The Final Sacrament

by James Forrester

  “No.”

  “Good—you’d be mad to feel brave at a time like this.”

  There was a pause. Neither of them said anything.

  Fyndern crouched down and looked into the blackness. The drain was about two feet high and although there was only a trickle of water running through it, it was oppressive. Also, it smelled foul. “I hope you are going to tell someone to reward me for this if everything goes according to plan.”

  “I will tell Thomas.”

  “How much?”

  “That will be up to Awdrey. I will tell Thomas I promised you ten pounds.”

  Fyndern stood up. “I told you I was worth more than two pence a day.” He looked at Clarenceux’s crouched outline against the stars above him and swallowed. “We will not meet again, will we?”

  “No, we will not meet again, Fyndern. But I am glad I met you.”

  “And me too, I am grateful,” said Fyndern in the darkness. “No one has ever trusted me as much as you, and made me feel worth something—more than just a trickster.”

  “Prove it now, Fyndern. Do this well and you will help stop a war and thereby save countless lives. Use all your skills and senses. Remember, go under the shaft from the refectory, find your way into the kitchen drain. The door to the undercroft is behind it. You have the key. Don’t put the boots back on until you are out of the water; we don’t want to leave tracks. And remember, everything now depends on you lighting that flame at the right time. When I send the signal. And when you are sure that the fire is going, get out quickly. Swim the pond if need be.”

  Fyndern reached forward and grabbed Clarenceux’s hand. He shook it vigorously and long. Then he let go, crouched down again, and plunged headlong into the stone tunnel.

  Clarenceux waited until he could hear no more sounds from the drain. When it was quiet, he turned and made his way back along the bank, moving quickly. Looking at the monastery, he could make out the curve of the moon reflected in the glass. A single light seemed to be burning in the upper chamber of the abbot’s house. But the window of the refectory itself was black.

  ***

  Thomas, Simeon, and Alice were all waiting for him in the hall, gathered around a large fire. Simeon shut the gate behind Clarenceux, locked it, and showed him into the warm.

  “I thought you would have gone to bed,” said Clarenceux, as he unbuckled his sword and laid it and the belt on the top of a barrel.

  Simeon poured him a tankard of beer.

  “How can you expect us to sleep?” asked Alice. “We want to know what is going on. We’re worried.”

  “Well, Fyndern is in,” replied Clarenceux, taking the tankard. “But Walsingham is trying to control the scene. There are too many soldiers there already. And I suspect more are on their way.” He pulled out a pistol from his doublet and set it beside the sword.

  “I don’t believe that Greystoke will walk into the abbey,” said Thomas, “even if his life is at stake. He cannot trust Walsingham.”

  Clarenceux supped his beer. “We have gone a long way beyond trust. Nothing is left except the politics of desperation. Walsingham still has to use him. I can refuse to surrender the document to Walsingham but I cannot refuse it to Greystoke because of Awdrey and Mildred. Even if Walsingham intends to arrest Greystoke the moment he has possession of the document, he has to allow him entrance to the abbey.”

  “But what is Greystoke’s plan for getting the document out?” asked Alice.

  “I don’t know. But he will have worked out something. That is why it is so important that Fyndern lights the fire. Greystoke’s plan will go up in smoke with the rest of him.”

  “What about Father Buckman?” asked Thomas.

  “He is just the middle man. Much as I would like him to be there, he is going to leave this to Greystoke. He has nothing to gain from being there in person tomorrow.”

  “And you?” Alice asked.

  Clarenceux did not answer. He supped his beer.

  “Everything is ready here, for your wife, as you requested,” said Simeon.

  “Good,” replied Clarenceux. “Now, Alice, I want you to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a long and tiring day.”

  Alice took her leave of them. Simeon stayed for a short while and then he too retired. Clarenceux and Thomas sat by the fire.

