Final Sacrament (Clarenceux Trilogy)

by Forrester, James

  It was late—past nine o’clock, when Greystoke called. Thomas answered the door.

  On hearing the knocking so long after dark, Clarenceux had suddenly been sharp, hoping for news of Awdrey. He was disappointed to see Greystoke in the light of Thomas’s lantern. He was even more disappointed to find that the man had come to offer him sympathy.

  “What use are you?” he demanded, after Greystoke had said how sorry he was to hear the news. “Walsingham tells you that my wife has gone. Damn it—why did he send you to protect us? Your sword is less use than a blade of grass. First you failed to protect my daughter, then you failed to find how the attackers broke into the house. Now you have failed to protect my wife and younger daughter.”

  “With respect, Mr. Clarenceux, if you had wanted your family to be safe, you should never have accepted custody of that document. I cannot be everywhere that—”

  “Did you see anything?” interrupted Clarenceux. “Were your eyes open? Or were you just too busy defending your own great dignity?”

  Greystoke said nothing.

  “I have had my doubts about you, ever since you killed that woman who shot at my daughter. Too fast you were. Too quick to kill her. The same thing the second time—you killed her so I could not find out how a deranged woman was able to enter this house unseen.”

  “You are drunk, Mr. Clarenceux.”

  “I have lost my wife and my child! This house is empty. I think of them and I cannot imagine life without them. I cannot see their faces without hearing their laughter. ‘There is no greater sorrow than to be reminded of a happy time in one’s misery.’ What do you know of that? You know only the words. Allow me to translate them into the feeling, so you can see what your friend Dante really meant.”

  Greystoke stiffened. Tentatively, his left finger reached for his sword, just to reassure himself of the angle of the hilt.

  “Mr. Clarenceux,” said Thomas, putting his hand on Clarenceux’s arm but not taking his eyes off Greystoke. “It is getting late. It is time to let Mr. Greystoke go home.”

  But Clarenceux was too drunk to catch the subtle meaning of Thomas’s warning. “It is not just the timing of the attacks. You knew the name of one of the women—Ann Thwaite.”

  Greystoke’s hand was now resting openly on the hilt of his sword.

  “Mr. Clarenceux,” he began, “you are upset that I have spied on you. I understand that. But it was always for your protection. I have failed in my duty, and for that I am deeply sorry. I did what I could. As for the name of the woman who attacked you, as you know, I heard that from the coroner.”

  Greystoke paused, waiting for an answer that would tell him whether he needed to draw his sword.

  No one spoke.

  “I will continue to do my duty, as Walsingham bade me,” he added.

  Still no one spoke. Far away down the street, someone slammed a shutter.

  Greystoke stepped back, as if to depart. But he added, “It pains me to think that you are so suspicious of me, and that however much I have tried to help you, I have been held at arm’s length. I will not trespass on your time any longer.”

  He did not bow. He simply walked back across the street.

  “He is lying,” said Thomas.

  “I know,” replied Clarenceux.

  51

  Thursday, January 30

  In the morning, Greystoke waited until Clarenceux departed for Cecil House. Seeing that Fyndern was watching from the hall window, he took a wherry along the river rather than walk through the streets. The tide being high, the waterman ferried him with no difficulty beneath the great arches of the bridge to Lyon Quay, and there he waited again. Sure now of his free passage, he made his way along Botolph’s Lane and Philpot Lane to the Black Swan.

  Buckman greeted him as an old friend, embracing him, a sparkle in his bespectacled eyes. “So you have succeeded in wresting Mistress Harley from her husband, and his daughter too. Most well done.” The priest pulled over a bench for Greystoke to sit on in the candlelit garret.

  “The constant surveillance paid off,” said Greystoke, putting his foot on the bench and leaning with his elbow on his knee. “His wife was tricked by a fake message, delivered by a fake manservant, relayed to her by Cecil’s trusting ushers. All we had to do after that was to wait. She is now in the old stone farmhouse in the fields near Islington. There it does not matter how loudly she cries; no one will hear.”

