London

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “You want me to persuade him to take the oath?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t it too late anyway?”

  “There still has to be an official trial with a jury. If he submits now, the king might accept it.” She made a sad little shrug. “It’s our only chance.”

  “And you think my voice might make a difference?”

  “You’re the one man he respects. And,” there was no mistaking the reproach in her voice now, “it was your opinion he was following when he refused the oath.”

  He looked down at the floor for a moment.

  “I think,” he replied softly, “he was also following his conscience. For the sake of what we all believe in.”

  He could not blame her if she ignored this mild rebuke. However devout, she was after all a mother fighting for her family. But now she had a surprise for him.

  “You don’t really understand,” she said. And she explained how she had met the king in the garden, and how Thomas had encountered him in the same place. “You see,” she went on, “those chance encounters, the fact that you are a Charterhouse monk: in a way, it is you and I who have brought this on Rowland. He was never meant to be given the oath at all.”

  Peter sighed. Why did providence work in such strange and cruel ways? It was God’s plan, of course. But why, he wondered sadly, must the design be so obscure, even to the most faithful? “I will go to see him,” he said at last. “But I cannot tell him to disobey his conscience. I cannot imperil the man’s soul, which, I promise you, is immortal.”

  She was not comforted, and he had not thought she would be. Yet, he had to admit, her final words had caused him pain.

  “Do you know what they will do to him? Do you understand?” She gave him such a bitter look. “It is easier,” she had said coldly, “for you.” Then she had gone.

  Easier? He doubted it. The word was that the three priors would be executed in days – not with a merciful beheading but in the most savage way. When the monks had had a chance to witness that, the king’s commissioners would come to the Charterhouse to offer the oath to the community. “These things are like phantoms, sent to frighten us and test our souls,” an old monk had said. But did Susan really suppose that, sitting hour by hour in his cell, he did not think of it?

  It was evening when Thomas came.

  At first, when he saw the worldly young courtier in the doorway, Peter could not help a feeling of irritation. True, Thomas looked distraught; but then, Peter thought, whatever his grief about Rowland, he was still Cromwell’s man.

  “No doubt,” he said to Thomas quietly, “you have come on the same errand as our sister.” He sighed, and then added a little drily: “This combination of a brother in the Charterhouse and your sister’s husband refusing the oath cannot be very good for your career.”

  Thomas only shook his head. “I’ve just come from court,” he said. “Even if Rowland takes the oath now, the king will not accept it. Treason has been spoken. He is going to destroy him.” He sat down, and buried his face in his hands. “And it’s all my fault.”

  “Yours?”

  “I brought him to court. I put him in this position.”

  “He took a stand for his faith.”

  “Yes,” Thomas agreed. “But only because, on a whim, the king decided to test my loyalty, not his. Henry wasn’t interested in him.”

  “If he dies,” Peter said quietly, “he will still be a martyr, you know.”

  But to his surprise, Thomas could not agree even to this.

  “To you and to Rowland it is an act of faith. Of course. But I’m afraid it will not be seen to be. Don’t you realize, Peter? When the Charterhouse monks are executed, they will be martyrs. All England will know it. But Rowland is not important. No one has heard of him. They will quietly execute him one day with some common criminals – an obscure royal servant who committed treason. That is how it will be. A private piece of royal vengeance. That is all that anyone will know or care.”

  “God will know and care.”

  “Yes. But His cause is being served by the monks, I dare say. Poor Rowland is just an innocent, a loyal family man, who happened to be in the wrong place. It’s all a mistake.” For several moments he was silent. Then he sighed. “I have a confession, brother.”

  “Which is?”

  “I am a secret Protestant.”

  “I see.” He tried to hide his disgust.

  “That, and serving Cromwell make me feel doubly guilty, therefore. I abandon my family’s faith, then cause Rowland’s death.”

  “Perhaps you should feel guilty, then.”

