London

by Edward Rutherfurd

  Slowly he conveyed the two Meredith brothers across the city on their melancholy mission. They were going to the Tower to see poor Rowland.

  They gained admittance easily at the Tower’s outer gate: Thomas was immediately recognized as Secretary Cromwell’s man. But the cart had to be left outside and it was now that Dan realized how much they needed him. For during the journey, Father Peter’s strength appeared to have ebbed away again. Getting down from the cart with difficulty, he seemed hardly able to walk and though in recent months the monk had lost considerable weight, it took both Dan and Thomas, one on each side, to help him along the cobbled lane between the high stone walls; and Peter was clearly short of breath by the time they reached the Bloody Tower. After Thomas identified himself to the respectful guard, they made their way slowly up the spiral stairway to Rowland’s cell.

  Rowland Bull was sitting quietly on a bench when they entered. The last red glow of sunset was coming through the narrow window. Some of yesterday’s calm had worn off. He had been sick again that morning, but only once. Now he just looked pale as Peter slowly sank down beside him. He was clearly glad to see them nonetheless.

  As the two of them talked in low tones, Dan found himself watching them with interest. Brother Peter he had come to know a little, Rowland he hardly knew at all. Seeing them side by side now, he observed with surprise how like each other the two men were; Peter’s illness had not only caused him to lose weight but made his face thinner too, so that he and Rowland might have been brothers. It was funny, he thought, but if he hadn’t known otherwise, he would have guessed that the former parish priest was the family man, and the lawyer, with his ascetic, almost ethereal expression, was the monk. Perhaps they lived their lives the wrong way round, he mused.

  They had been there several minutes before Peter broke the news. “I have taken the oath.”

  Rowland had not known. He had seen no one except a guard with some food in the last two days. Yet, shocked though he was, after seeming to droop for a moment or two, his reaction was rather unexpected. Gazing earnestly at Peter he said gently: “Was it so terrible for you, too?”

  “Do you wish to do the same?” Thomas asked him. “I do not think it can save you, but,” glancing at Peter, “with Peter here having done so too, it might soften the king’s mood. I could try.”

  Though he paused for thought, Rowland did not do so for long. “No,” he said at last. “I could not take it then; I cannot now.”

  Peter drew out from under his cassock a little flask of wine and then, with a smile, three little beakers. A little shakily he poured out wine, fumbling slightly with one of the beakers. Managing to control his shaking hand well enough he passed them to Rowland and Thomas.

  “In my state of health,” he said gently, “I am not sure that we shall meet again on earth, Rowland. So let us drink together one last time.” He looked carefully at Rowland, then. “Remember in your hour of agony,” he said softly, “you who are more to me than even a brother, it was you, not I, who truly earned a martyr’s crown.”

  They drank, and waited a while, saying nothing more. Then Peter and Thomas Meredith rose up, and did what they had come to do.

  Darkness had fallen by the time Dan and Thomas departed with the monk. It was not only sickness but the emotion of this final parting that had suddenly overcome him, for now, unable even to walk properly, he was practically a dead weight between them as they made their way back, very slowly, towards the gate. Seeing Thomas, the guards not only opened the gate but helped them get the monk up into the cart. Once this was done, assuring Thomas that he could manage, Dan drove slowly away to return to the Charterhouse, while the courtier turned round.

  “A sad night,” he remarked to the yeoman warder in charge of the gate, who nodded his head in quiet agreement. “I shall return and sit with poor Bull a little longer,” Thomas told him. “He looks almost as ill as the monk.” And he walked slowly and thoughtfully back.

  All was still in the Tower that night. Prisoners, custodians, even the ravens were asleep. The grey stone walls and turrets loomed blankly out of the shadows, apparently sightless in the starlight – except for a single faint glow, from the window of one cell, dimly lit by a candle, where two men still remained, keeping watch together. When once the guard looked in, he saw that Thomas was sitting gloomily on the bench while the lawyer, kneeling by the window, was softly murmuring his prayers.

