The air in the garden smelled so cold and so sweet. The bright sun on the hedges about them and the sparkling on the bare twigs above highlighted the fleeting moment.
“Will you teach me to read?”
He felt his chest tighten. “I will do all I can.” He hugged her gently. There was so much he wanted to say to her, about things she would need to learn in life—about families, about history and the wonders of past centuries, and about the joy of having children and seeing them grow, and understanding the future through them. All of this would have to wait. She would find out in her own time.
“You are sighing a lot,” said Annie.
“Am I?” laughed Clarenceux, releasing her.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because I love you,” he replied with a lump in his throat. “Because I so dearly love you.”
64
Clarenceux led Thomas and Fyndern out of the house and locked the door behind them. He did not look up at the house opposite. He remained silent as he walked across Fleet Bridge and through the darkening streets. At Ludgate he spoke brusquely with the guard about the urgent business he, Thomas, and his stable boy had to see to in the city, and gestured to Thomas’s lantern, which was necessary for them to go about the city later, after curfew. Soon the three of them were walking through the city proper, with its overhanging timber houses, frozen mud, and gravel streets. The signs above the doorways were fading in the dusk, and people heading for home were dark forms, huddled inside their cloaks against the cold. Church steeples conspired against the sky.
The three men wove through the streets and alleys, around the north side of the cathedral, through Paternoster Row, where the booksellers had already shut up shop, and up to Cheapside, where the market stalls were being cleared away from the wide street. They went eastward, past people carrying market goods on their backs, on their heads, and in baskets; past Goldsmiths Row, past the water-bearers and the great conduit. At the east end of Cheapside they turned right down Lombard Street beneath the gaunt tower of St. Mary Woolnoth and then, after a short distance, they came to Gracechurch Street. Crossing it and passing the church that gave its name to St. Dionis Backchurch, they turned left into Lime Street and then left again into the alley leading to the Black Swan.
The inn was a substantial old building tucked away behind other houses so that hardly any of it showed on the alley. The hall was still open to the rafters, with a rush-covered earthen floor in front of a large brick fireplace. Flasks and bottles stood in the shadows on high wooden shelves, and several spare candles hung in pairs from the common wick between them, draped over metal hooks in the wall. It was crowded with about seventy or eighty people—hot, smelly, and dimly lit, with the fire burning and six bright pricks of candlelight on tables and another eight set on holders attached to the walls. Laughter and chatter were in the air—and music too. Three men were playing together in the far corner: one with a fiddle, another with a set of pipes, and the third with a tabor. The tabor player was beating out exciting rhythms to which various men and women would dance for a short while before stopping to drink their beer. At the far end of the hall were two doors: one leading to the buttery, or so Clarenceux surmised, and the other leading to the private quarters.
As he searched the faces and people, some sitting on benches, others standing, he struggled to see anyone with an apron. He noted round-faced workers; hearty shopkeepers; builders with naked biceps glistening in the candlelight beneath their jerkins; two clerks or students nearby; and leather- and russet-clad workers of all descriptions, some with hats, some with shirts open. Four young women sat together at a table, as rowdy as their menfolk, but otherwise there were only a few women present, dotted here and there in the throng. There was barely room enough to move. It seemed a most unlikely establishment in which to find a Catholic priest.
Clarenceux caught sight of a woman carrying tankards, but before he could signal to her there was a chanting sound and clapping. Shouts of “Alice! Alice!” filled the hall. Clarenceux looked about for this Alice—and noted that Fyndern was staring straight across the room to the left-hand of the two doors. His attention was so strongly fixed that Clarenceux found himself bound to follow his gaze. A young dark-haired women stood there, seventeen or eighteen years of age, of slight proportions and a gracious smile. But it was not her face or her hair that was drawing Fyndern’s attention: it was what she was wearing. It was like a woman’s thin linen smock, except it was black. It fitted her body very closely and showed off her curves. Most shocking of all, it revealed her bare arms. Clarenceux suspected that if he could get close enough, he would see her ankles exposed too. Just to see her moving in that shiny black smock was enticing; when she stopped and placed her hands on her hips, looking sideways with a smile, every man present except Clarenceux inwardly sighed, groaned with desire, or shouted with lust.
