Low Treason

by Leonard Tourney

  “I wouldn’t try to run for the stairs, Mrs. Stock,” said Starkey, keeping his eyes on Matthew. “You’ll never make it by yourself. The sheriffs men are in the street. I’d pray if I were you, while you still have the chance.”

  Starkey charged again; Matthew moved clumsily to avoid him. It was all he could do to grab the man with one arm and with the other hold the man’s arm. The blade was but an inch or two from Matthew’s throat. They struggled in the center of the room and then Matthew felt his legs go out from under him and they were rolling on the floor, Starkey snarling and cursing, spitting in Matthew’s face and every second bringing the tip of the blade closer to Matthew’s throat. Matthew cried out, “God save me!”

  But it was Joan who saved him. Suddenly Matthew prevailed; Starkey’s eyes became cloudy and indifferent, his strength seemed to dissolve, the stiletto loosened in his grip and clattered harmlessly to the floor.

  Matthew pushed the heavy limp body from him and only then saw the point of a halberd protruding from the man’s chest. The weapon had pierced him through.

  Joan was standing above them, looking down uncomprehendingly as though to ask who had done this thing.

  But she had done it. She had found the halberd, had run at Starkey with all her strength, and her aim had been as true as her purpose. Starkey was dead. He lay on his side, the blood draining from him into a pool on the floor, the long iron shaft of the halberd planted in his back like a flagstaff without the banner.

  “He was going to kill you,” she said, repeating herself, quavering.

  Matthew rose and placed himself between her and the thing on the floor.

  “Oh, I shall be sick,” she moaned. She hid her face and went over to a comer of the room where she retched with such violence Matthew thought she would die of it. When she was done she turned slowly to face him again, averting her eyes from the floor, and said his name.

  He felt an immense relief at that. She came then into his arms, whispering, “Thanks be to God for this help. I did think the villain was going to kill you.”

  “You were right to think so,” said Matthew. “You were but an inch from a widow’s lot.”

  But their words of comfort were interrupted by a stirring and coughing. The recorder was not dead after all. He had only been knocked unconscious by the blow and was struggling to his feet and looking about him in bewilderment. At the same time a great commotion could be heard from the adjacent ward.

  “The warders are returning,” said Matthew. “Come, if we are to escape Newgate we must go.”

  “What of him?” asked Joan, pointing to the recorder, who had now seen Starkey’s body and was looking from it to the Stocks in great perplexity.

  “Let him be,” replied Matthew. “His friends will see to him. Come.”

  They rushed from the room, down the passage to the stairs. The main gate of the prison had been secured during the riot but there was a smaller portal to the left of it guarded by a single warder. To him, Matthew gave the same story he had given to the recorder, and the warder, a great dullard, believing the lie, unlocked the portal, and Matthew and Joan passed through.

  In the street outside the prison a huge crowd had gathered, drawn by the din of the prison alarm and the pleasing prospect of a violent spectacle. Between the crowd and the foot of the stairs was a ragged line of sheriff’s men. Unsure as to whether their primary duty was to prevent escape of the inmates or the invasion of curious citizenry, the sheriff’s men were facing in all directions, talking excitedly among themselves. As Matthew and Joan emerged from the shadow of the lodge door a thunderous cheer broke from the throng, the officers turned, and the hulk of a fellow who was their chief left the ranks of his companions to come up the stairs to meet Matthew and Joan.

  The leader bore an unsheathed sword and a fierce expression and, viewing both, Matthew braced himself to defend Joan and explain their exit, but there was no need. Had a multitude armed to the teeth emerged from the prison the hardy officer would have tried to prevent their escape had he nothing more than a wooden spoon in his pocket, but he was not prepared for a man and a woman coming leisurely down the stairs arm in arm, the woman well dressed though somewhat disheveled. Besides, the man wore a warder’s uniform and had a plain honest face. The officer exploded with questions before Matthew had half a chance to open his mouth. Had he seen the smoke, heard the alarm? What had transpired within?

  Matthew briefly explained about the fire in the chapel. It has since been put out, he said, but now every man was needed to quell the riot. He had been sent by his superiors within to seek aid of the sheriff’s men.