  Thomas did not interrupt, though the prayers were long. As he waited, he went over his conversation with his brother three days before. How brave and yet how uncertain the priest had been, in what agony of spirit. “I am denying the Church two martyrs,” he had confessed, “if we do this thing. Perhaps,” he had sadly remarked, “I shall lose my soul.”

  Yet surely, Thomas thought, Rowland had offered himself for martyrdom: wasn’t that the same? As for Peter, what name did one give the sacrifice, he wondered, of a man prepared to lay down not only his life, but even his immortal soul for his friend?

  But now the figure by the window rose from his knees and, with a nod to Thomas, lay on the bed. It was the moment Thomas had dreaded, the thing he had said he could not do.

  “You must,” the figure on the bed said softly. “We have to be sure.”

  Taking a blanket, therefore, Thomas went across to the bed, put the blanket over the other’s face, and began to press down.

  All his life he accounted it a proof of God’s mercy that another hand, at that moment, intervened.

  There was no doubt what was happening when the courtier summoned the guard. A few minutes later, two sleepy yeomen warders joined them to witness the scene.

  The lawyer on the bed was having a massive apoplexy. He was gasping for breath; his face was discoloured; even while they watched he started to sit up, then fell back, mouth open, face strangely sagging. One of the yeomen went over, then turned to Thomas. “He’s gone.” Then, more softly: “Better this than what he had coming.”

  Thomas nodded.

  The yeoman turned. “Nothing you can do, sir,” he said kindly to Thomas. “We’ll inform the lieutenant.” He ushered the others out, tactfully leaving Thomas alone for a moment.

  So that nobody heard Thomas, as he touched the corpse, whisper: “God bless you, Peter.”

  It was dawn when Rowland Bull awoke. He found consciousness slowly; his head felt strangely heavy. Thomas was still there. The last thing he remembered was the two of them talking with Peter. And then he frowned. Why was he wearing a monk’s habit? He glanced round. Where was he?

  “You’re in the Charterhouse,” Thomas said quietly. “I think I’d better explain.”

  It had not been difficult really. The sleeping draught Peter had given him had worked even faster than they had expected. Changing his clothes with Peter’s had been the work of a couple of minutes. Nor had there been any difficulty taking him out of the Tower. “I’m Cromwell’s trusted man, you see,” Thomas said. The only problem, which they had anticipated, was getting an unconscious man into the Charterhouse; and for that short journey, Daniel Dogget had simply carried him, bodily, in his mighty arms.

  “You’d be amazed how like you Peter looked once he was in your clothes,” Thomas continued. “And when a man dies, you see, his looks change anyway.”

  “Peter is dead? How?”

  “I was to kill him. We were going to make it seem he had died in his sleep. It was helpful that they already believed you were ill. But then, just as I began . . .” Thomas looked down for a moment. “I thank God the Lord took him instead. An apoplexy. He had been ill for so long, as you know.”

  “But what about me? What am I to do?”

  “Ah.” Thomas paused. “That is the message I have for you from Peter. He dared not write it of course: so I am to tell you. He wants you to live. Your family needs you. He reminds you of what he said: you have already earned the martyr’s crown because you were ready to die. By doing this, however, he has prevented you.”

  “His taking the oath, then .
. .?”

  “Was part of the plan. Father Peter Meredith is spared and you must now become him. It will not be too difficult. No one will trouble you here. To the monks you are an outcast. They will avoid you. The king’s commissioners are not interested in you; and besides, you are believed to be very sick. Remain in this cell, therefore, Old Will Dogget will look after you. In a little while, I can probably arrange for you to go to another place.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Then,” Thomas made a face, “both I and the two Doggets, father and son, will accompany you to a terrible death and your wife will not have even me to protect her. Peter hoped you would not do that.”

  “And Susan? The children?”