  Buckman smiled and blinked. “This calls for a celebration, a toast.” He reached for a pair of turned wooden cups and poured some wine into each one. “I will send to Lady Percy with the good news tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s to our success.”

  Both men drank.

  Greystoke leaned forward, cradling the cup in his hands. “Wooden cups. An unlit garret. No one can say you are a hypocrite, Father, in your hermitage in the city. I like that. Luxuries are for other people.”

  “What I have is plenty in the eyes of the Lord.”

  “Has Lady Percy sent more women?”

  “Three. Of whom two made the grade.”

  “And the third?”

  Buckman gestured to the two large oak chests. “These old trees can be very useful. Especially when weighed down with stones. People expect them to be carted to the quay, and for them to take two or three men to lift.”

  Greystoke set his cup on the table beside the burning candlestick. He paused, about to speak.

  “Yes?”

  “I need to ask you a question, Father. If it is expedient and dutiful in God’s sight to kill those who threaten our project, are there aspects which…” He hesitated again. “Are there acts which normally would be abhorrent that are permissible for the greater achievement?”

  “You are being evasive,” said Buckman. “Just because it is necessary to eradicate the threat of a woman going to the authorities does not automatically justify all other moral crimes.”

  “But some others?”

  “Such as?”

  Greystoke ran his fingers through his white hair. Eventually he said, “The woman, Awdrey Harley. She is deeply devoted to her husband. And she very probably knows where he has hidden what we seek. Now, we could use painful devices, but such is her devotion that I think we would have more success if we threatened her virtue: by filling her womb with the seed of another man. The prospect of that might turn her.”

  “I see.” Buckman thought long and hard. He started blinking, then reached forward and refilled his cup and Greystoke’s too.

  Greystoke felt obliged to justify his suggestion. “I know the Commandment about not committing adultery, and this woman is married. But it would encourage her to speak the truth.”

  “You are right to point to the Commandment. But you are not married—and I presume it would be you who is taking charge of this responsibility. Are you familiar with Deuteronomy, chapter twenty, verses ten to sixteen? ‘When coming to a city of thine enemy, first proclaim peace.’ In my understanding, that is what you have done already, seeking Clarenceux’s friendship. ‘If the city makes war with thee, then thou mayst besiege it. And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it to thee, then thou shalt smite all the males with the edge of the sword and take all the women, the children, and the cattle for thine own.’ It seems as though the answer to your question is whether you believe the siege yet to be won. Has the Lord delivered the city to you—or just the woman?”

  Greystoke felt a stirring in his body. “The Lord saw fit to deliver her into my hands.”

  “I would caution you: if you do this act, self-indulgence will imperil you—all of us. Be pure, my son. As you observe in the way I live here.”

  Greystoke nodded. He lifted his foot off the bench and walked slowly across the garret, thinking. “Clarenceux said that the document is in Oxford, in St. John’s College. He may have been lying but, at the time he said it, Ann Thwaite was holding
a knife to his wife’s throat.”

  “He has said on another occasion that it is in Oxfordshire,” replied Buckman. “Helen Oudry overheard him talking to his manservant. Perhaps he is telling the truth. See if you can wheedle confirmation out of him.”

  “It is too late,” said Greystoke, shaking his head. “He knows.”

  Buckman blinked and adjusted his spectacles. “How can that be? Who told?”

  “No one told. He notices things. He watches us day and night, as we watch him. He is the sort of man whose suspicions linger in his mind; he’s a man who likes his suspicions, who nurtures them. He picked up on the fact I knew who one of the women was. But the pretense lasted longer than we thought. It served its purpose.”

  Buckman was silent for a long time. “This puts a different complexion on things. Do not risk confronting him again. I will wait, and let him sweat for a few days, before I send word to him. In the meantime, do what you must with his wife.”

