The Bell Tower

by Sarah Rayne

  Some of the people began to chant the Lord’s Prayer. I did not join in. I could not see how the recital of words could dilute the agony of burning flesh and bone and eyes … And yet words can hold such power.

  Two men chained the prisoner to the stake, then lit torches from the brazier and plunged them into the piled faggots. The wood caught at once, and scarlet and orange flames leapt upwards. The flames caught the man’s garments, then burned higher, and he began to scream and to fight like a mad creature against the chains. The sounds tore through my brain, scraping at every nerve I possessed, and now the smell was not just hot iron and burning wool – it was the scent of roasting meats, of fat melting and crisping …

  The child moved uneasily again, and I pulled my cloak around my shoulders. It was absurd to feel icily cold when within yards a man was burning alive. Madge’s hand gripped my wrist and she pulled me through the crowds, and into a narrow street on the far side.

  I did not see the moment when the man sagged, but I know the moment when he stopped screaming.

  Seamus is with me again tonight. He has travelled between this house and Rede Abbas several times over the last months, each time bringing me news – of the Commissioners’ visit to St Benedict’s, and of how it was thought it would not fall victim to closure.

  ‘But the Commissioners are still watching us,’ he said. ‘Two of them have remained in the village. They are everywhere – talking, listening, watching.’

  I sensed his anxiety, and panic clutched at me, because Seamus was never anxious about anything in his life.

  ‘Is it about the Oath of Supremacy? Do they want you to take it?’

  ‘It’s not about the Oath,’ he said, and hesitated. ‘Thaisa, they believe I’ve been selling pardons. They’re going to accuse me of accepting these houses as payment for granting Edward Glaum absolution for his sins. They’re gathering evidence – talking to the villagers, to Squire Glaum’s servants.’

  I had heard of this practice of selling absolution – it’s called simony, and it’s regarded as a very serious crime.

  ‘Is it true?’ I said after a moment.

  ‘No.’ His hand came out to me. ‘But I can’t tell the people of Rede Abbas – or Thomas Cromwell’s Commissioners – the truth.’

  ‘What is the truth?’

  ‘That Edward Glaum gave the monastery these houses because I asked for his help in getting his daughter away from the prying eyes of the Commissioners – getting her to a place where she could give birth in secrecy and safety.’

  ‘His daughter?’

  ‘You, Thaisa.’

  Seamus has left Oxford and tonight I shall sleep in the room under the eaves, which has a bolt on the door. There is a feeling of security in knowing that bolt might keep people out.

  I suppose I knew that Edward Glaum was my father. I suppose I should be grateful that he cared enough to make it possible for me to leave Rede Abbas. But his kindness has brought Seamus under suspicion. Having seen those other religious houses on the journey here, I understand that St Benedict’s is not a particularly large house. But Seamus is still an Abbot – a person of standing. If it’s believed he accepted Glaum’s Acre as payment for the granting of absolution – of committing simony – he would be dealt with harshly. Probably he would be deprived of his office and even deposed of his Order. If that were to happen, I would tell why Edward Glaum gave the houses. But could I do so without it becoming known that Seamus fathered a child? Because if that were to be discovered …

  Writing that, I am back in that square with the flames licking around the chained prisoner. But it’s Seamus’s beloved body I’m seeing in the heart of the flames. It’s Seamus who’s burning, screaming as his blood boils and his bones start to melt, and his eyes, his sweet lovely eyes …

  Reading this entry in Thaisa’s journal, I knew she had been right to be fearful for Seamus on more than on level. Simony was, and still is, a serious offence, even in the enlightened nineteenth century. It’s the sin and the crime of profiting from sacred things, including buying or selling ecclesiastical preferments and benefices – and absolving sinners. I don’t think simony was ever punishable by death, even in the simmering cauldron of religious turmoil in Thaisa’s time. But that other sin – the sin of fornication, the fathering of a child by an Abbot …

  Yes, Thaisa had been right to be afraid for Seamus on that count.

