by Jeane Westin
She straightened, erasing the anxiety from her face. “He is my servant, and his welfare is my concern and duty.”
Phelippes shrugged. “To convince Babington, the priest must see Robert tortured, refusing to speak or renounce the old faith.”
Her hand flew to her mouth to stop its outcry.
“My lady, Robert knew this. It was his plan to gain their confidence quickly. I promise you we will arrange their escape, and the priest will bear witness for him with the traitors.”
Fleeing to her chambers, she searched for ways to save Robert from the path he had chosen…and found none.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“…a loathing of all loose unchastity,
Then Love is sin, and let me sinful be.”
—Astrophel and Stella, Sir Philip Sidney
Late August
WHITEHALL PALACE AND THE TOWER
The queen gave Frances leave to come to Whitehall Palace with her father. Frances, ahorse, was happy to miss the dust and tumult of Elizabeth’s train of carts and wagons holding all the sovereign’s furniture, bedding, and her two thousand gowns, which was even now leaving Greenwich behind.
It was unusual for the court to be in London during the late summer, but this was one season that had seen no late outbreaks of plague or sweat. The Thames did reek to the heavens, but noses were the only human part assaulted.
The queen had insisted on coming to her capital just in case the Spanish king dared send an armada against England now that Sir Francis Drake had attacked the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine in the New World. Mr. Secretary thought Philip II might take advantage, if not this year, then surely in the next. He urged Elizabeth to see to her fleet. Reluctantly, the queen had agreed with her spymaster, spending some of the Spanish treasure from ships captured by her piratical sea rovers. Captains Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher contented her with one-third of all the silver and gold they liberated from the lumbering, high-castled galleons of King Philip.
Frances left the unpacking of her gowns to Meg and disappeared into her bedchamber, dropped to her knees, and sent heavenward a desperate prayer for Robert. She tried to erase from her mind the horrifying images of him under torture, but she succeeded only in growing them by denial.
Though Robert had made this choice, she feared he had done so for her sake in the hopes that his service to the crown would allow them some future nearness of company. Was this heart’s pain heaven’s payment for her unchaste behavior? Yet Philip had not paid for loving Stella, for still loving Stella. Did God really hold men to be favored above women, as she had been taught and had not wanted to believe?
Still, Frances prayed for heavenly forgiveness, though she was careful to make no future promises. She could not promise faithfulness to that hollow marriage and add another broken vow to her soul’s burden. Philip had been able to live a lie, thinking love excused all unchastity, and having written that it did. Perhaps it did for him, for a man. Never for a wife.
She clasped her hands tighter. Punish me, not my love, she begged.
Frances searched her heart, looking for a better outcome for Robert. But she could find none, only the memory of cold, dank walls and the screams of the tortured. She was nearly faint when she tried to stand. She gripped the bedpost, demanding courage from her heart, enough to match Robert’s in the bowels of the Tower.
Pushed along the corridor by the Tower guard using the butt end of his pike, Robert nearly stumbled into the priest. He shared his cell with Henry Garnet, who shuffled ahead of him, a victim of Richard Topcliffe’s own invention, a device that had wrenched both his arms from their sockets. He must be in agony, having been tortured but yesterday, yet he had given up no names of Catholic families who would have hidden him in their priest holes in exchange for a Mass. He seemed intent on martyrdom and he would surely find it, if not now then one day soon. Walsingham was eager to accommodate such unwelcome traitor-priests.
Today they would force Garnet to watch, hoping to double his pain and frighten him into talking. Robert did not think the man would ever break, though every bone in his body most surely would. He was going to rescue the priest from that fate, at least for now, if his plan succeeded.
No matter how the walls of a filthy cell or these corridors closed about him, he would keep his purpose well in mind: He must be accepted by Babington and the other traitors. The priest would be his entrance into their number. Robert alone would bring them and the Scots queen to Walsingham’s justice; his future would be secured. He had that hope and must keep it before him.
