The Final Sacrament

by James Forrester

  “Signor Grestocche is speaking the truth,” commented Girolamo. “You fight like a man in an alley. But the more dangerous man—you fight intensely and suddenly, like the attacker.”

  Clarenceux again went on the attack. But Greystoke was so nimble on his feet that Clarenceux could not see how he would catch him off-guard. He needed the weapons of deceit and deception to win a fight.

  “Remember, Mr. Clarenceux, not every part of the arm is as strong as every other. Your opponent may risk a blow when you are being unwise in attempting it, through weakness. Maybe he prefers to attack you after you have mistakenly attacked him.”

  Clarenceux silently cursed the Italian for distracting him, darting at Greystoke’s body only to see him twirl away and counterattack with a high blade across his vision. An instant later he felt the tap of a hit against his arm.

  The bout went on for a further twenty minutes in much the same form. Clarenceux scored a hit here and there, where wit and natural contrariness allowed him to surprise Greystoke, but Greystoke scored three times as many. Eventually Clarenceux held up his hand, panting, and said, “Enough. I can see you are a master swordsman. You not only know how to speak like an Italian, you can fight like one too.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Clarenceux. And if I may return a compliment, I certainly would not like to meet you in a dark alley. May I offer you a drink in the hall? They do have some excellent double beer.”

  Clarenceux breathed deeply and looked at the white-haired younger man. “Why are you spying on me?”

  “You are a suspicious man, Mr. Clarenceux. I have told you already: Walsingham has given me instructions to do what I can to make sure you and your family are safe. That drink?”

  Clarenceux walked over to the table and picked up his cloak. “Another time, perhaps. I told my wife I would be home within the hour.”

  “Then let me walk with you.”

  28

  Friday, January 3

  Father Buckman sat at a table in the upstairs chamber of the tavern with two candles burning before him. He listened to the laughter coming from below. Then, adjusting his spectacles, he dipped his quill into the ink and wrote the number of the folio of the book open in front of him. He counted the number of lines down the margin to the word that began with the letter he wished to write and wrote the number. It was a laborious code but it had the compensation, he believed, of being secure.

  There was the sound of creaking on the stairs and he saw the landlord’s head appear through the opening of the stairwell. The priest nodded. He extinguished one candle, and having withdrawn the other one from its candleholder, he carried it across to the top of the stairs; there he fixed it into a bracket attached to a beam. He walked back into the shadows and hid behind two large chests, one stacked on top of the other.

  “Come up,” he called.

  A woman in her midtwenties appeared, her fingers hesitantly touching the wall. Buckman studied her. She was dark-haired and long-legged, with a chin that jutted out slightly as she moved. Very plain in her face and not intelligent, he observed, but strong physically. He could see that she had passed the age at which the future seems like a blossom unfolding; people were picking at the petals of her flower, and she could do nothing to stop them.

  “Stand there, in the light, where I can see you. Your name?”

  She was obviously frightened. “Jane Carr.”

  “What was your crime?”

  “I committed no crime, sir. The mistress said I’d taken forty pounds of lamb and suet, stolen it away—but I never did.”

  “Nevertheless, you were found guilty. So that becomes your crime, whether or not it is on your conscience. Your innocence you can plead before the Lord when you’re given your release. How old is your daughter?”

  Jane looked down at her feet. “She is by seven, Father.”

  “Tell me her name.”

  “Agnes, Father.”

  He paused, looking at the woman. How well Lady Percy understood her own sex. The slightest weakness—and she could make slaves of women. “Personally I deplore Lady Percy’s threats,” he said, “but I have not the slightest doubt of her sincerity. She will hang Agnes from a gallows if you do not follow our instructions.”

  In the candlelight, he saw Jane nod.

  “Good. Now, look to your right. There is a table there. It has something on it.”

  She saw the small table in the shadows and reached forward to lift a cloth folded on its surface. Underneath was a small pistol. It was about eleven inches long and had a wooden handle. She picked it up and carefully held it.

  “Do you know how to use it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Joan Hellier will show you, at the house in Fleet Street. Make sure you take the key and the powder with you too. She will also show you how to enter Clarenceux’s house without being detected. You will have only the one shot. Make it count. After you have pulled the trigger, do not wait. Run as fast as you can to the cockpit in Shoe Lane. There will be a man there with a horse. From Clarenceux’s house it is but a short distance to that horse. Nothing more will be expected of you. You do not even need to come back here; Joan will tell me of the success of your mission and I will write straight away to her ladyship.”

  Jane closed her eyes. “I am scared.”

  “You have nothing to be frightened of. You have already been sentenced to hang, and you have your daughter’s life to save. Do this and you will both be set free and sent as far away from your troubles as need be. Lady Percy may have cold methods, but she does have full coffers as well. She rewards loyalty generously.”

  “But if I am captured, then both Agnes and I will die.”

