The Roots of Betrayal c-2

by James Forrester

  Walsingham frowned. “I am sorry, I do not understand.”

  Cecil picked up the letter. “Do you believe a man of Clarenceux’s intelligence is simply going to allow himself to be arrested-after both you and I have failed to keep him under lock and key? Do you think he trusts me? Can’t you see the message in this letter?”

  “It’s too vague to be a real threat.” Walsingham shrugged. “If you do not do as he asks, what will he do? Come and find you?”

  “Damn you, he will send this same letter to Robert Dudley.”

  “He wouldn’t dare.”

  “Francis, open your eyes! He has spelled Dudley’s name out in this letter.” Cecil picked it up and held it out, shaking it, in front of Walsingham. He stabbed the page with his forefinger. “Look, there-where those words are underlined. Why did he do that? See that word, which is underlined, beginning with ‘d’? Then the next one that is underlined, beginning with a ‘u.’ And so on. Do you think it is an accident that he has named both Dudley and the people who can testify to the truth of his story?”

  “We will go together. Take guards-surround the house. He will not be able to get away.”

  Cecil carefully put his hands flat on the table. “Clarenceux is not the danger. It is the information he carries that is dangerous-and he knows it. If I arrest him, it will confirm the truth of all this. I do not doubt that a copy of this letter will go to Dudley straight away. Clarenceux won’t be the one who sends it.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I will go, as he requests, alone. He will be watching me-but so will you. Have just three or four men around his house, in sight of one another. If he tries to abduct me, or hold me to ransom, you will move in with my own guard, who will stand outside, and half a dozen other men-at-arms whom you will conceal nearby. Go and requisition an appropriate house now.”

  76

  That afternoon, at eight minutes to four, Sir William Cecil’s burgundy fur-lined cloak was laid across his shoulders by a groom of his chamber and he walked across the yard of Cecil House. He did not call for his horse; instead, six men in his livery followed him down the Strand and into Fleet Street, two of them armed with loaded muskets. The weather felt close, with a cold breeze, as if a storm was about to break.

  Cecil carried no sword but listened to the jangling belt-harnesses of the men behind him. Approaching Clarenceux’s house, he glanced at the front. The shutters on the ground floor were closed, as always. Those on the first floor were open, however. So too were those on the second floor. He turned to the men behind him. “Three of you, go to the back of the house and guard the rear exit. No one goes in or comes out except those men under the command of Mr. Walsingham. The other three, stay here. The same applies to this entrance.”

  Cecil knocked hard on the door with his gloved hand. He waited. No answer came. He knocked again and noticed the door move a little. When it became apparent that no one was answering, he tried turning the handle. It was unlocked. He pushed it open and went inside.

  The mustiness of an empty house greeted him. “Mr. Harley? William?” There was a slight echo along the dark passageway beside the staircase. Dust had fallen on the stairs but it had recently been disturbed in the center. He began to climb, the wooden boards creaking beneath his feet. “William?” he called again from the landing, looking through the door into the hall.

  He went in. Everything seemed to be in its place, from the elm table by the window to the carpets covering the two chests at the opposite end of the room. The four pictures on the white plaster looked at him accusingly from their gilt frames.

  “William?”

  Cecil began to look around the hall. Only when he came close to the elm table did he realize that it was not in its usual place. It had been drawn forward, nearer to the middle of the room. On it was a book: the Old Testament in Latin. There was a piece of paper tucked inside. He opened the volume. The piece of paper marked the pages of the Book of Job, chapter seven. Verses 11 and 12 were underlined: quampropter et ego non parcam ori meo loquar in tribulatione spiritus mei confabulabor cum amaritudine animae meae. Numquid mare sum ego aut cetus quia circumdedisti me carcere? Cecil knew these lines: “Therefore I will not stop my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. Am I a sea or a whale that you surround me in prison?”

  He picked up the paper. It was sealed with Clarenceux’s seal. He knew he would see his own name written on the front even before his eyes actually recognized the words. He broke open the seal and read Clarenceux’s message.