  “Yes.” Thomas looked down at his hands sadly, but then suddenly gazed up, straight into Peter’s eyes. “And what am I, brother? A man who lives the evil life of the court and enjoys it? I hold my faith in secret because I am afraid. Henry burns Protestants. I cause Rowland’s death, I leave my sister alone, ruined, and with four children. And I ask myself, brother, is my own life worth a tenth of any of yours? I think not. I tell you frankly, if I could die in Rowland’s place, I’d do so. I wish to God I could.”

  Peter saw that he meant it; and found that, for all his faults, he could love him again. “If only,” he said without any malice, “you could.” But there was nothing anyone could do for Rowland now.

  Peter slept little that night. Time and time again he tossed and turned on his bed so that old Dogget, who had taken to sleeping by the door of his cell since he had been ill, more than once came in to see if he was all right.

  He thought of Susan and her children. He thought of the terrible death that awaited poor Rowland and, no doubt, himself; and, despite all his attempts at prayer, Father Peter trembled, like any other man.

  He was not sure what hour it was when he awoke from a fitful sleep with a new idea in his mind. As he lay there, staring up into the darkness, he wondered what to make of it. He went over it again, carefully, and it seemed to him that it might work, though with heavy risks for those involved. There was, however, another difficulty: was it a crime to deny God’s Church even one of her martyrs? For as a priest, Father Peter Meredith faced a terrible dilemma: he did not know if he was doing right or wrong. One thing was clear. He himself, now, was in danger of losing his immortal soul.

  Nonetheless, shortly after dawn, he woke faithful Will Dogget, and sent him with a message to summon Thomas.

  Thomas listened very quietly until Peter had finished.

  “There are great risks for you,” the priest said.

  “I accept them.”

  “It would take a strong man,” Peter remarked. “Stronger than you or I.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  “Then the choice is yours.”

  “But,” Thomas hesitated before continuing softly: “It is the final thing of all that I cannot do.”

  “I’m sorry,” the priest said simply. “You must.”

  That afternoon, Thomas Meredith met Dan Dogget. He had a debt to call in.

  “I told you,” he said with a smile, “that I’d think of something.”

  Susan watched Rowland as he stared out of the stone window and wondered how he could be so calm. Especially considering the scene taking place below.

  He had not been calm at first. How terrible it had been, that Mayday morning, only three days ago, as they had approached the Tower. How his heart sank as the barge headed in, not to the ordinary dock by the old Lion Gate, but towards another entrance entirely – a small, dark tunnel in the very centre of the Tower’s long waterfront. The Traitors’ Gate.

  A heavy portcullis creaked up to receive him as they passed under the wharf. They crossed a pool, then a pair of huge iron-barred watergates swung slowly open as they entered a dimly lit dock under a great bastion. The Traitors’ Gate. Abandon hope, they said, if you come to the Tower that way.

  A few minutes later they had led him up through the great inner wall, to a chamber in the enlarged turret on its inner side that was known as the Bloody Tower.
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br />   And so he had made the acquaintance of the Tower of London. It was a strange place, a world of its own. Outwardly it had not grown much in recent centuries, except for the wharf which had steadily encroached on the river; but within its walls, over the centuries, there had been innumerable additions – a hall here, a new set of chambers there, additional wall-towers and turrets of brick or stone to house the ever-growing community who dwelt therein.

  And a remarkable community it was. Apart from the small army of workmen and retainers, cooks, scullions and washerwomen required to service the place, and the lieutenant, constable and other ancient officers, there was the Mint and its keepers, and the Master of Ordnance, whose gun foundries were on the wharf but whose stores lay safely within the walls. To add yet more colour, the new Tudor order of gentlemen-bodyguards to the king, the yeoman warders, were headquartered at the Tower and were often to be seen in their magnificent crimson uniforms. There was still the royal menagerie of exotic beasts and lions whose occasional roars, breaking the silence, could sometimes be heard from the south-west corner. And lastly, of course, the ravens on the green whose dark croaks announced what none could gainsay, that it was they alone who were the true, ancestral guardians of the place.

