“And before she married your father?”
“Elizabeth Heywood.”
“Ah! Daughter of John Heywood?”
“The same.”
“Well. A good old Catholic family.”
“With your permission,” Jack said, then lightly drew his dagger from its sheath. With it he sliced through the stitching at the top of his right boot and used the blade to slide out the two folded papers lodged between the leather plies. “I thought it best not to carry these openly. One is from my mother, the other the Wizard Earl.”
She moved to the window and held the letters at arm’s length to read them. “How fares the Earl?”
“Well, when I left him.”
When she had read the letters she laid them on a little table beneath the window, then shook her head, as if she hardly knew what to make of the Earl. “Some of us had hopes he—and not this Scotsman—would be king after Elizabeth. But. . . .”
Jack shrugged. “I think the Earl is the only noble in England who does not want the crown.”
“The Lord knows he did no work to gain it.”
“True enough,” said Jack. “Too easily he let the Scotsman convince him there would be toleration for the Catholics, and that was enough for the Earl. He went back to his experiments, his inventions, and now he watches while the Catholics are harried and whipped and cast into prison. Or he does not watch. I don’t think the Wizard knows how bad it is for . . . us.” He had almost said, “for you.”
Mistress Vaux looked at him closely. “Your mother says here that you and your manservant now count yourself among us.”
“We do.”
She looked unconvinced. “You asked whether you could speak openly. I ask you the same: may I speak openly and plainly?”
“Of course. I have nothing to hide.”
“I wonder. Does a man who has nothing to hide say he has nothing to hide? You were a Catholic. Then you turned apostate, a Protestant. Now you are again a Catholic. How do we know which way you will face when your giddy head stops spinning?”
From a woman like Eleanor Vaux, a woman who had risked her fortune to abet Catholics—risked her very life, for women as well as men had been tortured to death for their cause—he would bear this affront. “The question is well asked,” he said. “The answer is that you cannot know. You have my word, little as my word might mean to you, and if that will not suffice, you have Earl’s letter and my mother’s assuring you that I include myself among the faithful. I swear before God: I wish nothing but earthly peace and everlasting happiness for every Catholic in the land.”
She asked, “Do you wish the same for every Protestant?”
A fiery intelligence burned in her eyes; it was best to tell her the truth. “I do.”
She held his gaze. “Well, I do not. Simple, misguided believers, yes. The Scotsman, Cecil, Topcliffe, and all their spies and pursuivants, no. May they roast in hell, and the sooner the better.”
“I cannot blame you for wishing it.”
“Oh, you are a tolerant soul, are you not? Tolerant. Wishing people well but tolerant of those who do not. Tolerant. Soft of heart, soft of head, soft of soul, I fear. May the Lord help you when it comes to the manacles and the rack.”
He kept his voice even. “May the Lord help me then, and help us all.”
She watched him for an uncomfortably long time, then said, “There were Jesuits among the Heywoods, were there not?”
“There were. Two of my uncles, Ellis and Jasper.”
“Both gone now.”
“Both gone.”
“But neither of them murdered.”
“No,” Jack said. “Jasper was in the Tower, but Queen Elizabeth allowed him, for the sake I think of his father, to leave the country and live.”
She waved a gnarled hand vaguely. “So the Tudor bitch did one good thing in her life.” Jack waited for her to continue. She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “Have you ever seen a priest murdered by these Protestants?”
“I have.”
“Who was it?”
“Campion, and then young Harrington.”
She nodded. “I was there when they martyred Campion. You must have been but a child.”
“Nine years old, I think.”
“You were a Catholic in those days.”
“I was.”
“And after witnessing the manner of his death, you could leave the Church. And William Harrington’s martyrdom, when you were grown.”