  “Agnes will not die if you do your duty. You have my word that I will not let any harm come to her—as long as you carry out this godly task.” In the darkness, Buckman crossed himself and blinked. “This is just one of many stages in our planning. It must be carried out cleanly and on time as arranged, after church. We need you to do this for us. Remember, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

  29

  Saturday, January 4

  Clarenceux opened the box on the elm table and took out three pistols, their handles polished walnut and their steel barrels and wheel-lock mechanisms shining. He laid each one down gravely, alongside the two daggers and two swords already there. He looked at Awdrey and Thomas. “We will keep all three of these loaded—one in here, one in my study, and one in our bedchamber. We cannot wait until someone is at our door before reaching for the powder flask.”

  He lifted one and rotated the dog, pushing it to the firing position, then returned it to the safe position. He handed it to Awdrey, who handled it carefully, examining it from all directions. She held it in front of her, in two hands, and stared along the octagonal barrel, pointing it at the portrait of herself. She stopped aiming and looked at Clarenceux. She said nothing but then gazed down at the gun cradled in her hands. “How strange it is that an instrument of such destruction should not be the problem but the solution.”

  Clarenceux’s thoughts returned to Rebecca. Her head had been quietly buried in the churchyard yesterday. Now the very thought of that melancholy moment, and the smell of her decomposing remains, made him feel weak again. He ran a hand over his face and blinked away the incipient tears. “Whoever they are, and wherever they are, they are using time to their advantage. Making us sweat and fear, breaking us down. We must also use the time well—to make ourselves stronger.” He looked out of the window and saw the shutters on the house opposite half-open again, as normal.

  “Do we trust Mr. Greystoke?” asked Awdrey, behind him. “Should we trust any of Walsingham’s men?”

  “It was Walsingham’s men who tore this house to pieces before,” Thomas said.

  “We may have no choice,” replied Clarenceux.

  They heard Annie and Mildred coming do
wn the stairs. Thomas went back to his duties, crossing the hall as the girls ran in, laughing. Clarenceux smiled weakly at Awdrey. “Small mercies,” he whispered.

  ***

  All day Clarenceux felt as if his chest were twisted, listening for a knock at the door, or a shutter at the back to be forced open. He repeatedly looked at the house opposite, as if by watching his watchers he could discern something about the future. When Annie asked him to listen to her reading, he at first briskly dismissed her, then realizing it was his tension talking, not his real self, he sat down with her by an open shutter at the back of the house as she read to him from her horn book, his attention constantly drifting across the rooftops to see ways of approach and escape.

  After dark, they ate supper by the light of three candles in near silence. Joan had bought the ingredients for a salad, which they ate with some beef that she had stewed earlier in the afternoon. Only Annie and Mildred talked freely, prattling on about dolls, toys, and favorite colors until it was time for them to go to bed.

  Later that night, while Clarenceux was in his study, Awdrey came up the stairs carrying two pewter goblets of wine. He smiled at her candlelit face and watched her set one goblet down on the table.

  “Thank you, but I will not,” he said.

  Awdrey drained her own goblet, set it down, and lifted his. She looked at the fireplace, where half-burned logs were blackened, with flames licking around their edges. Then she looked at him. “For a moment, downstairs, I had a vision of being alone. I imagined being in this house, after you were dead, knowing you were never coming back.” She took a gulp of wine.

  “I am not dead. Not yet.”

  “But they will kill you, as they killed Rebecca.” She looked away, clutching the pewter goblet.

  Clarenceux pulled the seat on which he was sitting away from the table and leaned forward, with his elbows resting on his knees. “As I see it, we have four options. We could wait here all together, until whatever is going to happen happens. But that would be like rabbits waiting for the ferret to come. Alternatively, I could wait here alone and you could go into hiding with the girls. But I do not believe you and they could move from here without being followed or traced later. If that happened, you would be vulnerable. The third option is that we all go into hiding. But how long could we live like that, as fugitives? The fourth is the only one that makes sense to me. I take myself very publicly on my visitation of Oxfordshire. Everyone will know where I am—and they can come after me with all they have, while you remain here, watched over by Thomas and Nick, Walsingham’s spies, and Cecil’s guards.”

  Awdrey drank. “I want us all to go. Together. We could go to my sister’s house to the west of Exeter, on the edge of the moor. You remember how inaccessible that place is. No one would find us.”

  “I do not wish to go there and wait for someone to try.”

  “But we could be safe there.”

  Clarenceux straightened himself on his bench. “Do you really think you could be happy, hiding out in Devon?”

  She sighed. “I do not know. All I know is that we cannot keep living like this.”

  Clarenceux recalled the thought he had had when riding across London—that he could end the family’s woes by destroying himself. He caught Awdrey’s eye and gestured for the wine goblet in her hand. She passed it to him.

  “I have hidden the document in Oxfordshire,” he said. “We must find those who pursue us and lure them to it, and then destroy everything—them, it, and all our woes. Everything at once.”

  Awdrey looked at him with astonishment. There being no second seat in the room, she knelt down beside him and placed her hand on his leg. “Is that possible? To lure our pursuers in such a way—when we do not even know who they are?”

  Clarenceux put his hand on top of hers. “We know them by what they seek. These moths are not after just any flame. For them only one will do. That is what must guide us. That is what we must use to trap them.”

