Final Sacrament (Clarenceux Trilogy) (24 page)

Friday, January 31

Awdrey and Mildred were given an upstairs room with bare stone walls and a shuttered window that had been barricaded with thick planks on the outside. Only chinks of light entered, falling in golden coins on the bed and the floorboards. An old straw mattress and two blankets were thrown on the bed, as well as two folded linen sheets. Otherwise there was nothing in the room except a pail that served as a chamber pot.

Since arriving here on Wednesday night, Awdrey had done little but lie still beside Mildred and talk to her, wishing the child would cease questioning her and, at the same time, feeling grateful for her incessant prattling. She cried when she thought about Annie, and felt a deep dread of being told of her death. She was angry and sad when she thought about her husband, but when she thought about him hard enough, she was proud. She had no doubt whatsoever that his was a path of integrity and righteousness, and that he would prevail. It just took a lot of effort to see him at this deeper level, fighting for what he believed was right. It required her to put herself and her daughters to one side, and even her husband himself, and consider the paucity of options.

The smell of the bed was not good. The straw reeked of urine and the blankets of sweat. The floorboards were old and rough, and damp in places. Mildred received a splinter in her foot, which was impossible to remove with no tweezers and so little light. There was no fireplace, so the blankets were constantly employed, even though they stank. Bread, cheese, and an old apple had been their only sustenance yesterday, and the water had been rank. The worst aspect of the chamber, however, was the awareness that no one but her enemies knew she was here. She could see gray skies and open fields through the tiny gaps between the shutters and the barricades, and knew they were somewhere near a village north of London—she had gleaned that much from the long journey to get here—but that was all. When the clock in the parish church across the fields had chimed ten o’clock a few minutes earlier, it had sounded as if it was about a mile away.

“Mam, how long must we stay here?” asked Mildred, lying on her side.

Awdrey pulled the blanket up around them. “I don’t know; it might be a few days, maybe longer.”

“Will anyone come to take us home?”

She could not reply. The thought was too painful. She distracted herself by sinking down into the memories that she knew were safe: the day she realized she knew how to read, her wedding day, the day Annie was born after a long and difficult labor.

“I’m cold,” whined Mildred.

Awdrey heard footsteps on the landing outside the door and low voices. She strained to understand them but could barely pick up a word. The bolts of the door were shot open. She shivered and felt even colder, even more alone.

“Have you been given food?” asked Greystoke as he entered.

Awdrey did not even look at him, but Mildred sat up. “Look, Mam. It’s that man.”

Awdrey opened her eyes. A woman was standing in the doorway behind Greystoke—one of the women who had seized her beside the cart two days earlier. Both figures appeared in silhouette. She let her head rest on the mattress.

“Not as proud as when we first met, are you?” sneered Greystoke. “Do you remember that? When you did not wish to be seen with me in the street?”

Awdrey did not answer.

“Perhaps that old man you call a husband is regretting his carelessness.”

She felt a bitter sting, remembering it was her decision to leave Cecil House. The usher had told her the message had come from Thomas—saying that her husband was in great danger and needed to see her before he left London. She had asked for one of the ushers in the hall to accompany her.

“Losing a pretty wife like you would be a mistake.”

“Curse you, from your guts to your soul,” said Awdrey, unable to lie still and listen to another word. She sat up. “No good is in you. You are nothing but deceit; you have no substance.”

Greystoke shrugged. “I have substance, and you will know that soon enough. I will leave you so violated that you can never be a whole wife to your husband again. Every time he touches you, you will remember. Every time you desire him, and reach for him, you will hesitate, fearing that he is mindful of your being filled with another man’s seed. I will make you the adulterer.”

“In what devil’s name do you use such loathsome words? You repugnant whoreson! My husband told me you love the works of Dante. Well, let me tell you there is a special circle of Hell reserved for men like you—one where Dante and Virgil never dared set foot. It is set aside for men who are selfish, cowardly, cruel, deceiving monsters. There, men like you are forced to drink nothing but the blood of their victims and are made to eat the rancid flesh of the helpless on whom they have turned their backs.”