  “You must be patient,” Thomas answered. “For your safety, and for her own, she must believe, truly, that you are dead. Later,” he continued, “we will see what can be done. But not yet.”

  “You have thought of everything.”

  “Peter did.”

  “It seems,” he said sadly, “that I should thank you all. You risked your lives.”

  “I felt guilty.” Thomas shrugged. “Will Dogget did it because Peter asked, and the old man loved him.” He smiled wryly. “Simple souls are nobler, aren’t they? As for Daniel,” he grinned. “Let’s say he owed me a favour.”

  Rowland sighed. “I suppose I have no choice.”

  “There was one other message from Peter,” Thomas added. “It’s a little strange. He said: ‘Tell him he may only be a monk for a time. Then he must return to his wife.’ I’d have thought that was obvious. Does it make sense to you?”

  “Yes,” Rowland said slowly. “Oh, yes. It does.”

  Of all the horrors which marked the birth of Henry’s new English Church, one single execution in June that year truly shocked his people.

  It was occasioned by the Pope. In May, still urging Europe’s monarchs to depose the schismatic English king, the vigorous pontiff made Bishop Fisher, still in the Tower with More, a cardinal. King Henry’s fury knew no bounds. “If the Pope sends a cardinal’s hat,” he vowed, “there will be no head to put it on.”

  On 23 June, tired and broken, the saintly and grey-haired old Bishop of Rochester was led out on to the green in the Tower of London, and his head was struck off. It marked, most men felt, the passing of an age.

  Two weeks later he was followed to the block by the former chancellor, Thomas More. But though it was known that the royal servant died for the faith, his fate was seen more as a political fall than a religious martyrdom and did not make nearly such a powerful impression at the time.

  Doctor Wilson, who had originally accompanied the two men, being of no importance, remained almost forgotten in the Tower.

  The monks of the London Charterhouse continued their sufferings. Three more were executed and the rest were subjected to constant indignities. Their trials were made all the more painful by the fact that other houses of the order submitted to the oath, and the head of the order in France even sent a message that they should do likewise.

  It was hardly even noticed when, one evening in June, upon orders from the office of Vicegerent Cromwell, the cowardly Father Peter Meredith, still very frail, was conveyed out of the monastery to go to another religious house in the north. Old Will Dogget went with him.

  In the spring of 1536 a double irony took place. Perhaps, had she remained his wife, or even been more kindly treated, the Queen Katherine, Henry’s Spanish wife, might have lived longer. But whether this is so or not, at the start of that year, in a cold house in East Anglia, she died. Had King Henry waited, therefore, he would have been free to marry and need never have broken with Rome at all.

  Within months, moreover, Anne Boleyn, the other great cause of the business, having failed to produce the needed male heir, fell into disfavour and was executed. Then King Henry married again. But he did not return the Church to Rome. He liked being Supreme Head, and besides, the money he was now deriving from the Church was considerable.

  1538

  It was a May morning, but there was thunder in the air.

  The two Flemings looked at each other glumly across their little stall. Neither of them could find words to speak, but more than once they glanced sadly at the Charterhouse as if to say: you have deserted us. Though what the poor old monastery, now empty of inhabitants, could have done it would have been hard to say. Fleming and his wife had no thoughts, however, of such niceties that day. They were too busy pitying themselves. They were taking down the stall for the last time. The business was closed.

  The fault was King Henry’s. Or, to be yet more precise, that of his Vicegerent Cromwell. For Cromwell was closing all the monasteries.

  The Dissolution of the Monasteries was already the most extraordinary affair. For the last two years, up and down the country, the smaller, then the greater houses had been visited by Cromwell or his men. Some had been found guilty of laxity, others merely closed on little or no pretext. The vast holdings of lands, accumulated over the centuries, had thus fallen into the hands of the Church’s new spiritual head, who had for the most part sold them off, sometimes allowing his friends to purchase at discounted prices. About a quarter of the property in England was changing hands, the greatest change since the Norman Conquest.