  “If Fyndern manages to light the fire, you must tell Awdrey to reward him,” Clarenceux said. “I have put in my letter to her, which is with Sir William, to pay him; but I said to him tonight that I would give him an extra ten pounds. I have also made provision for you in that letter.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Thomas said. “I trust Mistress Harley not to let me starve. But what about you? How will we know about you?”

  “Thomas, you won’t. You will have to accept things as they are. A conflagration. A funeral without a body. A new Clarenceux—someone else.”

  “I will have difficulty accepting that last change.”

  “You have to. For Awdrey’s sake, for the girls’. For my sake too. Whatever happens tomorrow, my one abiding hope is that it is not in vain.”

  81

  Monday, February 17

  Clarenceux entered Alice’s chamber at nine o’clock that morning. The shutters were wide open and she was sitting on the floor by the bed with her knees drawn up under her chin. She looked worried, and her hair was tousled and dirty. She had not slept, she said, but had lain awake worrying.

  “What about?”

  “About all the things that could go wrong.”

  Clarenceux reached out a hand and pulled her to her feet. He looked down into her eyes. “Tell me what you think could go wrong.”

  “What if they don’t hand Awdrey over? What if I am attacked on the way back from seeing her delivered? What if Greystoke’s messenger takes the key from me? I need more than your prayers, Mr. Clarenceux.”

  He put his hand to her face, thinking about each of the things she had suggested. “You will have more than my prayers; you will have my pistol. Keep it loaded. It will be reassuring to me tomorrow to know that you have it.” She looked up at him with a solemn gratitude. “We will leave at a quarter to twelve.”

  “Will we ride?”

  “You will. I shall walk.”

  “A mark of penitence?”

  “No. I don’t want to give them my horse.”

  ***

  When the time came to leave, Clarenceux saw that Alice was waiting in the hall. He turned to Simeon, shook his hand, and thanked him for his hospitality and his service. He pressed two gold crowns into his hand. Then he looked at Thomas and embraced him. With a lump in his throat he said simply, “Thank you, Thomas.”

  “Mr. Clarenceux, all these years have been an honor.”

  “Look after them for me.” He nodded to Alice, who was holding Maud’s reins, and picked up his long black cloak. Simeon opened the gate for them. With one final look back, and a wave to Thomas, they left.

  They said very little to each other on the way. The weather was clear and the birdsong was sweet and bright. A few townsmen and women of Thame were on the highway, traveling toward Wycombe and London; a few yeomen were riding into the town. But soon they were at the gate to the abbey, where a small contingent of men was stationed. Two wore breastplates, the rest were not in any uniform, but all were armed and all watched Clarenceux and Alice silently.

  A well-dressed gentleman stopped them. “You are Mr. William Harley, Clarenceux herald?”

  “I am.”

  “And who is she?” he asked, looking up at Alice.

  “My messenger,” replied Clarenceux. “If she does not proceed, nor do I.”

  The man accepted this. He gestured in the direction of the abbey. “Mr. Walsingham is in the church.”

  Clarenceux nodded. He looked south to the sun, northeast to the wood he had traveled through in the
night, and then southeast to where the path led to the abbey. Nothing now could change him from his intended course. It felt like his last moment of freedom.

  On one side of the track to the abbey was a pile of trunks of trees, cut down and shaved of their branches for sale to timber merchants. Several soldiers in armor were leaning against the timber. As Clarenceux and Alice passed, the soldiers roused themselves and started walking toward them. To the north, men were approaching from the barn. He turned and looked behind; most of the men from the gates were also following them at a distance.

  On they went, until the high roof of the church appeared between the trees that had grown up around the abbey since the Dissolution. Soon the whole west front was visible, and the west range beneath the lay brothers’ dormitory, with the abbot’s house at the southern end. Clarenceux looked at the ragged west front of the church, with the piles of rubble and smashed sculpture near the open door. More men were standing here in small groups: some in half armor, some with guns, and some with pikes, one resting his leg on a piece of sculpture. All of them were looking at Clarenceux and Alice. The breeze wafted through the long grasses on either side of the track. Men shouldered their muskets and started walking to their predetermined positions, ringing the entire abbey. Their silent attention, and the threat of their armor and weapons, contrasted strongly with the birdsong and the sunlit ease of the morning.