  Right worshipful friend and kinsman, if you do genuinely desire that we be reconciled, and that all threats between us be as words in the wind, go to London Bridge and find the jeweler who goes by the name of Robert Rokeby this same afternoon, before six of the clock. His shop is near the center of the bridge. Follow his instructions and you will find me. Come alone, and you will be met kindly, in friendship.

  Cecil abruptly turned and walked out of the hall, running down the stairs to the front door. “Call the others,” he snapped to the guards. “We are going to London Bridge.”

  Cecil did not speak all the way. Walking fast, with the guards following him, he pushed past merchants and tradesmen without a thought, thinking of how he was going to deal with Clarenceux. Turning down alleys, he did not care for the state of his shoes as he splashed through the mud. He strode past the wardens on London Bridge, to a point about one third of the way across. There were several jewelers’ shops here. “Find Rokeby,” Cecil said to the guards with him. “His shop is somewhere near the middle.”

  Cecil hated being the subject of attention from the passersby. Those who knew who he was simply gawped at him standing in the middle of the street in public. Those who did not wondered who he was. Cecil felt their eyes pry into him and wished one of his men would find the shop quickly. He looked up at the houses overlooking the bridge; there were even two female servants looking out of an upstairs window at him. He turned around and pretended not to notice. There was a rumble of thunder in the distance. It would start to rain soon.

  “Sir William,” said one of the guards, “Rokeby’s shop is that one, with the shutters closed.”

  Cecil walked to the door. It was oak, old, and ill fitting, but locked securely. An external padlock fitting was not in use. “Damn it, search the place. If Clarenceux is in there, bring him out.”

  Two guards stepped up to the door. One knocked hard with a knife hilt. There was a pause, which irritated Cecil even more. These houses on the bridge were small-fourteen feet in total length-so even if Rokeby had been upstairs, he should have been there promptly. Cecil gestured to the guard who had spoken to him. “Call his name.”

  “Rokeby!” the guard called.

  The door opened.

  “Are you Robert Rokeby?” demanded Cecil, stepping forward.

  Rokeby was a short, gray-eyed man of about sixty, clean shaven, with a narrow face and almost bald head. “I am. And you must be Sir William Cecil. Godspeed to you, Sir William.”

  “Where is Clarenceux?”

  “You will have to come in if you want to-”

  “By God’s blood, man, tell me. I have lost my patience and you will lose your life if I have to play any more games. Tell me, here and now!”

  The man was terrified. “I cannot, Sir William. Mr. Clarenceux told me I had to show you.”

  “Then damn well show me. Show all of us.”

  Rokeby pushed his door as far open as it would go and Cecil gestured for his men to follow him in. “No, no, you cannot all come in,” spluttered the jeweler. “If I am to show you, I must lift the trapdoor.”

  Cecil was standing in a tiny shop, barely six feet deep by seven feet wide, made smaller by the cupboards fastened against the walls and the workbench. There was only room for four men to stand in there, besides Rokeby. The jeweler himself was standing in a narrow doorway that led to a back room. “What trapdoor?” Cecil asked.

  “This one. I
t is the way Mr. Clarenceux told me to tell you to go.”

  Cecil stepped forward. Set in the middle of the floor of the back room was a trapdoor, about two feet square. Rokeby opened it and Cecil looked down. About thirty feet below was the base of one of the pillars of the bridge, with a large flat cutwater-called a starling-visible above the waterline. The water churned around the stone of the starling. He looked hard at Rokeby. “Is this a joke?”

  Rokeby gestured upward. Above the trapdoor hung a rope ladder. He reached up and pulled on a cord and the rope ladder unfurled itself, tumbling through the trapdoor and trailing into the water below. “It is my escape way, in case of fire. Mr. Clarenceux asked me to show it to you. He said he doesn’t want anyone to follow you.”