  The next entries I can make out seem to have been made after the birth of Thaisa’s child – the child conceived in that candlelit, firelit cottage with the heady scent of the roses lying on the air like a drug.

  They are fragmentary, though, and the writing is so wild I can only make out occasional phrases. But on one page Thaisa has written about, ‘Such violent pain I thought I was being torn in half.’

  Then they continue a little more clearly.

  I have taken up this journal again in the hope that it will provide some comfort or companionship, even though I do not think there can ever be either of those things in the world.

  I have tried not to cry, but I have cried, of course – for so many hours that my eyes feel as if they have been scraped from my head. My body is bruised with misery.

  The little, lost creature who has engulfed me in the despairing darkness – the scrap of humanity that never drew breath – lies in a corner of the room. Seamus’s son and mine. A boy who should have grown up with his father’s charm and intelligence and impatience, and with light and life and love in his eyes.

  ‘And with your music in his soul,’ Seamus said, for he was with me all through the hours of pain.

  But there will be no music, no life, nothing for the child. When we knew he was dead, when Madge told us, Seamus broke down and pulled me to him, and I felt his hot, difficult tears soak into my gown. It has made a new bond between us, but not all the bonds of the angels, nor all the chains of hell’s devils can bring my son back to life.

  Afterwards, he attempted to gather about him the mantle of his calling, and tried to pray. I reached for the Book of Hours given to me by John, but no prayers touched me or helped me. I do not think they helped Seamus, either.

  I know when he really died, my poor lost little one. I know it happened as I stood in the square that afternoon, hearing the screams of a man burning to death.

  Tomorrow Seamus will try to arrange a burial and a service. He says I need not be there and Madge says I am not well enough to leave the house. But I will be there to see my baby buried, even if I have to be carried into the church.

  Midnight. Rain is beating down on the windows. Seamus is still here – he has lit candles and a fire in the downstairs room. I am lying as close to the hearth as I can get, but I am still cold with a deep, bone-coldness.

  Midnight is usually an hour when everywhere is quiet in this part of the town, but tonight there is noise and disturbance. People are running and shouting in the street, and twice now the flares of torches have passed across the windows.

  A few moments ago Seamus went out to see what was happening, while Madge and I remained inside. A hard, heavy weight is pressing down on my head, and I believe something dark and violent and terrible is coming. Then I look at the still small figure in the corner, and I think that nothing can ever be as dark or as terrible as that.

  Seamus has returned. The disturbance is coming from a group of people from Rede Abbas. When I peered through a window, even though their features were distorted by the flaring torches and their own emotions, I recognized most of them. With them are two men Seamus says are from Thomas Cromwell’s Commission.

  They are shouting loudly. At first the shouts were, ‘Witch! Bastard. Monk’s whore!’

  Then a new cry started up – this time Seamus’s name, followed by accusations. Heretic. And hard on the heels of that: ‘Pedlar of God’s benefices. Seller of absolution.’ And again, ‘Heretic!’

  Madge, the dear good soul, ran to the upstairs rooms, to see if we can get out through the little garden behind the house, but she has
just returned, white-faced, to say there are more people there. If we try to escape that way, they will be on us in minutes.

  We are trapped, but Seamus promises that somehow he will get us away. His eyes glow with the challenge, and I know the danger and the prospect of a fight stimulates him.

  There is one other thing he has promised, though. Before we leave the house, we will give the dead baby as Christian – and as reverent – a funeral as we can manage.

  We do not have much time, but a few moments ago we carried candles into a small room on the house’s side. Seamus and Madge, working with furious speed, have levered up a section of the stone floor and scooped out a hollow beneath it. I am sitting near the door, watching them, writing this. The room is windowless – a storeroom – but I know the outer wall backs on to a lavender bush that grows immediately outside. I know it because I picked some lavender only a few days ago, so that I could dry it and let its scent infuse the rooms. I have some of the sprigs in my hand now, and I shall place them in the grave with my son to sweeten his rest. There is a lavender bush outside the window of my cottage at Rede Abbas – if ever I can return there, the scent of that lavender will feel like a link to the child who lies here on his own.

