D. Wilson: The First Horseman

‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded angrily.

‘I have come to prevent you committing a great folly,’ she replied. ‘When you gave me that money from Bart, I knew something was amiss. He could never have obtained such a sum honestly. I went to him last night and made him tell me what you were all planning.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that. This has nothing to do with you!’

‘It has everything to do with me. If I hadn’t… But that’s not to the point. The fact is you are making a grave mistake.’

‘Really?’ I mocked. ‘And how do you know what I don’t?’

‘You remember, right at the beginning, I told you there was one man who knew the truth about your friend’s murder.’

‘John Doggett? Yes, but he refused to tell me.’

‘Well, I have been to see him this morning. I have ways to persuade that you lack.’

‘Do you mean you — ’

She laid a finger on my lips. ‘Not a word of that — ever — especially to Bart.’

‘Are you telling me that Doggett confided in you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then…’

‘He would not tell me because, he said, the information was dangerous. Instead he wrote something on a piece of paper, sealed it and told me to give it to you. He said he wanted you to know the truth to stop you blundering about in matters too deep for you. He hoped it would act as a warning. I was to tell you that if you persist in making a nuisance of yourself… Well, knowing Doggett, you can guess what he threatened. And you know that he can carry out his threats. Please, Thomas, read his note and stop this business now. ’

I unfastened the scrap of paper Lizzie gave me. The message was brief; curt in the extreme. It made no sense. ‘This is ridiculous!’ I shouted. Yet even as I did so, I was aware of a twinge of doubt, somewhere at the back of my mind. For several minutes I paced about the room. Questions tumbled around my brain: what was Doggett up to? How could his claim possibly be true? How could I give up my search for justice just when I was about to achieve it?

Lizzie stood there, hands clasped before her. ‘Please, Thomas. I know what this means to you but you have done all you can. Doggett sent a couple of his Dogs with me. If you carry on with this… inquisition… you will not live to see another dawn. Nor will I or the others.’

I thrust the paper inside my doublet and stamped to the door.

In the room below I turned to Jed. ‘Untie him,’ I ordered. As a bewildered Incent shook off his bonds, I said, ‘Get out. In future stick to your prayers and if anything untoward ever befalls me or my friends, expect a knock at your door.’

My companions stared at me and each other in mute astonishment. I did not stay to explain. I strode out to the courtyard, mounted my horse and rode away from St Swithun’s. Not to London. Not across the bridge. Dickon and I ambled along Bankside and took the westward road between the Thames and Paris Garden. The ice was breaking up and the winter sun streaked the river with gold. It was, I realised, a year almost to the day that I had last come this way. A year? It might have been a century, crammed as it had been with bitter and bewildering incident. What had it all meant? What had I achieved? What had I learned?

Exitus acta probat . If any three words could sum up what I now knew about human nature and had not known the previous January, they were these. ‘Results validate deeds’ — it had been Stephen Vaughan who explained that Latin tag to me, with evident disapproval, yet it seemed to me that almost everyone I had encountered was motivated by this principle. Those who believed some objective to be good considered it legitimate to employ any means — illegal, immoral, cruel or inhuman — to achieve it. I thought of the woman in grey, silently appealing to her audience to believe her innocence. For what good reason had her life been severed by a French headsman? According to Hugh Seagrave, she had made fun of her husband’s sexual inadequacy. If true, that threatened the dynasty. Kings must have sons. That is one of the rules they live by. Henry believed that the peace and security of the realm depended on his potency and his finding a wife who could give him the necessary man-child. No subject could be allowed to doubt the king’s ability and determination to conceive an heir. To scotch any such anxieties was, seemingly, an objective he deemed it worth killing for.

As I followed the long curve of the river, the sprawl of Whitehall came into view on the opposite bank. Ahead of me stood the high wall encompassing the archbishop’s town residence at Lambeth. State and church glowering at each other across the water. Rivals for power. Each believing in its own God-given authority and prepared to go to any lengths to defend it. Cromwell’s new England would be a kingdom in which the pope no longer had any place and the bishops would be stripped of most of their power. To realise his dream, monks and nuns were being turned out of their cloisters and protesters executed as traitors. To defend the old ways, the ancient truths they and their fathers had grown up in, priests were stirring peaceful countrymen to bloody rebellion. Appalling means justified by desirable ends.

The track over which Dickon picked his way now lay across a narrow swathe of meadow between the river and a thick belt of trees. I dismounted, led him down to the water’s edge and let him drink. Then, I tethered him to a severed stump to graze while I sat on a ruined wall — all that remained of an earlier generation’s vain attempt to hold back the frequent floods that overran this area.

What of the Incents? I wondered. Were they not typical of priests who believed themselves called to defend their people from error and, in pursuing this holy vocation, were prepared to pry into other people’s lives, to make accusations of heresy, to urge men and women to denounce their neighbours, to sanction imprisonment, torture and death by burning for those who did not believe the ‘right’ things?

Then there were the Seagraves. What had impelled them to seek my destruction? Revenge? Family honour? I pondered on the evils perpetrated in the name of rough justice. To my certain knowledge there were at least four fine families decimated and impoverished by feuds that had raged for generations.

I drew my travelling cloak more tightly round me and pulled the hood further over my head. A cutting wind was thrusting at me from the river. Yet I did not want to move. Not yet. Not till I had finished unravelling the coils that had bound themselves round my life during that dreadful year. I remembered my days in Antwerp. Were the members of the English House honourable people, uncorrupted by good motives? From their safe haven they were promoting revolution in their own land. The books they smuggled into England were inspiring literate men and women to defy ancient custom, to challenge the authority of the bishops, to tear down altars and shrines, to set neighbour against neighbour and even children against parents. They believed passionately in their New Learning and cared little what means must be used to drive out old falsehood. Tyndale had devoted himself tirelessly to translating the Bible into his mother tongue. What could be more honourable than that? But in so doing he had flouted the laws of church and state, defied his king and involved others in his intellectual and spiritual rebellion.

And that brought my thoughts back to Robert. Was that intelligent, noble, sensitive friend clear of the taint of using questionable means to secure desirable ends? Sadly, no. He and the other Christian Brothers were ardent in their belief that the Bible should be freely available to all who could read it and that this one book would change English society for the better. But to bring all this about they had, for some years, been operating a clandestine operation in defiance of king, bishops and the law. Their activities had placed many people in danger, including some of their friends. I thought of poor Thomas Poyntz and his family, separated — perhaps for ever — by his commitment to Tyndale and his work.