  Cecil looked behind him at the men in the doorway. He said nothing. He looked again at the river below, its brown water twisting around the starlings. The starlings themselves were platforms of rubble shaped like sharp-nosed boats. They projected out either side of the bridge and caught small branches drifting downstream. Cecil now understood why Clarenceux had been so specific about the times; at high tide this platform would be completely covered. As it was, the tide was coming in, and boats were able to sail upstream and downstream. At low tide, this point would become almost impossible for vessels traveling in either direction. The arrangements had been sophisticated. He could no longer hide behind his men. From now on, he would have to go on alone or not go on at all.

  “What happens down there?”

  “A man will meet you. He has room in his boat only for one, or so Mr. Clarenceux said. If you step into that boat alone and go with him, Mr. Clarenceux will come to you. That is all he told me and all I can tell you.”

  Cecil looked from the trapdoor to Rokeby. “You are going to be in trouble, for helping a criminal. You know that.” He turned to his men. “Go to the banks, find boats, commandeer them, and follow me. Remain discreet-don’t make Clarenceux aware of your presence unless you see a struggle.”

  Rokeby watched as the queen’s Secretary leaned forward and tested the strength of the rope ladder. Hesitant at first, Cecil suddenly stepped onto it and swung, his feet striking the side of the trapdoor. Then he began to climb down toward the water.

  He looked up at the beams of the houses, cantilevered seven feet out over the edge of the bridge. He had seen them from the river before but never from this angle, this close. A bird flew out from the shadows. As he took another step, and another, the rope ladder swayed, but soon he was down on the stones of the starling. He looked downstream, then upstream. No one seemed to be coming for him. He saw the rope ladder move, pulled up-presumably by Rokeby. “Leave it,” he commanded. Rokeby did as he was told. Cecil stood on the starling and waited for a boat to approach.

  “Sir William,” said a voice behind him. “This side.”

  Cecil cautiously turned. A stout man in his fifties with a hat and an unkempt gray beard was there. He nodded for Cecil to come the other side of the great pillar supporting the bridge that arose from the center of the starling. Cecil walked across the uneven surface toward the man. When he came within a pace, he stopped. The man smelled of a tanyard.

  “Who are you?” asked Cecil.

  The man said nothing. He stepped forward, so he was within an arm’s length of Cecil. “I am directed to check you for weapons, Sir William.”

  Sir William shook his head. “How dare you?” But after waiting a moment, he slowly opened his cloak and let the man-a pelterer who had recently unloaded a cartload of skins-feel his doublet for a pistol or knife.

  “This way.” The pelterer led Cecil around the other side of the pillar to a wherry moored against the side of the starling. Cecil got in. The pelterer arranged the oars, pushed off, and started to row upstream. Cecil checked the boats along the banks; he caught a glimpse of two of his men running along the quay, trying to find a suitable craft in which to follow him. The others he could not see anywhere.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Up the river. Mr. Clarenceux will meet us when he is sure it is safe.”

  Cecil sat in the boat, apprehensive. He looked behind; no one was approaching-none of his men nor Clarenceux. He looked along the quays on both the south and north banks. There were men loading and unloading barges on the north; and smaller ferries, skiffs, and light boats all across the river, but no sign of Clarenceux. He looked at the timber-framed houses on the south side and the extraordinary mix of buildings on the north: quays, stone turrets and towers, staircases, jetties, half-timbered houses, platforms, and cranes. There were timber supports holding firm the banks of the river. Other timbers propped up the quays where boats were moored. But still no sign of Clarenceux.

  Clarenceux, in fact, was just getting into a boat, a larger one with a black canopy that covered the rear half. It was manned by a young fellow called John Gotobed, whose uncle was the clerk of the Skinners’ Company. They were concealed around a corner of the dock that had been built up just south of the Strand, not far from Cecil House.

  “There’s the boat,” Clarenceux said, seeing Tom Griffiths, the pelterer, rowing upstream.

  “The watchers have signaled,” replied Gotobed, looking along the quay to where a man was holding his hand aloft steadily. The man on the opposite bank was similarly signaling. “There is no one following them.”

  “Let’s go,” said Clarenceux, sitting back beneath the canopy. Gotobed pushed off from the side of the quay and started to row to a point upstream where he would meet Griffiths and Cecil.