  “God’s death!” exclaimed the officer upon hearing this. “We shall quell it fast enough.” Flourishing his sword above him, he commanded his men to follow and Matthew and Joan stood aside as they charged up the stairs toward the lodge. There was momentary confusion as the men attempting to enter confronted a group of warders attempting to leave and the leaders of both parties endeavored to communicate above the uproar. But then Matthew saw a familiar face among the warders. It was John Beauclerk. So he, too, had escaped the fire.

  Their eyes met in the same instant of mutual recognition. Then Matthew saw Beauclerk say something to the men with him and point to where Matthew was, hemmed in by the onlookers. What Beauclerk said was lost in another great cheer from the crowd, now prepared to greet each emerging party in this fashion, but Matthew guessed its purport. Starkey’s body had been found and the old recorder would have identified them as the murderers. Grasping Joan by the hand, Matthew fled into the throng.

  Fourteen

  IT was noon before Matthew and Joan reached Cecil’s house, bedraggled and exhausted from their flight, only half believing in the reality of their escape and reluctant to identify themselves at the door for fear of being hauled back to Newgate again. However, no sooner had Matthew informed the doorkeeper of his name than the man’s stem, businesslike air was transformed into a strange excitement. He said that the master had been awaiting their arrival this half-day and that he looked to have a reward for the good luck of being at his post when the Stocks had finally come.

  They were ushered directly to Cecil’s apartment, where they found the knight delighted to see them. “You twain have come in good time! I thought to set the hue and cry after you. In God’s name, where have you been?”

  “We were imprisoned,” Joan declared when the doorkeeper had left them.

  “In Newgate,” Matthew added. They were almost too weary to speak of all they had experienced since their last interview, but Matthew proceeded with the tale, with only occasional interruptions from Joan. Cecil listened. He had

  already had report of the fire and riot at, Newgate but of the Stocks’ imprisonment he had known nothing.

  “Starkey is dead, too,” Joan blurted out, when she saw her husband had concluded his account without reference to its bloody climax.

  “Starkey? Oh, yes, he’s the one who tried to drown your husband in the Thames.”

  “I killed him,” Joan confessed in a flat, thin voice that sounded coldly matter-of-fact even to her ears.

  “It was to save my life she did it,” Matthew hastened to explain, glancing nervously at his wife and then back at Cecil again.

  “He was killed at Newgate?” asked Cecil.

  “At the keeper’s lodge,” Matthew said. “He would have killed us both had Joan not struck from behind. As God is my witness, it was as honest a blow as was ever struck against one head over his heels in iniquity.”

  Cecil looked reassuringly at Matthew. “I don’t doubt it. Never fear, the stroke will save the state the cost of a hanging. But look you now, I have my own news which I pray you find cheering after your ordeal. Castell—”

  Before the knight could complete his sentence there was a vigorous knocking at the door, Cecil said, “Come,” and the same doorman who had led the Stocks into the house thrust his head into the chamber to announce that John Beauclerk had returned and requested an immediate au
dience with his employer on a matter of great urgency.

  “Tell Beauclerk to wait,” said Cecil. Frowning, he turned to Matthew and Joan and in a lower voice said, “It seems my faithful secretary has found his way home again, like a truant hound. We shall presently hear what manner of story he concocts to candy over his treachery. Both of you, go quickly to the next room. Leave the door ajar. Return when I bid you, and in the meantime listen carefully.”

  Matthew and Joan did as they were told, and they had no sooner concealed themselves than they heard Beauclerk come into the chamber and begin speaking in an excited, high-pitched voice, giving first a garbled account of the Stocks’ arrest and imprisonment and then an account of

  their murder of Starkey and escape from Newgate. Cecil allowed the man to run on without interruption.

  When Beauclerk finished, they heard Cecil say: “The Stocks were arrested yesterday and yet you wait until this hour to tell me? ” .

  There was a long silence at this, and Joan yielded to the temptation to peer through the half-opened door. She could see only Beauclerk’s back. The young man had changed clothes since that morning, a fact that obviously accounted for their ability to reach Cecil’s house before him.

