A Crowning Mercy

by Bernard Cornwell

  The Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey was pleased with his work. He had tied witchcraft to Catholicism and both to the Royalists, and in so doing he had ensured himself the lion’s share of the credit. The editor of Mercurius, sensing that the tale would prove popular with his readers, wrote his own comments on the story. He praised Faithful Unto Death and warned Protestant England that the Devil was indeed in the land, and then he spoke of Faithful Unto Death’s determination to grub out all witches who would destroy the purity of the kingdom of God. At Faithful Unto Death’s urging he added a further paragraph. Faithful Unto Death, he said, did not want women to live in fear. Any woman, be she poor or rich, could visit the Reverend Faithful Unto Death Hervey in Seething Lane, and there he would prayerfully examine her and issue, for a trifling sum, a certificate that bore witness to the absence of the devil. Thus armed, no woman needed to fear.

  It was a stroke of genius. Within days of the Mercurius being distributed, Faithful Unto Death Hervey was besieged by women who sought his certificates. Fame was his overnight. He was asked to preach in the city, in Westminster, in parishes far from London, yet he could not accept all the invitations. He was busy, toiling day and night with the women who came to consult him; whose bodies he searched minutely for devilish protuberances. He worked faithfully in God’s vineyard, a happy man at last.

  “Christ on his cross! Who did it? For God’s sake who?” Sir Grenville Cony, newly returned to London, was furious, more furious than Ebenezer had ever seen him. The small man thumped a fist down on the Mercurius. “Are there nothing but fools in this city? I go for two weeks, no more! And when I come back! This!” He sat, hands clutching his great belly. “For God’s sake! How, Ebenezer?”

  Ebenezer shrugged. He stood staring across the river at the Lambeth marshes. “Hervey, I suppose.”

  “Hervey! Damned Hervey. Wasn’t he warned?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Christ! Are words so damned expensive? Why wasn’t he warned?”

  Ebenezer turned his expressionless gaze on Sir Grenville. “It was my fault.”

  The confession of guilt seemed to mollify Sir Grenville. He picked up the Mercurius and stared at the crude woodcut. “You must always, always, know what your people are doing. God! Men are such fools! If you didn’t point it at the ground for them they’d piss up their nostrils. God’s bowels, Ebenezer!”

  Ebenezer well understood Sir Grenville’s anger. The Mercurius Britanicus, as the most important news-sheet of the rebels, was distributed far from London. Copies went, fresh from the press, to the cities of Europe where money had been lent to the warring sides. The bankers of Florence, of the Low Countries, of Venice were desperately interested in the war’s progress. One battle could mean their loan was safe, a defeat could mean ruin. As Sir Grenville had shouted earlier, the Mercurius was available in Amsterdam before it reached the Parliamentary army in the north. He had shrieked a question at Ebenezer: “And who’s in Amsterdam?”

  “Lopez.”

  “Lopez! That damned, filthy Jew. Lopez!”

  Now Sir Grenville shook his head. His voice seemed to be a moan of pain. “That bastard priest described the seal! For God’s sake! The seal!”

  “You think Lopez will come?”

  Sir Grenville nodded grimly. “He’ll come, Ebenezer. He’ll come!”

  “What can he do? He can’t take her from the Tower? You have two seals.”

  Sir Grenville leaned back, his gaze sour on the younger man. He remembered his astrologer, Barnegat, saying an enemy would come across the seas and Sir Grenville was inflicted with a sharp stab of pain in his belly. Aretine! That damned Aretine! He feared Kit Aretine. But Aretine was dead, his grave halfway across the world in the American wilderness. Sir Grenville shook his head. “There’s nothing he can do, Ebenezer, but he might try. I don’t want complications. Do you understand? I want that damned girl dead and then we will have nothing to fear.” He rubbed his white, round face with both hands. “We must bring the trial forward. Look after that! See Higbed. Tell him we’ll pay whatever’s necessary. But bring the trial forward!”

  “Yes.”

  “And double the guard on this house! Triple it!” The bulging eyes still had anger in them.

  “You’re certain you want me to do that?”

  “I am certain. God! I am certain!” Sir Grenville remembered the handsome face of his enemy, he remembered the reckless daring that had eventually put Kit Aretine into the Tower. His voice was gloomy. “Lopez got a man out of the Tower before.”