Jack felt the heat rising along his neck and into his face, but he forced himself to keep his anger at bay. His voice was grim as he said, “I was twenty-two, I think, and my brother Henry twenty-one. Harrington did not die as Campion did. Harrington was not ready; there was terror in his eyes. Terror. My brother had been hiding him, and after Topcliffe’s hellish torture—days of it—poor Henry told him where the priest lay. Then my brother died of the plague, in prison. Died horribly. Punished and unforgiven, as he thought, for his sin. Neither my tortured brother nor the tortured priest died well. Both lives were laid waste because these Jesuits stir our young men to their supposed martyrdom. I said then and I say still: it was not God’s will that my brother—or Harrington—died. I will say the same in the very teeth of any Jesuit: a man can be a good Catholic and want no part of this Jesuitical martyr-making.”
She darted her head toward him and said, “Tell me this: how will young men and women know to be good Catholics if no priest dares to say the Mass and bring the sacraments to the people? How are they to know, if no Jesuit dares enter the land to risk the scaffold and the rack?”
Jack did not take his eyes from hers. “If bringing the Mass and the sacraments were all the Jesuits did, then all were well. But not only do these English priests serve the Italian pope; they are the very playthings of the Spanish king. The Jesuits would make England a colony of Spain.”
“And where is the harm in that, if the Old Faith is restored?”
Jack considered his answer, then said, “Mistress Vaux, we disagree. Yet I have no desire to change your mind on that score.”
She did not speak for a while, and Jack allowed the silence to settle around them. Eleanor sat remarkably still. A kettle clanked faintly in the kitchen, its sound dulled by the intervening rooms. A wood-thrush somewhere in the distance trilled its easy, liquid song. A creak from upstairs. At length Eleanor said, “Well. For this time I am satisfied. For your mother’s sake and the Earl’s I welcome you, and I will pray for you.” Jack nodded his thanks. She continued, “But you must have come seeking something. What can I do to help you?”
“The Wizard Earl,” Jack lied, “asked me to find out one called Guido about some business between the two of them.”
“The Earl says nothing of it in his letter.”
“He would have, but I advised him not to, fearing he did not understand the risk to himself, were I caught and the letter discovered.”
She nodded. “That sounds like the Earl. Sometimes I think he seems a great, overgrown boy.”
“I insisted he be circumspect.”
“It was well done. But of your task: I am afraid you have missed Guido by less than a day. He stayed with us for more than a month, and departed the house just yesternight.”
So Anne was right: Guido was not only in England, he was in Warwickshire. Or had been until last night. “Do you know where he has gone?”
With a tone shading between resignation and bitterness, she said, “He never reveals where he will go next. Or he would never tell a woman, even one who sheltered and fed him through this month and more.”
Jack paused to acknowledge the rightness of her claim, then said, “The Earl’s business is a matter of no small urgency. Is there anyone in the house who would know where Guido went?”
Mistress Vaux looked out the window and absently grazed an arthritic finger along her lip.
After a while Jack said, “A priest, perhaps? I would have one hear my confession.”
Still looking out the win
dow, she took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Then she said, “Guido is ever secretive about his comings and goings.”
She had already said so, but there was nothing to be gained by reminding her of the fact. Jack let her silence work for a long time. The thrush was gone, but a mockingbird somewhere in the woods had begun a series of songs. Finally Jack said, “There is one more thing.” He glanced toward the rolled blanket he had set on the floor next to his chair. “I hardly know where my travels will take me, and there will be much jostling along the way. Could you keep something here for me? It may hap I will call for it again one day.”
“And what is that?”
“The head of Thomas More.”
CHAPTER 12
Eleanor had hurried away to fetch a goose-down pillow. When she reappeared she laid the pillow on the table beneath the window, then carefully unrolled each of the blanket’s layers. In a minute or two she held the bones in her hands. Reverently she laid the skull on the pillow, then set the jawbone under it where it would have fit. One tooth—a molar—remained in the blanket, as did the three little patches of skin and hair that had somehow remained delicately adhered to the skull when it was in Jack’s mother’s care. Eleanor placed the tooth and the patches of skin beside the skull on the pillow. Jack considered the arrangement. All in all, the damage had been light. Something short of a miracle, perhaps, but not bad.