As Awdrey shouted at him, Greystoke walked over to the bed and reached down with his left hand to her neck, feeling her hands grasp his wrist as he dug his thumb deep into the flesh. Mildred started crying. With his right hand, Greystoke held Awdrey’s thigh through her dress. “Tomorrow. Despite the stench in here, I will have you. You have until this time tomorrow to save your precious marriage.”

“What do you want me to do?” she gasped as he removed his hands. Mildred was still crying, holding on to the top of her dress.

“Tell me where that document is.”

Awdrey looked at the woman beside the door. She could see now that her hair was dark, and that she was uncomfortable with Greystoke’s insinuations.

“You could bring it all to an end most quickly,” Sarah pleaded, over the top of Mildred’s cries. “Why don’t you? Please!”

Awdrey put an arm around Mildred and pulled her close. She kissed her head, soothing her. “You are wasting your time,” she said, not looking at them. “I know nothing more than you do. My husband said it was beneath a floor in St. John’s College, Oxford. You know that. And that is all I know.”

Greystoke stopped at the door and looked at her. “I am not going to waste time now,” he replied coldly. “You heard me. Ten o’clock tomorrow.”

Clarenceux moved a hair aside on Annie’s sweat-streaked face, and wiped her forehead again. She was so weak, so pale and vulnerable. He looked up at the woman who had been nursing her. “By now I had thought that things would have turned one way or the other. That it would not be…not be like this.”

He looked down at her again and saw her face so changed: the bright eyes unseeing, the delirium holding her from within. He thought of the people possessed by devils in the Bible and confessed to himself that he had never thought that such things might happen to his family. He had been too complacent.
But
if
one
does
not
live
with
a
measure
of
complacency, one cannot live. To pour ashes over our heads every day—that is no way to bring up our children, no way to face life.

He bit his lip and wiped her face again. Every intake of breath, every movement of her hand on the counterpane gave him an instant of hope—an instant that was quickly dashed. He closed his eyes and felt the weight of his tiredness; all he wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep and wake to find that everything was well again—that Awdrey and Mildred were restored to him and at home, and Annie well again and smiling.
So
many
people
must
feel
the
same
way
, he reflected.
I am not alone. When there are so many of us who suffer, how can anyone want to make our lives worse? In what way is that a Christian thing?

He noted Annie moving her hand. She blinked and opened her mouth, and once again his hopes were raised. But she simply moaned and looked past him, through him—her eyes focused on an eternity that she could see and he could not. He held her hand and kissed it.

“Annie, my beloved Annie,” he whispered, “I want you to know that I am here and that all will be well for you, that you have no need to fear. You are innocent, you are good, and the Lord loves the good and the innocent.”
Why, then, do the righteous suffer?
Clarenceux fought back the question. “He will protect you and give you strength, Annie, and I will pray for you every day. I pray for you and your mother and sister. Our house is empty of laughter; there is dust on the tables and on the shelves. There are rats in our kitchen eating the crumbs of stale bread that have fallen there; there is a leak in the stable roof. The sheets I sleep in are dirty, as are those in which Thomas sleeps. All will not be right again until you, my sweet, are well once more and we are all together again as a family. Come back to us, Annie; if you can hear me in the depths of your suffering, come back to me. I need you.”

Annie moved her hand, unconsciously. She stretched out, her hand shaking, reaching for something. Then the vision in her head was gone and her hand fell on the bed. Clarenceux saw no further movement in her. He watched and he waited; he saw her breathing and her eyelids trembling, the beads of sweat—but that was all. He stood up, crossed himself, then made the sign of the cross on her forehead and left the room, wiping away a tear hurriedly lest anyone should see.

Saturday, February 1

The light of dawn was in the sky, with a pink shade, as if bad weather was to come. The next sensation that touched Clarenceux was the awareness of the empty space in the bed beside him—and he knew instantly that the nightmare of his life was ongoing. Normally he would have lingered in bed for a minute or two on such a cold day, but not now. Not with that absence beside him.

