The Final Sacrament

by James Forrester

  “Daddy, who are those men?” asked Mildred.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he replied, setting her down and leading her by the hand over the threshold. He started to take off her coat inside the door.

  Greystoke was coming toward him. But just as Clarenceux, still with his hands on Mildred’s coat, saw the man and wondered what he wanted, he heard Awdrey scream. He turned to see both her and Joan open-mouthed, staring up the stairs. There, in an old red kirtle and brown jacket, stood a woman with unkempt black hair. She was staring at them with eyes wide, holding a pistol in each hand. The one in her left was pointed at him, the other at Awdrey and Annie. He recognized the gun in her right hand as his own—and he knew it was loaded.

  Springing forward with an almighty cry of “No!” he forced himself toward her, looking up at the barrel of the pistol, wishing he could move faster. He reached for the pistol inside his own doublet, but knew he was too late; the next instant the flash of the woman’s gun seared his eyes and he felt the heat and dust of the shot hit his face. An immense noise silenced his hearing. Hitting the wall with his shoulder, he drew his own pistol and aimed hastily at the woman. But in that instant of aiming, to his great shock, he saw the flash of flame from the other gun. There was a second explosion. He saw his daughter Annie hit by the bullet in the shoulder and blood seeping—rushing through her dress. With Annie falling, and Awdrey screaming, and the woman turning her head, Clarenceux pulled the trigger of his own gun. He hit her on the left of her abdomen, heard her scream, then saw her drop both pistols and crawl up the stairs toward the hall. Breathless, Clarenceux watched Awdrey desperately soaking up Annie’s blood.

  Gritting his teeth, Clarenceux followed the woman. He saw her stumble through the door at the back of the hall—and there she hesitated. Someone was running up the back staircase. A moment later, she went up to the second floor from the back landing, pursued by Greystoke, who had a sword in his hand. Nick was behind him. Clarenceux followed as closely as he could. He heard a shutter bang open and Greystoke and Nick shouting, and a scream. Then there was silence.

  When Clarenceux reached his bedchamber he saw the body half out the window, with blood running down the wall. He crossed himself, walked over to the woman, checked she was dead, and crossed himself again. Greystoke was standing, silently looking at her.

  “Did you have to kill her?”

  “She had a gun. Look in your mirror; your face is half-blackened and bleeding. I did not want anything left to chance.”

  Clarenceux said nothing.

  “I meant to protect you and your family. You could say thank you for that.”

  “Thank you,” said Clarenceux, and went back down the stairs.

  Annie was on the floor, cradled by Awdrey, who was sitting with her back to the wall. A blanket covered in blood lay across her. Thomas appeared in the open door with the physician from across the street, Mr. Knott, who started to examine the girl. Her eyes were open and full of tears. Looking over Mr. Knott’s shoulder, Clarenceux could see that she was breathing with difficulty. The bullet had struck her shoulder; there was pink tissue visible. Blood was in her clothes, in her hair, and across her face. The sight seized Clarenceux and held him, grabbing his head and forcing him to confront reality. What am I doing to my family?

  There was a creak; Thomas was closing the door, wary of further attackers but Mr. Knott held up a hand and stopped him. “No, I need the light,” he said. Picking up a pair of scissors, he cut away a part of Annie’s dress.

  “Is the woman dead?” Awdrey whispered, looking at Clarenceux.

  He nodded.

  Mr. Knott stopped examining Annie and looked up. “We need to put her on a table or a bed with lots of light—I cannot see what I am doing here.”

  Clarenceux saw the red blood still seeping from the wound, Annie’s frightened eyes, her red lips, her bloody mouth. Oh Lord God, spare my daughter! Spare her, spare her! He bent down, placed an arm beneath her back, and lifted her, at which she uttered an involuntary cry. She cried again as he carried her swiftly up the stairs to the first floor, laying her on the elm table in the window there, her lower legs dangling off the edge.

  Mr. Knott began to inspect the wound again. He touched something with his finger and Annie cried out. Awdrey caressed the girl’s brown hair. Clarenceux held Annie’s hand.