She broke her pose and walked toward the musicians, who followed her from the corner to a position in the middle of the long wall of the hall. She raised her hands above her head and turned to the crowd. There was a great cheer: she started clapping rhythmically and the crowd did likewise, following her lead. The tabor player picked up the rhythm and added some flourishes of his own, playing double beats. The fiddle player started up with a fast tune, giving the cue for the piper, who followed suit. With the crowd all clapping, the young woman put her hands on her hips again and held the pose just long enough to increase the excitement.
Her confidence was extraordinary. To stand there as an object of attention, practically alone, and yet smiling and holding that pose, drew not just the eye but the whole mind. Thomas nudged Clarenceux and pointed to Fyndern, who did not even realize they were looking at him. “We’ve lost him, for sure,” he said. Clarenceux nodded, turning to look for the landlord but now unable even to see the woman with the tankards. People had not come here for the beer.
When the young woman began to move, Fyndern was not alone in staring at her hips, which undulated and swayed as if she was a river in which every man would want to swim. The women too were fascinated, struck by the confidence with which the girl danced, catching the eye of the each of her admirers, and emulating the movements of sexual gratification provocatively in front of them all.
Fyndern closed his eyes, just to see if he could believe what was before his eyes—but he opened them again quickly, not wanting to miss a moment. He tried to imagine his cheek close to the thin black cloth over her hips—staring as it shifted back and forth with her rhythmic movements. But then he looked at her shoulders: those too were equally sensual…There were just so many parts of her to look at it; her whole body was a sea plant, its fronts undulating with the waves.
A middle-aged man with a beard and bushy eyebrows moved through the crowd, filling tankards. He was the only other person in the hall besides Clarenceux not staring at the dancing girl. The bushy-eyebrowed man, who was tall but not as tall as Clarenceux, noticed him and waited as Clarenceux pushed his way through the open-mouthed onlookers toward him.
“I am looking for a beer called Old Faithful,” Clarenceux said.
There was a huge cheer as the woman presented herself side on to the crowd, put her chin on her shoulder, and started to tweak the skirt of her black smock, swinging her hips as she did so. Clarenceux did not turn away from the man.
“You don’t look the type to drink Old Faithful.”
Clarenceux drew closer to him. “I will see him. Either you introduce me or I will do so myself.” He looked the man in the eye again, and repeated slowly and clearly, “Old Faithful.”
The bushy-eyebrowed man turned his expression to the right-hand of the two doors. He pointed and then, slowly, elevated his finger to indicate the room above that door. “Don’t cause trouble.”
Clarenceux started to push through the crowd. It took him some time to reach the door—people did not want to be disturbed as they watched the dancing. Thomas was b
ehind him; Fyndern was still spellbound. “Wait here,” Clarenceux said in Thomas’s ear. “Make sure no one follows me.” He took a deep breath, lifted the latch, pushed the door open, and went through, closing it behind him.
In opening the door, Clarenceux caught a glimpse of the room beyond. There was a substantial ladder set into the wall to the right. The music from the hall was muffled and he had the impression that there had been another sound, a tinkling noise in the distance. Had it been his imagination? He felt around the doorframe for a string that might have rung a bell but found none, and stepped forward, reaching for the ladder. Gripping both sides, he started to ascend, slowly, hearing the faint music, cheers, and clapping from the adjacent hall. One step, two. After a third step his head struck an oak board, which shifted slightly. It was a wide and heavy cover. When he pushed upward, it resisted on the hinged side. He adjusted where he was pressing and pushed harder, raising it.
He was greeted by a single golden light. There was a smell of burning and recently extinguished candles, sealing wax, the fug of airlessness and body odors. He pushed the hatch all the way open and moved up into the light.
