The Final Sacrament

by James Forrester

  He went down the stairs to the yard and out across to the stable, where he patted the horses, thinking about how he had shouted at Nick and trying to convince himself that what he had done was necessary: he had nothing to be ashamed of.

  “Mr. Clarenceux, sir,” called Thomas from the back door. “Mr. Greystoke wishes to see you.”

  Clarenceux walked through to the front of the house and spoke to him on the doorstep. After Cecil’s cryptic note he had no intention of allowing the man into the house.

  “You are not going to attend church then,” said Greystoke. “That is most unlike you, Mr. Clarenceux.”

  “After last week, it would not be appropriate. The family feels too vulnerable. I suggest you go alone,” he had replied, beginning to close the door.

  “Are things all right with you, Mr. Clarenceux?”

  “Do you think this general situation is—” But at that moment there was a scream from upstairs. “William!”

  It was Awdrey’s voice, and there was a note of fear in it that Clarenceux had never heard before. “Stay here,” he commanded. As the mind moves into slow motion, he turned and saw the wooden steps of the staircase passing under him, as he forced himself up, hearing his footsteps as if from afar. He entered the hall to turn to his right and saw everything as it should be—except for one hideous sight. A blond woman in a filthy gray dress was standing behind Awdrey with her left hand under her chin and her right holding a knife at her throat.

  “I’ll kill her—stay back!” shouted the woman, whose face was wide-eyed and terrified. Her voice carried a northern accent. She backed away toward the stairs, dragging Awdrey with her. But she heard Thomas running up the stairs behind her and stopped. When he appeared and took stock of the situation, she gestured with her head for Thomas to move into the front part of the room to stand alongside Clarenceux.

  The woman’s hair was a tangled mess, her hands were dirty and she had broken teeth. The skirts of her dress were stained down the front, and her fingers blistered. She did not look or smell as if she had washed for a long while. She had lost all self-respect. And she was shaking.

  “You know why I am here. Give me the document that Lady Percy wants. Give it to me or I will cut her throat.”

  Clarenceux stared at the woman. “It was you,” he muttered. “You who killed Joan.”

  “William, please!” urged Awdrey.

  “Give it to me!” the woman shrieked, fear and anger combining to make her appear like a crazed Maenad from the ancient world.

  “You are out of your mind,” said Clarenceux, approaching a step further, causing the woman to back away and dig the knife blade further into Awdrey’s neck. A trickle of blood ran down where the edge was cutting the surface. “I have lived with the curse of that marriage agreement for a long time now. I have told some people I have destroyed it. I have told other people that I will use it. The truth is that it is not in this house. It is not in this city. It is not even in this county. If you want me to give it to you, you will have to wait.”

  “Where is it? Tell me, and you can have your wife alive. Otherwise, it will be two bodies you need to bury.”

  “It is in Oxford,” said Clarenceux. “Hidden under the floor of a room in St. John’s College.” He paused and stepped closer, and the woman backed away another step. Awdrey was white-eyed with fear, rigid, barely daring to breathe with the blade hurting her. She started gasping.

  “Do you see your stupidity?” shouted Clarenceux, feeling angry and desperate at once. “Do you think I would be such a fool as to keep something as precious as that vellum in this house?”

  “Please!” shouted Awdrey, her head back, squirming. “It’s true!”

  Suddenly there was a knocking sound behind Clarenceux and he wheeled around to look—but there was nothing. The room was empty. Turning back, he saw blood bursting everywhere, all over Awdrey. Instantly he rushed forward, but then Awdrey lifted her hands to her face and screamed. The knife had fallen from the woman’s grasp. The blood was hers, not Awdrey’s. Greystoke had been so quick; he had stabbed her through the neck. Awdrey gasped and reached blindly for Clarenceux. He held her as she sobbed. Greystoke wiped his blade on the woman’s dress and turned the body over.

  A moment later, Clarenceux saw Mildred enter the room. The young girl looked with curiosity at the dead woman, her blood running across the floorboards. “Thomas,” said Clarenceux. The old servant stepped forward and ushered the girl out of the hall.

  “How many more of them are there?” Clarenceux asked Greystoke, holding Awdrey as she sobbed, pressing her face to his chest.

  Greystoke shook his head. “That I do not know.”

  “I don’t care!” cried Awdrey, lifting her face. “I don’t want to know. I just want to go away from here.”

  Clarenceux held her tight, but quietly he was thinking. Greystoke had thrown something across the room to distract the woman before he thrust. He noted the deftness, the sleight of hand, the silence of his approach, and the accuracy. The swordsman was more than just a show fighter.

  40

  Monday, January 13

  Clarenceux found himself alone in the bed, still clothed, with his sword in his hand. Lying there, he remembered that there were two corpses in the house: victim and murderer, lying side by side in the empty shop downstairs. Although the previous day his household had numbered seven, today it was just him and Thomas. Awdrey was safer where she was, where Cecil’s many servants could help look after her and, if necessary, call for a physician for Annie. They were only a few hundred yards away, yet this house was now so cold and empty. It had lost its purpose.

