James Forrester - Final Sacrament

Simeon poured him a tankard of beer.

“How can you expect us to sleep?” asked Alice. “We want to know what is going on. We’re worried.”

“Well, Fyndern is in,” replied Clarenceux, taking the tankard. “But Walsingham is trying to control the scene. There are too many soldiers there already. And I suspect more are on their way.” He pulled out a pistol from his doublet and set it beside the sword.

“I don’t believe that Greystoke will walk into the abbey,” said Thomas, “even if his life is at stake. He cannot trust Walsingham.”

Clarenceux supped his beer. “We have gone a long way beyond trust. Nothing is left except the politics of desperation. Walsingham still has to use him. I can refuse to surrender the document to Walsingham but I cannot refuse it to Greystoke because of Awdrey and Mildred. Even if Walsingham intends to arrest Greystoke the moment he has possession of the document, he has to allow him entrance to the abbey.”

“But what is Greystoke’s plan for getting the document out?” asked Alice.

“I don’t know. But he will have worked out something. That is why it is so important that Fyndern lights the fire. Greystoke’s plan will go up in smoke with the rest of him.”

“What about Father Buckman?” asked Thomas.

“He is just the middle man. Much as I would like him to be there, he is going to leave this to Greystoke. He has nothing to gain from being there in person tomorrow.”

“And you?” Alice asked.

Clarenceux did not answer. He supped his beer.

“Everything is ready here, for your wife, as you requested,” said Simeon.

“Good,” replied Clarenceux. “Now, Alice, I want you to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a long and tiring day.”

Alice took her leave of them. Simeon stayed for a short while and then he too retired. Clarenceux and Thomas sat by the fire.

“If Fyndern manages to light the fire, you must tell Awdrey to reward him,” Clarenceux said. “I have put in my letter to her, which is with Sir William, to pay him; but I said to him tonight that I would give him an extra ten pounds. I have also made provision for you in that letter.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Thomas said. “I trust Mistress Harley not to let me starve. But what about you? How will we know about you?”

“Thomas, you won’t. You will have to accept things as they are. A conflagration. A funeral without a body. A new Clarenceux-someone else.”

“I will have difficulty accepting that last change.”

“You have to. For Awdrey’s sake, for the girls’. For my sake too. Whatever happens tomorrow, my one abiding hope is that it is not in vain.”

Monday, February 17

Clarenceux entered Alice’s chamber at nine o’clock that morning. The shutters were wide open and she was sitting on the floor by the bed with her knees drawn up under her chin. She looked worried, and her hair was tousled and dirty. She had not slept, she said, but had lain awake worrying.

“What about?”

“About all the things that could go wrong.”

Clarenceux reached out a hand and pulled her to her feet. He looked down into her eyes. “Tell me what you think could go wrong.”

“What if they don’t hand Awdrey over? What if I am attacked on the way back from seeing her delivered? What if Greystoke’s messenger takes the key from me? I need more than your prayers, Mr. Clarenceux.”

He put his hand to her face, thinking about each of the things she had suggested. “You will have more than my prayers; you will have my pistol. Keep it loaded. It will be reassuring to me tomorrow to know that you have it.” She looked up at him with a solemn gratitude. “We will leave at a quarter to twelve.”

“Will we ride?”

“You will. I shall walk.”

“A mark of penitence?”

“No. I don’t want to give them my horse.”

***

When the time came to leave, Clarenceux saw that Alice was waiting in the hall. He turned to Simeon, shook his hand, and thanked him for his hospitality and his service. He pressed two gold crowns into his hand. Then he looked at Thomas and embraced him. With a lump in his throat he said simply, “Thank you, Thomas.”

“Mr. Clarenceux, all these years have been an honor.”

“Look after them for me.” He nodded to Alice, who was holding Maud’s reins, and picked up his long black cloak. Simeon opened the gate for them. With one final look back, and a wave to Thomas, they left.

They said very little to each other on the way. The weather was clear and the birdsong was sweet and bright. A few townsmen and women of Thame were on the highway, traveling toward Wycombe and London; a few yeomen were riding into the town. But soon they were at the gate to the abbey, where a small contingent of men was stationed. Two wore breastplates, the rest were not in any uniform, but all were armed and all watched Clarenceux and Alice silently.

A well-dressed gentleman stopped them. “You are Mr. William Harley, Clarenceux herald?”

“I am.”

“And who is she?” he asked, looking up at Alice.

“My messenger,” replied Clarenceux. “If she does not proceed, nor do I.”

The man accepted this. He gestured in the direction of the abbey. “Mr. Walsingham is in the church.”

Clarenceux nodded. He looked south to the sun, northeast to the wood he had traveled through in the night, and then southeast to where the path led to the abbey. Nothing now could change him from his intended course. It felt like his last moment of freedom.

On one side of the track to the abbey was a pile of trunks of trees, cut down and shaved of their branches for sale to timber merchants. Several soldiers in armor were leaning against the timber. As Clarenceux and Alice passed, the soldiers roused themselves and started walking toward them. To the north, men were approaching from the barn. He turned and looked behind; most of the men from the gates were also following them at a distance.

On they went, until the high roof of the church appeared between the trees that had grown up around the abbey since the Dissolution. Soon the whole west front was visible, and the west range beneath the lay brothers’ dormitory, with the abbot’s house at the southern end. Clarenceux looked at the ragged west front of the church, with the piles of rubble and smashed sculpture near the open door. More men were standing here in small groups: some in half armor, some with guns, and some with pikes, one resting his leg on a piece of sculpture. All of them were looking at Clarenceux and Alice. The breeze wafted through the long grasses on either side of the track. Men shouldered their muskets and started walking to their predetermined positions, ringing the entire abbey. Their silent attention, and the threat of their armor and weapons, contrasted strongly with the birdsong and the sunlit ease of the morning.

The worn gothic stonework of the west front was comforting, despite the loss of its statues and the defaced sculpture at its base. It was at least a house of God, Clarenceux told himself as he passed a soldier waiting beside the door. The soldier’s face was stern and determinedly unresponsive to Clarenceux’s polite nod of greeting. Alice dismounted, handed the reins to a soldier, and followed him into the church.

Silence and a cold light greeted them, striking the stone and casting shadows across the broken-tiled floor of the building. Men stood between the arches, looking at them. The elegant tracery in the windows remained disdainful of the shabby confrontation. In the empty side chapels, the damaged effigies of deceased gentry and clergy looked with wide open eyes to a distant, more glorious future. A handful of last autumn’s leaves blew across the floor, caught by the breeze from the window. Fractured saints in the broken stained glass cried for mercy. But there was no glass in the east window-and in the space where the great altar had once stood was a white-haired man, with a sword at his side.