Final Sacrament (Clarenceux Trilogy)

by Forrester, James

  As the echo died away, Clarenceux looked through the smoke. Greystoke had just been blown flat, a hole torn through his stomach. He wiped his eyes and saw blood flowing across the floor. The man was still alive, just. Still holding the side of his face, Clarenceux glanced at Alice, who lowered the pistol and dropped it.

  He stepped over Greystoke’s body. “You told me I could not beat you in a fight,” he gasped. “But a true fight is more than fencing. And I do not play fair. There is no man on earth I despise more than you.” He pointed his sword at Greystoke’s right eye. “Go straight to Hell,” he said, waiting a second more. Then he plunged the point down and watched the blood seep into the eye socket.

  The room was filled with smoke now, the open door only just visible as a shade of light. Clarenceux coughed and sheathed his sword. The noise of the fire in the undercroft was growing louder.

  Joan shut the door and bolted it.

  Clarenceux heard the bolts and shouted, “What are you doing? Leave this place, both of you while you still have time. You have no need to be martyrs—this is not your war.”

  “My daughter’s life depends on that document,” replied Joan. She appeared through the thick smoke, holding another pistol—her own. Clarenceux coughed. He could hear Alice coughing too.

  “Open the chest, Alice!” Joan ordered.

  “I am trying!” snapped Alice. “But I can only unfasten one lock.”

  Clarenceux’s face was still bleeding and his eyes streaming with smoke-driven tears. He could not stop his coughing. “Alice, get out,” he gasped between convulsions of his chest. “Run, now!” He coughed again. “There is a keg of gunpowder underneath the chest, in the undercroft. As soon as the fire reaches it, the room will explode and burn. This is not your fight!”

  Alice coughed again, struggling with the key. “No, this is my fight. Lady Percy sent me here, along with the other women. She has my mother, Mary Vardine, in her prison. She will let her burn at the stake for killing my stepfather if I do not take her the document—and I would rather burn myself than let her die in that way.”

  “No! Leave it!” urged Clarenceux. “That is the wrong key. I threw the real one in the fishpond when you were away.”

  The fire below was roaring now. Clarenceux lunged for the latrine door, to get air to breathe. “Alice!” he yelled looking back. “Leave the chest. You cannot open it.”

  Joan turned and ran to the center of the room. Spluttering and coughing, she aimed the pistol at the right-hand lock of the chest and fired, smashing it inward. Clarenceux heard the shot and charged back through the smoke. “Leave it!” he commanded as she struggled to open the lid. “Leave it!” he repeated, drawing his sword.

  “Curse you, Clarenceux,” she spat. “Curse you! Curse you!”

  Blind now from the smoke, he slashed desperately through the air. But Alice appeared and grabbed his sword arm. “Joan, do it!” she shouted. He fell to one side and landed on Alice, seeing the orange of the flames through a crack in the floorboards as he went down. Still she held him, trapping his arm. He kicked her and rolled away, then crawled to the chest, feeling it now open and Joan’s arm reaching up. With a lunge he thrust toward her body and felt the point puncture her flesh. She screamed in agony, but he cut and stabbed again and again, feeling the point enter her body three times until he heard a scream stop in her throat and her body fall to the floor. Frantic now, he slammed the chest shut, but immediately felt someone trying to open it again. “Give it to me!” Alice’s hysterical voice rose above the roar of the fire.

  Clarenceux felt Alice’s shoulder and grabbed her around the neck. He dragged her kicking and struggling to free herself through the smoke to the door in the wall leading to the old latrine. He pressed her against the wall in the alcove, trapping her there, her cheeks hard against the stone. Still she struggled, even clawing over her shoulder at his wounded face in her attempt to return to the chest.

