Salvation (4 page)

At dinner, Meg sat at the far end of the long table, watching him eat copiously and with relish but the smell and sight of the roasted meats sickened her. She toyed with some bread and took a few sips of wine, wishing she was alone.

‘You’re very quiet, wife,’ Edward observed, when he had gnawed the last of the flesh from a capon leg and wiped the grease from his lips.

‘Forgive me, husband, my head aches and the heat has tired me.’

‘And the reading, no doubt,’ he grunted. ‘It’s time you had other occupations. Too much time spent with books does women no good. Their brains are weak and should not be overtaxed.’

He tossed back the last of his wine. Meg winced as he stood up and his chair grated over the stone floor. ‘Steward!’ he shouted. ‘I have no appetite for more. Clear all this away.’

Stephen, the steward, hurried forward.

Meg waited for Edward to help her up from the table. He put his arm around her waist and drew her to him. His breath was laden with garlic and wine. ‘But I have an appetite for something else,’ he murmured. ‘Tell your maid to make you ready for bed. I have some accounts I must look over, but it will not take long.’

Upstairs, Bess helped her out of her clothes and into her nightgown.

‘Shall I unpin your hair, my lady?’

‘No, I’ll do it myself. You may leave me now.’

Bess bobbed a curtsey and went to the door; it clicked shut behind her.

Left alone, Meg opened a drawer and took out the letter from Tom she had found that afternoon. She knew she should burn it. Tom always insisted they should not keep each other’s letters once they had read them, but she was tempted to disobey. She could hide it somewhere. Even if Bess or one of the maids came across it, it would not matter, none of them could read. She looked around the room but then changed her mind. Tom was right. Even if it was unlikely the letter would be discovered, it was a risk she need not take.

Reluctantly, she carried it to the hearth and placed it gently on the stone. She took a candle from the mantelshelf and touched its flame to the paper then watched the letter flare up. Slowly it twisted and shrivelled until nothing but ashes remained. It seemed to her that her heart had turned to ashes too. Suppose the letter was the last she ever received from Tom? What would she do then?

A breeze from the garden made the candle flame flicker and stirred the tapestry on the wall beside the open window. The bright, silken huntsmen and baying dogs it depicted moved in endless, fruitless pursuit across the imaginary greenwood. If nothing changes, she thought, and what hope is there of that, my life will be as empty as theirs.

She put down the candle and sat on the side of the bed. If only disaster had not visited Tom’s family, everything would have been so different. She and Tom might have been husband and wife by now, but as it had fallen out, it had been impossible to oppose her parents’ wishes. She wrapped her arms around herself for comfort. In the corridor, Edward’s familiar footsteps approached.

*

When she woke, the sun was up and the air in the room was stifling. Beside her, a deep indent remained in the crumpled sheets. She shuddered as she remembered Edward’s shoulders heaving above her and the sweat glistening on his forehead.

With a great effort, she banished the image and got up to look out at the day. In the courtyard below, a horse she did not recognise was tethered to the post by the porch. Fear overwhelmed her. Had the rider brought news of Tom?

‘Good morning, madam.’

Startled, she turned but it was only Bess setting down a basin of water on the dressing table.

‘Do you know who our visitor is?’ Meg asked, trying to make her voice sound casual.

‘I don’t, I’m sure, madam.’

Bess dipped
a cloth in the basin, then pinned up Meg’s hair and sponged her neck and arms in silence. Rose petals scented the water and usually it was a pleasant and refreshing morning ritual but today nothing eased Meg’s mind. Was Bess telling the truth? There was something furtive in her voice and it was unlike her to be so quiet.

‘Are you certain, Bess?’

Bess flushed. ‘I am, madam. Will you breakfast up here today, madam?’

Meg hesitated, torn between the longing to find out who the early visitor was and fear that she might betray her emotion in front of Edward. At last she nodded.

‘I’ll go and tell Cook straight away, shall I?’ Bess asked, scooping up the unused pins and clips and dropping them back into the jewelled box on the dressing table.

‘And come back and tell me who has called. My mother was unwell yesterday. Perhaps it
’s a message to tell me how she is.’

