When the last of the Davy’s eleven surviving crew members had been removed from the pit, they were led—carried in Bidder’s case—to a dry room in a house a hundred yards further inland. Sir William Cecil stood before them and addressed them. “As her majesty’s Secretary,” he began, “I am going to draw up a pardon for you all, in line with the demands of this man, your erstwhile companion, Mr. William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms. Your crimes committed to date are forgiven, your punishments outstanding revoked. I will deliver the collective pardon, sealed with her majesty’s privy seal, to Mr. Clarenceux.”
A murmur of appreciation gave way to voices of relief and even surprised happiness. “With all thanks to you, Mr. Clarenceux,” said one man. Skinner made the effort of bowing low. Stars Johnson fell to his knees, in tears.
Cecil cleared his throat. “Lest there be any doubt, this pardon does not extend to any crew members of the Davy who are not here, nor to any crimes you commit in the future. In view of this, I will need a list of your names.”
One by one Clarenceux gave the names, which Cecil wrote on some paper provided by the jailers’ clerk. Cecil looked down the list when it was complete. “I do not want them to re-enter the city. If there is trouble, I will hold you responsible.” He looked Clarenceux in the eye. “Is that all?”
Clarenceux shook his head. “That is all with these men, Sir William, but not for you and me. Not by a long way. I want to believe I can trust you again. I want you to trust me. And I don’t believe that that will be possible until we are entirely honest with each other. Even now, we are evading each other. You still have the document at the heart of all this. The root of all this betrayal lies in your distrust of me.”
“Come outside, Mr. Clarenceux,” said Cecil.
The two men left the building. Immediately, despite the pouring rain, Cecil rounded on Clarenceux. “Listen to me,” he began, but at that moment there was a flash of lightning and the thunder crashed and rolled, silencing him for several seconds. “I will never forgive you. Never. This humiliation is…unsupportable.”
“By God’s wounds, Sir William. What crime have I committed that was not in self-defense and an attempt to right wrongs? What have I done? I kept the document as you ordered me to. I guarded it with my life. It went missing and you led me to believe that Rebecca Machyn had stolen it. You even told the ship’s captain that Rebecca was being sent to Southampton by Percy Roy—knowing full well that I would equate those initials with the Knights of the Round Table: Sir Percival, Sir Reynold, Sir Owain and Sir Yvain. You deliberately misled me. Nevertheless, I did all I could to recover that document in good faith. I risked death. I went to Mrs. Barker’s house and I was tortured. I was taken by Walsingham and locked up. You too imprisoned me. Almost immediately after escaping, I was captured by a pirate who believed I could lead him to the traitor Denisot, whom I now discover is in your pay. I was stabbed in the hand, dragged behind a ship on a rope, and forced to fight for my life against Sir Peter Carew. I ended up at Calshot being imprisoned by Captain Parkinson and had to fight for my freedom. In all that, what have I done that deserves your condemnation? Nothing! You on the other hand, were making me look after a document that was your insurance in case a Catholic queen should come again. If there had been an invasion, and if it had gone the way of the Queen of Scots—you would have called for that document. Publishing it would have been your glory and the final nail in the hopes of our present queen. She would have gone the way of her cousin Lady Jane Gray to the block. You may keep the document now if you feel you must, but it is not with my blessing. I have suffered too much.”
Cecil shook his head. “I do not have it.”
“What?” Clarenceux did not believe Cecil and simply stared at him. But he saw no evasiveness. The man was telling the truth.
“If…you didn’t take it, who did?”
“Your wife.”
The word hit him. He felt suddenly weak. He wanted to sit down. “I don’t believe you.”
“I am going to say this just once,” said Cecil, his face soaked with rain, “and then I am going to walk away. You and I will not see each other nor speak to each other. You will send your letter to no one and I will take no action against you. You will say nothing against me nor I against you. This matter ends here.”