  Suddenly, with an almighty explosion, the gunpowder in the basement caught. Even though they were both protected by the corner of the wall, it smashed them hard against the stone and knocked out their legs from under them. It tore the floor in the center of the room and shattered all the windows. Clarenceux struck his head as he fell. Senseless for a moment, the rising heat burned him awake, scorching his face and leaving him gasping for the cold air that now rushed through the latrine to feed the flames. Part of the tracery in the windows fell out.

  Clarenceux felt a semiconscious Alice stir feebly. “Down the shaft—there is water at the bottom,” he bellowed at her, hearing his own voice faintly through deafened ears. “Follow the water. Tell Lady Percy what has happened. Tell her the document is no more. Do that for me. Tell her that it is over. It is over.”

  Choking and gagging, in a state of shock, Alice steadied herself on his arm. Without another word she climbed into the shaft and let herself down, holding on to Clarenceux’s hand, trying to slow her fall by grabbling at the stone sides of the shaft. Then she was at the bottom, in darkness, with air rushing toward her and water running away. Numb, she knelt and began to crawl. But within a few yards, when she thought of what Lady Percy would now do to her mother, she put her forehead down into the black water and there, on her knees, she halted—and started to cry.

  ***

  Walsingham looked at the roaring flames leaping up through the refectory. His face was sweaty and smoke-smeared: despite his diminutive size, he looked fearsome. His men were now gathered in a line from the great pond to the building, passing along any containers that would hold water—buckets, helmets, and cooking pans, even a horse’s nosebag. But it was clear that nothing could save the building or anything within it. The two men charged with throwing the water through the windows, who were both standing on a cart, had to come away. Even where he was, forty feet from the wall, he could feel the heat of the flames on his cheek. Within twenty minutes of him leaving the refectory, the roof had caught, the flames leaping up and flowing out through the tracery of the windows. Thick smoke billowed out of all five windows and stretched across the sky.

  Captain Johnson approached him. “I don’t think we’ll be seeing Mr. Clarenceux again. Nor his pretty lass.”

  “How many of these men are loyal to me, Johnson?” snapped Walsingham. “Before he died, Mr. Greystoke said that ‘certain cogs’ in my clock had been changed. I would like to know what he meant by that.”

  “Sir, I am sure that all the men here are—”

  “Find the traitors, Mr. Johnson, or I will have you and every tenth man hanged in their place. Instruct Captain Walker to the same effect. Scour the ground. If Greystoke hid or dropped anything here I want it found. Search the sewer system too—it is possible that people are hiding in the old tunnels.”

  Johnson nodded, bowed, and departed. Walsingham watched him head back into the abbot’s house. He looked at the men between him and the pond. They were gathered now in groups, staring at the flames. Pieces of burning ash wafted high on the breeze and gently descended, still glowing.

  ***

  From his position in the wood, Fyndern watched the thick smoke rising and the flames licking at the roof at the east end of the refectory. He shivered in his wet clothes. A mixture of emotions pulled at him. He felt proud that he had lit the fire as Clarenceux had asked, and that it had burned so well—and yet he was sorry that he would never hear him say thank you. He had come to depend on Mr. Clarenceux’s words of trust and encouragement. He was pleased to have escaped through the drain, going down to the fishponds, but his overwhelming concern was for Alice. She had gone back into that building, he was sure. He longed to go into the cloister and search for her, to make sure she had escaped; but if she was not in the fire, Walsingham’s men had her by now.

  The birds sang in the trees above him. Sitting down in the shade he felt tears come to his eyes. The young woman whose sparkling eyes, beauty, and dancing had so captivated him was
lost. And there was no way of knowing. He tried to feel whether she was alive—and he could not. All he could feel was his utter wish that she should be well. All he could hope for was that she should return to Mr. Clarenceux’s household to work. And that was all he himself could do now. It was that or go back on the road and make his living from guessing the cards.

  The cards! Fyndern felt in his pocket and pulled out his pack of cards. They were soaked and had stuck together. Colors had run; the kings and queens were weeping. He threw them down and looked again at the smoke in the sky, rising faster than ever. He had no choice now; he would have to return to London.