  “The bullet has gone deep,” said Mr. Knott. “It needs to be removed as quickly as possible, so you must send for a surgeon. Call for Mr. Read on Ludgate Hill; he is efficient and nearby. If he is not at home, go to John Hunter, at the top of Water Lane. The longer we leave it, the greater the chance that the wound will be poisoned. I think there is some bleeding internally too. The breaking of blood vessels causes the blood to drip through the body inside as well as out. There is nothing we can do to stop that. She is in God’s hands.”

  Annie moaned. Tears ran from Clarenceux’s eyes as he looked at his daughter, smeared with blood, and clasped both her hands to his face and kissed them. “Should we not wash her, clean away the blood?”

  “Mr. Clarenceux, we must remove the bullet. There is going to be more blood yet. And water has its own risks, its impurities. Send for a surgeon now, without more ado.”

  ***

  No one sat down to eat that day. Thomas and Greystoke removed the dead body from the upper chamber and cleaned the wall. Greystoke went to see the chaplain, Mr. Bowring, and Thomas the parish constable. When the constable came to view the corpse, there was not much to add to Clarenceux’s description of events. The coroner arrived, made a cursory inspection, and left within a quarter of an hour. Joan looked after Mildred in the girl’s own bedchamber. Awdrey stayed by Annie’s side. John Hunter arrived. After half an hour of careful cutting and struggling with various instruments, as Annie screamed with the pain, drunk on the wine she had been given to quash its edge, he managed to remove the bullet. As the afternoon dragged into evening, and Annie slept, Clarenceux carried her up to her bed and laid her there, where he and Awdrey attended her.

  They were still there late that night, watching her by candlelight. It was a small room with little but a chest and Annie’s narrow bed. Awdrey sat on the bed, Clarenceux on a stool. Mildred was asleep in her own room. Joan and Thomas were in the hall by the fire with Nick. Greystoke had stayed with them until dusk.

  Awdrey pulled back the covers slightly to view the wound. “It looks as if the bleeding has stopped.”

  “The outer bleeding,” said Clarenceux. “Mr. Knott said she could be bleeding inside. And that could go on for days. And there is the danger of poisoning.”

  “Why would anyone do this to a girl?”

  “The same reason as they killed Rebecca Machyn,” muttered Clarenceux. He rubbed his hand over his face and closed his eyes. “But there was something strange. That woman fired one of my guns—a gun she must have found in the house. She could not have known it was here beforehand. She searched the house, found it, and used it. But the other gun was not mine. And it was not loaded.”

  “It was,” replied Awdrey, stroking her daughter’s hand. “I saw the flame shoot out of the muzzle, and your face was covered in soot and bleeding in several places.”

  “There was gunpowder, certainly—I felt the hot dust, like a sudden very hot wind. But not even a blind woman would have missed me at that range. I do not think there was a bullet in it. Just gunpowder.”

  “Why?”

  “To put us in fear. The woman herself was terrified, that was why she used the second gun. If she had known one was loaded and the other not, she would have used the loaded one and then used the unloaded one to make her escape.”

  He bent forward, speaking low. “Greystoke said that Lady Percy has sent an army of women against us. This woman was one of them. She was given a gun and told to shoot me—but whoever gave it to her fooled her. She was meant to scare us, not kill anyone. It was accidental that she found one
of my own pistols—that was not in the plan. If she had killed me, Lady Percy would have had no chance of finding the document.”

  “Greystoke was on the scene quickly.”

  “He was.” Clarenceux watched Awdrey move the blanket again, to see if the wound had indeed stopped bleeding. After a long minute’s silence he said, “It is clear he expected an attack. He was waiting outside before we left the house and he was there when we came home. Did you notice how quickly he found his way up the back stairs?”

  “Now you come to mention it, yes.”

  “I thought that curious. As far as I know, he has not been in this house before.”