  “Not this time.” Ebenezer smiled.

  “Get that trial forward, Ebenezer! Get it forward!”

  Ebenezer shrugged. He raised his eyebrows as he drew his hand across his neck. Sir Grenville shook his head, though he was tempted simply to have the girl killed.

  “No. Aretine’s dead, Ebenezer, but the bastard had friends. If the girl dies, there’ll be a vengeance. But they can’t take vengeance on a whole country. No. Let the law kill her, and then no one can accuse us.” Sir Grenville looked at the sentence in Mercurius: “Ebenezer Slythe putte familie love aside, preferring the Love of Almightie God, and in Sorrow and Pain broughte His Sister from Lazen.” Sir Grenville began to laugh, his fat shoulders heaving up and down, and the laugh grew louder. It was a strange contrast to his previous anger. He held a shaking finger out to his protégé whose face, pale and cold, was not amused. “You’d better get yourself a bodyguard, Ebenezer! A bodyguard. You’re rich enough!” He put his frog-face back and bellowed with laughter. “And watch your back, Ebenezer! Always watch your back!”

  On the day after the tribunal they fetched Campion again, dragging her from the horrid cell and forcing her up winding stairs and down long passageways. She thought that she must face another ordeal, and she whimpered at the horrors she imagined, but to her surprise the guards took her into a pleasant, well-lit building and pushed her into a sunlit, warm room. The floor was carpeted. The windows, though barred, were large and velvet-curtained. Two women waited for her. They were kind, in their matter-of-fact way, and they stripped her, bathed her, washed her hair, and then put her in a great, warmed bed. One of them brought a tray of food, hot food, and sat by her and helped her eat. “We’re feeding you up, dear.”

  It seemed to Campion that every thought, every action, took minutes for her. She ate clumsily, still not understanding what was happening, though the feel of clean skin, of freedom from lice, of hair that was washed fine, was wonderful to her. It seemed heavenly. She cried, and the woman patted her.

  “That’s all right, dear, you cry. It’s good for you.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  The woman smiled. “You’ve got friends now, dear. Friends. We all need friends. Now eat up all the pastry! That’s it! That’s a good girl.”

  They let her sleep. When she woke it was evening. A fire burned in the small parlor and one of the women waited with a jug of wine and yet more food. Campion wore a great wool robe, and her hair was tied in a ribbon. The woman smiled. “Warm enough, dear?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sit by the fire.”

  It was marvellous to be clean, to be warm, but she still felt filthy inside. She shrank from the memory of Faithful Unto Death touching her, sliding his dry hands over her skin. Nothing, she thought, could ever be the same again. She had been mired in Hervey’s filth, and it could not be removed. Yet what did it matter? She had no future. Someone had paid for this comfort—she assumed it was Lady Margaret for she could think of no one else, and she knew it to be a kindness that her last days on this earth should not be spent in filth. She looked at the woman. “How’s Toby?”

  “Toby? I don’t know any Tobys, dear. We’ve got a syllabub in the kitchen. Would you like some?”

  The next day, standing at the barred window of the bedroom, she looked down on a small, graying man who walked up and down in the tiny courtyard beneath her window. He walked the same course every day so that his shoes had made scars
on the grass. One of her new jailers nodded down at him. “That’s the Archbishop, dear.”

  “William Laud?”

  “That’s right, dear. He’s been cut down to size.” She laughed. “He’ll be cut down some more soon, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Campion watched the Archbishop of Canterbury as he walked, up and down, up and down, his head bowed over a book. He was a prisoner like her. Like her he faced the services of the executioner. He looked up once, saw her, and gave a slight inclination of his head. She raised a hand and he smiled. Thereafter she looked for him each day, and he for her, and they would smile through the window bars.

  Then, as if her blessings could only increase, a lawyer came to see her. He was called Francis Lapthorne and he exuded certainty that she could win her trial. The Grand Jury had committed her to judge and jury. She asked Mr. Lapthorne who had sent him, but he just smiled and winked. “Now that would be dangerous, Miss Slythe, most dangerous. Even stone walls have ears! But be glad I’m here.”

  She was. “How’s Toby?”