Meg
paced the floor as she waited. Her hand was on the door latch to go downstairs when she heard voices outside the window. Hurrying to look out, she saw Bess talking to the horse’s rider. His broad-brimmed hat shadowed his face, but Bess’s plump, pretty one was clearly visible. She seemed to be pleading with him, clinging to one of the stirrups as if she did not want him to go. Meg frowned. So Bess did know who he was after all. Why had she told a lie?

All of a sudden, the rider brushed Bess aside and jumped into the saddle. Meg caught a brief glimpse of his face, handsome in an arrogant way and framed with black hair. He looked a few years older than Tom.

Her heart raced. The rider fitted Tom’s description of his fellow clerk, Ralph Fiddler. Now she thought of it, she had noticed him with Bess at the May Day celebrations. Mother had said she should reprimand Bess for allowing him to be too free.

A strong feeling of foreboding that she could not fully explain came over Meg. Afraid she might be noticed, she shrank back into the room. A few moments later, the clatter of the horse’s hooves faded into the distance.

3

All day Tom walked and by evening he had reached Winchester. Footsore and weary, he found an inn just inside the city walls. As he passed an open window looking into a steamy kitchen, the smell of rabbit pie drifted towards him. He tipped out the coins in the pouch and counted them. Ralph had not been generous but there was enough for a pie and a jug of ale. After that he would have to hope he was lucky enough to beg a piece of horse bread here and there to sustain him.

He found a quiet corner and settled down with his food and drink. The inn was warm and after he had filled his stomach, his eyelids drooped. He woke from a dream of Meg to find a burly man with a florid, pock-marked face shaking him.

‘Wake up, lad. You can’t stay here unless you’ve money for a room.’

‘Wha’?’

The landlord scowled. ‘Go on, out with you. The cold might sober you up.’

Tom struggled to his feet. ‘I’m going.’

Outside, the moon dangled over the gabled roofs and countless stars burnt fiercely in the clear sky. As Tom passed the row of loose boxes where the inn’s customers stabled their horses for the night, a bay mare craned her head over her stall door and whinnied. He rubbed her nose and she nuzzled his hand, her ears twitching.

‘I’d share my food with you if I had any, old lady, but I haven’t.’

As if she understood, the mare lost interest and started to pull hay from the net hanging on the wall. A little further on, a wooden ladder led to an upper storey. Tom climbed it and, as he had expected, found himself in a hayloft; it was clean and dry with plenty of hay for bedding. The sweet meadow scent reminded him of how he and Meg had played in the fields together when they were children. What was she thinking now? He couldn’t blame her if she hated him. His only hope was that she would not believe he had abandoned her of his own free will. The words of the last poem he had written for her repeated in his head and he groaned. If only he had been able to give it to her. Unworthy as it was, it would have been a token of his love and might have pleased her. But it was too late now.

A chill came over him. The baker back in
Salisbury would surely go through the possessions he had left behind to see if there was anything worth selling to cover the unpaid rent. Suppose he found it? But no, the poem did not speak of Meg by name. It might have been addressed to anyone. The baker would suspect nothing. Scooping a pile of hay together, he lay down and pulled some more of it over him. He closed his eyes and soon he drifted into sleep. His last thoughts were of Meg.

*

When he woke the next morning, he stared at the beamed ceiling for a long moment before, with a heavy heart, he remembered where he was. He scraped wisps of hay from his hair and coughed up the chaff that had settled in his throat overnight. If only he had something to drink.

He slid
down the ladder and peered out cautiously. Two travellers wearing crimson and green doublets and black cloaks trotted into the yard and a groom ran forward to take their horses. Tom waited until the men had swaggered off into the inn before he emerged. He was starving but he dared not follow them in case the landlord recognised him.

He thought wistfully of last night’s rabbit pie as he made his way past the back entrance of the kitchens towards the street. A tantalising smell of fresh baking wafted from the open door. Just inside it, he noticed a tray of loaves cooling on a shelf. Surely no one would miss one? His heart thudding, he grabbed the nearest. It was so hot he almost dropped it at first then, quickly tucking it under his arm, he hurried away into the street.

That night and the next, he slept under hedges by the roadside, and woke in the morning with his clothes and hair damp with dew. By afternoon, clouds the colour of pewter scudded in from the west, bringing hours of heavy rain that soaked him to the bone and turned the rutted roads to a sea of mud.

