Sacred Treason (25 page)

It was about an hour and a half before dawn when Clarenceux opened the door to the stables. He listened. No sound came from above. He felt his way to the ladder and climbed, stopping halfway to whisper, “Are you here?”

He heard Rebecca move. “Oh, Christ be praised! I heard the fight in the yard and came back here, as you said. Are you hurt?”

“I have more bruises, a cut to my face and another on my arm, and I am covered in blood—but most of the blood is not mine.”

“Whose is it?” she asked as he reached the top of the ladder.

“One of Crackenthorpe's men.” Clarenceux remembered the moment. It had been a cold-blooded, merciless killing. In terms of its execution, it had been perfect. But he felt sick with himself. He was a herald, not an executioner.

He bent down, felt the hay, and let himself fall into its softness. “Goodwife Machyn, we cannot continue like this. Crackenthorpe knows we are together. The Knights are in disarray; they can do nothing to help themselves. We have to get out of the city.”

She came near him in the darkness and lay down beside him. “That is what we are trying to do, isn't it? That is why we went to my brother's house.”

“I suppose so. I just want to be away from this city, from …all this.”

Rebecca heard the note of despair in his voice and was worried. He had not previously sounded so weary, so despondent. If he had thought such things, he had not expressed them to her. He had always been strong for her. It was her turn now to be strong—to distract him from the abyss of dark doubts.

“I've been thinking while I have been waiting—about the names.”

“What have you found out?”

“Nothing—except I have an idea. Maybe the names of the Knights spell a word.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You asked why there were two Sir Reynolds and not one Galahad or Gawain. No Mordred. Well, maybe it's simply because the word that Henry intended required two R's.”

Clarenceux was skeptical. “Is that what Henry might have thought? Does that sound like his way of thinking?”

“As much as anything else I can think of.”

“So, which letters have we got, if we put all seven together?”

“Lancelot Heath—L for Lancelot. You and Henry—C for Clariance. Michael and Nicholas Hill are Ector and Reynold, so E and R. There's D for Dagonet, another Reynold and Yvain. So…”

“L, C, E, R, D, R, Y,” he repeated. “Only one vowel.”

“The other names could be vowels. A could be Arthur.”

“But it doesn't seem right that someone else should be King Arthur if Sir Arthur Darcy—one of the founders—was merely Sir Reynold.”

“So, if there's no A, what about U—for King Uther? Do you think we can dismiss that too?”

“I don't think we can guess things like this. If we had an M and an O we could make ‘Mercy, Lord.' If there was an A, then one word might be ‘Darcy.' But who knows? They might not actually be initials. We need to see the chronicle.”

Wednesday, December 15

Dawn had broken: light now crept around the opening of the door to the stables, and in through the cracks under the eaves. One of the horses shifted her hooves and searched for fodder; her stablemate awoke and whinnied.

Above, lying on the hay, Clarenceux opened his eyes, blinked, and looked around. He lifted himself onto one elbow. Rebecca was asleep beside him. He watched as she started to stir also, her deep slumber touched by the never-sleeping part of her mind that knew she was in danger, which even now was listening out for signs of alarm. But the sound of the horses was not enough to wake her; she had become accustomed to being in the stable.

He looked at her face, eyes closed, seemingly at peace. He looked at her brown hair upon her pale neck, the mole on the side of her face. He was struck by her beauty. Looking at her sleeping was an indulgence; he could gaze on her. And yet she was not the same woman as she was when awake. If she woke now, he would feel guilty.

Suddenly there was a cough outside. The door to the stable creaked open, the latch lifted by an uncareful hand.

Clarenceux was on his knees instantly, reaching for the sword that he had brought back in the early hours. He picked it up and crouched, ready, hearing the person in the stable below and Rebecca shifting as she woke. He moved forward, peering down through the open space where the ladder rested.

Rebecca gasped and started breathing as if in shock. He turned to gesture to her to keep quiet and saw that she was looking at him.

“Holy Mother of God,” she whispered.

Clarenceux turned back to the stables, watching. A lad appeared, not more than twelve years old. He watched him pat the first horse and hand her some good oats.

“Mr. Clarenceux, look at yourself,” Rebecca whispered, touching his arm.

Clarenceux looked down. His robe was streaked with the brown encrusted blood of the soldier. His hands were torn and bloodied. His clothes were ripped too, with seven or eight holes and gashes to his legs. As for his face, Rebecca's expression told him enough.
The
boy
will
scream
if
he
sees
me
like
this.

He moved away from the opening. “The boy down there is called Philip,” he whispered. “He's the son of Tom Griffiths, a dealer in hides and skins. Tell him I am here, and that I'm hurt. We need his help.”