  The worn gothic stonework of the west front was comforting, despite the loss of its statues and the defaced sculpture at its base. It was at least a house of God, Clarenceux told himself as he passed a soldier waiting beside the door. The soldier’s face was stern and determinedly unresponsive to Clarenceux’s polite nod of greeting. Alice dismounted, handed the reins to a soldier, and followed him into the church.

  Silence and a cold light greeted them, striking the stone and casting shadows across the broken-tiled floor of the building. Men stood between the arches, looking at them. The elegant tracery in the windows remained disdainful of the shabby confrontation. In the empty side chapels, the damaged effigies of deceased gentry and clergy looked with wide open eyes to a distant, more glorious future. A handful of last autumn’s leaves blew across the floor, caught by the breeze from the window. Fractured saints in the broken stained glass cried for mercy. But there was no glass in the east window—and in the space where the great altar had once stood was a white-haired man, with a sword at his side.

  Clarenceux heard his own footsteps echo through the nave. When he reached the crossing, just before the choir, he heard a clink of metal. Walsingham stepped out from behind a column near the site of the altar and took his place beside Greystoke.

  There was something chilling about seeing the two of them next to each other.

  Walsingham was dressed in black, as usual, with a black skull cap. Greystoke’s white hair and white skin, his white shirt and cream-colored doublet were a striking contrast. He even wore light-colored gloves. A small black-clothed man and a tall white-clothed one—eternity and purity. But how hugely those symbolic colors lied. Clarenceux looked from one man to the other. Greystoke’s face was a mess, he saw. His lip had been torn from his jaw; it was swollen, red, and stitched up.

  “You have brought the document then?” asked Walsingham.

  “You have brought my wife and daughter?”

  “They are safe enough, and near enough,” mumbled Greystoke, his speech impaired by his injury.

  The dead leaves shifted further across the floor.

  “I want to see them.”

  Greystoke shook his head. “Not before you surrender the document.”

  “Are they here?”

  “Show us the document.”

  Clarenceux turned to Walsingham. “How is this going to look to Sir William? You, in the company of a murderer and a defiler of women, a traitor to the State. Will he not judge you by the company you keep?”

  “I think you will find that Sir William will trust me no less at the end of the day. You, on the other hand, did not surrender the document to him. If anyone has burned their bridges with Sir William, it is you, Clarenceux.”

  At that, Greystoke drew his sword and held it up in his white-gloved hand, turning the blade. “Of course, we could just take the document from you.”

  “Perhaps. But if you attack me you had better be very sure I have the document on me.” Clarenceux looked at Walsingham. Then without another word, he walked to the south side of the church.

  “Where are you going?” demanded Walsingham.

  Alice began to speak, as Clarenceux had instructed her. “Mr. Clarenceux has made arrangements to ensure that you do not renege on your agreement.”

  As he walked into the south aisle, he saw a woman with blond hair watching him, along with two armed guards. He went on, into the cloister, and marched past the chapter house and up to the steps into the refectory.

  The huge room was empty, just as it had been the first time he had seen it—the trestle table and the rushes on the floor, the glazed windows, the stone lectern where the monks used to read to the community. The sole exception was the iron-bound oak chest from his house in London, in the middle of the room. He bolted the door behind him and went across to the chest; he unlocked the right-hand of the two locks and lifted the lid. The smell of the sulphur in the gunpowder rose to his nostrils. Two pounds of it had been scattered across the base. In the bottom of the chest were the two holes he had bored there. The chest itself was firmly nailed to the floor.

  He heard someone try to force the door open. Then he heard furious knocking. “Damn you, Clarenceux!” It was Greystoke. “Open this door or I will blast it open.”

