If he had only waited a few more years, Henry would have been free of Catherine without losing his Catholic allies in Europe and the respect of the common people in England, who loved Catherine and despised the “goggle-eyed whore,” Anne.
Catherine died in 1536. Although only fifty at the time, the years of separation from her beloved daughter and banishment to a series of drafty, damp manor houses had aged her greatly. With her final, struggling breaths, she dictated a letter to Henry, closing with: “Lastly, I make this vow — mine eyes desire you above all things.” She signed the letter with her own hand “Catherine the Queen.” Rumors swirled that Anne had bribed Catherine’s cooks to poison the pitiful woman, but an autopsy discovered a cancerous growth inside her heart.
Catherine died, both literally and figuratively, of a broken heart.
After the separation from Rome, with the exception of Henry making himself the head of the church, he wanted everything else to remain the same in order to make the transition easier for the public. All of the old rituals such as creeping to the cross and washing the feet of beggars would still be observed. Many reformist detractors secretly murmured that Henry’s English Church was “more Catholic than the Catholics.”
Cromwell persuaded Henry to send commissioners to the monasteries, claiming they had descended into houses of debauchery — many priests were known to have fathered children by local women. Not only would these commissioners identify priests who had broken their vows, but they would also confiscate and examine all holy relics in order to determine their authenticity.
It was the first step toward the total conversion of church property to the Crown.
*******
Hailes Abbey
“You will hand over the phial now, Abbot,” said Commissioner Nicholas London.
“You have no right!” insisted the abbot, Stephen Sagar. “This abbey was duly consecrated in 1277, and the Earl of Cornwall acquired the holy relic of the blood of Jesus Christ that was once in the possession of Charlemagne himself!”
“If the phial contains the true blood of Christ, then you should welcome an unbiased examination,” replied London.
“Unbiased!” cried Abbot Stephen. “Master Secretary has an agenda, which is to seize all monastic property for the Crown.”
“All property on English soil already belongs to the Crown,” snapped London. “I will not debate the matter any further with you. Hand it over now, or I will have my men hack the shrine to pieces. Either way, it will come into our possession.”
The abbot closed his eyes and made the sign of cross. London looked at his assistant, Drake, and guffawed.
“Get on with it!” shouted Drake as he pushed the abbot toward the shrine.
The abbot’s hands shook as he selected a key from a ring attached to his habit and used it to unlock the outer gate of the shrine that encased the reliquary, the ornate metallic box that displayed the phial. Drake snatched it from him and opened it.
“The Holy Blood of Hailes,” said Drake, oozing with sarcasm as he handed it to London.
“Truly miraculous,” sneered London. “For over two hundred and fifty years, drops of the Savior’s blood from this phial have been distributed to thousands of pilgrims, and as a result, donations have poured in to provide for the construction of these magnificent buildings. Yet the phial remains full.”
“Collected with the Holy Grail by Joseph of Arimathea himself, I’d wager,” said Drake with a laugh.
“The church does not recognize the Holy Grail or any of the Arthurian legends,” retorted the abbot.
“Looks more like duck’s blood to me,” said London.
“Or honey mixed with saffron,” added Drake. “We’ve seen plenty of fakes and know all the tricks.”
“Are there any other relics we should know about?” asked London. “Nails from the cross, perhaps?”
“Over thirty abbeys in Europe claim to have them,” snickered Drake. “I never knew they needed that many to crucify one man.”
Abbot Stephen shook his head. “You know full well that the sacred phial is all that sustains this abbey.”
“We will analyze the phial,” said London. “In the meantime, all residents, including yourself, must prepare to vacate the premises. My men will take down all displays of popery in the chapel today and return once Master Secretary has reported his findings to His Majesty.”
*******
Commissioner London had ridden ahead with the fake relic so he could immediately show it to Cromwell, who would no doubt be pleased that he had more evidence with which to persuade Henry to decommission yet another monastery.
After London’s men loaded the carts with the objects they had seized earlier in the day, Drake made sure they were secure. They then began the slow trek with the weighted down carts back to the city.
From the corner of his eye, Drake could see a young novice following them, trying to remain hidden. Drake did not let on to anyone that he had spotted him.
The abbot has sent him to make sure we are leaving the area…
It had not escaped Drake’s notice that the chapel was not as elaborate as other abbeys he had encountered. Many had secret passages and chambers for hiding both people and objects. Now that the monks knew the relic in the shrine would soon be exposed as a fake, they would be in a panic to move any precious objects hidden in the abbey to a new location.
When his men made camp for the night, Drake told them he was going to double back to the monastery to make sure they were not being followed and assured them he would return in time to continue the journey in the morning as scheduled.
*******
Concealed behind the tree line just outside the abbey, Drake waited in silence. His instincts were correct: a few hours later he spotted the same novice hurrying away from the abbey on foot with a sack slung over his shoulder. The youth made so much noise with the clanking objects, he never heard Drake closing in from behind. Drake quickly and expertly subdued the novice in a sleeper hold, and after a minute of steady pressure, the youth fell into unconsciousness.
