James Forrester - Final Sacrament

***

Walsingham looked at the roaring flames leaping up through the refectory. His face was sweaty and smoke-smeared: despite his diminutive size, he looked fearsome. His men were now gathered in a line from the great pond to the building, passing along any containers that would hold water-buckets, helmets, and cooking pans, even a horse’s nosebag. But it was clear that nothing could save the building or anything within it. The two men charged with throwing the water through the windows, who were both standing on a cart, had to come away. Even where he was, forty feet from the wall, he could feel the heat of the flames on his cheek. Within twenty minutes of him leaving the refectory, the roof had caught, the flames leaping up and flowing out through the tracery of the windows. Thick smoke billowed out of all five windows and stretched across the sky.

Captain Johnson approached him. “I don’t think we’ll be seeing Mr. Clarenceux again. Nor his pretty lass.”

“How many of these men are loyal to me, Johnson?” snapped Walsingham. “Before he died, Mr. Greystoke said that ‘certain cogs’ in my clock had been changed. I would like to know what he meant by that.”

“Sir, I am sure that all the men here are-”

“Find the traitors, Mr. Johnson, or I will have you and every tenth man hanged in their place. Instruct Captain Walker to the same effect. Scour the ground. If Greystoke hid or dropped anything here I want it found. Search the sewer system too-it is possible that people are hiding in the old tunnels.”

Johnson nodded, bowed, and departed. Walsingham watched him head back into the abbot’s house. He looked at the men between him and the pond. They were gathered now in groups, staring at the flames. Pieces of burning ash wafted high on the breeze and gently descended, still glowing.

***

From his position in the wood, Fyndern watched the thick smoke rising and the flames licking at the roof at the east end of the refectory. He shivered in his wet clothes. A mixture of emotions pulled at him. He felt proud that he had lit the fire as Clarenceux had asked, and that it had burned so well-and yet he was sorry that he would never hear him say thank you. He had come to depend on Mr. Clarenceux’s words of trust and encouragement. He was pleased to have escaped through the drain, going down to the fishponds, but his overwhelming concern was for Alice. She had gone back into that building, he was sure. He longed to go into the cloister and search for her, to make sure she had escaped; but if she was not in the fire, Walsingham’s men had her by now.

The birds sang in the trees above him. Sitting down in the shade he felt tears come to his eyes. The young woman whose sparkling eyes, beauty, and dancing had so captivated him was lost. And there was no way of knowing. He tried to feel whether she was alive-and he could not. All he could feel was his utter wish that she should be well. All he could hope for was that she should return to Mr. Clarenceux’s household to work. And that was all he himself could do now. It was that or go back on the road and make his living from guessing the cards.

The cards! Fyndern felt in his pocket and pulled out his pack of cards. They were soaked and had stuck together. Colors had run; the kings and queens were weeping. He threw them down and looked again at the smoke in the sky, rising faster than ever. He had no choice now; he would have to return to London.

He stood up, picked a long grass, and idly swished it in the air. It was going to be a long walk.

Tuesday, February 18

Francis Walsingham lay blinking on an old bed in the abbot’s lodging. He had slept for half an hour and had just been awoken. It was still dark, except for a single candle burning nearby. Captain Walker had told him they had found the girl, Clarenceux’s messenger. She had been hiding in the drains beneath the abbey, not far from the pond.

“Is she alone?” asked Walsingham.

“My men have been all the way through both drains. There is nobody else.”

“Where is she now?”

“Outside, sir.”

“The fire?”

“It will not spread.”

“I will see her,” he said, rising to his feet.

Alice was brought up into the chamber with her hands tied behind her back and two men holding her by the arms. She was bedraggled and shivering. Five other men accompanied them.

“Give her a cloak,” said Walsingham as soon as he saw her.

One of the men went looking for a garment.

Walsingham walked to her and looked into her eyes. He appreciated her beauty, her youthfulness, her proud mouth, her precocious sense of her womanhood. “Where is Clarenceux?” he asked.

“He did not come with me. He stayed in the refectory.”

“Why would he do that?”

“To protect the document. Until the very end. Destroying it, and his enemies, and himself-that was how he thought he could save his family.”

Walsingham looked up into the dark roof beams of the abbot’s chamber. The silence seemed to reach him, waiting for him to say something: to have the idea that would resolve the night, the burning and the mystery of Clarenceux’s death.

“Who was the woman with Greystoke?” he asked.

“Her name was Joan Hellier. She was sent by Lady Percy to serve Father Buckman.”

“How do you know these things?”

“I was working in Mr. Clarenceux’s household with Thomas and Fyndern. Mr. Clarenceux prepared us for what we had to do.”

Walsingham looked at the guards. “Leave us, all of you,” he ordered. When they had left he pointed to a bench. “Sit down.” He put his foot on the edge of the bed and rested his arm on his raised knee. “You are going to tell me everything now. Where is Clarenceux and how did he get out? More to the point, where is the document? Who started the fire?”

***

At first light, Walsingham stood at the top of the steps leading into the refectory, looking down. The fire was still smoldering, intense heat rising, flames dancing along pieces of blackened timber on the huge pile of ashes in the undercroft, smoke still rising in the roofless space. Burned joists jutted out of the wall; there was nothing left of the floor. The wind had picked up and was whirling hot ash around the room, causing him to step back to avoid it coating his clothes and getting in his eyes. On the left, sections of the blackened plaster had fallen away; only the door through to the latrine and the fireplace remained as recognizable features, now meaninglessly high in the middle of the floorless wall. On the right-hand side, two of the windows had lost their tracery and presented broken arches against the sky. The others were stark, skeletal shapes of blackened stone.

“Gather the men to form a chain again,” he ordered Captain Walker. “This must all be doused and searched today. I want that chest found, even if all that is left is pieces. The girl says it was laced with gunpowder. But she may be lying.”

Thursday, February 20

Awdrey sat at the table in Cecil’s study. She was red-eyed still from rubbing away the tears, and aching in her soul as well as her body. She stared across at the fire, which had burned down, and closed her eyes. Fire. It would always haunt her, she knew. The thought that across all England her husband did not exist, and there was nowhere she could go to speak to him, and yet men like Walsingham still existed, and Father Buckman, sickened her. The only good things that had happened to her in the last few days were hearing that Greystoke was dead and seeing Annie again. But in herself she felt empty. Part of her was missing.

Sir William and Lady Cecil came into the room and greeted her; Sir William was hobbling with his gout, wearing nothing on his right foot. Despite his slowness, he shut the door carefully behind them.