monasteries and endowed them so priests would sing Masses for their souls; what right had the king to dissolve them and sell off the land? What right had the king to make the break with Rome and declare himself spiritual head of the Church in England? As for the nobles, what right had the king to sell off the very abbeys in which their predecessors had been laid to rest, as if their honorable bones had been buried in any common kitchen? In this they found common cause with the people who looked at the altars of their country churches and could not believe that the figures of the saints to whom they had prayed last week were now to be destroyed. We forget what a shock it was, even those of us who look back on their struggle and believe they were right and good people. Remember the old days: when your horse broke a leg or your mother broke an arm, you would place a clay or wax figure on the altar, make a donation, and pray. The old king forbade that. To many people it seemed that he had made it a heresy even to pray for good health. Add to that the physical destruction of the rood in every church and the implementation of a new prayer book, and you can begin to see why the people of Lincolnshire rose as one. Rich and poor, young and old, they all did exactly what the king had forbidden them to do: they went on a pilgrimage to Lincoln. Forty thousand of them. They wanted their saints back; they wanted to be able to go on pilgrimages and make offerings. They wanted to pray in their own way, to do what they knew was dutiful in God's eyes.”

“That was the Pilgrimage of Grace?”

“No, that was just the start. The king responded by sending the blood-stained duke of Suffolk against the pilgrims. He threatened the faithful with death if they refused to give up the pilgrimage and go home. The king himself had expressly ordered that no mercy was to be shown them, the duke said. As a result, the men of Yorkshire began their own protest, under the leadership of a lawyer, Robert Aske. He was a pious man; he did not want to provoke a conflict, nor even to threaten the king's forces. He led nine thousand men into York and restored the monasteries there. He was a good leader too; he took Pontefract Castle without a single casualty and kept his followers under control, so there was no looting or theft. He even managed to control the more political demands of his fellow gentlemen. But the king was duplicitous. He accepted a list of demands sent to him by Aske but never responded. When pressed, the king pretended to accede and Aske, realizing his pilgrims could not remain mobilized indefinitely, disbanded them. In January 1537, after a rebellion in Cumberland, the king gave orders that all those who had taken part in the events at York should be rounded up and executed. More than two hundred knights, abbots, priests, and clergymen were hanged. Aske himself was dragged back to York and hanged there in chains.”

Clarenceux shook his head, his voice cracking with emotion. “When people ask me about my religion, what I mean when I say I am
Catholic
in my faith, I think of the men trying to protect the burial places of their families, and their honest ways of praying, and their desperate hopes in the saints, and I applaud them for fighting to preserve the Church from the monster that was Henry the Eighth. And yet what did I do? I fought for that despicable, unholy king at Boulogne. I fought for him in Lord Paget's company, under the command of the same duke of Suffolk. To the end of my days I will regret that. And to the end of my days I will believe that what Henry did in the north was the work of the Devil. Kings should not pretend to be men of the Church or to rule the Church; nor should they condemn men simply because of their faith.”

Rebecca was quiet for a long time. “That is what we are getting ourselves involved in, isn't it? You are a new Robert Aske.”

Clarenceux rested his head in his hands.
They
begged
Aske
to
be
their
leader; Henry begged me to take the chronicle. Like Aske, I am prepared to fight for what I believe is right. For both of us it is a matter of freedom. But there is a difference: Aske knew what he was up against.

“If I am, does that matter to you?”

“Yes. It means that I believe in you.”

***

They left the stable loft about three o'clock in the morning. The sky had cleared, and the new moon had not yet appeared, so the stars were the only light. It was just enough to show the whiteness of the snow; they could see the streets and alleys and did not have to feel their way.

They walked carefully nonetheless. The deeper cold meant that the snow had frozen harder, but at the edge of the lanes it had not compacted as much and so crunched under their feet. Clarenceux led the way, stopping here and there to check for the night watch in this ward. No one seemed to be about. There was just starlit stillness.