  He smiled. “You have nothing to worry about. Nothing! Do you understand?”

  A smile spread on her face, a smile of such delight and love that Mr. Lapthorne was touched. He was a youngish man, in his thirties, with a fine face and a deep, expressive voice. He laughed at her happiness. “You’re crying! Let me give you a handkerchief.”

  He laughed too at the evidence of the presentment. “You a witch, my dear? It’s nonsense! Nonsense! Now that Goodwife could be, oh yes! A secret, black and midnight hag if ever there was!” He was full of plans. He would summon witnesses from the London watch who had fought the fire at Scammell’s yard and he would take statements from them that none had seen the devil that night. He scoffed at the thought of a cat killing an armed man, or of Campion murdering Samuel Scammell. Campion’s spirits began to rise. On his second visit he made her recite the Lord’s Prayer and he applauded her when she had finished. “Wonderful! Wonderful! You’ll do it in court?”

  “If no one sticks a knife in my back.”

  “They tried that, did they? I wondered. Dear, oh dear!” Mr. Lapthorne shook his head. “If only I had been there. Still! I’m here now!” He pulled a leather bag on to the table and took from it a quill, an inkpot, and a great sheaf of papers. He unclipped the lid of the ink and pushed it, with the pen, toward her. “You’ve got to work now, Dorcas.”

  “Call me Campion.” She smiled shyly.

  “Campion! What a lovely name. What a lovely name. Your middle name?”

  She nodded, not wishing to explain.

  “Campion! Splendid. You must sign papers, Campion. So many papers! I sometimes think we lawyers will choke ourselves with paper. Let’s start here.”

  He had written out her own story, telling the truth, and she skimmed through it, admiring the style, and signed her name. Then followed a batch of receipts, acknowledging favors received in the Tower. He smiled when she queried those. “We want your jailers to be happy, don’t we? It makes a good impression in court if they smile at you, help you. The jury knows you can’t be such a bad girl after all. Don’t worry. We’ll pay a little money here and there as well.”

  Then he put a pile of letters on the table. They were requests for witnesses to come forward. Twenty-four alone were to members of the watch, another forty-five were for soldiers who had served at the siege of Lazen Castle. Francis Lapthorne said he had taken their names from the Parliamentary muster rolls, and he rubbed his hands with glee. “We’ll make them regret this trial, my dear! Oh yes! We’ll make them look the fools they are!” He laughed at her suggestion that the Roundhead soldiers would be afraid to give testimony. “The law is the law, my dear. You’ve seen a harsh side of it, but you’ll find it can be a tender preserver of the truth too. They’ll come if they are ordered. Now, you read the letters and then you sign them.”

  She laughed at the great pile. “Read all of them?”

  “Always read what you sign, my dear.” He laughingly allowed that the letters were all duplicates of each other, but made her read through the top copy. Then he fanned them out on the table. He watched her write her signature again and again and, as she did so, explained that he had thought it far too dangerous to invite Lady Margaret or the Reverend Perilly to give evidence as she had suggested. “This is not the time for avowed Royalists to be in London. You do understand?”

  “I do.”

  “But worry not! We will win, indeed we will!” Francis Lapthorne sanded her signatures, tipped the sand off and packed the papers away.

  “Is that all?”

  “You want more?” He laughed. “That’s all, my dear.”

  He promised to return the next morning and Campion, cheered by his visits, watched him walk away across the footprints left by Archbishop Laud. He paused in the small archway, turned, smiled and gave her a bow. She waved.

  An hour later, in a private room of the Bear Inn at the city end of London Bridge, Francis Lapthorne took the papers from the leather case. He burned all of them, except for two which bore Campion’s signature on otherwise blank sheets. Those two, with a flourish, he put before Ebenezer Slythe. “A deal of work, sir.”

  “But well paid.”

  “Indeed! Better than the theater!” Since the Puritans had closed the playhouses, actors like Francis Lapthorne had been short of work. “It’s always a pleasure doing business for Sir Grenville.”

  Ebenezer looked at him sourly. “And doubtless a business when you provide him with pleasure.”

  Lapthorne shrugged. “It’s an honor to be a friend of Sir Grenville,” he said defensively.

