The Roots of Betrayal

by James Forrester

  When the mug was drained he paid the landlord, got up, and left. Gray clouds were gathering again, blocking out the sun. The birds screeched as they passed over, looking for fish. And coming up Southampton Water was a large vessel.

  Prouze could not be sure that it carried three flags on its main mast, let alone that they were all St. George’s flags. The vessel seemed to take ages, tacking this way and that, and half an hour had passed before he realized with disappointment that it was not the ship he was waiting for. It bore only one flag. When he looked again at the men who had been watching, all of them had gone. The place where the green-eyed man had been sitting was now occupied by a thin, ginger-haired mariner. The bald fat man’s place was now occupied by a large black-bearded man who looked more like a bear with a haircut than a man. The Negro too had gone; his place was now occupied by a gray-haired man, who was staring out across Southampton Water.

  Walking back along the quay, Prouze was no less aware of being watched. He looked up—and for an instant thought there was someone in the valley of the roofs between the Two Swans and the warehouse built next door. He saw a head there, momentarily. When he looked back, it had gone.

  32

  In the fields north of the city, Clarenceux looked up at the sky. It was growing dark, not only on account of the gray clouds but also the dying of the light. It would not be long before the city gates closed, and he wanted to make sure he was inside the walls when that happened. He would stay in one of his hiding places that evening—a stable loft where he had hidden his swords under some hay. He would head to Mrs. Barker’s house at four.

  He looked down at the ground. On a small cloth on the grass and buttercups lay two German-made wheel-lock pistols, with large, rounded pommels, ivory handles, and sleek long barrels. A matching carved, ivory-covered powder flask lay there too, and a small wooden box containing pouches of gunpowder and the tools for maintaining the guns. Having spent two hours practicing that afternoon, ratcheting the firing mechanism with a spanner, he was confident that the guns would fire. He had had only one single misfire in fourteen shots. He also knew he could hit a target as small as a cabbage at a range of thirty feet. The only problem was reloading. It had taken him nearly seven minutes to reload the two pistols with bullets, damping, wadding, and gunpowder. The gun merchant had assured him that after some practice, he would be able to do each pistol in under a minute. Clarenceux had believed him at the time.

  He knelt and packed up the guns. Before getting up, he looked at the nearby stone wall of the field, and the bluebells and buttercups. He crossed himself. When he arose and started walking back to the city, it would be with a murderous intent. He was nervous already; he would need God to steady his hand in the morning. He prayed, screwing his eyes tight. When he opened them, he saw the colors of the buttercups and bluebells. Blue and gold, he thought. The colors of King Arthur’s coat of arms.

  33

  Carew walked along the quay with Kahlu beside him. It was almost dark and hardly anyone was working now. The tall wooden cranes were stationary, silhouetted against the sky. Most of the seagulls had left, to settle in some corner of the night to sleep. Only the occasional bird swooped over the water.

  Carew had checked all the lines of approach. Skinner was still on the southernmost tip of the promontory. Carew raised an arm and signaled to him to return to the inn. He looked up at the last vestiges of the sunset and sat on the edge of the quay. Kahlu sat down beside him. Together they gazed at the sky.

  “Do you think we should go back?” Carew asked. “Prouze is with her again tonight.”

  “Uh-uh,” replied Kahlu, shaking his head.

  “She has betrayed him though. He must have realized today—seeing the crew taking their turns on the quay, waiting. If he suspects, he will take it out on her.”

  Kahlu shrugged and made a sort of whining noise to suggest “Maybe.” And then a series of low grunts to suggest male enjoyment.

  “I know. He did not complain while she was giving him her breasts to lie on. But some men blame women for their own faults.”

  Kahlu stared at the deep-blue sky streaked with two lines of pinkish gold above the western horizon.

  Carew stared at it also. For a moment he recalled sailing off the coast of Guinea. The metal belt that fastened the upper and lower masts had grown so hot that when you spat on it, the spittle instantly sizzled and evaporated. The skies had been beautiful, and the sunsets unforgettable.