“Stop there,” came a nasal, slightly high-pitched man’s voice. “Who are you?”
Clarenceux did not stop. He climbed the last steps and looked around the attic chamber. There was one candle on a holder attached to a beam, not far from the hatch. The noise from the hall continued.
“Who are you and what are you doing here? Speak now—I have a pistol aimed at your chest.”
“You do not frighten me,” said Clarenceux, walking to the candle and lifting it aloft. He saw the slope of the roof, the underside of the shingles. The room covered the space above the buttery and the downstairs chambers, and was more extensive than he had anticipated. In the shadows were various items of furniture—but no people.
“Who would have thought of finding you, a Catholic priest, hiding in a bawdy house such as this?”
The voice continued its same nasal monotone. “Who are you?”
“I am the one you will not shoot, Father Buckman. The man to whom you owe your soul. The man whose wife and daughter you have stolen.”
“Clarenceux.”
“I am he.”
“You owe me a document.”
“I owe you nothing. You have hounded me, persecuted me, shot my elder daughter, taken my wife and raped her, taken my other daughter, killed my maidservant, made foul use of my property—and my soul is sick of it, tired and sick.”
Cheers rang out from the hall downstairs, clapping and hoots, which gave way to chants. The musicians struck up another tune.
The nasal voice seemed colder. “Then I suggest you do something to cure your sickness. Return the rightful property of Lord Percy to his widow, and your wife and child will be returned.”
Clarenceux held the candle aloft and walked toward where Buckman was hiding. “I am not going to let you, or John Greystoke, or anyone else anywhere near that document until I know for certain that my wife and daughter are safe and well. Take them into Oxfordshire.” Clarenceux moved to one side. There was a table there with a desk slope upon it. An open inkwell, several folios of used and blank paper, and three leather books were also on the table. The candlelight caught the rim of a small bronze bell fixed to a truss.
“Would you care to suggest a particular place in Oxfordshire?” asked Buckman.
Clarenceux did not answer but began to look around the attic, avoiding hitting his head on the trusses of the roof. When he came to the two chests, one on top of the other, he drew back. Buckman had placed a tabletop on its side next to them, allowing him a hiding place such as a child would make when playing in an attic full of furniture. Clarenceux saw the glint of a glass moving and walked back to the hatch, where he set the candle back in its holder. He then moved into the darkness himself.
“I will only hand the document over to you or to Greystoke in person. A time of reckoning has come.”
“If you have a duel in mind, I warn you Greystoke is one of the best swords in the kingdom, and a fine shot too.”
Clarenceux maneuvered himself behind the chests and saw Buckman move out of his hiding place, around to the far side. He was weasel-like and thin, not tall but with little hair, bespectacled and dressed in a cassock. He was holding a gun and pointing it at Clarenceux as he backed away toward the hatch.
“Go on, run away, if that’s what you are edging over there for,” said Clarenceux from Buckman’s hiding place. “Go and see Greystoke; tell him to make arrangements to take my wife and daughter to Great Milton in Oxfordshire. That is close to where we will make the exchange.”
Buckman was near the candle now. He blinked repeatedly as he backed away, holding the gun, saying nothing. Within reach of the candle, he snuffed out the flame, leaving Clarenceux in darkness, and descended the ladder as quickly as he could. Clarenceux heard the dying strains of the music downstairs: less applause this time, and no shouts. He felt his way across the attic in the darkness and followed Buckman. At the foot of the ladder he felt for the door and found the latch at the same time as Thomas opened it. He looked over his servant’s shoulder across the candlelit space of the hall to see Buckman leaving by the main door.
Fyndern was staring alternately at Buckman and at Clarenceux, as if asking what he should do.
“Curse the boy,” said Thomas, “he’s too slow. I told him to follow the man.”