  31

  Monday, January 6

  Clarenceux stayed up until very late before stumbling into his bedchamber. Awdrey was sleeping on the floor of Annie’s room, so he was alone in the bed. Barely able to comprehend the day’s events, he lay down and reflected on the killing of the woman. That forced him to focus on what he now deemed most important: who was John Greystoke—and whose side was he on?

  He awoke feeling cold, but the daylight around the shutter told him that he had slept long. He was immediately shaken back to the events of the previous day. Hearing a cry from the adjacent chamber, he leaped out of bed. Awdrey was on her knees cradling Annie, crying. For a moment Clarenceux thought their daughter was dead, but then he saw that Annie too was crying, and moving her hand feebly.

  “Get her some food, William.”

  At the foot of the stairs he saw Nick. “We need bread,” he stammered. “Annie likes capon and milk. We need to feed her, to give her strength.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a gold angel. “Buy lots of white bread and capon.”

  Clarenceux then sank down on the back stairs and put his head in his hands. Feeling powerless and anxious, he prayed for Annie. He was still in this state when there came a loud hammering at the front door. Stirring himself, he walked along the corridor as Thomas went down by the front staircase. Clarenceux stood in the dark corridor, listening to the exchange of words.

  “Right heartily I greet you. May I speak with the householder?”

  “About what business?” answered Thomas.

  “About his forthcoming visitation,” replied the messenger, a young clean-shaven clerk.

  Clarenceux moved forward to stand behind Thomas. “What is it?”

  “Mr. Garter sends his greetings, Mr. Clarenceux, and asks that you deliver a reply to this letter by me.”

  Clarenceux accepted the letter, breaking the seal. He opened it and started to read:

  To Mr. William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms, from Sir Gilbert Dethick, Garter King of Arms, greetings. It has not escaped our attention that you are overdue in making your visitation of the county of Oxfordshire, as agreed in our earlier conversations. On account of it being the Christmas season, we have forborne to press this matter, but now that Epiphany is upon us, it is required of you to set a date for the speedy expedition of your duty. You will please us by making known to the bearer of this letter the date you intend to commence, or, if it be a question of unavoidable delay, the date by when you will have begun the visitation…

  Clarenceux stopped reading and thrust the letter back toward the bearer. “Domesday,” he said. “I will have set out by Domesday. And if that is not good enough an answer, tell Mr. Garter to take his letter to the privy and wipe his arse with it.”

  The messenger looked aghast. “Mr. Clarenceux, I will tell Mr. Garter no such thing.”

  “And if he doesn’t like that response, tell him he has a choice between his arse and mine,” snapped Clarenceux. “I have no time for this. My daughter is—” He stopped himself and glanced up at the windows of the house across the street. “Just go. I apologize for my profanity. I am tired and I am worried for the safety of my family. It is not something I can explain now.”

  He turned wearily from the door, waving away the messenger and climbing the stairs to the hall. Thomas closed the door.

  “Thomas.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I want you to go to Mr. Cecil’s house and ask to speak to Sir William. They will not allow you within, but ask when you might come and give him a message from me. I need to know whether Walsingham really did send Greystoke to guard me or whether the man is just presenting a bold front. If he did send him, I would like to know why Walsingham trusts him so much. I do not trust Walsingham himself to tell me these things—but he will not lie to Sir William. And ask Sir William one final thing. If Sir William trusts Walsingham and Walsingham trusts Greystoke, can Sir William guarantee his loyalty?”

  32

  Sarah Cowie was laying on one of the three mattresses in the candlelit chamber when Joan Hellier entered. “What went wrong?” she asked, looking up, her dark hair loose across her face.

  Joan shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  Sarah sat up.

  “Of course it matters. Jane was sent to that house with a specific plan and now she is dead. One of us will be next; what will our mission be? To give our lives for him as well?”

  “Not for him. For our daughters.” Joan walked across the room to a flagon standing on a small table and poured the beer into a tankard. She swallowed half of it and handed the tankard to Sarah.

  “Who is Father Buckman?” asked Sarah before she drank.

  “I am not supposed to tell you.”

  “It is well and good that he sends women like Jane to get killed, but you may not mention him?” She passed the tankard back to Joan.