  52

  Clarenceux bent forward and kissed Annie on the forehead as she lay in the bed. Placing a hand on her cheek, he whispered a prayer for her. He tried to think of her gasps and delirium as diminishing, and rosy-cheeked health blossoming in her. It was a picture of a prayer. Then he made the sign of the cross and gestured to the servant standing in the doorway to lead him to Cecil’s study.

  “William,” said Cecil as he entered, looking up from the pile of papers spread on the table in front of him. “Is there news?”

  Clarenceux shook his head. “I was hoping that your searchers would have yielded some.”

  “Apart from the dead body of the gentleman usher who accompanied Awdrey, nothing. No one knows anything; no one saw anything.”

  “And Walsingham? What about his men? What use has he been?”

  Cecil straightened his back and put his pen down. “Mr. Walsingham is doing all he can to ensure the safety of you and your family.”

  Clarenceux raised a finger. “That is where you and I have to disagree. His man Greystoke is not trustworthy. You yourself cast aspersions on his integrity.”

  “I simply reminded you that you should err on the side of caution.”

  “Sir William, listen to yourself. One of your servants has been murdered. Your wife’s godchild has been kidnapped outside your own house, together with her mother. And that is not all. Greystoke was signaling to the women who attacked me…He used a mirror to flash the light into their chamber across the street. Twice he entered my house falsely to demonstrate his loyalty by killing them. He is cold and ruthless and he is against me—I know it. I know it. Walsingham sent a man who is working for the Catholic cause against me, to spy on me. Walsingham is being used.”

  “Damn it, William. Have you quite had your fill? Because I don’t want to be interrupted when I say what I have to say.”

  Clarenceux glared at Cecil.

  “I asked Mr. Walsingham why he trusts John Greystoke, as you requested. Mr. Walsingham’s reasons were sound. They met years ago in Italy, in Padua, when the English religious émigrés were staying in the Republic of Venice. Mr. Greystoke came back to England when the queen ascended the throne. He has undertaken many missions for Walsingham and proved successful, even when in danger of his life. Most tellingly, it was Mr. Greystoke who told Francis about Maurice Buckman. Does that name mean anything to you? He also goes by the name of John Black. He acts as the go-between from Lady Douglas to Lady Percy. It was Mr. Greystoke also who told Mr. Walsingham about Lady Percy’s women. Without Mr. Greystoke, this investigation would be nowhere.”

  “I do not believe that is the whole story,” said Clarenceux, walking across the room, clenching his fist.

  Sir William rose to his feet. “Give me one hard fact, one indisputable piece of evidence that I can give to Walsingham to show he trusts the wrong man.”

  “I do not understand you, Sir William. You yourself warned me against trusting him. Yet you will not question Walsingham’s trust. And you ask me to give you evidence. Why not ask Walsingham to produce proof that Greystoke is loyal to her majesty?”

  “You could have made this much easier by handing over that document to me. Much easier for yourself and your family, and everyone else.”

  Clarenceux said nothing. It felt as if the whole world was against him, and that Cecil was in league with Walsingham and Greystoke and even this mysterious priest, Father Maurice Buckman, alias John Black. But how could that be? Catholics in league with Protestants? Loyal men in collaboration with avowed traitors? The cold sickness of self-doubt muted his protests and forced him to think of home, and the loss of his wife, and the only people left to him now whom he could trust.

  He swallowed. “I will go and bid farewell to my daughter,” he said.

  53

  Friday, January 31

  Awdrey and Mildred were given an upstairs room with bare stone walls and a shuttered window that had been barricaded with thick planks on the outside. Only chinks of light entered, falling in golden coins on the bed and the floorboards. An old straw mattress and two blankets were thrown on the bed, as well as two folded linen sheets. Otherwise there was nothing in the room except a pail that served as a chamber pot.