Cecil took a deep breath. “I knew Lady Percy would never let matters rest, so I had Walsingham put a watch on her house. That coded message from Mrs. Barker, who is Lady Percy’s sister living under cover in London, was brought to me on the fifth day of May. I recognized the code as a cipher instantly and I stayed up late that night, after Walsingham had left me, working out its true meaning. I deciphered it that same night—long before Walsingham. It told me that Rebecca Machyn was acting with the Knights of the Round Table and was going to deliver the Percy-Boleyn marriage agreement to them. I believed that that meant you were also in accord with her decision. I could hardly ask you to your face. The message also told me that she would be taken by ship with her brother two days later to Scotland.
“I had very little time to act. I knew your wife was coming to my house to see my wife and so I confronted Awdrey with what I knew. She declared that you would never betray me, that you would never give the document to Widow Machyn, even though she knew how fond you were of her. From this I established that she knew about it. That did not surprise me; a wife often knows more of her husband’s secrets than he realizes. I explained to her my fear that you would give it to Rebecca Machyn because of your love for that woman. I asked her to give me the document to prevent that happening. Still she refused to do so. She would not betray you, she said. Desperate, I made a deal with her that afternoon—the day we discussed you being ambassador to the Low Countries. I would arrange for Rebecca Machyn to disappear at the same time as Awdrey took the document and hid it. That way, the Knights would not get it, and you would believe that Widow Machyn had betrayed you, so Awdrey could be sure you would forget her. The pair of you would then leave the country and go to the Netherlands. As it was, you were just too suspicious and too attached to that document and to Widow Machyn for the plan to work. But the truth is that I meant it for the best—and so did Awdrey. She did what she did because she loves you. And she never wanted anyone to come between you—not Rebecca Machyn, not me, not even a document that could dethrone the queen.”
Clarenceux said nothing.
“Now, if you please, I will have the queen’s seal.”
With a shaking hand, Clarenceux reached into his doublet and pulled out the bag. He handed it to Cecil without a word. He stood still as Cecil walked back to the river. His eyes were unfocused as the man embarked on the covered boat, to return to the city. Nor did he acknowledge Griffiths when the man came to him, standing still and sodden, asking him if he wanted to be taken home. He started to walk to the river, water running down from his hair.
The storm moved away. Tom Griffiths rowed him back to St. Bride’s parish in the small boat. But the rain continued to run down his face long after the clouds had passed.
Epilogue
It was a difficult reconciliation. It took place in Chislehurst parish church on a bright afternoon on the last day of May. Clarenceux watched Julius walk with Awdrey across the common to the church and stop short, allowing her to come to him alone, as Clarenceux had specified in his letter. Without a word they had then gone inside, knelt and prayed together, and left, almost without a word passing between them.
The argument took place in the churchyard. It was an argument that had to happen—not for one side to win or the other to lose, but so both of them had a chance to say to each other what they felt, as firmly as they needed. Awdrey accused Clarenceux of being too close to Rebecca, and he had to confess his feelings were strong. But, he protested, he had never betrayed her, his wife. She maintained the same. “Nor did I ever betray you,” she said. “Sir William Cecil asked me to steal the marriage agreement from you and I re
fused him. I refused because I am your wife and I will always be loyal to you.”
“How did you know where it was?”
“There are two small holes in the door to your study. Through those holes I saw you often checking that chitarra. Once, when you were out, I put my fingers inside it and felt a document hidden there. But I never told Sir William. I never betrayed you.”
“You might not have betrayed me, but you misplaced your trust,” answered Clarenceux. “That is a betrayal of another kind.”
“And you misplaced your affections,” she responded. “That too feels like a betrayal.”
“That was not my fault. I can’t control my feelings…”
“And do you think I can control my trust any more than you can control your emotions?”
Clarenceux had no answer to that. Or, rather, he knew that the easiest answer was a false one. The truth was that they had somehow lost touch with each other. What bound them together completely encompassed them—so much so that they did not normally even think of their union. In being so much a couple they each had forgotten the other person. They had forgotten each other’s vulnerability. In their separate selves, they had grown apart: Clarenceux to dwell on the affection outside his married life, Awdrey on the stifled ambition in her husband—the man on whom she depended for food, warmth, money, status, and everything.