“Move along, papist dog,” the guard growled, giving Robert a final push against the priest.
Garnet was whispering his morning office.
Robert knew he must prepare himself to suffer what was necessary for the queen of England and the queen of his heart. No intelligencer had ever done what he willingly did. If this day’s act did not shake a preferment loose from the queen’s frugal nature, nothing would: an estate at least, since he dared not hope for a knighthood. Yet his father had been granted a baronetcy by Henry VIII after service with the king in the French wars. He had a faint hope.
If he gained such status, he could be in Frances’s company without question. He could see her, by. God’s grace; she would not be banished forever from his sight.
Just to see her would be…no, not enough, but it might keep him from madness.
As he lurched in chains onto the lowest Tower floor, now underground with no light except for torches, he came to a large room equipped as for hell. In one corner sat a huge vat of oil ready to boil to death the next condemned poisoner. That was the sentence for a wife who poisoned her husband, or a servant who served up arsenic crystals in the master’s wine.
Although the Thames’s damp near overwhelmed their warmth, hot fires burned in braziers set about the room, branding irons glowing red amidst the coals. The dark scents of blood, of burning flesh, vomit, and loose bowels were everywhere. He gagged.
“Courage, my son,” Garner murmured.
“Thank you, Father.”
Against the back wall, Robert saw a rack with its turning wheels and the iron cuffs on a side wall with its chain hoist and heavy cannonball to add weight as its victims hung helpless with their arms in manacles twisted behind them.
The priest, his lips moving, looked at the evil devices and did not shrink. He smiled. The priest was either a brave man or a lunatic.
Robert did not think himself a coward, but he had never been foolhardy. With a deep breath and his hands in tight fists, he recalled his courage, and the face of the woman he loved. He could go on; he could bear anything, even this hell, with Frances in his heart, her face as it had been in the inn a few nights gone, wanting him, loving him fully at last.
Garnet’s lips moved in silent prayer. He looked up at Robert and repeated through trembling lips, “Courage, my son.”
Robert nodded, praying for the same courage from the same God.
A hoary, decayed man of nearly sixty years approached Garnet wearing a strange smile, almost as if greeting an old friend. The priest did not shrink.
Robert caught his breath and swallowed hard. Richard Topcliffe, the queen’s principal interrogator, was to be his inquisitor. He had seen the man many times in Walsingham’s office, had listened to his bragging. He was an evil sadist who even had a torture chamber in his own home, where he prided himself that he could work faster and better than at the Tower. It was said he could neatly strip the skin from a man with his whip. Death came as a blessed angel to his subjects.
Topcliffe hated Catholics from his soul’s depth and delighted in breaking them, either their bodies or their spirits, especially if he could get them to recant. Still, nothing saved them from Tyburn’s tree.
The interrogator knew that Robert was no traitor, in the Tower on Walsingham’s orders, yet he leaned close, leering a greeting, his foul breath roiling Robert’s empty stomach. “I will make it look good for ye, sir, doubt me not.”
Robert did not speak
, wanting neither to encourage nor anger the man, if human man he could be called, nor did he want the priest to hear.
“Good day to ye, good priest,” Topcliffe said, smiling with blackened teeth at Garnet. “We shall have ourselves a time”—he swept his arms wide—“gaming with all my toys.”
A woman was dragged into the chamber between two guards. Her clothes were in tatters, her breasts exposed. She moaned on sight of Topcliffe, who liked to rape his female victims as part of his interrogation.
“Ah, my witchy succubus is here for another turn on the rack.”
The man was mad, cruel for his own pleasure, fit for Bedlam, yet here he was with life-and-death authority over Catholics, because Elizabeth lived in daily fear of the pope’s sanction of her assassination. “Bring my guest over here,” Topcliffe ordered the guards holding Robert. “My apologies to ye, Master Garnet, but I will not have time for ye today. Observe so that ye may know what amusement you will provide me tomorrow.”
