by D. K. Wilson
‘Whatever caused her change of heart, I’m glad of it. I hope this may be a fresh start for her. I’d like to think she can put her past behind her.’
‘Would that salve your conscience?’ Ned asked.
I did not answer.
For the rest of the summer I divided my time between Hemmings and Goldsmith’s Row. The little female coterie in Kent was more than content to gossip and ogle my infant son. Lizzie was a great success with Raphael and when the wet nurse left, at the end of September, she slipped naturally into the role of his carer. The sweating sickness did, in fact, break out in high summer and there was no question of my family returning to town. London fell very quiet save for the frequent sound of the passing bell ringing from several steeples. One event that many had looked forward to – the coronation of the new queen – had to be repeatedly postponed because of the contagion and eventually the ceremony was not held.
Business was brisk that summer, thanks in no small measure to Thomas Cromwell’s assault on the smaller monasteries (Robert had been right to prophesy the minister’s dramatic rise). With thousands of acres of land coming on to the market, property speculation soared. Noblemen, gentlemen and yeomen ambitious to establish or extend country estates came to the City to sell or pawn their plate or jewels in order to raise capital.
In this atmosphere of bewildering change I came to rely heavily on Robert’s advice and enjoyed discussing with him the events of the day. We fell into the habit of attending Sunday mass together at the parish church of St Pancrate’s or the Mercers’ Chapel and dining at his house afterwards. For the most part Robert welcomed the revolution that was sweeping the land. He had little love for the monasteries and, as I thought of Ned and Jed, it seemed to me that many monks generously pensioned off might find themselves useful occupations outside the cloister. Yet I could not be blind to the mounting mood of resentment becoming almost tangible on the streets. For every gentleman or merchant looking to profit from the dissolution, there were a dozen or more ordinary folk who cursed Cromwell and (when they were sure no court eavesdroppers were listening) cursed his royal master. Those, like Robert, in close touch with affairs abroad had even more disturbing things to report. As he explained to me, England’s rebellion against the pope had so far succeeded because our neighbours, France and the Empire, were intermittently at war but, in August, these belligerents signed a treaty. Those in the know, Robert said, genuinely feared the possibility of a combined invasion.
The changing political situation made it necessary for Robert to cross the Channel in August for consultation with his business contacts in the Netherlands. I received occasional letters from him during late summer and early autumn and they only increased my sense of foreboding. He hinted at threats and even actual violence being offered to English merchants in Catholic lands. He wrote of secret emissaries being sent by Catholic activists to friends in England with the express purpose of promoting rebellion and promising money and troops to aid in overthrowing the anti-papal regime.
In the first days of October it seemed that their strategy was working. The long-feared storm broke in the distant northern counties. The first we heard of it in London, around 7 October, was that all Lincolnshire was up in arms, that the people were demanding the monasteries should be restored and Cromwell handed over to the leaders of the revolt. Wild rumours rampaged through the streets. A rebel army was marching on the capital. According to which story you believed, ten thousand, thirty thousand or fifty thousand angry Englishmen, led by gentlemen of the shire, were on the road south and picking up more malcontents as they came. The government firmly denied these rumours in leaflets hurriedly printed and distributed to every household. The rising, we were told, amounted to no more than a peasant rabble that had already been suppressed by the king’s generals. This reassurance was received with widespread cynicism. If peace had been so easily restored, people wanted to know, why had the king and court hastened to take refuge in Windsor Castle, the strongest royal fortress in the land?
In the midst of the general panic, I received another letter from Robert. It was brief and, to judge from its uncharacteristic scrawl, written in haste.
My hearty greetings to you and your mother. Here is much grave news. The King of France has sent troops against the English port of Calais. It is believed he intends to secure it as a base for an invasion fleet. Here in Antwerp several foreign merchants have been arrested and imprisoned with no charges put forth. I am so far safe, praised be to God, but obliged to go very warily about my business. Yet the worst news is that Master Tyndale, that great servant of God, is dead. He had escaped detection for some years but was recently discovered and betrayed to the authorities by a wretch sent over from England for the purpose. Three days ago he was brought to the stake near here and there strangled before his body was burned. Thus does Antichrist muster his forces. We must be vigilant. I have written nothing of this to my good lady wife and I pray you to say nothing that would alarm her. Should I be unlawfully detained here or should anything worse befall, you may receive no more letters from me. I shall write when and if I can and am in hope to return safely in about two weeks.