  He turned in his bed and lay on his side, remembering the shock of finding Joan. He recalled the sight of the woman with the knife. How wrong I was about Nick. How hateful I must have seemed, how unjust. And I did not listen to Awdrey—she urged caution, and she was right, for it was that woman all along.

  He threw off the blankets and felt his way downstairs, too full of self-recrimination to care about the cold. “Thomas,” he called as he felt for the latch and opened the door to the hall. “Thomas, are you awake?”

  “I am now.”

  “That woman yesterday—how did she get into this house?”

  Thomas stirred in the darkness. “I do not know. I suppose she was always hiding, in one of the attics.”

  “No, I searched thoroughly yesterday. They have found a way in, through a wall or a window. They could be back inside even now.”

  “The doors are certainly locked, Mr. Clarenceux. And to the west there is only the alley. They would be seen coming in the front, and behind there is the yard. To the east is Mr. Webb’s house—and you know he would not entertain such people.”

  “They have found a way in and it has to be from Mr. Webb’s direction,” repeated Clarenceux, marching to the front windows and opening the shutters. He could see a couple of lights in the house opposite and the shadowy line of the roofs. “Both these women who have attacked us have attempted poorly thought-out acts. Futile attempts. Yet they have found their way into the house without being seen.”

  “The first one came in through the back window, we know that. We found the catch lifted.”

  “She did not unfasten it herself; it was opened from the inside. Lady Percy has sent an army of women after me—it is beginning to look as if someone is placing them in here on her behalf. Perhaps Greystoke himself: I don’t think it a coincidence that he has killed both of them.”

  “But Greystoke was sent by Walsingham.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps Walsingham sent another man called Greystoke and this one has taken his place.”

  There was the sound of wind through the rafters. Somewhere down the street a shutter banged open. “They could be listening to us now,” he said.

  “Mr. Clarenceux, we have to go to the constable today.”

  “We als
o need to see to the horses. We are without a stable boy.” Clarenceux went to the door leading up to his study and paused. “I am so sorry for what I said to Nick. It was wrong. And you were right. I should not have rushed to judgment.”

  “It was understandable, given the circumstances,” replied Thomas.

  Then there was no sound but for the wind in the rafters. Both men listened.

  “We need to see to the horses,” Clarenceux said in a louder voice. He went back to where Thomas was and took his arm. “We will talk outside,” he whispered.

  41

  “It’s dangerous to stay here,” said Sarah Cowie as she saw Joan Hellier in their second-floor chamber. “Greystoke will kill us all, one by one.”

  “We’re not that stupid,” muttered Joan, kneeling on Jane Carr’s bed and looking through her possessions. She took a comb and the dead woman’s money for herself.

  “But is the plan working?”

  Joan went across to Ann Thwaite’s bag, left by the door of the room, and started to rummage through it. “The beauty of this plan is that it cannot fail. Every attempt is just another stage in the plan. Eventually it will be successful.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Joan let an old smock fall from her hands and kicked it away across the floor. She sighed and looked at Sarah. “You’ve seen a bull baiting. First one dog goes in and it gets thrown, then the next, and it gets thrown too. Some dogs get killed. The older and wiser ones hold back. They know that sooner or later, one of the young ones will catch the bull by surprise, or two dogs will distract the bull, and they will grab it by the neck and worry it to death. Although the bull fights, and catches it with its horn and kills it, the master of the ring sends in another couple of dogs. If they are brave and determined, the bull is as good as dead. It is only a matter of time.”

  “We are the dogs, you mean.”

  “It is better to be the dogs than to be the bull.”

  42

  The constable and the coroner, together with their assistants and clerks, assembled at Clarenceux’s house that same afternoon. The coroner, whose inquest had consisted of a cursory examination of the corpse and the premises a week earlier, now spent hours going over the details. It was too much of a coincidence, he deemed, that three women should have been killed in the same house within a week. He insisted on taking statements from all the people involved, so Greystoke had to be summoned from across the road. Clarenceux refused to send for Awdrey; the coroner accordingly decided he would go to Cecil House to interview her. The party—with the constables and clerks, Thomas and Clarenceux—made their way to the imposing house by the Aldwych and waited in the great hall while the coroner spoke to Awdrey.

  When the officials had completed their work, Clarenceux went up to see his wife and daughters alone.

  “Sir William is not at home?” he asked.

  “He is with the queen,” Awdrey replied.

  “When you see him, find out why he sent that Latin message. For my part, I mean to search harder, and that means taking the risk of spending more time with Greystoke.”

  ***

  Late that afternoon, Clarenceux and Thomas saddled up the horses to exercise them. They rode out along the Strand past the palace and the royal menagerie, feeling the cold wind of January on their faces. There was no warmth in the weak sun. Being a Sunday, there were no washerwomen walking back into the city with their baskets of linen, as there would have been on any other dry day. Carters and travelers were hastening along the road to make sure they reached the city by nightfall. The two men ate a small supper of bread, beef, and cheese at a tavern in the village of Knightsbridge. It was dark when they left, for the new moon was only three days old. They rode slowly, with owls hooting in the trees on either side of the road, past the latecomers hastening to the city’s suburbs—shadowy carts and riders in the night, black figures shifting in a dark world.