Garnet did not speak, his gaze seeming to penetrate the arching stone ceiling, searching for God and finding Him. His smile was peaceful, almost satisfied.
God’s grace, Robert thought. The man seeks martyrdom.
He had time to think no more. The guards shoved him roughly toward a chair bolted to the floor with dangling manacles and an iron band. He was soon in those irons, arms, feet, and head. He did not know how to prepare himself. He remembered the pain of his broken leg and of the lead ball in his shoulder, but those had come suddenly, without warning. How would he withstand torture from a madman who could easily forget that Robert Pauley was there for the queen’s good?
Topcliffe leaned close to his ear. “Sir Walsingham gave me no orders about ye. Yet I know I must make of ye a convincing subject, or my reputation could be tattered. Her Majesty would not like that. My repute keeps Catholics in France, or quietly hiding in their holes.” He leaned even closer, his stinking mouth almost brushing Robert’s cheek.
Topcliffe stood back, peering at him like a painter ready to make a true likeness. “Ye are a handsome man, as once I was.” He put his hand to his own cheek, wrinkled as old leather.
“Do as you must, Master Topcliffe.”
“Ahhh”—Topcliffe sighed—“a brave man. I like brave men. They call me to my best work.”
Robert planted his feet hard against the stone floor, pressing until the river damp came through his leathern shoes. He would not scream. He must not scream. Topcliffe might lose control and forget Robert’s mission. It was said his manhood hardened and rose with a victim’s screams. Such a madman could easily forget—would want to forget.
Topcliffe lifted an iron from the brazier, looked at it as if he’d never seen it before, and, shaking his head slightly, returned it to the glowing coals.
Robert had braced himself for the iron and now allowed his forehead to relax only the least bit against the restraints. Topcliffe was playing games. The man could not help himself.
“Now we shall witness how much you like playing with my toys, Master Pauley.” He extracted another iron from the fire and, with a smile, his crazed eyes glowing in the heat of the rod, he brought it near Robert’s cheek.
Robert jammed his feet against the stone floor, tight-closing his lips to hold in any sound that might escape.
The hooked iron came closer, followed by Topcliffe’s grinning face.
Closer.
Robert thought himself prepared, but the heat melted his courage so that his fists tightened anew. He felt the skin on his cheek shriveling, though the iron still had not touched him. When it landed, he heard his own flesh sizzling and smelled the scent of roasting meat. The pain of it ripped through him, worse than the ball he had taken in his shoulder. Worse than his broken leg. Worse than both together. Worse than anything he had imagined. A scream roiled through him, churning about in his mouth, but no sound came forth from his tight lips.
He felt his head pressing back hard against the iron brace, but there was no escape even after Topcliffe removed the brand and stepped back, satisfied. “Ye won’t be so pretty now.” He leaned closer and whispered happily in Robert’s ear, “Many have courage at first. It is the second time that I invite them to my fete that they lose all valor and beg for mercy. Do ye see any mercy in me, Master Pauley?”
Robert scarce heard his bragging. His flesh still sizzled and he was forced to prayer, wondering whether Frances would be repelled by his face. Had his desire to stay in her sight even after Sidney returned from his war made of him someone she could not bear to look at?
Then he lost any sense, ceasing to think, until a leathern bucket of icy Thames water hit him full in the face and he came out from his faint back to Topcliffe’s nightmare. For a moment, he forgot his mission was to save the queen from Catholic plotters and was happy to think that Henry Garnet would escape this crazed man’s further pleasure, though the priest would no doubt be recaptured and eventually returned here. His stomach rebelled at the thought. Could he ever allow this madman to torture Garnet again?
A guard approached at Topcliffe’s summons and released Robert from the chair, though he remained in irons as he stumbled up the stairs to his cell. He could sense his cheek swelling as it throbbed mightily without cease.
While one guard was inside the cell securing the priest’s shackles to the wall, the guard behind Robert whispered, “Tonight, late,” then pushed his prisoner inside and did not chain him up to the wall.