He snatched the sack and sprinted back to his horse. By the time the novice regained consciousness, Drake was over a mile away. The youth stumbled back to the abbey and told the abbot what happened, but he was unable to give him any description of his assailant.
“God has completely abandoned us,” lamented Abbot Stephen.
Drake returned to his men before morning as promised. Without pausing to look at the contents, he had quickly buried the sack at a fork in the road next to a stream. It would be easy enough for him to retrieve it when he and the rest of London’s men would be given time off to spend with their families before the next inspection. A less experienced man would have tried to keep the booty on his person and would have given himself away. Drake valued his neck too much to be tempted — the longer the sack was in the ground, the safer it was for him.
*******
Two Weeks Later
“Father!” cried the boy.
“Young Master John!” Drake called to him as he dismounted his horse.
The boy leaned heavily on his crutch as he limped to his father, but in his rush, he tripped and fell hard to the ground.
“Johnny!” cried Drake as he ran to the boy and picked him up.
“I hit my head, Father,” said Johnny. “I’ll be alright.”
Drake hoisted him over his shoulder and carried him into the house. “Where is your mother?”
“Gone to the fishmonger,” answered Johnny.
“Ah,” said Drake. “Lamprey pie tonight, perhaps?”
“I’d rather have rabbit stew,” replied Johnny.
“Well, then,” said Drake, “you’d better check the traps. You go on ahead, and I’ll catch up when I’ve unpacked.”
As soon as Johnny was out of sight, Drake grabbed a mattock and quickly dug a deep hole directly behind the buckthorn tree behind their hut. Opening the sack for the first time, he took a quick inventory of the contents. There we
re several gold and silver coins and crucifixes. At the bottom of the sack, something shimmered: it was a lavish metal box encrusted in jewels. As he opened it, he expected to find a large ruby or emerald ring, but to his surprise, it was a phial containing a dark liquid.
A shiver ran through him as he beheld it. The turquoise object was definitely a Roman uguentarium, the glass bottles found in ancient cemeteries. The tubular phial had been wound with a decorative spiral thread that was connected to a three-tier looped handle that included a looped ring at the apex…and the monks had been desperate to keep it safe.
A staunch reformer, Drake felt a sense of dread encompass him as he considered the possibility that the monks had put a fake on display in order to protect the true blood of Christ.
Destroy it! Impoverished people gave up their silver and gold in the false hope of being cured by the fake relic on display!
He put the phial on the ground and raised the mattock. Just before bringing it down to smash it, he stopped.
The monks protected it as if it were the real thing…they believed it to be real…maybe it is real…if it’s real it could cure Johnny…
He stood frozen with the mattock above his head.
God is testing my faith…I must trust in Him to cure Johnny…
*******
“That was a lovely meal, dear,” said Drake to his wife, Molly. “You can’t beat lamprey pie, eh, Johnny?”
“That’s right, Father,” replied the boy.
“The rabbit traps must have been empty,” said Molly with a laugh.
“Here, Johnny,” said Drake, “let me pour you a little ale.”
Drake took the boy’s mug and surreptitiously added a tiny drop from the phial that he could not bring himself to destroy earlier. What if God had allowed the phial to come into his possession so Johnny could be cured?
Drake felt his heartbeat quicken as he watched Johnny take the last sips from the mug. “Off to bed now,” he said to the boy.
I will destroy it first thing in the morning if he’s still a cripple…
*******
After Cromwell inspected the phial delivered to him by Commissioner London, Abbot Stephen Sagar made a public admission that it was a fake, and Hailes Abbey was surrendered to the Crown on Christmas Eve of 1539.
*******
Village of Eyam, 1665 AD
There was a loud knock on the door of the rectory. “Vicar! Vicar!”
William Mompesson, the town rector, opened the door. Standing there was Marshall Howe, the town’s gravedigger.
“What is it, Marshall?” asked the vicar.
“It’s George Viccars, the tailor,” said Howe. “He’s brought the Black Death with him to village!”
It was true. The consignment of cloth from London was riddled with fleas that carried the Yersinia pestis bacterium. By the time black welts appeared on the tailor, he had already visited half the households of the village with the cloth.
Mompesson had convinced the villagers to isolate themselves with a self-imposed quarantine. Neighboring villages left food supplies at a pick-up point, and the disease quickly began claiming the weakest among them.
When Mompesson’s wife suddenly began to show symptoms of the disease, he turned his mind to the object that had been passed down through his mother’s family. An obscure ancestor had been part of Cromwell’s network that identified false relics in the holy houses. According to the family legend, this ancestor had kept an ornate phial seized from one of the abbeys originally as a souvenir, but later, out of desperation, he had used a drop of the liquid to cure one of his sons who had been unable to walk since birth. Mompesson had always regarded the phial as an antique oddity and kept its existence a secret, since the idolization of relics had no place in Protestant England, and the mere hint of that among wagging tongues would result in him losing his situation.