  30

  Sunday, January 5

  Clarenceux awoke, washed himself, dressed, and felt his way down the stairs. He moved through the dark hall. Thomas was already up; he had opened the shutters inside the glass windows at the front of the house. A little dawn light was seeping into the street. Clarenceux went to them and looked out; there was a small light in the open window of the house opposite.

  “It will be cold in there,” he muttered, hearing Thomas in the room behind him.

  “Walsingham’s men are made of strong stuff,” agreed Thomas. “That house isn’t a home—it is like a dark lantern, always looking out.”

  Clarenceux was about to turn away when he noticed something passing in front of the glimmering light. “It is beginning to snow,” he remarked. He turned to the darkness of the hall, listening to the sound of Thomas dragging away the blankets and mattress on which he had slept. “Light the fire and candles; let us get ready for church.” He was about to turn away again when a voice drew him back to the window. He heard the unbolting of a door and its opening. Although he could not see him, Clarenceux realized there was a man entering the opposite house from the street. His method of monitoring who came and who went was no longer possible—not if they were changing men in the dark.

  By the time he was down at the kitchen, where Joan was feeding the tiny flames on the embers with brushwood, he could hear the sounds of his family in the rooms above. The girls were running about. The one good thing about the terrible situation they were in was that his daughters did not let the taut atmosphere distract from their playing.

  “Today, Joan,” he said, looking at her stooped back, “we will all go to church. No one stays behind.”

  She turned and looked at him, seeing his face in the darkness barely illuminated by the light of the fire. “Sir, but will not the house be vulnerable to thieves? You always say that—”

  “Joan, you know that thieves are now the least of our worries.”

  She stood up. “I do, sir. Though I wish it were not so.”

  An hour later, as dawn was breaking, the family ate their breakfast of bread and butter in the hall together. Clarenceux took a black velvet cap which he intended to wear and tried it on, looking in the mirror in the hall. It did not suit him, so he left it on the elm table. Moving closer to the window, once again he looked out, feeling compelled to watch the men on the other side of the street. Now, in the morning light, two of them were waiting outside—Greystoke and Tom Green—their feet trampling the thin layer of snow into the mud.

  Once outside, with his breath billowing in the cold air, Clarenceux ignored Greystoke and Green and stayed by Awdrey’s side as she steered their daughters down the street. Thomas, Nick, and Joan all followed, Thomas casting suspicious glances at the men. Bells rang out across the city, and now those of St. Bride’s started to ring too.

  Greystoke, dressed in his respectable doublet and long cloak, walked over to him. “Your wife was reluctant to let me accompany her last Sunday, Mr. Clarenceux. Perhaps she will be more tolerant of my presence now you are here?”

  “We are going the same way,” replied Clarenceux stiffly. “I am accompanying my wife and household. Let us leave it at that.”

  Clarenceux expected Greystoke to answer but he did not. Instead the man simply tagged along behind the family. They walked through the muddy street, half-white with snow, with the cold air in their nostrils and the bells ringing louder.

  Clarenceux felt guilty, entering church with a pistol hidden inside his doublet. It was almost worse that it was concealed; he knew that God was watching and he knew that He could see the guilt in his heart. But Clarenceux knew that he had to be prepared, and prayed for forgiveness. If God could see his transgression, he reasoned, then He could see that it was not out of disrespect but a desire to protect his family and himself. He glanced at Greystoke, sitting not far away. The other guard, Tom, was standing uncomfortably at the back. H
e had no doubt that they too were armed.

  There came the time in the service to sing Psalm 52. Why boast of thyself in mischief, O mighty man? The goodness of God endures continually. Thy tongue devises mischiefs, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. Thou love evil more than good and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Selah. Thou love all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue. God shall likewise destroy thee forever, He shall take thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of the land of the living. As Clarenceux sang the words he took a strange comfort in the fact that God could have enemies, and that King David could sing with beatific confidence about Him destroying them forever. For those few moments, he felt a sense of grace, as if he did have a powerful ally in his conscience-driven search for peace.

  As the service drew to a close, Clarenceux saw Awdrey looking at him. He sensed her nervousness as people started departing from the church. Her fingers fluttered slightly as she rearranged Mildred’s hair, which had become tangled. Greystoke and Tom Green were watching him. What do they know that I do not?

  Clarenceux wanted to do something rash, something unexpected. He wondered about taking the family to eat their dinner at one of the London inns and not head home. But he could not simply do erratic things every time he felt vulnerable. He started to walk out of the church, putting his hand on Annie’s head, ostensibly guiding her between the people moving toward the door but in truth finding reassurance in the physical contact.

  Most of the snow on the ground had been trampled but everywhere else it lingered, glistening in the sunshine that now had broken through the clouds. They walked back to the house with no more than a few words. Mildred had difficulty keeping up, so Clarenceux bent down and lifted her, carrying her with his right arm. He fumbled in his pocket with his left hand and passed the key to Awdrey. While she unlocked the door, he watched Greystoke and Tom Green walking up the street behind them.