Your assured friend,
Robert Packington
It was a relief to know that my friend was safe but I was worried that he spoke of Tyndale in this way, almost as a personal friend. Two weeks passed with no more news. Then three. Then four. I called several times on Margaret Packington, hoping to discover that she had heard from her husband, while at the same time not wishing to let her see my own mounting anxiety.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the City was becoming almost unbearably tense. We heard that the trouble in Lincolnshire had been dealt with. The ringleaders had paid for their treason with their lives and the country was quiet once more. But we were allowed scarcely a breathing space. By the third week of October the contagion of rebellion, though no longer a threat to the nearest shires, had spread northwards. What we could gather from messengers and travellers suggested that the whole of England between the Humber and the Scottish border was in the hands of men who called themselves ‘pilgrims’ and who were intent on forcing Henry to reverse his policies. They commanded tens of thousands of followers – too many to be defeated in battle. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk had been sent north with all the troops they could muster but no one believed that the royal army was big enough to crush the revolt or that, if it came to a pitched battle, the king’s men would advance against their own countrymen. Many citizens who could do so were fleeing to the comparative safety of the countryside. I made sure that the members of my own household were safe. At the beginning of November I sent down to Hemmings as many of them as could be spared.
Then, in the midst of all this gloomy turmoil, there came a piece of good news. I had retired for the night on Sunday 12 November when one of my servants came to my chamber with a scribbled note: ‘Thomas, thanks be to God, I am returned safely and have much to tell you. Come with me to first mass in the Mercers’ Chapel. Robert Packington.’ The early office was performed at five o’clock so I extinguished the candle immediately and settled to sleep, happier than I had been in weeks.
The following morning I was up and dressed in good time. I took a lantern and stepped out into West Cheap. It was dark and made the more so by a thick mist drifting up from the river which so mingled with the smoke from household fires that I could see no more than a few paces before me. I had just passed the bulk of St Mary Bow, whose coloured windows were illumined from light within, when I heard a loud noise ahead of me. It was something between an explosion and a heavy blow upon an anvil. I could not recognise it at all. I stopped. Listened intently. The street was now quiet again, save for the sound of water dropping from the eaves. As I set off again, a frenzied commotion broke out – screams, shouts and cries of alarm. Cautiously I lifted my lantern higher and strode forward. A small crowd had gathered around the Great Conduit, the square building housing the water fountain that stands at the junction of W
est Cheap and Poultry. There was nothing unusual about that; labourers congregated there every morning hoping to be hired. But there was something different about this gathering. Everyone was grouped around a tableau at the base of the west-facing wall. Drawing closer, I saw two men kneeling beside a third who lay on his back upon the stone paving.
‘What’s happened here?’ I demanded.
One of the kneeling men looked up. His face was pale in the lamp’s lurid glow. ‘This poor fellow’s dead… killed… But, I don’t understand… There was no one near him… Yet… well, see for yourself, Master.’
I bent forward. There was, indeed, a gash in the dead man’s dark cloak and the lamplight glistened on what was oozing from it. I shone the light on his face – and recoiled in horrified recognition.
Chapter 10
‘Witchcraft, that’s what it was. Must have been.’ The speaker – a dark, straggle-haired fellow with the stench of the tannery about him – stood up. His long face in the lamplight was pale and lugubrious.
I was too stunned to make any reply. I could scarce breathe for the emotions surging in my breast – anger, horror, grief – and disbelief. ‘This could not be,’ I wanted to cry out. ‘Dear God above, this could not be!’ I knelt on the wet stone and peered closer at the lifeless face. It was strangely calm and expressionless. But there was no doubt. Here was all that remained of Robert Packington.
The tradesman was now raising his voice to address a rapidly gathering audience. ‘Here is a great evil, Masters, the work of Satan himself and his bondsman.’
Several people in the crowd threw questions which the self-appointed narrator answered with gestures and a quavering voice that would have done justice to an actor in one of the Inns of Court plays. ‘Why, here’s this fine gentleman walking across the street, holding his lamp high – thuswise. Steps forward this foreigner from the doorway yonder.’ He glared around, gathering his audience with his baleful eye. ‘He shouts some curse or spell and points – like this. There comes a doomcrack from the very portals of hell. Our gentle neighbour calls out.’ He paused and lowered his voice. ‘But straightway he falls down —’
‘What are you saying?’ I came to myself and stood up, interrupting the performance. ‘This was the work of a foreigner? Why say you this? Do you know the assassin?’
The speaker drew himself up to his full scrawny height. ‘That I do not, young Master (he emphasised the word ‘young’), but, sure, he had to be foreign. Who of the king’s subjects would deal in such devil’s work?’ His words drew a murmur of assent from the other onlookers.
‘Then you know nothing! You stood there not ten feet from the murderer and all you can tell us is that, in your precious opinion, he must have been foreign.’
‘Do not take on so.’ The man was not to be put out of countenance. ‘I saw what I saw and I know what I know. It was a short fellow in a long cloak with the hood up and he spoke in a strange tongue.’
‘What did he say?’ I demanded.
‘And I were a scholar who spoke foreign I could tell you.’
‘And what became of this little “foreigner”? Can you tell me that?’
For the first time the grimy leatherworker looked less sure of himself. ‘Why, he headed down Bucklersbury… I think.’ He spun round to point at the narrow entrance to the street of grocers’ and apothecaries’ shops. ‘Yes, down Bucklersbury. Heading for the river, I doubt not.’