Eleanor’s face burned with what Jack first thought was fright, but then he saw it for what it was: not the craven fear of the dead, but the holy fear of awe. With evident pain in her joints, she knelt before the skull. After a moment’s hesitation Jack did the same. She muttered an Ave Maria, a Paternoster, and a Te Deum, then crossed herself three times and tried to rise. Jack crossed himself once and helped her back into her chair.
She looked almost a different woman from the one who had shrewdly questioned him only minutes before. It was as though Sir Thomas had spoken to her words of everlasting comfort, had assured her that all would be well: that in fact all was well already.
Jack looked again at the skull. He still saw nothing but grinning bones. They stared stupidly at him. Or maybe they taunted him.
How was it that Sir Thomas spoke so clearly, and with such powerful reassurance, to these pious women? Eleanor, his own mother . . . but to Jack he had nothing to say.
Eleanor looked at Jack placidly, her usual crisp movements somehow forestalled by Sir Thomas More. “Whether you come again for him or not, Sir Thomas will find his way back into your family. There is no doubt of it.”
As there was no sense and no charity in doing otherwise, Jack nodded his acceptance of the inevitability.
Mistress Vaux said, “I tell you there is no doubt of it, despite all your disbelief.”
Jack held up his palms as if to say, I do not disagree. He added aloud, trying to keep his tone entirely free of ridicule, “Do you think Sir Thomas might allow you to keep the tooth and the hair in your family? Its falling into your hands was perhaps providential.”
Eleanor seemed uncertain what to make of the idea. She turned and looked to Sir Thomas where he lay on his pillow. For a long while she stared at him. Then she turned back to Jack and said, “He will allow it. In fact he desires it. You may be sure these four relics will be well looked after, and honorably venerated.”
“I believe it with my whole heart.”
“I thank you for this most sacred gift. The Dowager Vaux at Harrowden shall have one relic, each of my two blood sisters shall have another, and one shall remain here. Sir Thomas desires it so.”
“So please you, thank Sir Thomas for me. It is he who knows best, and not I.”
“Yes. I have thanked him already. But the gift came through your doing, your acceptance of his desire.”
Without knowing he was about to do it, Jack crossed himself again. Mistress Vaux did the same, then pushed herself up from her chair. “Wait here,” she said.
After a few minutes a plump, thin-legged country squire, or so the man’s clothing proclaimed, entered the room. Eleanor stood in the doorway and said, “I’m going to look in on Ned’s mother.” As the men sat, Jack could hear Mistress Vaux climbing the stairs. He knew the creaking must be coming from the steps, but he imagined it was Eleanor Vaux’s crepitating joints.
The squire’s sparse hair was the color of dried flax, his eyes pale, cold, and canny. “You are, I take it, a priest,” Jack said. The man nodded. “Jesuit?”
“Perhaps.”
Most of the English Jesuits were no older than Jack, but this man looked about fifty. Jack guessed he sat before the head of the Jesuit mission to England: “Garnet? Henry Garnet?”
The priest’s expression did not change. “What is the difference?” he asked. The voice had the clear, cool tones of a tenor. No doubt the man could sing a rousing Te Deum, as Jesuits everywhere sang every time one of their own was put to death—as if the murdering were a glorious thing. “Mistress Vaux has told me of your mother’s letter, and the Earl’s. She said you wanted to confess. I am a priest, and I am here to administer the sacrament. What are your sins?”
Jack knelt, surprised at how willingly his body submitted where his mind misgave. He told the priest of his confession to John Gerard, told him of his doubts about rejoining the Catholic Church, of his decision to proceed nonetheless. Whether this last was entirely a lie, not even he was sure anymore. When the priest asked whether there was anything else, Jack took a risk. He said, “Just this: it is not, I think, a sin of my own, but I would speak of it. I fear that the man Guido, who was here yesterday, in league with a few other hot-headed Catholics, plans some great violence against the authorities of this land.” Jack watched Garnet—if Garnet it was—as the man’s cheeks flushed. The priest knew something.