Most of the time in his days of walking, his thoughts were of Meg, but sometimes they turned to Ralph and anger flooded through him. A wild desire to return to
Salisbury and confront Ralph seized him. It was only the thought of the likely consequence that stopped him from yielding.

There was fear too. Was it really only a wish to rid himself of Tom that drove Ralph? Could he be trusted to keep his word to leave Meg alone now? In Tom’s darkest moments, the thought of her at Ralph’s mercy tormented him. At other times, he held onto the belief that Ralph’s self-confessed wariness of Edward Stuckton would keep her safe. It was, however, a bitter pill to swallow that it might be Stuckton’s wealth and position alone that protected her; the realisation made Tom all the more wretched about his own helplessness.

By the fourth day, the blisters on his feet throbbed with every step and he had to stop to pack leaves inside his boots in the hope of easing the discomfort. Halfway through the morning, he came to a bustling town huddled beneath the ruins of what must once have been a great castle.

‘
Guildford,’ a stallholder answered when he stopped in the marketplace to ask the name of the town.

‘How much further is it to
London from here?’

The man scratched his chin with a calloused finger and considered for a while.

‘Two days, maybe, if you walk fast.’

He turned to serve a customer and Tom looked hungrily at the truckles of cheese set out on the stall. A small piece remaining from one of them was very close.
With a glance around to see if anyone was watching and then again at the stallholder, who was still talking to his customer, Tom whisked it away and hurried off. For a few minutes, he felt breathless expecting a hand on his shoulder, but none came. He was not sure whether to be ashamed or gleeful at his success.

As the day wore on, other roads joined the one he was on and the way became much busier. Carts and wagons trundled along piled high with bales of hay, sacks of flour and heaps of vegetables. Shire horses strained to pull great drays creaking under their loads of timber and bricks. Tinkers’ carts rattled past laden with pots and pans and pedlars humped sacks of trinkets, lace and ribbons on their backs. Once he came up behind a team of drovers herding four hundred head or more of cattle and had to squeeze his way past, his nose wrinkling at the smell of dung and warm, cuddy breath. It seemed as if
London was a huge maw sucking in the produce of the land for miles around.

Eventually, the meadows and market gardens on either side gave way to sparsely wooded lanes, where decaying hovels sheltered between the trees. Soon the buildings stood close together and the trees disappeared entirely. Ragged children with wary eyes and dirty faces scampered in and out of doorways and skinny dogs and cats scavenged in piles of rubbish. Here and there, towers of rickety wooden scaffolding swarmed with workmen building larger houses than the hovels around them, but many appeared to be no sturdier than the scaffolding.

All at once, there seemed to be more people than ever, all going in the same direction with an air of excitement.

‘Over here, sweetheart!’ The stout woman who had called out slipped her tattered dress off one shoulder exposing a pendulous breast. She winked. ‘What’s your hurry, my lovely? Plenty of time to see the fun.’

Tom frowned. He had no idea what she meant.

With a hoot of laughter, she got up and waddled towards him and he realised she was drunk. ‘I’ll be on m’back all night when it’s over,’ she slurred, ‘but stay awhile and you can have first pick at the lock.’

He flushed; that at least was clear. Before he had time to get away, she grabbed his hand and clamped it over her puckered nipple. ‘Don’t be shy.’

Tom
dodged around her and hurried on.

‘Not good enough for you, am I?’ she yelled at his retreating back. ‘Fuck yourself then, country boy.’

Tom winced. Did he look such a bumpkin? A feeling of despair came over him. He’d not only lost Meg, but he had also been a fool to think he could make his way in London. Sweat beaded his forehead and, like malevolent giants, the houses on either side of the lane towered over him, narrowing the sky to a slit of blue.

The crowd was enormous now, driving him forward as if he were a piece of flotsam on a powerful wave. It was hard to keep his feet from slipping on the slimy ground and his ears rang with the din around him. A girl emptied a chamber pot from an upper window and he jumped out of the way to avoid the stinking contents.

‘Watch where you’re going,’ a thickset, heavily bearded man growled, ‘or I’ll black your eye for you.’ Muttering an apology, Tom wove round him and hurried on. Then, just as he thought he could go no further, a burst of light dazzled him.