  Cecil saw the larger, half-covered boat approaching. He felt annoyed, defeated by Clarenceux’s stratagem. He consoled himself; when this was over, he would still be the queen’s Secretary and he could manage the eventual outcome of this episode much more to his liking. This was just something he had to do first.

  Gotobed’s boat came alongside Griffiths’s. Cecil caught Clarenceux’s eye. “I suppose you want me to come across and join you.”

  “We have important things to discuss, Sir William. And we need to discuss them now.”

  Clarenceux and Gotobed did their best to steady the two boats while Cecil climbed over, but even so it was an ungainly operation for the queen’s Secretary. He was not as physically active as he had been in his youth. But he managed it and took a place on the covered bench to Clarenceux’s left. Griffiths also crossed and tethered his boat on a long rope to the rowlocks of Gotobed’s, so that it drifted along behind. Then the two oarsmen took their places and started to row the canopied boat back downstream.

  Cecil noticed the change of direction and the purposefulness of their stroke. “Where are we going now?” he asked.

  It began to rain. Clarenceux watched the droplets scatter themselves across the gray water. “Wapping,” he replied.

  “Are you taking me to watch one of your pirate friends be hanged?”

  Clarenceux looked at Cecil. “I know it was you. It took me a lot of time and pain to find out. You lied to me over and over again. You saw that letter to Lady Percy and you took action. Or, to put it another way, you panicked. You faked Rebecca Machyn’s theft of the document, and you sent her to Captain Parkinson.”

  Cecil looked away. “It was for the best.”

  “How can you say such a thing? How can you? Do you have any idea how many men have died as a result of you playing this game? Hundreds. Hundreds of men and women have died. Many others are wounded. You had a clever idea of how to fool me into thinking that a woman had stolen that document, thereby saving it from falling into the hands of Mrs. Barker. But what was the result?” Clarenceux held up his right hand, with the scar where Kahlu put his knife through it. “That is just one small result. The man who did that is now dead. So is the captain and almost all of the crew of the ship on which it happened. So are many of the crew members of the ships sent to blow us out of the water.”

  “It was for the best,” repeated Cecil. “It was for the security of the State. I would do it again-and then ten times more.”
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  “It was a mistake,” replied Clarenceux. “When I make a mistake, only I suffer, and those who depend on me. It is forgivable. But when you make a mistake, hundreds die. It is unforgiveable. Powerful men cannot afford to make mistakes.”

  “Listen to me. I meant well. I had to stop a rebellion-”

  “You meant well? Ah, that makes everything fine. Those men did not really die-because you meant well. This wound never happened, and the young woman I saw blown in half aboard the Davy did not die in vain, because you meant well. Sir William, damn your meaning well, if this is what it does-and to hell with your good intentions. If hundreds die and many suffer, it does not really matter whether you meant well or not, does it? You failed us.”

  “Clarenceux, a friendly warning: don’t make this worse for yourself.”

  “Worse? How do you think this possibly could be any worse?”

  “By insulting me. By threatening to send information to Dudley. By demeaning me-by dragging me into this miserable boat.”

  Clarenceux shook his head. “I told you to come alone. You paid no attention. I watched you. Six men followed you to my house. More were already stationed around it. You demean me by thinking that I am so stupid I will allow you to arrest me. And then you insult me by thinking I will not notice your soldiers. If I seem threatening to you, perhaps you ought to ask yourself what you are afraid of. Of me? Of me telling the truth? Or of the truth itself?”

  It was raining hard now, as they approached London Bridge again. Clarenceux looked across the water. Few boats were in use; most had taken shelter. One or two were still on the water, including one setting out from just this side of London Bridge. Clarenceux pointed to it. “You see what I mean? Row faster, Tom, John; there are men approaching from the north bank.”

  A flash of lightning lit the sky for a moment. Thunder rolled across ten seconds later. The rain came down harder. Griffiths and Gotobed continued rowing. “Keep going,” Clarenceux shouted. “There is a bonus for both of you because of the inclement weather.”