‘God’s death!’ I shouted. ‘You make a useless witness. What about the rest of you; someone must have seen what became of the assassin.’
There was much muttering and shuffling of feet but no one came forward.
‘Well, we waste time here. Four of you lift the body – gently – and come with me.’
‘Hold fast, young neighbour.’ The tanner was not to be deprived of his assumed authority. ‘This is a matter for the crowner. We must not move the corpse without his say.’
‘Stand aside, fool!’ My anger burst forth and I half-screamed, half-sobbed the order. ‘This man was my friend and a truer friend man never had. Bring him respectfully to my house.’
No one moved.
I glared around at the faces, dim in the lamplight. ‘This was a fellow Londoner killed in cold blood. We must find the truth of the matter. Take him to my house hard by. There we’ll send for the coroner, as the tanner here insists, and a physician will examine the body.’
No movement, only whispered conversations. Then I guessed the cause of their reluctance.
‘If it’s loss of a day’s wages that worries you, I’ll see that no man is the poorer for a simple act of Christian charity.’
Still they stood like members of a tableau in one of the old miracle plays. Then an apprentice nodded silently to his friend and together they stooped to lift the slain man’s shoulders. Others gathered round to help bear the weight. I stepped forward to lead the way and thus our little cortège bore the body of Robert Packington to Goldsmith’s Row.
By taking charge of the necessary investigation of this atrocity I was, as I think I knew even then, covering over the thoughts and feelings that would otherwise have overwhelmed me. I had poor Robert laid out on one of the gold beaters’ benches while I sent for my physician and also for the coroner.
The coroner was the first to arrive. Master Kernish was a gaunt, black-clad lawyer who was accompanied by a secretary carrying his ledgers and writing materials in a large scrip. He came striding in from the street, where daylight was now doing battle with the mist, and immediately set about establishing his authority. He scarcely listened to my brief explanation.
‘Who sent for the physician?’ he demanded curtly. ‘I’ll thank you to leave such decisions to the proper authority – which is me. However,’ he conceded with a deep frown, ‘since the man has been summoned I will await his report on the cadaver. I suppose it is too much to hope that there were any witnesses to this fatality.’
‘Six unskilled labourers and petty tradesmen,’ I said. ‘I have sent them up to my chamber to await your pleasure.’
He replied with a grunt and turned towards the stair.
In the chamber he seated himself in a cushioned wainscot chair drawn up to the table. The secretary sat beside him setting out precisely his ledger, papers, quill, penknife and inkpot like troops on a battlefield.
Kernish surveyed with every appearance of distaste the huddle of men who stood by the livery cupboard. ‘This is the way I work: I will take independent testimony from you, one at a time. You will wait outside until summoned and, while waiting, you will not discuss the incidents of this morning. I will not have any collusion. The life of one of His Majesty’s subjects has been taken, seemingly in a violent manner. If that is the case then a vile crime has been committed against the king’s peace and the good order of this city. I am empowered to uncover the truth. This will be a preliminary investigation. If I deem it necessary, I will swear a jury and you all, or any of you, may be summoned to give your evidence before it. Everything you say in this room and at a subsequent full inquest will be recorded and you will be under solemn oath to restrict your answers to my questions to the simple truth. I want no opinions, suppositions or accusations that cannot be substantiated. Is that clear?’
There was a murmur of acquiescence.
‘Very well, outside, all of you. Master Treviot, I will hear you first.’
When the other witnesses had shuffled through the doorway and closed it behind them, Kernish looked up at me. ‘For the record,’ he demanded, ‘you must state your name and occupation.’
When that had been done and noted by the secretary’s scratching pen, the lawyer launched his routine interrogation. ‘Our first responsibility is to establish the identity of the deceased. I understand he was known to you. Is that so?’
‘He was Robert Packington, mercer, leading citizen of London, member of the Common Council and of the parliament. He was also one of the finest men who graced the life of this city. I have known him all my life and was privi
leged to call him my friend. Master Kernish, the sooner we can complete the formalities and set about tracing —’
The coroner held up a hand. ‘I repeat what I said just now: relevant facts are all I require at this stage. Rest assured that accumulating evidence is the best way of discovering whether a crime has been committed and, if it has, of bringing the perpetrator to justice.’ He sat back in the chair and his tone changed. ‘So it is Master Packington whose body lies below.’ He crossed himself. ‘That is a severe loss indeed. One which many of us share. He was one of this city’s finest sons. I met him on many occasions and know something of his charitable works. There are many who have cause to thank God for Master Packington. It is hard to think that anyone would wish him ill. Mayhap your physician will find some natural cause —’
‘He was struck down,’ I blurted out. ‘There was blood all over—’
Again Kernish motioned me to silence. ‘We must have everything in order. Now, Master Treviot, tell me clearly what you saw.’
I shook my head in exasperation. ‘I saw nothing. Would to God I had been there moments earlier. I might have —’