  Seamus has his crucifix which he will put in the child’s hands, and when I finish this last entry, I will leave my diary in the grave as well, so that our son will have my story and his.

  As I write this, the windows are being smashed and there are great heavy thuds on the door. It can only be moments before they are in the house …

  Seamus is beginning the prayers for the dead, and I am about to close this book for ever. The one last thing I shall do for our son, as his face is covered with earth and the stone slab, is to sing my family’s song as we let him go home to God.

  And then – I do not know. Despite Seamus’s promises and his bravery, I do not think we can escape.

  Thaisa’s story ended there, but the strength of emotion that had driven her pen reached out to me. Her words about the scent of lavender creating a link to the child who would lie here on his own affected me very deeply. A hot, hard lump of misery formed in my throat, and for some moments I could not see the pages for the mist that obscured my eyes.

  I put Thaisa’s diary in a pocket, and made my way to the stairs, intending to go quietly up to my bed. Halfway up the stairs I heard shouts and running feet in the square outside, and so deeply was my mind in Thaisa and Seamus’s story, that at first I thought I was hearing the lingering echoes from three hundred years earlier. From that night when Seamus Flannery and the woman, Madge, had dug that frantic, tragic grave.

  But then Theodora came running into the room, her eyes wide and terrified, her face white, and the present snapped back into its place.

  ‘People in the courtyard,’ she said, clutching my hands. ‘Oh, Andrew – it’s the two Glaum women and other people from Rede Abbas. They’re shouting for me to go out to them. If not, they’ll break in. Can we get out without them knowing?’

  It was as if the past – that segment of the past in which I had been so deeply immersed – had reached out and closed bloodied claws around us. Thaisa and Seamus Flannery with Madge had huddled in this house three centuries earlier, hearing the doors and windows being smashed, because the Rede Abbas villagers, led by Cromwell’s Commissioners, believed Seamus had accepted these very houses in return for pardoning the sins of Edward Glaum – Thaisa’s father.

  And now Edward’s descendants – Margaretta and Gertrude Glaum – were breaking into the house. Their motives were different; they believed Theodora had murdered their father and caused him to be entombed alive. For the murder, if nothing else, they intended to deliver her up to justice. But their intentions were the same as those of their forbears.

  ‘We can’t get out,’ I said to Theodora. ‘They’d be on us at once.’

  ‘I’ll go out to them,’ she said. ‘It’s me they want anyway.’

  She was halfway across the room when I caught her and pulled her back, because Thaisa’s words had come back to me. ‘Tonight I shall sleep in the room under the eaves which has a bolt on the door,’ she had written. ‘It gives me a feeling of security to know I could draw that bolt and it would keep people out.’

  I had not been up to that room, but if the bolt was still there …

  ‘There might be a way to evade them,’ I said. ‘We’ll barricade ourselves into the attic room and bolt the door. Then we’ll wait for someone to summon help. Mr Thread at the printer’s shop – he’ll hear. He’ll help us. But the Glaum ladies and the rest will have given up long before then in any case. Go up there now, Theodora.’

  ‘I’ll fetch food to take as well,’ she said, and made for the door, obviously meaning to go into the storeroom – the room where I had found the baby’s grave; the grave that was still uncovered …

  I said, ‘No, I’ll do that. You fetch the oil lamps.’

  I waited until she had gone, then I ran to the storeroom. First, I tumbled a few things into a rush basket – bread, some cold meat and cheese. I added a jug of milk, careful to stand it upright.

  And then I did something that may seem extraordinary to anyone reading this. I can only say, in mitigation or explanation, that in times of extreme fear the mind is a curious thing.

  Thaisa’s last recorded words about the child had lodged in my mind, and I did not think I could leave this house without trying to give him some form of rest.