  The prisoners were few in number and almost exclusively of the upper class – courtiers or gentlemen who had offended the monarch in some way. Sometimes, it was true, they might be made to suffer, though use of the rack or other tortures remained extremely rare in England, but more often than not they were housed in modest comfort as befitted their estate.

  His own reception had been polite enough. The Lieutenant of the Tower, a courtly man, had paid him a brief visit. Although loyal to his monarch, Rowland suspected, he was secretly appalled by Henry’s actions. Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher were confined in the Bell Tower, near the entrance, he learned. Doctor Wilson was elsewhere, and the three priors in yet another lodging. After this, though brought his meals by whatever guard was on duty, he was largely ignored. He was, after all, of no importance. He was left alone with his thoughts.

  He had tried to be calm. But how could he be, given the terror of what was surely to come for himself and the fear for his family?

  By the end of the first day he had twice been sick and was so pale that the constable was told he might be dying. The next two days, despite visits from his wife and children, he was hardly better. Yet now, as he looked out at what was passing below, pale though he was, he almost smiled, and turning to Susan remarked:

  “Come and see this wonder.”

  The three priors were being led out to execution.

  They were allowed to walk from their lodging to the outer gate. From there they would be taken across London to the awaiting gallows. They were accompanied by the lieutenant and a respectful group of yeoman warders, who were evidently determined to give them a few last moments of dignity before the ordeal that lay ahead; and they had just passed the green where the ravens strutted when Susan, unwillingly, joined her husband to watch them.

  “See how meekly and cheerfully they go,” he murmured. “The lambs of God.” He smiled at her. “I think,” he went on gently, “that is what faith really means. They know, you see. They know they are doing right.” He paused as the little party went quite close beneath the window. “That’s what martyrs leave behind, isn’t it? For all of us to witness. A message stronger than words.” He smiled. “I suppose they are the stones, in a way, of which the Church is truly built.”

  Susan said nothing.

  Rowland continued to watch. He now felt the calm which, after a long agony of anticipation, men often feel when they are at last brought face to face with a great terror. A sense, curiously, of relief.

  Last night Thomas had given him some other news when he had visited. “When the executions are done,” he had said, “they are going straight to the Charterhouse to give the oath to the rest of the monks.”

  Peter. He too, then, would soon be in his company. Perhaps, Rowland thought, they would be tried together, even die together. The thought comforted him and gave him strength.

  On 4 May in the year of Our Lord 1535, upon the order of King Henry VIII of England, that zealous Defender of the Faith, the execution of the three priors was carried out in the following manner.

  From the outer gateway of the Tower, they were placed on hurdles and dragged through the streets. Their journey was a long one, for while the old Smithfield site was still used for executions, another place had gradually become even more popular: the old Roman crossroads a mile to the west of Holborn, where once a marble arch had stood and which now took its name from a little stream that ran nearby, known as Tyburn; the gallows was Tyburn Tree.

  The crowds along the way noticed something unusual. Since olden times, since the good old days when Saint Thomas Becket had defied the Plantagenet king, it had been the custom before any churchman was handed over to the civil authority for execution to remove the Church’s protection by stripping him of his religious orders. But today, Henry being God’s temporal and spiritual representative on Earth, this was no longer necessary. With a gasp the onlookers noticed: “They are dressed as priests.”

  At Tyburn, where a great crowd awaited by the gallows, King Henry had decided to make this a court entertainment. Not only was he present, but so were the ambassadors of France and Spain. More than forty mounted courtiers accompanied the king, all wearing masks, as though they were going to a carnival.

  Before this noble company the three priors meekly came. Offered the chance to recant at the gallows foot, they all refused. Nooses round their necks, they were hauled up and hanged and then, while fully conscious, taken down and cut open. Their bowels were dragged out, then their hearts, and their arms, legs and heads hacked off and raised, and waved about for all that splendid crowd to see. It was savagely done, in the best and oldest way. Then their blood-soaked limbs were taken to be nailed or hung in sundry places.