  He stood up, picked a long grass, and idly swished it in the air. It was going to be a long walk.

  82

  Tuesday, February 18

  Francis Walsingham lay blinking on an old bed in the abbot’s lodging. He had slept for half an hour and had just been awoken. It was still dark, except for a single candle burning nearby. Captain Walker had told him they had found the girl, Clarenceux’s messenger. She had been hiding in the drains beneath the abbey, not far from the pond.

  “Is she alone?” asked Walsingham.

  “My men have been all the way through both drains. There is nobody else.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Outside, sir.”

  “The fire?”

  “It will not spread.”

  “I will see her,” he said, rising to his feet.

  Alice was brought up into the chamber with her hands tied behind her back and two men holding her by the arms. She was bedraggled and shivering. Five other men accompanied them.

  “Give her a cloak,” said Walsingham as soon as he saw her.

  One of the men went looking for a garment.

  Walsingham walked to her and looked into her eyes. He appreciated her beauty, her youthfulness, her proud mouth, her precocious sense of her womanhood. “Where is Clarenceux?” he asked.

  “He did not come with me. He stayed in the refectory.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “To protect the document. Until the very end. Destroying it, and his enemies, and himself—that was how he thought he could save his family.”

  Walsingham looked up into the dark roof beams of the abbot’s chamber. The silence seemed to reach him, waiting for him to say something: to have the idea that would resolve the night, the burning and the mystery of Clarenceux’s death.

  “Who was the woman with Greystoke?” he asked.

  “Her name was Joan Hellier. She was sent by Lady Percy to serve Father Buckman.”

  “How do you know these things?”

  “I was working in Mr. Clarenceux’s household with Thomas and Fyndern. Mr. Clarenceux prepared us for what we had to do.”

  Walsingham looked at the guards. “Leave us, all of you,” he ordered. When they had left he pointed to a bench. “Sit down.” He put his foot on the edge of the bed and rested his arm on his raised knee. “You are going to tell me everything now. Where is Clarenceux and how did he get out? More to the point, where is the document? Who started the fire?”

  ***

  At first light, Walsingham stood at the top of the steps leading into the refectory, looking down. The fire was still smoldering, intense heat rising, flames dancing along pieces of blackened timber on the huge pile of ashes in the undercroft, smoke still rising in the roofless space. Burned joists jutted out of the wall; there was nothing left of the floor. The wind had picked up and was whirling hot ash around the room, causing him to step back to avoid it coating his clothes and getting in his eyes. On the left, sections of the blackened plaster had fallen away; only the door through to the latrine and the fireplace remained as recognizable features, now meaninglessly high in the middle of the floorless wall. On the right-hand side, two of the windows had lost their tracery and presented broken arches against the sky. The others were stark, skeletal shapes of blackened stone.

  “Gather the men to form a chain again,” he ordered Captain Walker. “This must all be doused and searched today. I want that chest found, even if all that is left is pieces. The girl says it was laced with gunpowder. But she may be lying.”

  83

  Thursday, February 20

  Awdrey sat at the table in Cecil’s study. She was red-eyed still from rubbing away the tears, and aching in her soul as well as her body. She stared across at the fire, which had burned down, and closed her eyes. Fire. It would always haunt her, she knew. The thought that across all England her husband did not exist, and there was nowhere she could go to speak to him, and yet men like Walsingham still existed, and Father Buckman, sickened her. The only good things that had happened to her in the last few days were hearing that Greystoke was dead and seeing Annie again. But in herself she felt empty. Part of her was missing.

  Sir William and Lady Cecil came into the room and greeted her; Sir William was hobbling with his gout, wearing nothing on his right foot. Despite his slowness, he shut the door carefully behind them.

  Lady Cecil put her hand on Awdrey’s arm. “I cannot begin to say how much I feel for you. Looking at Annie growing stronger day by day, I longed for when you would be reunited as a family. I am so sorry.”