When he heard the footsteps on the ladder, the boy was startled. He dropped a bucket he had been holding and backed away. The sight of a woman only confused him further.

“Philip?” Rebecca asked, stepping cautiously down the ladder as he retreated to the far side of the stable. She could see he had fair, curly hair by the light of a small window.

The boy said nothing. He glanced at the door but did not run. He was further from the door than she was.

“Don't worry,” she said. “There is a friend of your father's upstairs in the hay loft. He is badly injured. Do you know him? He is an important man; his name is Mr. William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms.”

Again the boy glanced at the door. Rebecca felt he might bolt for it, and waited, watching him breathe.

“Is Mr. Clarenceux in danger?” he asked at length.

Rebecca nodded. “There are men chasing him who want to kill him. We need your help to get washed and dressed in some spare clean clothes—they can be old, they don't have to be new—so we can get out of the city. Can you do that for us?”

The boy hesitated for a long time. Then he said, “By your leave, madam, I will ask my father.”

This troubled Rebecca. But it was inevitable. She stood back as he walked self-consciously from the stable. Their fate was now in the hands of this boy's father, a stranger to her, a skinner by the name of Tom Griffiths. If he valued his safety more than Clarenceux's friendship, they were dead. They would be waiting there until the guards came.

No one came.

Rebecca went back up the ladder to Clarenceux. He was crouching by a chink of light, tending to his wounds as best he could. As she came up the stairs he looked up at her.

“He's gone to get his father.”

Clarenceux nodded and looked down. He could not keep his worry hidden when he looked at her. She could see it in his face. And she knew it was reflected in her own.

The stable door opened again. They both heard heavy footsteps on the ladder. Clarenceux glanced at where he had hidden the sword, under the hay. If it came to the worst, he could make a fight for it here—perhaps hold them up while Rebecca escaped.

Another step, and another. The whiskered face of Tom Griffiths appeared at the top of the ladder. He caught sight of Clarenceux, crouched in the hay, and Rebecca standing beside him, and climbed the last rungs.

“My boy tells me you're in trouble.”

Clarenceux could not be sure how this meeting would turn out. He had no inkling of Griffiths's religion. He only knew him on two accounts: the tenement he rented and the Skinners Company. He could easily imagine the gruff and stoutly traditional Griffiths taking it into his head to turn him in to the authorities.

“Goodman Griffiths, I am in a desperate plight. A man of my acquaintance—this goodwife's husband—came to me one night last week and asked for my help. Naturally, I did what I could, but there is some business in which the man was involved that attracted the attention of a royal sergeant-at-arms. I don't know what that business is; I am trying to find out. Nevertheless, that same sergeant-at-arms wrecked my house the following day and killed one of my servants, a boy. The same man tortured this woman's husband to death. Last night there was an attempt to kill me. I fled here in desperation. I need to leave the city and to stay away for a while. I need clean clothes and a basin of water.”

Griffiths thought for a moment. “You left tracks. Not just footprints; bloody tracks. They lead straight to this stable.”

“For that, Goodman Griffiths, I am deeply sorry. I beg your forgiveness.”

Griffiths said nothing.

“We have trespassed on your time too much and will trouble you no more,” said Clarenceux suddenly, feeling that Griffiths was disinclined to help them. He started to get to his feet.

Griffiths did not budge. “Hear me out, first, before you go. You are a good man, Mr. Clarenceux. I know you don't have to come here and check these houses. The queen's bailiff would take the same two pounds and five shillings every quarter either way, and it would be delivered to you whether you cared about their condition or not. But you do come and look, and you do send men to repair them. You take far more care of us than the bailiff. Maybe you've only done all that so today you'd have a hiding place. But you're a good warden of the company too. So I'll do a deal with you. I have a young family, and we have little money. It is a struggle every quarter to pay the rent. If I don't give you clean clothes but take you out of the city in a pelterer's cart, how much is it worth?”

“A pelterer's cart?” Clarenceux almost laughed at the repulsive thought. But then he realized that it was perfect. Who would suspect anyone would hide in a cart of stinking hides and skins?

“We need to go across the bridge, to Southwark.”

“Then I'll take you across the bridge. There's a three-penny toll for a full cart.”

Clarenceux looked up at Rebecca. She looked nervous but shrugged her shoulders.
What
alternative
have
we
got?

He felt in his pocket for the purse he had taken from the table in Draper's study and looked at the coins. “Half a year's rent. Four pounds ten shillings.”

“Make it five pounds.”

“Payable when you get us safely to the stable yard of the Bell Inn in Southwark.”

“Mr. Clarenceux, you and I have an agreement.”