  Since arriving here on Wednesday night, Awdrey had done little but lie still beside Mildred and talk to her, wishing the child would cease questioning her and, at the same time, feeling grateful for her incessant prattling. She cried when she thought about Annie, and felt a deep dread of being told of her death. She was angry and sad when she thought about her husband, but when she thought about him hard enough, she was proud. She had no doubt whatsoever that his was a path of integrity and righteousness, and that he would prevail. It just took a lot of effort to see him at this deeper level, fighting for what he believed was right. It required her to put herself and her daughters to one side, and even her husband himself, and consider the paucity of options.

  The smell of the bed was not good. The straw reeked of urine and the blankets of sweat. The floorboards were old and rough, and damp in places. Mildred received a splinter in her foot, which was impossible to remove with no tweezers and so little light. There was no fireplace, so the blankets were constantly employed, even though they stank. Bread, cheese, and an old apple had been their only sustenance yesterday, and the water had been rank. The worst aspect of the chamber, however, was the awareness that no one but her enemies knew she was here. She could see gray skies and open fields through the tiny gaps between the shutters and the barricades, and knew they were somewhere near a village north of London—she had gleaned that much from the long journey to get here—but that was all. When the clock in the parish church across the fields had chimed ten o’clock a few minutes earlier, it had sounded as if it was about a mile away.

  “Mam, how long must we stay here?” asked Mildred, lying on her side.

  Awdrey pulled the blanket up around them. “I don’t know; it might be a few days, maybe longer.”

  “Will anyone come to take us home?”

  She could not reply. The thought was too painful. She distracted herself by sinking down into the memories that she knew were safe: the day she realized she knew how to read, her wedding day, the day Annie was born after a long and difficult labor.

  “I’m cold,” whined Mildred.

  Awdrey heard footsteps on the landing outside the door and low voices. She strained to understand them but could barely pick up a word. The bolts of the door were shot open. She shivered and felt even colder, even more alone.

  “Have you been given food?” asked Greystoke as he entered.

  Awdrey did not even look at him, but Mildred sat up. “Look, Mam. It’s that man.”

  Awdrey opened her eyes. A woman was standing in the doorway behind Greystoke—one of the women who had seized her beside the cart two days earlier. Both figures appeared in silhouette. She let her head rest on the mattress.

  “Not as prou
d as when we first met, are you?” sneered Greystoke. “Do you remember that? When you did not wish to be seen with me in the street?”

  Awdrey did not answer.

  “Perhaps that old man you call a husband is regretting his carelessness.”

  She felt a bitter sting, remembering it was her decision to leave Cecil House. The usher had told her the message had come from Thomas—saying that her husband was in great danger and needed to see her before he left London. She had asked for one of the ushers in the hall to accompany her.

  “Losing a pretty wife like you would be a mistake.”

  “Curse you, from your guts to your soul,” said Awdrey, unable to lie still and listen to another word. She sat up. “No good is in you. You are nothing but deceit; you have no substance.”

  Greystoke shrugged. “I have substance, and you will know that soon enough. I will leave you so violated that you can never be a whole wife to your husband again. Every time he touches you, you will remember. Every time you desire him, and reach for him, you will hesitate, fearing that he is mindful of your being filled with another man’s seed. I will make you the adulterer.”

  “In what devil’s name do you use such loathsome words? You repugnant whoreson! My husband told me you love the works of Dante. Well, let me tell you there is a special circle of Hell reserved for men like you—one where Dante and Virgil never dared set foot. It is set aside for men who are selfish, cowardly, cruel, deceiving monsters. There, men like you are forced to drink nothing but the blood of their victims and are made to eat the rancid flesh of the helpless on whom they have turned their backs.”

  As Awdrey shouted at him, Greystoke walked over to the bed and reached down with his left hand to her neck, feeling her hands grasp his wrist as he dug his thumb deep into the flesh. Mildred started crying. With his right hand, Greystoke held Awdrey’s thigh through her dress. “Tomorrow. Despite the stench in here, I will have you. You have until this time tomorrow to save your precious marriage.”