  “I did not think ...”

  “You did not think I would care? Tell me, how did you know of the arrest?”

  “I was at the magistrate’s hall when they were brought forth—or rather I came there just after they were carried off.”

  “Well,” demanded Cecil, “which was it? Were you there or were you not, to witness in their behalf?”

  “I was not,” replied Beauclerk in a quavering voice.

  “But of course you would have certified to their honesty had you had the opportunity,” Cecil said with heavy irony.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “And then this morning you were at Newgate?”

  “Oh, no, sir, I have been in my rooms all morning.”

  “Indeed you have. How is it, then, I smell smoke about you?”

  “Smoke, sir?”

  “Yes, smoke. You know what that is, don’t you?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “Well, I smell it upon you. Pray tell me who ordered you to dog the Stocks from one end of London to another?”

  “He is a liar who says so,” protested the secretary hotly.

  “I say so,” replied Cecil, fixing the young man in a withering stare. “You were at the magistrate’s and at the prison for the same reason—to make trouble for the Stocks and for me.”

  There was another awkward pause.

  “I did have business there,” the young man asserted without conviction.

  “What manner of business?”

  “My purse ... it was stolen ... in Paul’s. Not a week since.” -

  “Your purse? You lost a great sum?”

  “Not a great sum, sir.”

  “A small sum, then, a miniscule trifling sum, hardly worth the notice? Such a sum as a man of modest means would stuff the poor box with?”

  Beauclerk’s reply was low and cautious. “Well, it was two angels, sir—and some odd pieces.”

  “So then you were there to accuse the thief?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was the wretch you say stole your purse?”

  “A scurvy serving man, sir. One Stephen Wright, man to Lord Havering.”

  “Oh, indeed,” retorted Cecil, obviously not impressed with Beauclerk’s powers of invention. “Then you just happened to be at the magistrate’s when the Stocks were dragged in, accused of theft themselves. Whereupon you came forward to identify them?”

  “No, sir, I mean yes, sir.”

  Beauclerk fell silent in confusion.

  Cecil said, “I think you were at the magistrate’s indeed. There to aid and abet the slander against those honest people. There to fill your purse rather than protest its theft. There to do treason along with one Starkey in whose fate you may now see a mirror of your own.”

  Joan held her breath, pitying Beauclerk despite herself. Then she saw him fall upon his knees before Cecil, whimpering, pleading. But Cecil was firm. He told Beauclerk to stand and to be silent, which the young man did, shaking before his outraged master. Cecil called out to Matthew and Joan to come forth.

  At the sound of the movement behind him Beauclerk turned abruptly and his eyes, glistening with tears, widened with amazement.

  “You!”

  “Yes, no thanks to you or your fellow Starkey,” said Matthew.

  Forcing a smile, Beauclerk turned to appeal to his mas-258

  ter, pausing only long enough to control his voice. “But see, sir, how I was deceived by false report. Here is a matter of good cheer! ’ ’

  “You denied knowing us,” said Joan accusingly. She remembered the scene all too well, the fear and the humiliation, the leering faces of the crowd happy to be entertained by their arrest. Now she felt little pity for this quaking wretch, a false friend who had betrayed them.

  “Yes, yes,” protested Beauclerk, grinning ridiculously, his face pale and tear-stained. “That’s true, but only because I thought my silence would further our cause.”

  “Shame upon you, sir,” Joan declared scornfully. “Just how should our imprisonment have furthered any cause but Gervase Castell’s?”

  “We had all been commanded by Sir Robert to keep privy what had passed between us.”

  “So then,” said Cecil, the irony in his voice even more devastating, “it was excess of zeal to comply with my instructions that stopped your mouth. Where was this zeal I would know when you carried our counterplot to Gervase Castell? How much was the traitor to pay you for the information?”

  “I will kill the man who has accused me of that,” cried Beauclerk, glaring menacingly at Matthew.