“What manner of violence?” Garnet asked.
“I know not.”
“From whom did you hear this thing?”
Jack dangled a bit of bait: “I . . . I had as lief betray no man’s confidence.”
The priest nodded. “You know I must respect the seal of the confessional; I will reveal what you tell me to no man. Not even, unless the matter be truly grave, to the Pope himself. But this is like to be of such importance, and so I impose on you an additional act of penance for your sins. Tell me but this, and you know I must bear your secret to the grave unless many lives hang in the balance: from whom did you hear this thing?”
Remembering the big man at Harrowden, the one with the bullet-shorn ear, Jack crossed himself, said a silent prayer asking for forgiveness, and lied: “I overheard it. At Harrowden I was in the next room when Robin Catesby confessed his sins to Father Gerard.”
Father Garnet closed his eyes and let his head fall back. “Catesby,” he whispered, half to himself. “I might have guessed it. And you say you know none of the plan’s particulars?”
“None. If I did, I could work to prevent it. Catesby spoke of Guido, but he would reveal no other particulars to Father Gerard: only that his plan would usher in a Catholic king, or at the least force the Scotsman to honor his promise of toleration.”
Garnet sat for a long time staring into the middle distance. Doing his best to ignore the ache in his knees, Jack kept kneeling. Garnet’s silence gave Jack time to make a calculation: if the priest knew nothing of the conspiracy Jack had hit upon, the man would not have reacted as he did. If he knew of it and supported it, he would reveal nothing to Jack. If he knew of it and feared or doubted its success, or if he knew some mischief was afoot but did not know the details, maybe he would offer some hint of what he knew. Jack said, “You know this desperate device of these men is doomed to fail. When it does, things will be much worse for us Catholics. The King will take bloody vengeance, and few among even the Catholic nobles will dare resist him.”
Finally Garnet said quietly, “That is true; I fear it. The Scotsman’s response would be terrible.” He was silent again for a while, then stirred in his chair, leaned forward, and said, “The seal of the confessional prevents
me from telling you more, but I will say this much: plans have been laid for foul doings. I know not of a surety when the thing will come to pass—a few weeks, maybe, or a few months—at, I think, Coombe Abbey.”
“Sir John Harrington’s house.”
“The same, not twenty miles distant.”
“I know Harrington’s daughter Lucy, the Countess of Bedford.”
Garnet’s face brightened. “Do you? If you could use her influence to gain entry into the house. . . .”
“I think I can.”
“Good. I will tell you only this: the young princess Elizabeth Stuart stays at Coombe Abbey. If arrangements were made for the child to be spirited secretly to some safer place in the event of any hint of an attack on Coombe Abbey, that would not be amiss.”
“Is the girl’s life in danger?”
“Not her life, I think, but. . . .”
“These hot-heads plan to seize her, then. Hold her hostage in exchange for concessions from King James. Or carry her away to Spain or Italy to be raised Catholic.”
“I have said enough. Too much, it may be, and may the Lord have mercy on me if I have. Well, you have made your confession. The rest of your penance is to pray every morning for forty days that your motives may be purified.”
The priest gave Jack absolution and said, “Rise. Make your way, before much more time has passed, to Coombe Abbey.”
Burr had mixed some cured mutton, onions, greens, and a large dollop of goose grease in a kettle of water that now rested on the kitchen coals. When the stew reached a boil he would drop in a dozen or so eggs. Young Ned Tidwell had told him where to find food and implements but had proved useless when it came to cooking. The boy sat peevishly watching. Burr stirred the mixture with a long wooden spoon as he said, “This might not match your mother’s cooking, but I trust it will serve.”
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