  “It has also,” Cromwell remarked with satisfaction, “transformed the king’s finances.” On the strength of it, the Supreme Head was starting to build Nonsuch, another huge palace outside London.

  But this was not all. The reforming party in the English Church had received such strength and encouragement from this great cleansing of the past that they had also won Henry’s permission to accompany it, this spring, with another purge.

  “Superstition,” Cromwell and his friends declared: “we must rid England of popish superstition.” It was not a wholesale purge, but for weeks now, all over the country, a careful selection of images, statues and relics had been destroyed. Pieces of the Holy Rood had been burned, sanctuaries closed. Even the great jewel-encrusted shrine of London’s saint, Thomas Becket had been broken up and its gold and gems taken to the king’s treasury. The point was made.

  There had been, even Cromwell had to admit, one unfortunate by-product of all this zeal. The monasteries had been host and comforter to an army of the poor. Old men like Will Dogget had been housed; hungry folk had been fed at their doors. Suddenly in London now there were tribes of beggars with whom the parishes could scarcely cope. The aldermen had appealed to Cromwell, who had to agree that something must be done.

  And then there were the stall holders. What was to become of those who, like the Flemings, trafficked before the gates of every London monastery in all the religious trinkets and images that were now condemned? Nothing, it seemed. “Our occupation’s gone,” Mistress Fleming declared. Bitterly they packed up their stall.

  A few minutes later, as they wheeled their handcart down into Smithfield, another melancholy sight awaited them. In the middle of the open area, a crowd had gathered. Before it a curious little square scaffold had been set up underneath which piles of wood had been stacked. As they drew closer, they could see that an elderly figure was hanging by his arms in chains from the scaffold and that the wood beneath him was about to be lit.

  The reformers were doing good work that day. Along with the statues and the images and the superstitious relics, they had found an old man to burn.

  Old Doctor Forest had been told he should die years ago. His crime had been that he was confessor to poor Queen Katherine. In his eighties now, he had been left, half forgotten in jail for some years until, as an afterthought, it had been realized that someone had better burn him or he might die of natural causes. Presiding over this little ceremony the Flemings saw a tall, grim, grey-bearded figure, who, as they drew near, was calling out to the old man: “In what state, Doctor, will you die?”

  Hugh Latimer, the Oxford scholar and reforming preacher was a bishop now. If he had any objection to this affair, he certainly gave no sign of it. Gall
antly the old man replied that, even if the angels were to start teaching any but the true doctrines of Holy Church, he would not believe them. At which answer Latimer indicated that it was time that he should burn.

  But something special had been ordained that morning. Instead of the usual fire, where the victim either suffocated or died of the flames quite quickly, they had decided to dangle the old man over the fire in chains so that he could suffer a slow death that might torture him for hours. Under Hugh Latimer’s supervision, this was now done. But the crowd, for once, had had enough. As the flames and smoke rose, a rush of able-bodied men knocked the scaffolding down and within a minute or two, the old man was dead.

  Slowly the two Flemings continued on their way.

  “It’s lucky,” Mistress Fleming declared to her husband, “that my brother Daniel makes good money on the royal barge. He’ll have to look after us now.”

  “You think he will?”

  “Of course,” she said. “He’s family, isn’t he?”

  Just then, she heard a rumble of thunder.

  But there was no thunder that morning twenty miles away to the east, in the old Kent city of Rochester: only a pale blue sky and a bright sheen on the water of the River Medway as it went silently to meet the Thames around the point.

  Everything was quiet as Susan waited.

  It had been Thomas’s idea, the previous year, that she should move to Rochester; and though at first she had been hesitant, she was glad in the end to find a pleasant sanctuary in the old place, far from the unhappy scenes she associated with the capital. The children were happy there too. In the modest lodgings near the cathedral, she had discovered a new peace.