“I met a man,” he began. “A man who said he did not believe in God—who said there was no god. He was a pirate. He cut me and killed others, seduced women, stole, and thought nothing of these things. And I believed he was a godless man—a man without conscience. And yet this man risked his life for me. He saved my life, and in so doing lost his own.” Clarenceux sighed heavily, thinking back to the moment when Carew left him in Calshot. “If a godless man can do a godly thing, is there not room in the world for every sort of good? Certainly there is no good in Catholic and Protestants fighting one another. If Jesus were to return now, I do not believe He would be Catholic or Protestant.”
Awdrey noticed the deep scar in his hand. “It is a pity that you had to go so far to realize that,” she said. She looked at his forehead and at his shoulder. “It is a pity you had to suffer for all the lessons you have learned. And it is a pity that you had to lose your beard. I liked you more with it.”
“We have these passions, don’t we, Awdrey? We feel things and we act. I am sorry if I have offended you. I am sorry if you lost trust in me.”
She took his right hand and looked at the scar. “I too am sorry. I apologize for putting my trust in Sir William and not in you. It would be better to go to the Devil with you than live in Heaven alone. Without you it could not be Heavenly.”
Clarenceux raised an eyebrow. “That is a very secular thing for you to say, Mistress Harley.”
She gave a smile. “We are just human, whatever it says in the Bible.”
Clarenceux smiled back at her. “I heard those very words not long ago from a washerwoman in a house of ill repute in Southampton.”
“Then it must be true. What were you doing there, may I ask?”
“I’ve got a lot to tell you, my love.”
***
Almost three weeks later, Clarenceux was sitting in his hall checking his cook’s account when his servant Thomas announced a visitor.
“Show him in,” said Clarenceux, not looking up.
“Sir, I think you might want to receive him at your door. It is Sir William Cecil.”
Clarenceux leaped to his feet. “He said he did not want to see me again.”
“He must want to see you, sir, for he has come in person.”
Clarenceux went downstairs and greeted Sir William at the front door of the house. Sir William stood there very formally, with his hand on a small staff. He asked to come in and speak to Clarenceux privately. The herald showed him up to the hall and closed all the doors.
“I have come for two reasons,” Sir William began. “The first is that I have been thinking a great deal about our last conversation, at Wapping. I said things then that perhaps—no, definitely—were better left unspoken and, better still, unthought. I said them because I was angry and anxious. And I was guilty. I did come between you and your wife like an interloper in the dark. I did try to steer her trust away from you, and you were quite right in the boat to ask me if it preyed on my conscience. I maintain that my answer was right: for the safety of the State, I would do it all again, and send all those people to their deaths—but personally I was in the wrong. I should not have doubted your loyalty, nor should I have come between you and your wife.”
Clarenceux did not know what to say. Cecil’s morality had long ago left him perplexed. But there was no denying that the man was here, in person, and apologizing to him in his own home. He had no wish to be Cecil’s enemy. He bowed his head. “Sir William, your apology is most warmly received and heartily accepted. If in my speech I did offend you, in my accusations, I apologize in return.”
Cecil seemed happy. “You have made things well again with your wife?”
Clarenceux nodded. “We are administering loving medicine to each other.”
“Good.” Cecil put his hand inside his mantle and felt for something in a pocket of his doublet. “This other thing may be of interest to you. Either way I am obliged to ask you to respond. I have heard from Southampton by way of Captain James Parkinson’s man, John Prouze, whom I believe you know. Yes?”
“I know his name.”
“Apparently Carew’s body was washed ashore several days after he went missing. It had been badly eaten by sea creatures and had to be identified by the ring on his finger. Prouze said that you would be able to confirm it was his.”
