The Roots of Betrayal

by James Forrester

  “I think we have just lost the chance of surprise,” Latham murmured.

  France looked around. “It doesn’t matter. He’s cornered. There are only two doors—and if he leaves by the one on the far side…It must lead back into the courtyard.”

  Latham caught the attention of the woman in the apron as she began to return to the kitchen. “My good woman, can you tell me where that far door leads? And are you familiar with the man at the table in the corner?”

  “The door leads to the stairs, which go up to the best chambers. They are all taken. But there may be space in one of the second-best chambers, off the gallery. In this weather we have our hands full.”

  “And the man?”

  She looked in his direction. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen him before. He just came in and demanded something to eat. He said he did not mind what. I gave him a piece of bread and told him I’d send a maid with some pottage when it’s done. Will you and your friend be joining him? I am sure there will be pottage enough, and it’s both beans and bacon. Three pence a bowl, four with bread.”

  Latham put a friendly hand on her shoulder. “Thank you. Some pottage would be a fine thing. First, though, about that man over there. He is no friend of ours—nor of yours. We are carrying a warrant from Sir William Cecil, her majesty’s Secretary, to arrest him on suspicion of sedition.”

  The woman looked blankly at Latham.

  “He is a Catholic spy,” France explained.

  “There’s not going to be any trouble, is there?” the woman asked anxiously. “I mean, there are many guests, some children too.”

  “Don’t you worry,” replied France. “All we need you to do is to close and secure the main gate until we have apprehended him. When he is locked up in the nearest magistrate’s house, we will be back—looking forward to some of that pottage.”

  “I really ought to be asking my husband. When he returns, I’ll do as you say. We do usually close the gate at this hour, at dusk.”

  “Where is your husband?”

  “At the mill.”

  Latham glanced again at the man. He was eating the bread, still watching them. “Look, my good woman, trust me. Close it now, just for five minutes. We will arrest him quietly and lead him out through the upstairs passage if that would suit you better.”

  “George, he’s getting up,” said France. “He’s leaving by the far door.”

  “Go after him. I’ll head him off at the gate.”

  France stepped forward. The general chatter subsided as he pushed past the seat on which the well-dressed woman was sitting and knocked the lawyer into another man who stumbled backward, falling almost on top of the boy and the kitten. He did not listen to the complaints nor the calls for him to be careful, but kept on toward the doorway. When he reached it, he swung blindly around the jamb—and ran straight on to the poised knife of the man, who was waiting immediately around the corner.

  Philip France’s first reaction to the blade entering his chest was to look down. He saw the blood pouring out, as water pours from a drain in a storm. His second reaction was to look up at the face of the man who had stabbed him. No words passed between them but enough time elapsed for France to look questioningly at him. The man turned and fled up the stairs. France’s last clear thought was that he ought to tell George to look out for himself. He took only one step more, then felt suddenly very weak and slumped in the doorway, barely aware of the shouts of alarm from the guests as his life ebbed away.

  George Latham heaved the drawbar of the gate into place and stood ready. He heard the sound of a man running along an upstairs corridor, then he heard the shouts. There were rapid footsteps on a stone staircase and a shadowy figure suddenly emerged from a door nearby.

  At that moment, the innkeeper’s wife ran out of the hall and shouted, “Your friend has been wounded! He is bleeding.” She saw the killer’s dark shape on the other side of the archway, the knife still in his hand. “Look out! He’s got a dagger!”

  George Latham had only once before wielded a blade in anger. That had been during his time at Oxford, in a drunken brawl with some of the townsmen who had turned vicious. But he knew the rudiments. His lack of experience was the last thing on his mind. He had forgotten his orders from Walsingham. All that mattered now was that the bearded man before him had stabbed his most faithful friend—a companion since his schooldays.

  “You want to get out?” he shouted at the shadow. “To leave?”

  The man did not move.

  “Well, go on then,” snarled Latham, approaching him. “Go on—leave. All you have to do is open the gate and go.”

  The man looked across the yard to the stables.

  “If you run, you are going to have to run on foot. If you reach your horse in the stable—which will have been unsaddled by now—you will be trapped.”

  “Don’t go near him. Call for the constable,” cried the woman, as the men who had been inside the hall came out. “Raise the hue and cry.”

  At the same time, there was a loud knocking on the gate, and a man from outside demanding: “Who has barred my house against me? Damn your eyes, open up!”

  The innkeeper’s wife ran across and started to pull back the drawbar. At that moment, sensing that the man might go to the gate, Latham reached for the knife at his own belt, drew it, and rushed forward. The man saw him coming and ran across the yard. Latham sprinted after him. Not far behind came the man he had seen eating cheese, closely followed by the lawyer. None of them had a lantern but all were grimly determined. The traveler with the hat joined them too. And then the boys from the stable appeared, one with a small lantern.

  The killer swerved and ran down a dark alleyway between the stable and the perimeter wall of the inn. Latham knew the man was trapped. Inns that depend on the security of their guests’ horses and possessions do not have easy access points behind stables. The Mowbray Arms was no exception. A moment later the man found himself in the near-darkness of a dead end, with four shadows blocking the only way out. And then the stable boy with the light joined them.