  Kahlu suddenly nudged him, pointing at two men in the shadows behind them. He and Carew edged to one side to hide behind a pile of broken crates. The town gates would have been closed some time ago, at dusk. There were bylaws forbidding boats to come and go at this time. Respected burghers with a lantern were permitted to pass, but there was a chance that Carew’s men could be accused of being nightwalkers. That in turn would lead to accusations of theft or attempted theft. Although in Southampton the authorities were lax about clamping down on those who brought illicit goods into the port, they would not turn a blind eye to thieves. If the watchmen saw Carew and Kahlu they would either arrest them or demand a bribe.

  The watchmen walked around a corner, out of sight. “Time to go,” said Carew. “We’ll start again at dawn.”

  34

  Ascension Day, Thursday, May 11

  Clarenceux could not sleep. He lay on a pile of hay in that fitful state between sleep and wakefulness, too awake to let himself drift into unconsciousness and too far from consciousness to control and dispel his fears. His plan, which had been so well worked out earlier, now seemed makeshift, overoptimistic, and unreliable. The un-reason of half-sleep was sickening him as if it were poison in his mind.

  He listened in the darkness to the sounds of the horses in the stable below and the rats in the walls. The distant clamor of cats fighting reached him. Not much later there was the barking of a dog, roused from its sleep by someone walking in the night along the lanes. Then a minute’s quiet. No cats, dogs, rats, owls, or nightingales. No voices.

  He opened his eyes. It was dark in the stable loft. Neither was there any sign of light seeping in from outside. Nevertheless, he stirred himself as anxiety churned inside him. It was better to be fully awake than off-guard.

  He got up and felt around in the darkness, placing his hand where he had laid out his weapons the previous evening. He felt a dagger and strapped it in its sheath to his left thigh. A knife he attached to his calf, inside his boot. A sword—which he would have to conceal as he walked through the city—he buckled to his belt. He used the spanner to cock the two pistols and tucked them into his clothes: one inside his doublet, which was fastened over the top; the other behind his back, in his belt. The spanner for loading the guns and the gunpowder flask he put in a pouch hanging at his side. The box containing the other tools and the remaining gunpowder, together with the key to the backdoor to his house, he hid under the hay.

  Before he left the stable, he knelt and prayed. He looked in his heart for hope and thought of his wife and family. He remembered Annie singing in her chamber and little Mildred climbing the stairs at home, her curly hair framing her smiling face. He thought of Tom: his servant’s deeply lined, careworn forehead, and the resolution in his eyes that left you in no doubt he would face an army singlehanded if ordered to do so. He thought of Julius. And his thoughts flickered around Rebecca. He had lain in this very stable loft with her once before. She was still a presence. He saw her long brown hair, her glad and sad brown eyes, the mole on the side of her face. He prayed for her too.

  He stood up and felt for the great cape he had been lying on. He put it on and made his way to the ladder. The horses shifted in their stalls but did not whinny or cause alarm. Shutting the stable door, he was out in the cold of the morning. He looked up: the stars were clear but the faintest lightening was now in the sky, the black of night becoming the deepest blue.

  The dark houses and the silhouettes of t
heir roofs against the stars clearly revealed the pattern of the lanes and alleys in this part of the city. Every so often he caught a glimpse of a dark figure moving between the shadows: thieves, nightwalkers, and men of base intentions and ill repute. Maybe a few were like him, conducting their business under cover of the night. But those with honorable intentions would have been carrying a lantern; he did not. He had been too concerned to assemble his weapons and test his guns. On reflection, he was glad. Lantern candles, tinderboxes, and gunpowder in a hay-filled stable loft would have been a dangerous combination.