Cecil held out the ring of the Carew family. Clarenceux took it. He nodded when he saw the familiar arms. “There were only three of these made. One was given to Sir Philip Carew, who was killed in Malta. One was given to Sir Peter Carew, who still wears it on his finger. The third was given to the eldest son, Sir George Carew, and taken from him by his mistress when he abandoned her, so she could give it to her son by him.” Clarenceux remembered seeing it for the first time, in this very room—just after he had escaped from Cecil House. He closed his eyes and recalled once more—as he had so many times—the last conversation in the tower at Calshot, and those final requests. He was glad now he had delivered them. Silently, in his mind, he said a prayer for the pirate.
“So it is definitely his?”
“He would never have let it go—he would rather have died. It was the only thing that bound him to his true identity. If it was found on a corpse near Calshot Fort, there is no doubt that the corpse was his.”
Cecil nodded and took the ring back. “It is certainly not Sir Peter’s,” he said. “He saw me yesterday. He is going to set sail for Ireland shortly.”
Clarenceux felt sad. A part of him had hoped that Carew would have survived. “Could I have the ring?” he asked. “Raw Carew left a son who would benefit from knowing which ancient heraldic line sired him. With this, one day, I will be able to tell him of his more illustrious ancestors.”
“Raw Carew had a son? Was he married?”
“No. The child is a bastard. But he will learn who his father was either way. Maybe giving him this heirloom will make him mindful of his more noble heritage.”
Cecil thought about this. “I suppose I have no further use for it.” He handed it to Clarenceux. “Now, I thank you for listening to me. I bid you good day, Mr. Clarenceux. Perhaps, having gone through this together, we will be closer friends in future?”
“I hope so, Sir William.”
Only after Cecil had gone did Clarenceux properly think about Raw Carew. A life had been lived and lost—but how rich a life it had been. He cast his mind back over the men aboard the ship, and the life experience of men like Hugh Dean with his black hair and grin, and Kahlu coming from Africa and making his way through li
fe without speech but so much knowing. He thought too of the women that Carew had loved and those whose lives he had touched—Alice, Ursula and Amy, even Juanita. No doubt there were many others, unknown to him. Most of all, he remembered that moment in Calshot Fort when he realized that Carew had come back for him. A godless man had indeed done a blessed thing.
He looked at Carew’s ring and its three black lions. Old Sir William Carew must have thought three rings for his three sons would bind them forever. He could never have known that membership of that confraternity would pass to the son of a Calais maid and from him to the son of a Southampton whore. He felt the weight of the ring; it was floating on the deep ocean of the human spirit, passing from hand to hand as if those hands were waves.
And then he noticed something. There were nine words carved in tiny letters around the inside. He took it closer to the window and examined it carefully. As he read the words, the most powerful emotion rose in him and overwhelmed him. Tears flooded to his eyes. He started to smile and weep at the same time as a great joy broke open and flowered in his heart. Someone had put this ring on the corpse, someone who wanted to deceive Cecil and at the same time let Clarenceux know the truth. The name of Raw Carew did not just live on in legend—the name was dead and the man himself lived on. For there, inside the ring, Clarenceux could clearly read the words that he had spoken to Carew at Calshot.
In all our struggles, the last word is hope.
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction—pure fiction. I use that term over and above the usual publisher’s disclaimer at the front of a novel because I want to stress that this story is entirely a modern invention. I often come across historical novels described as “accurate,” including my own Sacred Treason, the prequel to this book. This is an area of huge misunderstanding. Very simply, if a historical text is truly “accurate” in relation to the past, then it is a work of history. No work of historical fiction is historically “accurate” because any verisimilitude it possesses relates to something going on in the novelist’s mind, not the past. The workings of the mind may well include the absorption of historical evidence; and in my case it is certainly based on what I have learned about Elizabethan daily life from many years of being interested in the period, but that does not mean the story relates to real events. Where the names of historical characters are mentioned, they are merely emblematic, signifiers of character. My Sir William Cecil is a signifier for a powerful loyal conspirator prepared to stoop to underhand methods. The real Sir William Cecil never said or did any of the deeds mentioned in this book, with a couple of minor exceptions that are incidental to the plot.
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