Mompesson vacillated too long about what action to take with the phial; his wife died in a matter of hours after first exhibiting symptoms.
The next day, the grief-stricken vicar exhorted the villagers to put their trust in God and announced he would perform the sacrament of Communion. After pouring the wine into the communal cup, he added a drop from the phial then consecrated it.
Few people showed up for the service — many who were still alive feared infection. Only the most faithful attended.
“The blood of Christ, shed for you,” said Mompesson as he held the cup to each parishioner’s mouth.
When all had partaken, Mompesson drank what was left over, since it was blasphemy to throw out the consecrated wine.
Everyone who participated survived.
A woman named Elizabeth Hancock remained disease-free, even though her husband and children succumbed. Not only did she attend to all of their bodily functions while they were stricken, but she also buried each of them herself over an eight-day period.
Marshall Howe, the overworked gravedigger who had handled so many dead bodies, escaped unscathed.
Mompesson never told anyone about the phial and moved to a new parish in Eakring in 1670.
*******
Epidemiology Conference
London, 2010 AD
“We have some very exciting news to announce today,” said Professor Paxton. “As you all know, Eyam was an isolated population known to have survived a plague epidemic. Everyone in the town would have been exposed to the bacterium, so a life-saving genetic trait would be expected to be common in the survivors. Their gene frequencies would have been replicated right down the generations without much infusion from outside. Not only do we have a register of survivors of the epidemic, but we were also to able to trace their descendants, with many of them still living in Eyam. From the DNA samples that have been collected, a significant percentage of them showed a mutation — we call it the ‘Delta-32’ mutation. It prevents a virus from entering the cells of the immune system. Although this particular study was limited to descendants of plague survivors, we’re hopeful that experimental treatments using the same Delta-32 mutation will be effective in preventing HIV infection.”
*******
Star Chamber, Undisclosed Location
2049 AD
In many ways, the most powerful wing of the United States government is the judicial branch. The Supreme Court has the authority to declare acts of Congress and the president unconstitutional, and all rulings are final. Once a justice is appointed to the court, he or she serves for life.
In theory, one party could occupy the White House and also hold a super-majority in Congress, but if the Supreme Court was composed of at least five renegade justices who were politically motivated, they could overturn any piece of duly enacted legislation simply by declaring it unconstitutional.
The founders believed giving a president the power to nominate a Supreme Court justice, who would then be subject to a vote of approval in the Senate, would provide a check and balance to power, thereby preventing the scenario outlined earlier.
But when the founders constructed this system of checks and balances, the average life expectancy was fifty-eight years, and they never anticipated that within two centuries, Supreme Court justices would live well into their eighties and beyond.
For a president, a convenient time for a justice to retire or die is when the his or her party has control of the Senate. Few things are more irritating to a political party in power than an elderly Supreme Court justice who refuses to either resign or die in a timely manner. Some desperate individuals operating under the radar might even resort to murder to avoid that situation.
But there was one secret society dedicated to extending life if a particular death posed a dire threat to the nation. This organization was composed of three people who only ever referred to themselves as One, Two, and Three. Membership was for life, with a new recruit installed upon the death of one of the established three. On this day in 2049, a burgeoning crisis necessitated a meeting:
“She’s terminal,” said One.
“What fro
m?” asked Two.
“Glioblastoma,” answered One. “She fell from a sudden dizzy spell. It’s just been discovered from additional tests conducted at the hospital. We have to act immediately before her doctors either convince her to resign or declare her incompetent.”
“She does not believe in the sanctity of life,” protested Three. “A precious drop should not be wasted on her.”
“The Antichrist has ascended to power,” said One. “Under no circumstances must he be in a position to nominate one of his apostates as a replacement — his agenda would be continued indefinitely.”
“Agreed,” said Two.
They waited for a reply from Three.
“The decision must be unanimous, Three,” said One.
“Agreed,” said Three.
They walked to the safe, and One entered her security code, followed in turn by Two and Three. Once all codes were confirmed, the door popped open. One reverently held the uguentarium while Two removed the top and carefully collected a tiny amount of the liquid into a syringe.
“It’s nearly all gone,” lamented Three.
“Which of us will administer it?” asked Two.
“I will,” said One. “No one will question my credentials.”
*******
The secret service agent stationed outside the hospital room recognized the woman walking toward him from the portrait hanging in the main lobby of the agency’s headquarters.
“Director Kerkorian,” said the agent.
“Hello, Agent…Pollock, is it?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.
“I’ve heard nice things about you,” she said. “How is Justice Stein?”
“She’s fallen into a coma, Director,” he said. “I overheard the doctor mentioning something about declaring her incompetent.”
“Where there’s life, there’s hope,” she said. “I brought her some roses — we attended college together. I won’t stay long, but please ensure we are not disturbed, since it may be the last time I see her alive.”
“Of course, Director,” said Pollock.
The Nosferatu Chronicles: Return to Vambiri Page 7
