James Forrester - Final Sacrament

The bell of St. Bride’s chimed eleven. Entering the hall, he saw Thomas lighting the fire and the table laid out, with his elder daughter, Annie, positioning the salt and the butter dish in front of his place at the head. Awdrey rushed in, carrying a tablecloth. She looked anxious.

“Do you have the time to help?” she asked pointedly, moving the salt and the butter dish out of the way. “Perhaps you have not noted how much work goes into the preparation of a Christmas meal? Joan and I are both hard-pressed. Even Thomas lent a hand with chopping herbs. You and the children seem to be the only ones in this household with time on your hands.” She did not stop for a reply but went out to the back landing.

Clarenceux stood still as he heard her rapid footsteps on the back stairs, heading down to the kitchen. “Thomas,” he said, walking over to the table and straightening one corner of the newly laid cloth. The old man looked up from the hearth. “Do you have any idea why Walsingham has increased the guard?”

“I do not know, sir. But I do fear it, as I know you do. I do not know how to counsel you.” He rose to his feet. “I will say this, though. You carry a heavy load. You do not seem yourself, and that affects us all-Mistress Harley most particularly, but also Nick, Joan, and me. I do not think it was wise to banish Nick to the stables, sir. I do not believe he was consorting with them.”

“What else should I do? Run the risk of having a spy in my house on the chance that Nick is innocent? What if I should be wrong? It is better to be cautious and wrong than to be wrong about his innocence.”

“Sir, it is very cold these days. Normally out of mercy you would have let him inside the house. Now you have made him like you less.”

Clarenceux sighed and rubbed his face in his hands.

“Sir, I wish I could alleviate you of it, this anxiety. So too does Mistress Harley. She feels that you are worrying over what might never happen.”

“Might never happen?” Clarenceux took his hands away. “It is happening. What does she want? For me to pretend all is well until someone holds a gun to my head, or to hers, and demands the document?” He turned and looked at the brightness of the glazed window. “Jesus is our Savior, Thomas, but I have been pushed past the point of prayer. I have been pushed past the point of trusting her majesty to protect me too. That document is the point of a dagger and the weight of England is resting on it. It pushes into me; it pierces me. And I do not know what to do. All I know is that Walsingham fears that something will happen soon-and that is why he has increased the guard.”

“Sir, you could go and ask Mr. Walsingham why he has made this change.”

“I was thinking much the same thing. My wife’s priority might be setting the table, but my obligations…” He decided and moved to the door. “I will do so now. I will be back before dinner.”

He went down the front stairs, took his cloak and hat, and stepped out into the street. He could not help but look up at the house opposite: there was a flash of light, as if a man’s shoulder buckle had caught the light. A man’s face moved in the first-floor window-and quickly withdrew.

“May your heart pour with shame and your eyes weep torrents of regret,” shouted Clarenceux.

A fine rain had begun to fall. The ground, still frozen after last night’s cold, would soon soften into mud. He looked down the hill to Fleet Bridge and up to Ludgate, with the cathedral tower, lacking its spire, frowning down on the scene. A wherry journey to the Tower would be frustratingly slow, since you could never get the watermen to put their backs into rowing against the tide, especially when it was raining. Back at his house, he opened the gate and went into the yard. “Nick!” he called.

Nick had been in the hayloft. Hearing the call, he took two steps on the ladder and jumped the rest of the way to the straw-covered ground. Clarenceux went to the stable door and looked in. Nick unlatched it. The tall black stallion, Brutus, welcomed his master by throwing his nose in his direction. Maud, the chestnut mare he kept for his wife, bucked her head in her stall and snorted. He patted her too. Both horses had been cleaned out; hay was in their manger and fresh straw on the floor.

“Was it very cold in here last night, Nick?”

“I kept myself as warm as I could, sir, in the hay upstairs. But, truth be told, it was indeed cold.”

The boy needed a wash and a clean shirt. Even by the standards of stable boys he was dirty. “I am sorry I spoke sternly to you the other day,” said Clarenceux. “Tonight you can sleep by the kitchen fire.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Do you have family with whom you want to share Christmas dinner? You are welcome to stay with us should you wish, but if you would rather go to your kin, you may.”

Nick seemed brightened by this news. “Thank you, sir. I did ask Mistress Harley if I might spend Christmas with my cousins in St. Dunstan’s parish; she said she would speak to you about it.”

“Well, you have my permission. Now, if you will help me saddle Brutus, I have a journey to make across the city.”

Joan Hellier kept watch on the back of Widow Baker’s cottage as John tried the door. It was locked and there was no keyhole: it was bolted on the inside. He stepped back and looked up. A shuttered window ten feet above the ground looked as if it might not be locked, or only fastened with a loose catch. Although it was only small, about a foot wide and about the same high, Joan was slim enough to get through such a gap. There were two buildings in the small yard: a henhouse and an ivy-clad ruined carthouse. By the henhouse John found a crate packed with hay in which Widow Baker stored apples. Emptying the apples out, he carried it in one hand as Joan walked around the yard seeing what else could be used. A wooden pail, a block of wood used for chopping firewood, an old wooden churn. They tried various combinations. Five minutes later, with John balancing on the churn on top of the upturned crate, and Joan standing on his shoulders, she was able to slip a knife between the shutter and the jamb, lift the catch, and haul herself up and into the dark chamber of the cottage.

She crouched on the floor of the bedchamber of her intended victim. Even though they had knocked on the door repeatedly and believed no one was home, she was still apprehensive. Reassured by the silence, she straightened herself as far as she could, as the roof was low, her eyes adjusting to the light. The room was very neat, with nothing scattered about or left to one side. There were two beds, a chest beside the window, and another chest by the opening to the ladder that led down into the main living space of the cottage.

Joan went down the ladder. Halfway there she paused and looked around in the gloom of the shuttered space. There was a cauldron of pottage near the fire, some embroidery on a bench by the closed window. These were signs that someone would return soon. She descended the rest of the way, smelling the lingering smoke of the fire and boiled vegetables. The ashes were still warm. Her cautious eyes tried to take in as much as possible: a pair of old bellows, the leatherwork needing repair; two flitches of bacon above the fireplace; a table board and trestles in a corner.

She went to the back door and unbolted it. “John,” she whispered, “put the pail and block back where we found them. Nothing must appear disturbed. Then come in here and bolt the door after you.”

Clarenceux rode through the street toward the Tower, impatiently pulling Brutus to the left, then to the right, trying to avoid pedestrians, and spurring the horse when there was an opportunity for speed. The timber jetties of houses hung darkly over the narrow alleys, with little more than a strip of gray sky to be seen above. At London Stone, several coaches blocked their road where merchants’ wives had bade their coachmen stop so they could chat without descending. This infuriated Clarenceux, who turned Brutus north along St. Swithin’s Lane and then right into Lombard Street. In galloping, however, he almost knocked himself off the horse when, standing in the stirrups, he struck the overhanging beams of an old house with his shoulder.