  Clarenceux knew that someone had been in the house during their absence as soon as he entered. He went to place his riding cloak on the peg nearest to the door, and there was already another garment on it. Feeling it, he recognized it as Awdrey’s safeguard, which had previously been placed on the adjacent peg. “We need a light,” he said to Thomas. “Go and ask Mr. Greystoke if he will oblige us.”

  “Mr. Greystoke?”

  “We need to lure him in. He will make mistakes—but if we are not there with him when he does, we will not spot them.”

  43

  That Sunday set a pattern for Clarenceux and Thomas for the next two weeks. Clarenceux rode every day to Cecil House to see Awdrey and his daughters. Awdrey looked tired and worried, and he felt dispirited, as if he was failing her. Thomas and Clarenceux mucked out the horses themselves and exercised them in a new direction each day. Several times they searched the house for a secret entrance but did not find one; eventually they gave up looking. They ate at a different tavern every dinnertime. They also met with Greystoke each day, under the pretext of Clarenceux wanting to practice his swordsmanship. On both Thursdays all three men attended Girolamo’s swordsmanship school at the Belle Savage—although Thomas simply watched.

  Clarenceux noted the comings and goings of the men at Greystoke’s house, asking him about each of the men living there with him: who they were, what their backgrounds were, why they had sought employment with Walsingham. Every time Greystoke replied with confidence and assurance, mocking him for being so suspicious. Which only made Clarenceux more so.

  He looked forward to the riding most, when no one knew where he was. Each night when the time came to go home, he felt as if he were forcing himself back into a vice, and that Lady Percy was giving it an extra turn. He had to be there, to play the victim, so his enemies would come to him. The place that had once been a home now seemed oppressive—the most dangerous place he could be.

  He knew he was being watched—and not just by Greystoke. Thomas knew it too. Occasionally something would appear slightly out of place. In his study Clarenceux positioned documents so that the corner of a charter would be just tucked under the edge of a book, or his horn ruler would be left with its lower edge on the seventh line from the bottom of a page. From this he knew that what he was reading was also being checked, in case he was using a book-based code. This was doubly worrying: whoever was looking at his papers could read—it was therefore very unlikely to be a woman being manipulated by Lady Percy but someone with an education. Whoever it was, he or she was not entering by way of the rear window. Clarenceux wedged small pieces of dried bread in between the shutters—crumbs that would fall out if the windows were opened. They remained in place.

  For the three women in the house two doors to the east of Clarenceux’s, the situation was as taut. Joan Hellier informed Maurice Buckman that only Clarenceux and Thomas were now living in the house. Buckman instructed Joan and the other women to listen to all conversations and to take every opportunity to enter the house when Clarenceux and Thomas were away. They used the knowledge that he would exercise his horses for at least an hour every day to time their maneuvers. They too felt trapped. Spying on Clarenceux and Thomas meant an agonizing and tense period for one of the women each day. She had to lie still in the front attic, above the hall, for a whole day, until one of the other women gave the all-clear signal. This task was shared by Helen Oudry and Joan Hellier. Sarah Cowie was the only one of the three who could read, so it fell to her to check Clarenceux’s study. One of the few compensations was the chance to refill their wine and beer flasks and flagons from the barrels in Clarenceux’s buttery whenever they crept into the house.

  Over the two weeks, the women learned little. But what they did hear was of great importance. They knew where Awdrey was. They discovered when the house would be empty and where Clarenceux went with Thomas. They found out just how much Clarenceux did not trust John Greystoke. Most importantly, they heard Clarenceux himself telling Thomas in a low voice that the docume
nt was in Oxfordshire. And this was the message they took back to Father Buckman.

  44

  Sunday, January 26

  Before church, Clarenceux noticed it was beginning to rain, so he waited until the last moment before donning his long cloak and leaving the house with Thomas. He stepped outside and greeted Greystoke with a perfunctory nod; Greystoke was waiting in a similar long garment. Clarenceux continued on his way, holding his hat firmly on his head as the rain came down harder, splashing into the mud of the street. The bells rang out above them, somber-sounding in the rain. Already there were puddles forming as the three men joined the queue and entered the church.

  Greystoke seemed to be in an equally somber mood. Thomas was just tense. Clarenceux listened to the sermon, thinking of his wife and daughters and remembering the moment two weeks earlier when Annie had been shot. What hold could anyone have over a woman to make her do such a thing as shoot a child? It did not seem sensible to him that a religious motive underlay their actions. If religious self-sacrifice were the key, why did the woman not attack him in public? He hardly listened to the sermon, preoccupied with imagining the next threat that might assail him.

  After the service Clarenceux and Thomas headed to a tavern, the Mermaid in Cheapside, for their dinner. Clarenceux invited Greystoke to join them, as usual. The tavern, however, was busy. All seven tables were full. There was a fiddle player near the fire and two children dancing, a dog nosing from table to table, but the lack of space meant they could not stay. Thomas suggested the Bell in Gracechurch Street, where he used to be on good terms with the innkeeper’s wife and was always treated well. Clarenceux had not been there but was persuaded to try it, and Greystoke made no alternative suggestion.