  Ebenezer was not listening. He was staring at the signed sheets. “God in his heaven!”

  “What?”

  “Look!” Ebenezer pushed the sheets across the table. “Fool!”

  “What?” Lapthorne did not understand. “You asked me to get two signatures, I got two signatures! What more did you want?”

  Ebenezer turned one of the sheets round and read it aloud in a sarcastic voice, “Dorcas Campion Scammell. What the hell is that supposed to be?”

  “Her name!”

  “Campion? Her name’s not Campion!”

  Lapthorne shrugged. “She told me it was. She said it was her middle name.”

  “You’re a fool.”

  The actor assumed an air of hurt dignity. “A person may assume whatever name they like, it’s not illegal. If she says that is her name, then that is her name. It will be quite sufficient for her confession.”

  “Pray you never have to make a confession to me, fool.” Ebenezer took the two sheets. “And pray you’re right.” He put two coins on the table.

  Lapthorne looked at them. Four had been promised, and even that was hardly a great amount for the deal of writing he had done, yet he did not care to argue with the intense, dangerous young man whose eyes were dark and fanatical. He smiled. “Pray give Sir Grenville my regards.”

  Ebenezer ignored him. He limped from the room, gesturing for his men to close behind him. He walked slowly, using a cane to assist his limp. He crossed the street and went slowly down the steps to the wharf. People parted for him, awed by his face and by the armed guards. His own boat waited, its oars held upright so that the black blades were outlined against the myriad points of light upon the river. Ebenezer settled in the stern and nodded to the oarsmen. He felt good. He guessed the signatures would do for the confessions, one for witchcraft and one for murder. His sister was doomed and not even the Jew in Amsterdam could save her. Ebenezer smiled. Even the news from Europe was showing that Hervey’s foolish ambition had caused no harm.

  Julius Cottjens, the man who provided his clients with privileged news from the financial capital of the north, walked to the wharves again that evening. He had done it every evening since Sir Grenville’s faintly hysterical letter had reached him and Cottjens was content with this duty. He liked to walk, his pipe drawing sweetly and his dog running happily about him, but to be paid for his evening const
itution was a piece of beneficent luck. Amsterdam looked rich and peaceful in the evening light, its people plump and prosperous. Cottjens felt a great contentment. He stopped in his usual place and sat on a bollard while his dog sniffed excitedly at bales of cloth. Cottjens’s pipesmoke drifted over the placid canal waters in the evening, summer air.

  The Wanderer, the object of these evening strolls, was still tied up. It was high out of the water, its cargohold empty as it had been for weeks. The mainmast had been stepped up again, but the spars were still lashed to the ship’s deck. It was a beautiful ship, Cottjens reflected, but it was days from being ready for sea.

  A sailor came over the gangplank carrying a wooden box of wedges. Cottjens waved his pipe stem at the ship and raised his voice. “Ships don’t make money tied to wharves, my friend?”

  “Mijnheer?”

  Cottjens repeated himself and the sailor shrugged. “She’s made plenty of money in her lifetime, Mijnheer.”

  Cottjens looked impressed. He nodded at the name, elegantly carved beneath the windows of the stern gallery. “An English ship, yes?”

  “Lord no, Mijnheer! Mordecai Lopez owns it. It was built here! I think he likes an English name.”

  “My friend Mordecai? He’s back in Amsterdam?”

  The sailor hefted his box. “He’s here, but he’s ill. May the good Lord preserve him if He watches over pagans.”

  “Amen to that.” Cottjens knocked his pipe out on the bollard. “Badly ill?”

  “So they say, Mijnheer, so they say. You’ll excuse me?”

  Cottjens called his dog, then started back, a happy man. He could write with more news to Sir Grenville, news that would undoubtedly make that fat, subtle Englishman also a happy man.

  Cottjens made a short detour to look at Lopez’s house. The windows of the two lower floors, as ever, were barred and shuttered, but higher up he could see lamplight through windows. A shadow moved across a curtain.

  Cottjens whistled for his dog. Like Ebenezer Slythe in London, he was a happy man; a little richer, a little older, and a little wiser. He would write to Sir Grenville with his news, his good news, that Mordecai Lopez was sick in Amsterdam, unable to interfere in Sir Grenville’s affairs.