  The smells of the city assaulted his senses even more at night. The burial grounds of the churches were full to overflowing but they did not stink like Cheapside, where any fallen market produce that was not swept up moldered away. However, the worst smells were to be found in the smallest alleys. Turning down one, he passed a line of tenanted houses with brimming cesspits in their backyards and basements. In places, the night heightened the stench of the horse dung trodden into the mud, or the ordure from where flocks of sheep had been driven along to market. Clarenceux put a hand over his mouth and nose, and looked up at the church towers and spires, like so many stone plants growing strongly out of this fetid, highly fertilized square mile of God’s earth.

  In Bread Street, a wave of nervousness flowed over him. He had two cocked pistols on him—and yet he felt weak, trembling. He strode more purposefully, reminding himself of what he was doing, bringing to mind all the anger he felt. Rebecca Machyn had betrayed him. She had stolen the document. That she had done so could only be due to these people whom he was going to confront. And they would betray her too. She was not safe in their hands—wherever they had taken her. All they wanted was the document and someone in a position of responsibility and authority to pronounce it true and legal. When that happened, they would not care for her. They would not protect her; she would have nothing more to offer them. That was the corruption of power—a series of betrayals, a sequence of disappointments and vendettas, a world of fear.

  He came to Little Trinity Lane, his pulse racing. Looking at the low jetty of the Machyn house ahead, he saw Mrs. Barker’s house on the opposite side of the street, with its shuttered windows. There was no sign of any light within.

  He stood in front of her door, breathed deeply, and rapped on it with his knuckles. He waited. Ninety seconds passed before the door opened a fraction.

  “Your name and business?” asked a voice from the shadows.

  “My name is King Clariance. My business is that of the Round Table,” declared Clarenceux.

  The door opened more fully, allowing him in, and then shut behind him. For a moment there was darkness, then the servant opened the aperture of a lantern he was carrying. Clarenceux blinked, unable to see the servant.

  “We have been waiting for you, Mr. Clarenceux.”

  The lantern moved off in the direction of the stairs. Clarenceux followed, feeling the round pommel of the pistol in his doublet. He crossed himself. But as he did so, the lantern flashed across the figures of two men waiting silently at the foot of the stairs. One was a man whom Clarenceux did not recognize. The other was James Emery.

  “Good evening,” said Clarenceux.

  “We will talk upstairs,” said the unknown man. The servant with the lantern turned to shine some light on the speaker. “Go up.”

  “Don’t do anything hasty, Mr. Clarenceux,” added James Emery. “If you do, you will regret it.”

  It was not just a warning. It was a slip, made by a man as nervous as he was. Clarenceux felt the pistol through his doublet and turned to follow the servant up the stairs. Emery and the other man came behind him. As the servant’s lantern illuminated the landing above, Clarenceux saw the legs of another man standing there. Nicholas Hill.

  “If you are carrying a weapon, Clarenceux, hand it over now,” said Hill, looking down at him.

  Clarenceux bit his lip, cold with nerves, seeing the flickering of the lantern and the long shadows it cast on the walls. He arrived at the top step. The servant moved his light to shine directly on him. Slowly Clarenceux moved his cape to one side and made to unfasten his sword belt. The servant trained the lantern on the weapon as it fell. Clarenceux felt behind his back for the pistol there, tucked in his loosened belt.

  He took a deep breath. The next moment he threw himself sideways against Hill, striking the man’s chest with his shoulder and driving him back against the paneled wall. He pulled out the pistol and pressed it upward into the top of Hill’s neck. “Keep still! This will blow your head clean off. You have one chance to tell me where you have taken Rebecca Machyn and the document. Now!”

  “A Godly creature you are not,” gasped Hill, trying to free his arm, which was trapped beneath Clarenceux’s weight. “If that is why you came here, you can hang yourself.”

  The door to the chamber in which he had met Mrs. Barker opened. The room was lit by a chandelier. Keeping the pistol on Hill’s neck, Clarenceux turned and looked in. At first all he saw was the light. Then he realized his mistake.

