James Forrester - Final Sacrament

“Let Mr. Walsingham go first,” said Clarenceux.

“No,” said Greystoke, taking his position beside the chest. “I think it would be unwise of me to let Mr. Walsingham go now.”

“Mr. Greystoke, what do you mean by this?” shouted Walsingham.

Greystoke pointed his sword at him. “You stay where you are. You have nothing to add to this discussion.”

Clarenceux stepped down from the lectern and drew his sword. Wisps of smoke rose between the floorboards. Greystoke saw Clarenceux’s attention elsewhere and lunged forward immediately. At the last moment Clarenceux parried the blow and stepped to his right, cursing himself for the small mistake. Again Greystoke darted forward; their swords clashed repeatedly as Clarenceux drove back the attempts to stab and cut him. Each time he was giving way to Greystoke.

“I smell smoke,” said Walsingham in alarm. “There is fire!”

“I told you that you were no match for me,” jeered Greystoke.

Clarenceux swept his sword down and jabbed forward toward Greystoke’s thigh but the younger man responded swiftly by turning his defense to an attempt to slash across Clarenceux’s face.

“Mr. Walsingham, you know you are honored,” declared Clarenceux. “Your friend here was trained by the great Camillo Agrippa, the Catholic swordsman of Rome. Four years, was it not?” he demanded as Greystoke stabbed forward and turned his strokes into a flurry of cuts so fast that Clarenceux had difficulty moving his own blade to defend against them. Again he stepped back and Greystoke attacked, turning an attempt to run Clarenceux through the gut into a swipe across his face, slicing through the cheek. The pain made Clarenceux cry out, and he raised his hand instinctively, feeling the looseness of the flesh. It was a huge cut. Red blood poured across and down from the wide wound. Alice stared in horror.

“Fire!” shouted Walsingham. “Get out of here.”

“Not without the document!” said Greystoke, trapping Clarenceux behind the table.

“Then you will die!” shouted back Clarenceux, holding his face with one hand and lifting his sword with the other. Smoke was pouring into the room now through the floorboards. Joan ran to the chest, and then stopped and stared at Alice, who had produced a pistol. Greystoke and Clarenceux did not see it, not taking their eyes off each other. Walsingham did not see it either, as he hurried across the room, choking, and reached up to unbolt the door. But as he yanked it open, Alice pulled the trigger. The report of the gun stunned them all. Walsingham turned and tried to see what had happened, but there was too much smoke in the room.

As the echo died away, Clarenceux looked through the smoke. Greystoke had just been blown flat, a hole torn through his stomach. He wiped his eyes and saw blood flowing across the floor. The man was still alive, just. Still holding the side of his face, Clarenceux glanced at Alice, who lowered the pistol and dropped it.

He stepped over Greystoke’s body. “You told me I could not beat you in a fight,” he gasped. “But a true fight is more than fencing. And I do not play fair. There is no man on earth I despise more than you.” He pointed his sword at Greystoke’s right eye. “Go straight to Hell,” he said, waiting a second more. Then he plunged the point down and watched the blood seep into the eye socket.

The room was filled with smoke now, the open door only just visible as a shade of light. Clarenceux coughed and sheathed his sword. The noise of the fire in the undercroft was growing louder.

Joan shut the door and bolted it.

Clarenceux heard the bolts and shouted, “What are you doing? Leave this place, both of you while you still have time. You have no need to be martyrs-this is not your war.”

“My daughter’s life depends on that document,” replied Joan. She appeared through the thick smoke, holding another pistol-her own. Clarenceux coughed. He could hear Alice coughing too.

“Open the chest, Alice!” Joan ordered.

“I am trying!” snapped Alice. “But I can only unfasten one lock.”

Clarenceux’s face was still bleeding and his eyes streaming with smoke-driven tears. He could not stop his coughing. “Alice, get out,” he gasped between convulsions of his chest. “Run, now!” He coughed again. “There is a keg of gunpowder underneath the chest, in the undercroft. As soon as the fire reaches it, the room will explode and burn. This is not your fight!”

Alice coughed again, struggling with the key. “No, this is my fight. Lady Percy sent me here, along with the other women. She has my mother, Mary Vardine, in her prison. She will let her burn at the stake for killing my stepfather if I do not take her the document-and I would rather burn myself than let her die in that way.”

“No! Leave it!” urged Clarenceux. “That is the wrong key. I threw the real one in the fishpond when you were away.”

The fire below was roaring now. Clarenceux lunged for the latrine door, to get air to breathe. “Alice!” he yelled looking back. “Leave the chest. You cannot open it.”

Joan turned and ran to the center of the room. Spluttering and coughing, she aimed the pistol at the right-hand lock of the chest and fired, smashing it inward. Clarenceux heard the shot and charged back through the smoke. “Leave it!” he commanded as she struggled to open the lid. “Leave it!” he repeated, drawing his sword.

“Curse you, Clarenceux,” she spat. “Curse you! Curse you!”

Blind now from the smoke, he slashed desperately through the air. But Alice appeared and grabbed his sword arm. “Joan, do it!” she shouted. He fell to one side and landed on Alice, seeing the orange of the flames through a crack in the floorboards as he went down. Still she held him, trapping his arm. He kicked her and rolled away, then crawled to the chest, feeling it now open and Joan’s arm reaching up. With a lunge he thrust toward her body and felt the point puncture her flesh. She screamed in agony, but he cut and stabbed again and again, feeling the point enter her body three times until he heard a scream stop in her throat and her body fall to the floor. Frantic now, he slammed the chest shut, but immediately felt someone trying to open it again. “Give it to me!” Alice’s hysterical voice rose above the roar of the fire.

Clarenceux felt Alice’s shoulder and grabbed her around the neck. He dragged her kicking and struggling to free herself through the smoke to the door in the wall leading to the old latrine. He pressed her against the wall in the alcove, trapping her there, her cheeks hard against the stone. Still she struggled, even clawing over her shoulder at his wounded face in her attempt to return to the chest.

Suddenly, with an almighty explosion, the gunpowder in the basement caught. Even though they were both protected by the corner of the wall, it smashed them hard against the stone and knocked out their legs from under them. It tore the floor in the center of the room and shattered all the windows. Clarenceux struck his head as he fell. Senseless for a moment, the rising heat burned him awake, scorching his face and leaving him gasping for the cold air that now rushed through the latrine to feed the flames. Part of the tracery in the windows fell out.

Clarenceux felt a semiconscious Alice stir feebly. “Down the shaft-there is water at the bottom,” he bellowed at her, hearing his own voice faintly through deafened ears. “Follow the water. Tell Lady Percy what has happened. Tell her the document is no more. Do that for me. Tell her that it is over. It is over.”

Choking and gagging, in a state of shock, Alice steadied herself on his arm. Without another word she climbed into the shaft and let herself down, holding on to Clarenceux’s hand, trying to slow her fall by grabbling at the stone sides of the shaft. Then she was at the bottom, in darkness, with air rushing toward her and water running away. Numb, she knelt and began to crawl. But within a few yards, when she thought of what Lady Percy would now do to her mother, she put her forehead down into the black water and there, on her knees, she halted-and started to cry.