  It was a brief task to scoop up the disturbed earth and sprinkle it over the little body again. As I did so, I was aware of Thaisa’s diary still in my pocket. I paused. Part of me wanted very much to take her with me in the form of her journal, but there was another part that was remembering how she had talked about the scent of lavender linking her to a child who lay here on his own. How she had left this diary with him, ‘so that he will have my story and his,’ she had said.

  I had copied down her story in my own journal. It would not be entirely lost.

  I bent over the grave, and pushed the diary as far down in the earth as I could. It was absurd to imagine a tiny hand came out and closed around the book, but for a moment the sensation and the image was very strong.

  Then I was spreading the earth in place and replacing the stones.

  ‘I’ll keep hold of you in my mind,’ I said, silently, to what lay beneath the floor. ‘You’ll be in my prayers and in my thoughts.’

  As I picked up the food and the jug of milk, it occurred to me that I did not know the child’s name. Had Thaisa and Seamus named him? Had Seamus baptized him? It was something I would never know. I would think of him as Anthony, though – after St Anthony of Padua, who is the patron saint of all things lost, and who is typically portrayed as holding a child in his arms. Using up minutes I could not afford, I paused for long enough to murmur the words of baptism over the grave.

  How the two Glaum daughters found us, I do not know, but Quire Court – once Glaum’s Acre – had belonged to their family, so they must have known of its existence, and thought it the likeliest hiding place. I have never believed that any of the monks told them where we were, and I never will believe it.

  Once we had slammed and bolted the attic door, I felt safer – although not very much. In the courtyard outside, torchlight leapt across the old stones, turning the place into a devil’s lair. I could see Margaretta and Gertrude Glaum, and with them were five men, three of whose faces I knew from Rede Abbas. How the long and difficult journey from Rede Abbas to Quire Court had been made, and how the men had been coerced into making it, I could not guess. Money had probably been involved, though, and the village people had long been accustomed to obeying the Glaum family. As well as that, Theodora had always been a strange, misunderstood figure in Rede Abbas. It would not have taken much persuasion to get a group of the villagers to Oxford, especially if the Glaum ladies had told them they believed Theodora had murdered their father.

  If there had been just two men out there I might have tried to fight, b
ut there were five, and I could not overcome five. Even in the torchlit darkness, I could see they were brandishing makeshift weapons – clubs and spikes. It was not out of the question that one of them had a gun.

  Then they saw us, and a shout went up – triumphant, angry, greedy.

  ‘Murderess,’ screeched one of the Glaum females. ‘Bring her out and we’ll take her back to face justice.’

  ‘My father was alive in the tomb,’ shouted the other. ‘He was buried alive. And it’s that creature’s fault!’

  Theodora had been huddled in a corner – she was scratching at the bare plaster of the wall by the window, and I again had the sensation of the past overwhelming us.

  ‘Your eyes are narrow and long’, Seamus Flannery had said to Thaisa. ‘Your ears are set a little too high on your head to look entirely human … Your hair is the colour of the primroses in Musselwhite’s Meadow …’

  He could have been describing Theodora, who was born three hundred years after Thaisa. I could almost believe it was Thaisa who crouched in the room now.

  Then she stood up, and she was my Theodora again, and she was staring out of the larger of the windows, and saying we were on the corner of the house here. ‘If we could get out through one of the windows, Andrew, and down to the gardens—’

  ‘We couldn’t do it,’ I said. ‘We can only wait and hope someone raises the alarm.’ But even as I spoke, hope was dying, because most of the other residents of the Court went to their homes each evening, and the only other person who lived here was Mr Thread. He was as thin and timid as his name, and although earlier I had hoped he might summon help for us, now it was easier to visualize him cowering in his house, afraid to confront such an angry group.

  I had barely finished speaking when a frantic crash came from below. The outer door smashed open and banged against a wall with a sound that reverberated through the whole house. Cold night air rushed into the house – I could feel it even in this attic room.