“No,” replied Clarenceux. “Let him go. Buckman’s armed—no need for Fyndern to risk himself. Besides, Buckman’s too sharp to lead us to Awdrey. He will lie low, once he has made sure he has not been followed.”
The fiddle player was playing alone now. There was an air of drunkenness and the noise of chatter in the hall. A group of men had gathered around the dancing girl and she was laughing nervously, looking from one to the next.
“Where is the innkeeper?” asked Clarenceux.
Thomas indicated the other door. “Replenishing tankards.”
Clarenceux took the nearest wall-fixed candle, despite a few glances and complaints from drinkers nearby, and put his hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “Come with me,” he said as he headed back toward the stairs and up through the hatch, clutching the small light.
He lit the candle that Buckman had extinguished and took the second light across to the table. The papers were theological notes, nothing in code. He opened the heavy leather cover of the first and largest of the three volumes: it was a Bible in Latin. The second was in Italian, Dante’s Inferno. The third book he recognized as soon as he glimpsed it: it was Henry Machyn’s manuscript chronicle. Someone had stolen it from his house.
“Mr. Clarenceux,” said Thomas, who had kicked apart the straw mattress and bedding and was now inspecting the two large chests. They were each about three feet high, four feet wide and two feet deep. He lifted one end of the upper chest with some difficulty, due to the weight of the oak. It was locked.
“Mr. Clarenceux,” repeated Thomas.
“Open it,” said Clarenceux, looking through the Inferno for any indications of a code.
“It is locked.”
Clarenceux put the book down. “Go downstairs and find a chisel or something metal. We’ll break it.”
While Thomas was gone, Clarenceux returned to the table and picked up Henry Machyn’s book, with its loose cover. He could see nothing strange about it, no extra notes. He started searching the corners of the attic, looking and feeling into the dark recesses, but it was a vain hope. In truth he knew he would find nothing. Buckman had departed too quickly.
He went back to the chests and dragged the upper one off the lower. It fell to the floorboards with a heavy thump and a rattle of its contents. The lower chest proved to be empty.
When Thomas returned with a pointed metal poker to break the lock of the other chest, it revealed only three canvas shirts, two black cassocks, some candl
esticks, a pistol, gunpowder, a pair of old leather shoes, and cheap gloves.
Clarenceux tipped the lid and let it fall under its own weight. “I wonder why the innkeeper has not been up here to see what we are doing.”
“Perhaps he wants nothing to do with Father Buckman,” suggested Thomas.
“Mr. Clarenceux,” called Fyndern tentatively from the stairs.
Clarenceux picked up Henry Machyn’s chronicle and the candle and walked toward the hatch. He saw the boy’s face in the golden light. “What is it?”
“The girl. Some men have paid the innkeeper so they can take her into the back room. She is in danger.”
“Christ’s love, Fyndern, she is a whore, a common woman. You don’t need your delicate senses to see that.”
“No, Mr. Clarenceux, she is not, and they are going to use her. The innkeeper has sold her.”
Clarenceux wanted nothing to do with the matter. But the knowledge of what had happened to Awdrey made him feel guilty, and the voice of his conscience whispered in his ear: You can make a difference—if you choose to do so. But only if you choose.
Thomas emerged from a corner, his candle guttering, shaking his head. Clarenceux heard the voices from the hall. His own instincts told him not to get involved, so why did he trust this boy’s? The truth, he knew, was that the boy reminded him of himself in the happy days of youth, when his parents and brother were alive, and when he never suspected that his future would end in an ever-narrowing, ever-darkening, increasingly lonely alley.
“Mr. Clarenceux!” urged Fyndern. “She is only two years older than I am. You must help her.”
“Two years? Was that was a wild guess, intuition, or is she touting for business?”
Fyndern let the heavy hatch door slam shut.
“Thomas,” said Clarenceux, looking sideways at his old servant, holding up a book. “This is Henry Machyn’s chronicle.”
Final Sacrament (Clarenceux Trilogy) Page 28