  For a long moment, the man held out the knife in front of him, his hand shaking.

  “Drop the knife,” shouted the traveler in the hat. “Drop it now! You will only make your punishment more severe.”

  “He is going to hang whatever,” said the lawyer. “The question is whether he repents first.”

  Latham stepped forward. “Who are you?”

  “Go to hell,” muttered the man. Then he said it again, louder. “Go to hell!”

  Latham looked at the man’s shape in the dimness and held out his left hand, palm upward for the knife, concealing his own blade. “Give the knife to me. There is nowhere else to run.”

  But at that moment the man lifted the knife above his head and, with a loud cry, ran straight toward them. As he came to Latham, he brought the blade down. Latham dropped to a crouch and threw himself at the man’s legs, bringing him to the ground. He whirled around with his own knife and stabbed the man’s thigh. Then he stabbed him in the groin as the others there also set about the felon with their day-to-day knives. It was hysterical, a frenzy of stabbing—men killing out of fear and revenge. Suddenly it was over. The killing moment was done.

  “The beast is dead,” said the lawyer, his voice betraying his excitement and relief. The stable boy with the lantern held it close to the corpse.

  Latham looked down at the bloody torso. It had been bad butchery: he could see a rib and pink organs. He felt sick. The man was dead—and these fellows were smiling and congratulating themselves. But what were they doing here? What was he doing here? Who were all these people around him, talking, laughing, and shouting? Only when the innkeeper called for silence and demanded to know the identity of the dead man did Latham catch the one strand of purpose left to him.

  “He is a spy,” he gasped. “A Catholic conspirator.” As he s
poke he knelt down and felt the side pockets of the bloody jerkin. Finding nothing, he started to undo the jerkin itself. His hands became smeared with the man’s warm blood, fumbling inside the gore-soaked linen of his shirt. And then he felt a folded paper. He took it out and slipped it into his own pocket. Standing up, he wiped his brow, leaving the others to drag the body away into the yard.

  3

  Wednesday, May 3

  Clarenceux walked over Fleet Bridge and westward along Fleet Street, toward his house. It was late morning. The bright sun shone on the houses on the north side of the street. His house was on the south side. He looked up at it: a typical, three-story merchant’s house. There was a shop at the front—which he did not let but used for storage, so the shutters were always closed—and two floors of accommodation above, with a large hall occupying most of the first floor. It was not much to show for a lifetime in royal service, first in the army at Boulogne, then in the various heraldic ranks at the College of Arms. It was very little, considering he had been born the son of a gentleman. But it was something. And it was more than most followers of the old religion possessed.

  The old religion. Catholicism: loyalty to all things holy, as he understood it, including the offices of the Church and the pope. England turning against the old religion had been the tragedy of his life. He had been still young in 1534, barely sixteen, when the old king, Henry VIII, had passed the Act of Supremacy that made him Head of the Church. At the time Clarenceux had not understood the significance of this. It had only struck him when the first wave of monasteries were closed two years later. Three years after that, all the greater monasteries were shut and their possessions confiscated, even the great foundations of Glastonbury and Westminster. Many of the churches that he knew, and where he had studied the arms on the tombs as the dust drifted in the stained-glass light above him, had been pulled down. Some had been sold off—the land, stone, glass, and lead all going to the profit of one of the king’s friends. Even the books had been sold off—those that were not destroyed by the abbey’s new owners. These actions had set his heart against the tyranny of that king.

  When Mary Tudor had succeeded to the throne, there had been no funds to repurchase and rebuild the hundreds of closed foundations. A few monks and abbots were restored, in a token gesture, but the queen had been too conciliatory. She had put her efforts into the persecution of heretics who preached against her and had ignored those heretics who now rebuilt the sacred abbeys as their halls and homes. That had just made the reformers more embittered. The first statute of Queen Elizabeth’s first parliament had been wholly uncompromising, ushering in a new age of tyranny. If he was caught maintaining the spiritual authority of the pope, as he believed was right, he would have his house and all his goods, lands, and chattels confiscated. If he was found guilty of maintaining the preeminence of Rome three times, he would be sentenced to death. Heresy—not following the rites of the official Church—could lead to hanging too. Even declining to use the new Book of Common Prayer, or speaking of it in a derogatory manner, would lead to imprisonment.

  He entered his house to see his manservant, Thomas Terry, who immediately welcomed him in and shut the door. Thomas had served him for many years and was practically a member of the family. He was a strong-minded character. Clarenceux compared him to a slowly rusting iron bar—still unyielding despite all the outward appearances of aging.

  “Mr. Clarenceux, sir,” said Thomas, “there was a message from Widow Machyn while you were out. She says she would like to see you, if you would do her the honor.”

  Clarenceux nodded and went up the stairs. “Did she say when?”

  “No, sir,” said Thomas, following him, “but she seemed very anxious. I presume what she has to say is important.”

  Clarenceux paused at the top, trying to think of what it might be. “Thank you, Thomas.”