The other guard kicked him, but not too hard. “This one will not move for his pain tonight,” he said, chuckling.
The cell door clanged and the tiny space lost most of the light that had penetrated from the hall torches. The guards left, arguing loudly over who would pay for a bottle of ale.
“My son,” Henry Garnet said softly, “pray with me and God will remove your pain.”
Robert bowed his head rather than argue that God seemed to hold no sway in the Tower.
“Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum…” When Garnet finished, he whispered, “I cannot reach you. Will you crawl to me?” With his foot, he pushed a vial of holy oil from under his straw pallet toward Robert.
“But you were searched,” Robert said, wondering how Garnet had smuggled the oil into their cell.
“The true faith has believers in need of blessing, my son, even in such a place as this. Come closer.”
Moving swiftly to the priest, Robert put the vial in his shackled hand to receive the sign of the cross on his forehead. The priest drizzled oil on his flaming cheek, soothing it at once. Perhaps it did have some heavenly healing properties.
“What was that fiend whispering to you?” Garnet asked.
“He thinks me twice a traitor, Father.”
The priest shifted his arms, grimacing, but there was no way they would be comfortable. “Why is that?”
“Because I am a Catholic and a servant to Lady Frances Sidney. Or was until discovered.”
“Walsingham’s daughter?” Garnet’s face hardened.
“Aye, the same.”
Garnet’s gaze was now confused. “But you are in this place under sentence of torture?”
Robert pointed to his cheek, careful not to touch the seeping wound. “As you see, Father.”
Garnet stirred to take the weight from his arms, which must hurt him like Hades.
The man had shown him a kindness, trusted him. He whispered in the priest’s ear, “Sleep now. You will need your strength later, when dark falls over the city.”
Garnet raised his head, staring at Robert, sudden hope in his face. “Praise the Lord. Will we be delivered?”
“Sleep now,” Robert repeated.
But neither man could sleep through his pain. They waited, looking up from the filthy straw at every guard who passed. It was very late when torchlight shone through the small iron grate and a key turned in the lock.
“Come swiftly,” the guard said, his lantern lighting the way.
Robert helped the priest to stand, hi
s arm about his waist.
Stumbling after the guard, who halted, cautioning them before turning every corner, they came to a small door where food was usually delivered, judging from the dried, shrunken turnips rolled against the wall.
“Out with ye. Leave and never return if ye know what be good for ye.” The door clanged shut behind them, but not before the guard said, “And tell no one I be helping ye, or I will see ye dead.”
The priest, his arms dangling useless, looked about, bewildered. “Robert, where shall we go? The watch will find us for sure, and there will be no escape again.”
“Father, I have the key to Walsingham’s house on Seething Lane, but a few steps from Tower Hill. Come behind me closely, keeping always to the shadows.”
Garnet held back. “To that devil’s lair? Are you mad?”
Robert smiled, though it set his cheek to throbbing more intensely. “And the last place anyone would look.”
“You are too clever, sir, and sure to be daring, thus easily caught.”
“I was clever enough to be in Walsingham’s household without suspicion for many years. Come; follow me. Are you not out of the Tower?” He held to the priest’s cloak and pulled him into the dark along Tower Hill and thence into Seething Lane, almost in the Tower’s shadow. There was no watchman on his rounds in the lane. No doubt a cold wind blowing off the river kept him hiding in some warm inn.
Finding the gate to the garden open, Robert slipped inside and was surprised to see candlelight moving within the house. He went to a side door to be met by a maid and, from the look of the mixing spoon in her hand, also the cook’s helper. Her mobcap sat over her dark hair, which was suitably untidy, though her familiar gray eyes looked a warning when Robert’s gaze opened wide. She saw his branding mark, and though her lips grew tight and he saw her swallow hard, her eyes misting, she did not cry out or reach for him.
He could not help but be proud of her.
As Robert passed, he muttered, “What do you know of cookery?”