The sight before him took his breath away. A huge expanse of water, far broader than any he had ever seen, glittered in the sunshine. He had heard of the
Thames but had never imagined it would be so wide or so filled with boats. A great tide of people poured out of the surrounding lanes, all heading east along the muddy strand. He had no choice but to join them. Swept along, he marvelled at the wonders on the opposite bank: the vast silhouette of a cathedral that outdid even Salisbury’s; magnificent houses and palaces with gardens running down to the river and landing stages festive with bright flags. Amid the general commotion, street vendors shouted out offers of ale and hot pies. The aroma of freshly baked pastry rekindled Tom’s hunger with a vengeance.

Up ahead, a huge stone bridge, supporting a jumble of tottering buildings, spanned the river. People hung from the windows, calling out to the boatmen below. Above the rooftops wheeled hundreds of large, black birds that from time to time swooped down to rest on poles set up along the bridge’s parapet. As Tom came closer, he peered at them curiously then wished he had not. The poles were crowned with human skulls. The eye sockets were empty but in places flesh was still attached to the bone.
He averted his eyes from the ghoulish sight as the crowds swept him onto the bridge. The cobbles were slippery with mud and waste. He felt his feet slide and he struggled to stay upright, terrified that if he fell he would be trampled. Suddenly, he felt a slight tug at his belt. It came from a small brown hand, its ragged nails rimmed with dirt.

‘No you don’t.’ He snatched the boy’s wrist.

‘Lemme go, I didn’t take nothing.’ The boy’s grubby face screwed up in a scowl of defiance. He was skinny with lank ginger hair and dressed in filthy clothes. Ten or eleven perhaps, though it was hard to be sure. He must be desperate to risk a beating, or worse.

‘If I had any money, I’d share it with you,’ Tom said, feeling a surge of pity.

The boy stared at him for a moment then broke away. Soon, he was lost in the crowd.

On the north bank of the river, a huge, square building made of stone gleamed in the sunshine, pennants fluttering from its corner turrets. From its martial appearance, Tom guessed it must be the famous
Tower of London. As he drew close, he felt awed by its forbidding lofty walls. They dominated the open expanse of sloping ground in front of its massive gates.

On the left-hand side of this open space, a long stand draped with scarlet and black banners had been set up. In the middle, on a smaller platform, a broad-shouldered man wearing a black jerkin and black breeches waited. Tom could not see his face for it was covered by a black hood, but from his stillness it seemed he was unmoved by the hubbub around him. His right hand rested on the shaft of an axe.

Tom shivered. Now he understood the reason for the throng. There was to be an execution. He had never witnessed one before today.

Excited people were trying to push closer to the platform but a crescent of guardsmen battled to keep them back. Against the duns and greys of the crowd, the guardsmen’s scarlet coats made a startling splash of colour.

A drum roll silenced the crowd and all eyes turned to the gates. A party of three richly dressed men walked slowly out into the yard and took their places on the long stand. Moments later, another drum roll sounded but this time, the men who came out from the Tower were shabby and jostled along by guards. The younger of the two held his head high but the cries and protestations of the other man were pitiful to hear.

The group climbed the steps onto the platform. The terrified man redoubled his struggles as two guards dragged him to a tall post but his screams were inaudible now, drowned by catcalls and whistles from the crowd. The captain of the guard conferred with the executioner for a few moments then barked an order to his men. They hauled one of their victim’s arms above his head and tied his hand to the post. His body went limp and his head lolled. Tom’s blood froze as the executioner advanced. Something in his hand glinted in the sunlight. When he raised it, the shape was clear. It was a heavy hammer, like the ones Tom had often seen farriers use at home. In his other hand, he held a large, iron nail.

‘What have those men done?’ Tom asked a man standing beside him.

‘Don’t you know?’

Tom shook his head.

‘Treason. Now shut your trap and let me watch. Topcliffe’s the best there is. You don’t often get the chance to see him at work.’

The noise from the crowd died away and in the silence, a wail broke from the prisoner, a high, thin, eerie sound like the howling of the north wind. With a single blow, the executioner, Topcliffe, drove the nail into his hand, skewering it to the post. The prisoner writhed and screamed.