  He turned into his hall, strode past the elm table in the front window to a door in the corner, and ascended the narrow staircase beyond. The age of the house showed most here: the wooden stairs creaked beneath his weight and, at the top, there were a couple holes in the door to his study, where gnarls in the wood had shrunk and fallen out. The room itself was untidy, as usual, with papers and books scattered across the floor where he deposited them in the course of research. There was an empty space above the fireplace where the portrait of his father used to hang. It had been smashed in the searching of his house six months earlier. His father’s damaged sword had been straightened and now hung nearby, along with a new blade that Clarenceux had acquired for his own use. Some of the books had been repaired too, and were now stacked in the presses against the walls.

  He went to the far side of the room, as he always did on entering, where a small instrument hung with its face against the wall. It was a chitarra: a lute-like instrument with a thin neck and five courses of strings. It had an intricately carved grille over the sound hole. He reached up, turned it face outward, and plucked the strings one by one. They were in a particularly unusual musical sequence—just as he had left them. But, even so, he lifted the instrument down and removed the grille. He pushed his fingers through and felt the edge of the document glued there, deep inside. Satisfied, he replaced the grille and put the chitarra back, face against the wall.

  He wished that he could forget about the document. It was a constant worry. If anyone knew he had it, they might do something extreme. His daughters might be kidnapped and held to ransom. He might be tortured. The very fact that he knew of its existence was a risk. Catholic houses were regularly searched for seditious documents: if royal officers were to come and find it, then Sir William Cecil would not save him. As a Protestant and the queen’s Secretary, Cecil would be heavily compromised if anyone found out that he even knew of its existence. No one would step in to save him, Clarenceux, from the gallows.

  It was ironic. Here he was, in possession of the means to dethrone a queen—and, moreover, a queen who was an enemy of his faith—and yet he did nothing. His only weapon was one so powerful he dared not use it. It actually made him more vulnerable. He told himself, the moment to use it had not come. In his heart, however, he knew that that moment would never come. He was not reckless enough to start a revolution. Nor did he want a return to the old days, when men and women were burnt at the stake for their religious beliefs. He wanted a quiet life and mutual understanding. That in itself set him against all those who knew he had the document, who were ardent for him to proclaim the queen illegitimate in his role as a herald. The surviving friends of the late Henry Machyn—a secret Catholic fraternity organized to protect the document—expected him to do much more with it. They were collectively called the Knights of the Round Table. They would not wait forever.

  He sighed heavily. And wondered why Rebecca had come to see him.

  4

  Late that evening, Francis Walsingham was riding through the city, looking up at the open windows of some nearby houses. He wondered who might be watching him. It made him think about spies, and how many there were hidden behind the opaque routines of everyday life. Men who watched their servants for signs of theft of goods or money. Those who watched their neighbors. Servants who listened through thin, plaster-covered partitions to their masters’ words in the next room. Clergymen who observed their flocks for signs of sin. Later there would be the night watchmen patrolling the city for strangers out after curfew. The more one looked at a city, the more it seemed that everyone was on the alert. The business of mankind was increasingly that of watching itself, listening to its own sins, weaknesses, and betrayals.

  And then there was him, Walsingham, the eyes and ears of her majesty’s Principal Secretary. He was the one who felt the pulse of society for signs of rebellions and revolutions, dissent and disservice. His role was to gather all the knowledge that others heard and saw, and to advise accordingly. And when knowledge was not enough, he acted on instinct. That was perhaps the most important part. He had to use
a measure of instinct to know when someone was withholding information. Or to know where a plot was likely to emerge, and to be there, listening, to preempt it. As Sir William so often reminded him, if they were to foil nineteen plots out of twenty against the queen, they would have failed.

  He turned a corner near his house in the east of the city and saw the high walls of the Tower of London ahead of him. Shielded in that great fortification, he would hear nothing. The queen in her palace heard nothing. Sir William himself heard little. It was essential for him, Walsingham, to be the listener that the queen and Sir William so desperately needed. He had to be in the streets, amid the smells, in order to understand what people told him. But what they really needed was for all these people with their shutters open, listening, to be the queen’s agents. A truly loyal people would report dissent and subversive conversations as a matter of course. Their love of their monarch and their spiritual duty to protect her majesty required it of them. Yes, that was what he should be planning: how to make the whole population his agents. How to make them betray one another. Each one could report to the constable of their ward or manor. And those constables could report to the hundredal officers or, better still, the lord lieutenant.

  As he approached his house, he saw a horse tethered outside. He did not recognize it. That meant little; he was a poor judge of horses. But even he could see this one was exhausted and covered in sweat.

  Walsingham rode through to his stable and dismounted. He shouted for a boy to attend to his mount and went through a passageway to the main hall, a large room open to the roof beams. The walls were relatively plain, decorated only with a pair of rather unflattering family portraits and two faded tapestries. A man was talking to one of his servants. They turned toward him when they heard his footsteps approaching across the flagstones.

  “Good day, Mr. Walsingham,” said his servant with a small bow.