Moving across the room, he went to wash himself, but the basin of water was frozen solid. He rubbed his body through his linen shirt, using it as a towel to clean himself. He swiftly removed it and put on a clean one—his last—from the clothes chest. Donning his waistcoat, doublet, hosen and shoes, he went downstairs. Thomas was in the kitchen already, talking to Fyndern. They heard him coming.

“Do you want the fire in the hall built high, Mr. Clarenceux?” Thomas was folding up the blankets of his bed by the hearth.

“No, just enough to keep it alight,” he mumbled, standing in the doorway. “Tell me, Thomas, how well can you remember the coroner’s inquest on the death of that woman who attacked Awdrey? She was killed two weeks ago tomorrow.”

Thomas shrugged. “As well as the next man but probably no better.”

“What was her name?”

“Ann Thwaite. Why?”

“How do you know?”

Thomas shrugged. “Greystoke said so at that dinner in the Bell Inn. He said he heard the coroner call her by that name.”

“She was not a Londoner. She had a northern accent. How would the coroner have known?”

“Half of London has a strange accent these days—some are French and Dutch but many are from the north. She could have settled here and been known to the coroner from another parish.”

“No other parish claimed her. She was buried in St. Bride’s.”

“No? Then…how can Sir William Cecil not accept that?”

Clarenceux walked the length of the hall, his footsteps sounding loud on the floorboards. Opening the shutters, he peered through the quarrels of glass at the house opposite. All the shutters were closed. Either the cold of the night had been too much for them or Greystoke had changed strategy.

“I want you to stay here with Fyndern,” he told Thomas. “I am going to St. Bride’s. If Mr. Bowring or Mr. Lynton confirm what I suspect, then we know for certain that Greystoke had knowledge of her and knows about the women from Lady Percy—and no doubt is behind Awdrey and Mildred’s abduction. Walsingham will have to arrest him.”

***

Clarenceux went to the church, passing one of the churchwardens on the way, who had already unlocked the building. At the vicarage, Mr. Bowring was not yet dressed but Clarenceux left a message and went into the church to wait. He walked up to the rood screen, stripped now of its cross, pushed the gate open, and passed through, reflecting on how that simple act would not have been possible only ten years earlier. Perhaps in admitting the common man to this, the holiest part of the church, the Protestants were making a claim for the real equality of souls? He felt torn. On the one hand, everything he cherished in the world was threatened—all the beauty and history, the richness, the pageantry, and the sense of communal living—and on the other, there was a degree of sublime purity in the uncluttered closeness to God to which the new church aspired. But why did one have to choose? Why could not the old stand alongside the new? And why did so many of those who wanted “purity” in themselves not care about it in others? They always spoke about
their
souls,
their
communion with God—as if He had a care only for them.

But now, with the pain of Awdrey’s absence touching him particularly, he admitted to himself that he too felt a keenness for God to look out for him in particular. He felt the need to pray in that way. He needed to devote his soul as well as his mind and body to the well-being of his wife and children.

He began to pray, kneeling there on the stone, in front of the high altar. He was still there half an hour later, when Mr. Bowring came up the nave.

“I understand you want to see me.” He saw that Clarenceux was on his knees. “Are you praying for the souls of all the women who have died in your house?”

All Clarenceux’s suspicions and distrust of the new religion came flooding back. He rose to his feet. “Indeed, Mr. Bowring. I need to ask you a question. About the last of the women.”

“The last?”

“I want to know if you were told her name.”

“No. She was buried in an unmarked grave. I only did so because no one knew her name.”

“You are sure?” asked Clarenceux. “Absolutely sure? The coroner did not tell you?”

Mr. Bowring seemed affronted. “Do you think I would lie about whether I knew the name of a woman I had buried? The coroner simply recorded her as ‘woman foreigner.’”

“Then you will say the same to Sir William Cecil? To Francis Walsingham?”

“Why? What is it to—”

“Yes or no?” urged Clarenceux. “Yes or no?”

Mr. Bowring looked him in the eye. “I am an honest man, Mr. Clarenceux.”

Clarenceux bowed politely. “So am I, Mr. Bowring. There are precious few of us left. Good day.”