  “Maurice Buckman is a priest. No one ever sees his face. You go to the Black Swan in the parish of St. Dionis Backchurch and ask the landlord if he sells a beer called Old Faithful. If the priest is not there, he says he is out of that brew at the moment, but he can ask the brewer to make some more in the near future. If he is in, the landlord takes you to the back of the tavern, pretending to show you the cask, then sends you upstairs. You have to talk to the priest in darkness, or near darkness.”

  Sarah’s thoughts returned to Jane. The mattress where the dead woman had slept the previous night was neatly arranged. Beside the bed was a leather bag, a folded smock on top. “She should not have had to die. She was innocent.”

  “I suspect that her innocence was why the priest picked her out. Not you, not me—her. In God’s name, if this all comes to an end, and I am alive, I am going to make sure Lady Percy gives her Agnes a good start in life. She deserves that at least.” Joan drained the tankard. “That double beer’s good stuff.”

  Sarah got up, took the tankard from her, and refilled it from the flagon. “It’s been harder for Jane and me. We weren’t used to the life. Jane was caught in a household where her lady decided to get rid of her; her mistress accused her of theft and then paid the constable to rig the jury. She did not know how to act. I’m not much better. I admit I stole. Five pewter plates, worth two shillings and six pence; a salt cellar worth a shilling; and a candlestick worth eight pence—that’s what I took. I ran the risk, and I got caught and was sentenced to hang. But it wasn’t something I was doing all the time. Jane and me, we weren’t to know whom to say yes to and whom no. Most of the time we weren’t given much choice.”

  “My heart bleeds for you,” Joan said, watching Sarah drink. She walked to the far side of the room, opening the shutter and breathing the cold air of the night. “But we all need to be harder than that. We cannot afford to feel pity or sorrow, or regret.”

  “I cannot remove the image from my mind of us killing that woman at Lady Percy’s house. I remember all three of us scrabbling with her, to get her on the ground, and you lifting her skirt to have something to strangle her with. And then the sight of her legs kicking, the hairs on her legs, and her red petticoat, her grubby linen socks in those old shoes, just kicking, kicking as you held the hem around her neck.”

  Joan closed the shutter. “It was something we ha
d to do. Now we have got another task, equally unpleasant. When it is over we can run away and pretend it never happened. And won’t that forgetting be blissful. God’s wounds—you haven’t had to cut off a woman’s head.” She took the tankard that Sarah offered and swigged the beer. “When you slice through the throat and see the phlegm that you know is just like the phlegm that you are swallowing, and when the blood oozes slowly out of the tubes, it doesn’t just turn your stomach; it turns your soul. But then you’ve got to drive that knife through the bones of the neck and cut it all, just cut everything, with the woman’s eyes staring into infinity, as if she can see God and you cannot. You cannot do it without desperation. You have to make it seem as if it’s nothing.”

  “It sounds like butchery.”

  “No. Butchery is much more refined.”

  33

  Clarenceux looked at Annie as she lay in her bed. If there was too much bleeding internally, Mr. Knott had said, she would be in a worse state by now. But poisoning could happen at any time. Rapid breath, quick pulse, very high or low temperatures, and fever were the signs that the body was unable to cope with the intrusion of the bullet and that the humors were out of balance. If that happened, she should not be bled by a surgeon. She had already lost too much blood for the normal prophylactic of bloodletting to work.

  Small feet came running up the stairs. Mildred was standing just outside the door in her night rail, peeping into the candlelit room.

  “You should be in bed, daughter of mine.”

  “Is Annie going to be better tomorrow?” asked Mildred.

  “Not tomorrow but maybe in a few days. Do you want to come in and say good night to her? She is still awake.”

  Mildred came in with her straw doll and gently kissed Annie’s arm. She then returned to her own bedchamber. A few noises came up the stairs from the kitchen and the hall. Clarenceux looked at his daughter’s face on the white sheet, her milky blue eyes, and he felt as if nothing mattered now but his family’s safety, their wholeness. If I could give up the document to Lady Percy to save Annie, I would do so.