  Clarenceux went to the window and saw Walsingham’s men circling the whole abbey, all the way down to the fishponds. It was time to fetch the document.

  Six minutes later, Clarenceux unbolted the door. Greystoke angrily pushed inside, holding his sword. “Where is it?” Clarenceux said nothing but backed away as many more people filed into the refectory. Walsingham followed, then the woman from the south aisle of the church, and Alice and seven or eight men. Greystoke advanced on him with his sword drawn and started berating him again. Clarenceux drew his own blade and summoned up the full power of his voice to command the attention of everyone present.

  “Back!” he roared. “Back! As God is my witness, Mr. Walsingham, I have not sought a confrontation with you or with that man. But I will hand the marriage agreement over to no one until I know my wife is safe. Where is Maurice Buckman?”

  “It matters not,” said Greystoke, his sword at the ready.

  “Mr. Walsingham, I do not know why you trust this felon, a killer, but I see that you do. Do you know he is in league with Maurice Buckman? Are you awake that Greystoke himself now has control of my wife? Now, listen to me. I will show this document to you so you may know that it is genuinely the marriage agreement that you have sought for so long—and I will show it to Greystoke too, for I want nothing more to happen to my wife—but I will not let either of you have possession of it until I know that my family is safe.”

  “You are in no position to make demands, Clarenceux,” shouted Greystoke.

  Walsingham raised his hand. “Nor are you, Mr. Greystoke. Not when I have a hundred men in and around this abbey.”

  “Let the others out,” said Clarenceux. “Just we and the girl remain.”

  Walsingham’s eyes narrowed, knowing that Clarenceux had a plan. But he knew also that Sir William had at least acquiesced to the plan, for Sir William had personally passed on Clarenceux’s directions. He turned to his men and nodded.

  “And Joan,” added Greystoke. “She must stay too.”

  Clarenceux’s attention turned to the woman. Joan Hellier looked back at him. It took a moment for him to understand how she fitted into the story of his troubles—but when he did, he remembered Sarah Cowie’s words—and knew he was looking into the eyes of Re
becca Machyn’s killer.

  The last of the guards left. Clarenceux went to the door and bolted it shut. He gestured with his sword to the long trestle table as Alice took her position at the door. Walking to the middle of the room, he reached inside his doublet for the document, which he pulled out, in its folded state. He unfolded it, still holding his sword, and laid it flat on the table, pushing it in front of Walsingham and Greystoke. Both men leaned over it. Light from the great windows behind them made the parchment easy to read. Walsingham picked out the black-letter names in the old chancery script, together with the terms of the agreement and the names of the witnesses, including the bishops of Durham and Rochester. Both men were suddenly quiet and reverential in the presence of a document of such importance.

  When they had read it, Clarenceux pulled it away, and started to fold it up. But suddenly Greystoke drew his sword and brought it level with Clarenceux’s eyes.

  “Leave it.”

  For a long, silent moment Clarenceux stared at the tip of the blade. His eyes shifted to Walsingham. “I am not a fool and neither are you. I am sure you can understand the need for me to secure the document until my family are safe.” He moved away from the table, taking the document with him, and went to the chest. He turned back to the two men. “To that end I intend to leave the document in here.” In their sight he opened the chest and placed the unfolded parchment inside. He locked the right-hand lock on the chest with the key already in the lock and then took another similar key from a pocket in his doublet and locked the left-hand side. He looked to Alice and handed her one of the keys. “Take this young woman to my wife,” he said to Greystoke. “She will have one key with her. The other stays here. When I hear that my wife is safe, then—and only then—you can have the document.”

  Walsingham looked at Greystoke. “How far away are they?”

  Greystoke stared at the table, then raised his head and glared at Clarenceux. “Three miles.”

  “Take my wife to the Saracen’s Head in Thame,” said Clarenceux firmly, looking into the man’s gray eyes. “Alice will accompany your messenger. When you get there, if all is well, she will be given a code word. When you bring back the key and the code word, then the document will be yours.”