  Sir William came closer and held out a piece of paper to Awdrey. It was addressed to her in her husband’s handwriting. “He left this with me in case something happened to him. I understand you might want to read it alone. But before I leave it with you, I wonder if you could tell me something. Does the thirtieth of June last year mean anything to you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “It was a very hot day when William and I went for a dinner by the river at Richmond with our girls. We were very happy. I told him I had never been happier in all my life.”

  Sir William held out the letter. Awdrey took it, her hand shaking. She turned it over, looking at it, seeing her husband’s seal intact on the back. Just the sight of her name written in his hand made her want to weep.

  Lady Cecil squeezed her hand tightly then left. Sir William also withdrew, closing the door gently behind him.

  Awdrey closed her eyes and tilted her head back, not wanting to suffer the emotions she knew she would feel when she opened the letter. She took a deep breath and said a prayer for her husband’s soul. Opening her eyes, she looked at the letter and slid her finger beneath the sealed flap.

  My dearest wife, my love, my life,

  I write this letter in my study, where you have seen me on so many nights, working by the light of a candle. No doubt you have often wished I was not such a bookish man—so wrapped up in old tales, heraldry, ancient chronicles, and charters. But by the time you read this, you will know that I have done a very unbookish thing. I have no way of conveying to you how sorry I am that I have caused you so much worry over these last three years, and so much suffering in recent weeks. I did what I thought was the right thing at the time, when I took possession of that book from Henry Machyn. That one act has wrecked our lives. If, through destroying the document and our mutual enemy, I have managed to restore your good opinion of me, and our daughters’ safety and prosperity, then I will have achieved all that I can hope to achieve.

  I have not made a formal will—there has not been time. Nevertheless I trust that this letter will serve the same purpose. I pray that you will settle my debts, those upon lease and in shop books. To our faithful and loving servant Thomas I pray that you pay the sum of twenty pounds of good and lawful money. To the boy Fyndern who has lodged with me these last weeks and looked after our horses, I will that you pay him his wages and give him suitable reward for his courage. To the boy Nick, whom I so wrongfully dismissed from my service, if you can find him, I would give the wages owing to him and five pounds. To the girl Alice Vardine who has also lodged with me, I pray that you pay her the wages I owe her at the time of reading this and a fine new dress. Perhaps she might take the position recently occupied by
our late servant Joan? That is something I leave to your discretion.

  You do not know this but there is a cottage and small farm in the parish of Wargrave, in Berkshire, which is in my freehold. I purchased it for the purpose of hiding the document two years ago. The deeds you will find in my study, in the small chest beside the table. I wish you to go there to see the tenant, John Beard, and to give him five pounds. They are good but poor people, and I wish them to do well.

  I pray that you have some two dozen gold rings made for friends in London, that they may remember me. My historical and heraldic manuscripts I wish you to give to the library of the College of Arms but only after Mr. Julius Fawcett has had the chance to look over them and select any items he would like for his own library. To Tom Griffiths, a tenant of mine near Aldersgate, I give and forgive six months’ rent.

  The chronicle of Henry of Abingdon I wish to be returned to its rightful owner, Sir Richard Wenman, of Caswell in Oxfordshire. My father’s sword I bequeath to our daughter Mildred, to be passed to her eldest son; and my Bible in English I bequeath to Annie. I would like my manuscripts and preparatory notes for a visitation of Devon to be given to Mr. John Hooker of Exeter. Finally, the elm table in the hall I bequeath to your sister’s husband, Mr. Andrew Holcroft, as a memento of our friendship.

  To you, my dearest, beloved wife, I leave everything else.

  I urge you to bring up our daughters in the understanding of the True Faith. Teach them that it is better to live peacefully under a Protestant queen in the eyes of the Lord than agitate and live in a state of war, and cause our fellow believers to be persecuted. God knows the truth of faith lies in our hearts, not just in what we profess. I wish them and you peace.