James Forrester - Final Sacrament

“I do.”

“Can you tell me more about them? Did you notice anything in particular?”

Wheatsheafen turned to her. “Such as?”

“Well, I do not know exactly. But…were they kindly disposed toward me?”

They had reached the gate leading out of the castle. The great gate was closed but a smaller side door was open, allowing people to come and go freely on foot.

“Well, I would not go so far as to suggest they were unkind,” Wheatsheafen said after thinking hard on the matter, “but nor would I say they were friends of yours. They both had strange accents, from the north, I believe. One of them was-well, ugly. He had swarthy dark skin, like an Egyptian, and his eyes were too close together. I cannot imagine your beautiful brown eyes settling happily on his and not being a little disconcerted. You know what they say about the Egyptians. It is just as well consorting with them has been made a felony.”

“And the other one?”

“I can recall only one thing about him-I do not think he was a man.”

“You mean he was a boy?”

“No, no. The Egyptian seemed to be taking direction from this smaller, smooth-skinned person, who did not speak at all. I had thought his demeanor odd at the time; being a physician I had looked at his hands-but he was wearing gloves. I also looked at his throat but he had covered it up. Later it struck me that this is exactly what a woman who dressed as a man might do to conceal her identity. So my best guess is that this second man was a woman in disguise.”

Rebecca stopped. “Did you not see fit to tell me this?”

“I only thought about him being a woman after I sent to you. Would it have made things different? Would you have known them? My dear, you have to admit, you are something of an enigma. It is nearly two and a half years since we first met and yet I know so little of your life before then. You keep many things hidden. I would ask, but I am afraid of appearing to pry into matters that you very clearly wish to keep to yourself. I recall a man coming here not long after you had arrived. Immediately you had to go to him. I knew then that you had a past that you could not wholly leave behind.”

“That was Mr. Clarenceux.”

“Is he a past lover? Or, let me put it more discreetly: do you love this man from your past?”

“With all my heart.”

“Then you should go to him. We may need you here, but you must follow the path of your emotion. Feelings are the Lord’s way of guiding people in life, I believe.”

Rebecca shook her head. “He is married. He loves his wife, and she is much younger than me.”

“Ah.” Mr. Wheatsheafen looked down the lane toward his house. “In such unfortunate circumstances, the Lord Almighty can sorely tempt us. Perhaps that is what He is trying to do-test you, by making you love a man who does not love you. Virtue is your guide and your target.”

“It is not that he does not love me. I know that he does. He and I shared an intense experience three years ago. It was very dangerous; we became very close. He would look at me and his eyes would linger, always that moment too long, and I would hold his gaze. But the fact is that he is married and loves his wife dearly; the affection he feels for me is secondary to that fact. But such things are settled-this is not about affection. If someone is searching for me, and knows I am here, then they have good information yet they are not friends. That in itself is worrying. Why are they looking for me? If it has anything to do with my experiences with Mr. Clarenceux, then I might be in serious danger, and so might he.”

“Is that likely?”

Rebecca looked over her shoulder. There was no one in sight; the lane was empty. She spoke in a low voice nonetheless. “You must not repeat this to anyone, Mr. Wheatsheafen. Not even your wife. Mr. Clarenceux has possession of a document that could destroy the queen-it proves that her mother was previously married to Lord Percy and so the queen is illegitimate. It was given to him by my late husband, Henry. Needless to say, there are a number of Catholic plotters who are prepared to do anything to seize it. My husband was killed by Francis Walsingham simply because of a suspicion that he would use it for revolutionary Catholic purposes. Two years ago last May, when Mr. Clarenceux came here to Portchester, it was because the document had been stolen. I believe he recovered it, although I never asked him and I have not been in communication with him at all since October of that year.”

Mr. Wheatsheafen listened with the same careful attention with which he listened to patients telling him of their illnesses. At the end, he considered his prognosis and spoke solemnly. “On the one hand, Rebecca, I have always said you had some dark secret and that your past was not yet over. In that I am satisfied; the enormity of your situation does not disappoint. But I am not glad to be right, for I can see that it saddens you and makes you think about the past perhaps a little too much. There is a man there you must forget; you must leave both him and that awkward situation behind and live your own life, guided by God.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “As for your affection, I do know also that it is possible for a man to love two women. I still love my first wife dearly, God rest her soul. I also love my present wife. I therefore love two women. Although one might now be permanently in the past, if she were alive today, I would love her all the more. Likewise, I cannot say that I would not love my present wife if my first were miraculously to return: love is not just a matter of timeliness. So, if it be that I go to Heaven, and trusting that both my wives will be there too, I will find myself living in a state that contradicts the scriptures.”

They fell silent, looking at each other. Eventually Wheatsheafen said, “Rebecca, I think you are wise to be cautious. I do not believe those men-or that man and that woman-meant you well.”

Monday, December 23

Maurice Buckman waited in a panelled chamber in the inn in Grantham, in Lincolnshire. He was a fifty-two-year-old man with a round head and very little hair. What little there was amounted to the merest halo of white. His vision was poor, so he wore wooden spectacles with very thick lenses, and he blinked much more than most people-but nothing about him otherwise was blurred, and when wearing his spectacles, which had been made for him by a Milanese craftsman, that visual vagueness became a hawklike precision. For a man in his fifties, he was quick-thinking and agile, capable of intense concentration. He regularly wore an old black cassock, which left people wondering whether he was a priest (which he was) or merely a poor man (which he was also, although by choice). Beneath that cassock was a rough canvas shirt, and beneath that uncomfortable shirt, a heart that beat with a passion for the Catholic faith.

Placing another log on the fire, he sat back at the nearby table and sipped the glass of sack. It would not be long now. It had been a long journey, he reflected: four and a half days. But Lady Percy’s instructions had been clear. Everyone coming or going to see her was followed-Walsingham kept her houses under constant surveillance-and if Buckman was noticed coming to her from the Tower, he would be arrested, interrogated, tortured, and hanged. The route was therefore extremely elaborate. Also, speed was imperative: he had had to arrive at this inn many hours or even a day before her ladyship, so those spying on her would not see him enter the building.

From his lodging in London he had crossed by wherry to the south bank of the river at Greenwich and joined the southbound travelers taking the ferry along the Kent coast to Gravesend. Most of them had then transferred to the Canterbury road, hiring carts and coaches for the rest of their journey, but Buckman had noticed that one young man did not. When he had boarded one of the crayers that went up and down the coast, the young man had boarded another boat and followed at a distance. Buckman had accordingly deviated slightly from his intended route and landed on the Isle of Sheppey, near Shurland Hall. No one went there anymore; it was a desolate place. But he knew it well-he had grown up nearby. Any paint still left in that vast mansion was peeling. The elaborate plaster ceilings were damp and stained; in some cases they had crashed down onto the floorboards. Windows with armorial glass had lost quarrels or housed cracked panes, and were strewn with cobwebs and dead flies. The shutters of unglazed windows hung at angles where their hinges had given way. Several fireplaces were strewn with twigs where birds’ nests had fallen down, sometimes with the dead birds. And in the great hall, the tapestries’ wooden frames lay bare.