Lady Percy, the dowager countess of Northumberland, was about sixty years of age. She had a permanent frown upon her deeply lined, very pale face. She was motionless, seated on a massive horse in the park of Sheffield Manor, which was slightly frosted after the recent cold weather. Her small bright eyes were fixed on the dead rabbit in front of her. The goshawk had dropped it on the ground and, being allowed to peck, had broken open the skull and eaten the brains first. Then it had eaten the rest of the head and the top half of the body. Next it had upended the remains, so the legs were in the air, and pulled the fur out in tufts, scattering it all around the carcass. Now it was gorging on the thigh muscles. Every so often it would look up and its bright red eye would switch from point to point in the landscape.

Her ladyship remained motionless. Fascinated.

She had seen the rider out of the corner of her eye but he could wait. Her servants had instructions not to disturb her. If she guessed rightly, she knew who the caller was, and what his mission was.

Today her hawk was not hungry and quickly lost interest. With a sudden great beating of its wings, it flew off. Her ladyship waved a hand at her falconer and turned her horse back to the manor to see the visitor.

***

No one spoke to her until she had dismounted and entered the house. The servants knew better; the visitor understood and bided his time as he watched her stride into the lofty hall, then turn to receive him formally.

“My lady, this man announces himself as Sir Percival.”

“Well he might,” she responded. Looking at him she said, “Your arrival means bad news.”

“Indeed, my lady,” replied Sir Percival, bowing and removing his traveling cope. He was a tall, thin man of forty years, with a neat brown beard and sharp, concentrated features that suggested he was a shrewd man, which indeed he was. His eyes were not unkind but nor were they forgiving; his lips were pursed as if permanently considering a grave matter.

“When did you leave London?”

“On Sunday morning, not long before midday.”

“We must converse in private.” Turning to the various servants who had now gathered in the hall, she declared, “There is no need for any of you to be present. Come, sir.” And with that, she turned and marched up to the dais, stepped onto it, and went through the wide doorway and up the broad sweeping stairs beyond.

***

They were alone in the privy chamber, next to her bedchamber. There was only the one seat: a large wooden throne, on which Lady Percy sat. Apart from the tapestries on the walls and a chest behind the throne, there was no other furniture in the room.

“What time did he die?”

“That I do not know, my lady. I left London as soon as I had had confirmation from Mistress Barker's contacts.”

“But he definitely passed over the chronicle? To its intended recipient?”

“Yes, my lady. To the new King Clariance.”

“Well, that is something, at least.”

Lady Percy tapped the arm of her throne. The man before her was the linchpin, the Knight whose name was not known to the others and whose principal purpose was to announce to her when the chronicle changed hands. In line with the original plan he should now return to London and make his identity known to the new King Clariance. But if the plot had been discovered, this was dangerous.

“I presume you have not yet revealed your identity?”

“No.” Sir Percival looked her in the eye. “The new King Clariance knows nothing.”

Lady Percy got up from the chair and walked to the window. “It is difficult to know what to do. The plan was all about the right time to act, not about how to cope with betrayal. I take it you understand what has happened?”

“Not entirely, my lady.”

She continued walking, considering her words carefully.

“One of the Knights—Sir Dagonet, whose real name I understand is William Draper—was heard discussing the Knights' fraternity with representatives of Queen Mary of Scots, at Holyrood. He was heard by a number of men, one of whom was a spy for Elizabeth of England, a man called Wood. Apparently Draper spoke about Henry Machyn's chronicle. As you are aware, there is not much damage a Knight can do by himself; that is why the fraternity exists. But when I made further inquiries, it turned out that Wood had left Scotland immediately and Draper was following him back to London. As it was certain that Wood would tell the authorities, I decided to eliminate Draper, to stop them from interrogating him further. There was little time to spare, but I judged the mission essential. I sent a good man with instructions: he was to return a certain pistol when Draper was dead. That was nine days ago. Needless to say, I have not received the pistol.”

Sir Percival nodded, understanding now what had thrown the whole scheme into jeopardy. “Henry Machyn told me on Friday he was planning to hand over the chronicle that night—he knew Draper had talked. He said he had been told by a royal sergeant-at-arms that he had twenty-four hours to surrender the chronicle or he would be killed. But he was resolute. He sent his wife to Mistress Barker's, telling her to stay with her. I waited for those twenty-four hours and was preparing to come north on Sunday when a message came to Mistress Barker's that Henry Machyn's corpse had been seen at the plague pit.”

“Is Mistress Barker still in London?”

“Yes.”

“And her identity is still a secret?”

“As far as I know.”

“Good. She is a brave woman, my sister. If the new King Clariance can act on the instructions he has received, we may still have a chance.”