  “You are looking at the wrong witness against you,” said Cecil, continuing in his tone of cold interrogation. “I have ample witness of your treachery, chiefly the man to whom you conveyed it, the jeweler himself.” Cecil turned to address Matthew. “It was what I was about to say when this rogue’s entrance prevented it. Castell is lodged in the Tower. My men found him this morning not three miles beyond the Spitalfields. He was dressed as a common laborer, but I knew that particular disguise, having been myself its victim. Since his arrest he has told a good deal about his activities in the City and will doubtless tell us more when properly persuaded. You will find his discourse fascinating. We shall all go there presently. You, too, John. Indeed you, my man, shall go before us.” Cecil rang a little bell on his desk and had hardly done so but the appointments secretary appeared with two armed

  servants behind him. It had all been planned. The men went at once to seize Beauclerk by the arms.

  “Go, now, sirrah. These men will provide you with a jolly escort to the Tower where I trust you will find accommodations according to your deserts.”

  Beauclerk was led out, weeping openly. As the door closed behind him, Cecil said: “If it is one thing I cannot stomach, it’s a traitor. High treason they call it in the law. They would with more reason call it low treason, for a man must stoop low—indeed, must crawl upon his belly like a serpent—to practice it.”

  “What will happen to him?” asked Joan.

  “Beauclerk?” Cecil smiled grimly. “He will be tried and then hanged and quartered. It’s a hideous punishment that a Christian nation would be well to abjure were it not for the example it sets to others.”

  Joan shuddered at the very thought of the appalling, ghastly death. She did not so much hate Beauclerk now, despite his treachery. But she knew her pity would be to no avail. The young man had condemned himself. Avarice or ambition or whatever it was that had wormed its way into his heart had brought about his tragedy.

  “Now,” said Cecil with obvious satisfaction, “we shall all follow to the Tower—and to the jeweler, who awaits our coming.”

  But Matthew looked at his little wife uncertainly. She seemed overcome with fatigue. He said, “Joan is weary, sir. Could she
not return to our lodgings?”

  “Why, of course,” the knight announced expansively. “Beshrew me for not seeing it myself, Mrs. Stock. I will have some of my servants see you back to the Bell straightway. In the meantime your husband will be my companion. Come, Mr. Stock. You will see and hear things that will sober you, sir. Trust me.”

  In the late afternoon huge leaden clouds moved over the city and seemed to rest on the very rooftops. In the distance there was the persistent rumble of thunder and flashes of lightning. It began to rain; pedestrians scattered, merchants shut up their shops, while the braver sort of ]

  ragamuffin and idler stood about in the street gawking at the sky. Then the rain, which fell lightly at first, came down harder; soon the streets were awash with mud and debris, all traffic stopped; horses bound still to their wagons and carts shrieked in alarm as the wind rose and the rain slashed sideways at the houses. The violence of the sudden storm was awesome.

  Then, as suddenly as the torrent had commenced, it ended. There was a great stillness, and only the leaden clouds remained, swollen and threatening, covering London like a cowl. In the houses on the streets lamps had been lighted; people came outdoors and stared up at the glowering heavens and inquired among themselves what this savage storm meant.

  With the storm’s end Cecil’s coach resumed its course toward the Tower. From its windows, Matthew could see, as they neared, the walls, battlements, and bastions with their frenzy of embrasures and turrets and the central keep of grim limestone like a little city unto itself. His heart began to beat with anticipation. The coach rumbled to a stop and from within the walls of the structure he heard the clamor of voices. The coach door opened, Cecil made a remark about the weather, looked up at the sky dubiously, and beckoned Matthew to follow.

  The portals of the Tower were heavily guarded but no one stood forth to check their progress, to require identification, or to seek to know their business. They passed beneath the portcullis, and thereafter doors opened before them with a marvelous efficiency; heads bowed mechanically; halberds dipped in salute with their little pennants limp; husky voices used to silence cried aloud, “God save you, Sir Robert,” “Good day, Sir Robert.” Cecil strode forward energetically, eyes front, occasionally acknowledging a greeting with a murmur, a name, or a little wave of the hand as though he could hardly contain his impatience to come to where the jeweler was. Matthew followed him, looking about him curiously with heavy-lidded eyes weary of flight and danger and ready simply to absorb the strange new scene.