  There were many people in the room, including women. Two or three men were already in the doorway. Clarenceux pushed the pistol harder into Hill’s cheek. “Damn you! Tell me!”

  The men in the doorway faltered.

  “Tell me!” shouted Clarenceux at Hill. Suddenly he jammed the pistol against the man’s temple. “Put your hands up. Walk into the room.”

  Hesitantly, Hill did as he was told.

  Clarenceux swapped the pistol to his left hand and held it against the back of Hill’s head. He pushed his right hand into his doublet and pulled out the second pistol. He waved it at the men still on the stairs and landing, gesturing them to follow.

  “Put the gun down,” said one of the men in the doorway. “There are many of us. You have only two shots. We will take you even if you kill two of us.”

  “Stand back and keep silent, unless you want this man to lose his head.”

  The men withdrew cautiously, allowing Hill and Clarenceux into the brightly lit chamber. Emery, the servant, and the other man held back at the door. “You three too,” snapped Clarenceux, gesturing to them with the pistol in his right hand.

  Now he could see everyone. Not one but two chandeliers were burning, the large metal rings of candles providing light. More light came from the candles on a makeshift altar set up in front of the shuttered windows. There were about twenty men and women staring at him. He backed against a wall.

  Mrs. Barker stepped forward, wearing a black and gold gown with lace at her wide cuffs and neck. “Mr. Clarenceux, you come here in war. You threaten these Knights and soldiers of the Faith. If you harm one of us, there can be no forgiveness.”

  Clarenceux looked from face to face, seeing cold judgment there. “Where is she? Where is the document? That is what I need to know.” He kept his left-hand pistol on Hill; the right-hand one he leveled at Mrs. Barker.

  “We do not know where Widow Machyn has gone. She has betrayed us too.”

  “What do you mean? You are the ones responsible.”

  Mrs. Barker looked at him with a steady gaze. “Shoot me—if that is your intention. But I do not know where she has gone. None of us do.”

  Clarenceux sensed a shifting among those present, an uneasiness with what she had said. “The Percy-Boleyn marriage agreement was taken from my house. My life depends on its safekeeping. Even being here now will be enough in the eyes of her majesty’s Secretary, Sir William Cecil, to warrant my execution for treason. I am not going to take any chances.”

  “You are taking a very great chance right now,” said one man.

  Clarenceux jerked the pistol against the back of Nicholas Hill’s head. “Walk forward, away from me. Slowly. Join the others.”

  Hill did as he was told, taking four slow steps. “I will not forgive you for this,” he said.

  Clarenceux waited until Hill h
ad stopped and turned, still keeping the gun in his right hand on Mrs. Barker. “Why are there so many of you here? I came here to celebrate Mass in a private chapel with the Knights of the Round Table, not a crowd of onlookers.”

  “These people are all supporters of the Knights’ cause,” said Mrs. Barker. “We call them Gentlemen and Ladies of the Round Table. The status of the Knights is undiminished. It is a calling. You too were called to be one of us, by Henry Machyn himself. You said you wished to join us again. But if you truly wish to take communion alongside us, you have set about it in an unfriendly way.”

  “You arranged for her to steal the document. That was an unfriendly introduction.”

  “That is another matter. It is growing light already—we are losing time. And we have all been betrayed. We will act together, but first we must pray. Will you hear Mass with us? Or are you determined to shoot one of us before the survivors cut you down?”

  Clarenceux lowered the pistol in his right hand so that it was no longer pointing at Mrs. Barker. The one in his left he still held ready. “If she has betrayed you too, where does that leave us?” he asked, looking at the assembled faces. One man’s was full of defiance. Behind him, he saw a woman of about thirty; she was trembling. Beside her was a young man who looked unmoved, cold. Clarenceux had seen that sort twenty years before, in the army. The sort of man who gives the order to shoot and is able to pretend that it does not mean he has broken the Commandment: Thou shalt not kill. Another woman looked tired, drawn, as if she had not slept. With one or two exceptions, these people were not revolutionaries.