James Forrester - Final Sacrament

Greystoke stared at the chest. He looked at Alice and Joan, then back at the chest. Clarenceux could see him wrestling with the decision-whether to take Awdrey in person to the inn in Thame or to send Joan with Alice. Greystoke had seen Clarenceux lock the chest and give a key to Alice, but still he did not trust him not to remove the document in his absence.

“Joan. Take the wife and the girl to the required place, and then make sure this woman returns, with the key. And then we’ll be done with these games.”

Clarenceux watched Alice unbolt the door and leave, followed by Joan. He stared at the open door. “They will be gone for more than an hour.”

“So,” asked Walsingham, “this is your plan, Clarenceux?”

“Mr. Walsingham, with respect, you have no place in this deal. You would be best advised to leave.”

“I will do no such thing,” replied Walsingham coldly. He sat down on the bench by the table and placed his hands together on the surface.

“And you, Greystoke?”

“I am not moving out of the sight of that chest.”

“Very well.” Clarenceux moved toward the door. “I cannot stand the thought of spending the next hour and a half in this room with a murderer and a traitor. The room already reeks with the foulness of your breath-and that is nothing compared to the stench of your soul. I will wait outside.”

“Clarenceux!” snapped Walsingham. “The key. You will leave the key.”

Clarenceux reached into his pocket and pulled out the key, placing it on the top of the chest. “You will still have to wait for the other one.”

Outside, thirty armed men were gathered in the shaded cloister and around the door. Some were seated on pieces of timber or stonework in the rubble-strewn courtyard at the center of the cloister; others were standing or leaning against the cloister wall.

Walsingham appeared at the door behind Clarenceux. “Captain Johnson, take ten men and follow Mr. Clarenceux wherever he goes. Make sure he comes back here when the women return.”

Captain Johnson, a man with large sideburns that covered his cheeks, was wearing a long fawn coat with a leather belt and holding a steel helmet. He bowed to Walsingham and placed the helmet on his head. He signaled to several men, and they all got to their feet or stopped leaning against a wall and stood ready. Clarenceux walked between them and along the shaded cloister. At the end he turned the corner and walked out of the abbey precinct through the door under the lay brothers’ dormitory-the route by which he had first entered the abbey with Sir Richard Wenman. He wondered whether anyone from the locality was now riding to Sir Richard to tell him that his abbey had been overrun by Walsingham’s men. It did not matter; by the time Sir Richard arrived, their business would be concluded.

He turned left outside the abbey and walked down across the grounds past the abbot’s house. There was a worn patch of ground here and he stooped to pick up some stones from the mud. None of the guards questioned him. A short distance away there were some larger, flatter stones; he discarded most of the first handful and replaced them with these. Twenty minutes were spent in this fashion, walking this way and that, picking up flattish stones. When he had twenty or thirty, he proceeded to the pond.

Standing on the bank, the sun bright from the south, he looked across the deep green-black rippling water. The ducks were settled on the surface some distance away. He skimmed the first stone across the surface, bouncing it four or five times. The next stone bounced twice. The next three times. One or two bounced ten or eleven times off the surface but some plummeted straight into the water-including the key to the chest. Captain Johnson’s men sat on the ground or watched him idly; no one noticed. When the stones were all gone, he stood for a long time just looking at the green bank and the water, the blue sky, the sun. He thought of Awdrey and Mildred, at last making their journey to safety, and he wished he could see them, embrace them. But this way, they were in no danger.

Captain Johnson’s men hurriedly got to their feet as they saw him start to wander back toward the abbey.

He went into the church and walked up to where the altar had once stood. Looking down the nave at the splintered woodwork and broken carving, it felt so wrong that men could wantonly cause such destruction. Captain Johnson’s men remained at a respectful distance as, still wearing his sword, Clarenceux knelt on the cold stone chancel step to pray.

One of Captain Johnson’s men kicked a piece of wood; the sound echoed away through the nave and aisles. Clarenceux heard the echo. They could smash the images and pull down the rood screen, and even burn the rood itself-but the echoes of their acts continued. He stood, turned, and projected his deep voice into the body of the church, proclaiming the words to the congregation of air and light: “ Domine, Jesu Christe, qui me creasti, redemisti, et preordinasti ad hoc quod sum, tu scis quid de me facere vis; fac de me secundum voluntatem tuam cum misericordia. Amen. ”

“Mr. Clarenceux,” said Captain Johnson, “this building is no longer a holy church. This is not a place for Catholic prayers.”

“You think that because it is in Latin it must be Catholic?” replied Clarenceux with a scornful look. “It is a prayer, written by a good but weak-headed king of England. He wrote it in the Tower of London when he was awaiting death, at the hands of other members of the royal family. Do you want to know what it means?”

Captain Johnson looked to his men for support. They were unsure. The symbolism of the church was undimmed.

“It means ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Who created me and redeemed me, and preordained me to be what I am, You know what You wish to do with me; do with me in accordance with Your will, with mercy. Amen.’ Tell me, Captain Johnson, wherein lies the heresy in that? Wherein lies the disrespect? Do you rather not see the disrespect all about you, in this desecration?”

His voice echoed away. No one answered. He turned back to the empty space that had once been the high altar and went down on his knees once more.

“You are praying to emptiness, Mr. Clarenceux,” said one man behind him.

“There is nothing there,” jeered another.

A second time Clarenceux rose to speak to them. “If there is nothing here, do you deny the existence of God? For God is everywhere, even where you have torn down His altars. If there is nothing here, does it matter to you that I pray for you, in my Latin prayers-praying that the Holy Spirit will infect your limbs with cancerous sores and make your tongues bleed for your lies? I have seen the plague infest the poor houses in London, and heard whole families screaming with the pain as they die, one by one-the men too frightened to touch their plague-fingered wives, the children crying in bed with the sores pulsating through their whole feverish bodies, and their parents too scared to enter their chambers. Shall I pray for the plague to smite you? If there is nothing here, then you will say, ‘Yes, Mr. Clarenceux, do your worst! Pray us to suffer the most miserable deaths! It makes no difference.’ But I am far surer that this was, and is, a holy place than you are sure that it is not. For your confidence is founded on ignorance. I am sure that our prayers are listened to, just as you are sure that they fall on deaf ears. I am strengthened by my faith and you are enfeebled by your doubt. I am willing to die for what I believe. Tell me-are you prepared to die for your doubt? Your skepticism is weak- weak -and the fervent man will always triumph-not only in the eyes of God, but in the hearts of men and women too.”

No one spoke. A dead leaf scratched its way in the breeze across the floor. Clarenceux looked up to the windows; the weather was changing, the sun dimming behind clouds.