  And so, with the butchering of these, the first of the Christian martyrs who denied the king’s supremacy, Henry’s Church of England proclaimed its new authority.

  Peter attended the executions, then made his way back to the monastery. When he reached it he felt very tired.

  Shortly afterwards some of the king’s servants arrived with a small package rolled up in a cloth. When it was unwrapped, the monks saw that it was their prior’s severed arm. The king’s men nailed it to the monastery gate.

  It was a little after noon that the commissioners came to the Charterhouse to demand the oath from the community. The monks were all gathered together. The commissioners, who included a number of churchmen, explained to them the propriety and the manifold wisdom of loyal obedience to their king. But all the monks refused. Except for one.

  To their great astonishment, looking tired and ill and having, after the horrors of the morning, it seemed, lost heart, the most recent arrival, Father Peter Meredith, stepped forward and, alone of all their number took the oath.

  Secretary Cromwell himself informed young Thomas Meredith what had happened; and Thomas should have been glad. “Not only does he live,” Cromwell remarked, “but it does you some good: I’ve already told the king that the only loyal fellow there was your brother.” He grimaced. “He himself may not be long for this world though. They tell me he seems very sick.”

  And so, indeed, Thomas found him when he visited the Charterhouse a few hours later. For while the rest of the community was being subjected to a barrage of threats and persuasion in the chapel and in the refectory, Peter had withdrawn to his cell where he was being tended by old Will Dogget. He seemed now to have difficulty even rising from his bed, and after a few words, Thomas left him.

  But it was the other visit he had to make that he dreaded. For a long time he hesitated outside the house at Chelsea, and it was only when one of the children happened to run out and spot him that he was obliged to enter. Even then, he made every excuse to play with the children and avoid the subject before, at last finding himse
lf alone with Susan, he had to break the news.

  “Peter has taken the oath.”

  At first, she did not believe it. “I have been to the Charterhouse and seen him,” he told her. “It is true.” For long moments she was silent.

  “You mean,” she finally said, in a low voice, “that after leading Rowland to certain death, he himself has now deserted. He is leaving Rowland to die alone? He led him there,” she spread her hands, “for nothing?”

  “He is very sick. I think he is very tired.”

  “And Rowland? He is well, but about to die.”

  “I think Peter is not just sick. Ashamed. I try to understand.”

  “No.” She shook her head slowly. “That is not enough.” After another long pause, with a grief in her voice that almost made him double up with pain, she quietly said: “I do not wish to see Peter again.”

  And he knew that Peter had taken away everything in which she trusted, that she would never change her mind, and that there was nothing he could do about it.

  Dan Dogget glanced up at the sky. He did not often say a prayer but now, surreptitiously, he did so. There was one good thing: his debt to Meredith would be discharged when this strange business was over. “Just let it be soon,” he prayed.

  It was nearly sunset when they set out. Father Peter had not felt well enough to attempt the journey in the afternoon; but an hour ago he had seemed to gather strength and, on young Thomas’s orders, Dan had brought the little cart round to the monastery gate.

  The atmosphere in the Charterhouse had been tense. Since the executions the previous morning, Henry’s churchmen had subjected the monks to a continuous series of tirades. Earlier, three of the most senior monks had been taken, not to the Tower but to the common jail. “The king is determined to break at least some of them down,” he was told. As for Father Peter, his position was strange. Since he was ill, he kept apart in his cell anyway; but it was clear to Dan that the other monks had effectively disowned him. Even the king’s men had rather lost interest in him. “He only just arrived,” one of the other old lodgers remarked to him. “He was never really one of them, you know.” Yet whatever his disgrace within the community, and even though, as they passed through the courtyard, the monks looked the other way, Dan noticed how his father still treated the former priest with reverence and, when Peter prepared to climb into the cart, knelt down and kissed his hand.