James Forrester - Final Sacrament

After the greetings, Mr. and Mistress Holcroft led Awdrey and her servants into the hall. A large fire was blazing away in the immense granite fireplace. Candles burned on both sides, their wax dripping fat down into the rushes. Awdrey took off her wet safeguard and handed it to one of the Holcrofts’ servants and warmed her hands. She stared into the flames, swallowing back the disappointment, unable even to look at Thomas.

“We knew you would come soon when we received a letter from your husband,” said Mr. Holcroft. “He enclosed one for you too.”

He held it out to her. The paper looked yellow in the candlelight. She felt the beating of her heart quicken and her chest tighten. She could not say a word. But, watching her own hand, she saw herself reach out and take the letter and open it. She took a deep breath, said a few words of prayer, and started to read.

My dearest heart,

I hope you never read this. I am only writing it out of fear that something will go wrong with my plan. You will know by now that the letter I left with Sir William Cecil was a message of love-but it was also one of hope. The time it will have taken you to get here should have given me plenty of time to reach this lonely, lovely place in the moor. But if you are reading this, it is a journey I will never make.

I have little time to write and so many things I would like to say to you. One is that it is perhaps better this way. You would not want to live your life hiding out in the granite clefts of Devon. Nor would you wish to be tied to an old man hiding in such a remote place. You are young, and you can yet make another man happy, for you are the perfect wife. No man could wish for more. Mourn no more than the requisite year, and marry again with my blessing, as I said in my last letter.

For the sake of the reassurance that human memory offers, make a small monument somewhere with my name on it. What you write shall be your choice of words, but if you would do me one final kindness, inscribe my motto on it somewhere: In all our struggles, the last word is hope. For those words have given me much strength over the years, when times have been hard.

Kiss our dear daughters for me. Bless them.

And now, for the last time and forever, good night my sweet Awdrey, my Etheldreda, my love.

Three weeks amp; four days earlier

Monday, February 17, in the refectory of Thame Abbey

Coughing, and with his eyes stinging as the smoke poured around and into him, Clarenceux felt Alice tighten her grip on his hand. She was as low as she could go, panicking, shouting. He loosened his grip on her wrist and let her fall the rest of the way down the shaft. Then he crossed himself, said, “Go with God,” and pulled himself to his feet.

The heat from the fire was terrific, and growing rapidly. He could see nothing except smoke and flame in the room, and could not even tell if the floorboards between him and the fireplace were still able to hold his weight. Tentatively, keeping one foot on the stone floor of the latrine alcove, he stamped on them. They held. The stone itself to which he was clinging was hot now. His eyes and his wounded cheek were stinging terribly, his naked skin burning with the heat. The time had come for him to make his decision. He could either follow Alice down the shaft and live, and face the next attack when it came, or he could take refuge in the monastic hiding place and bring the whole cycle of fear to an end, as he intended.

Stepping onto the floorboards, and trusting God to help him, he crawled into the stone fireplace, his hands and face burning with the extreme heat that rose through the floor. He reached up into the fireplace and found the protruding stone he had discovered when he had first made this climb, when he had come here with Sir Richard Wenman. It was harder with the pain of his wound and the blindness of the smoke, his eyes shut, coughing, and constantly wanting to be sick. But up he went, his fingers grappling for the stones that he could be sure would hold him. As he rose inside the chimney itself, he felt the heat and smoke rushing past him, as he knew it would, reaching for the light and the sky above, which was a mere gray-brown patch at the top of the chimney. He retched and almost lost his grip, pulling his heavy, tired body up toward the wooden door that was set back into the side of the stonework fifteen feet above the base of the fireplace. Up he hauled himself, until his fingers finally reached the sill of the small doorway. Pressing himself back against the narrowing wall of the chimney, he brought his leg up and found a secure foothold, then moving higher, he pushed open the door. It gave way to a small windowless chamber. With a final effort, panting and gagging, he heaved himself half into the chamber, and then drew up his legs, kicking shut the six-inch-thick oak door behind him.

He listened to the roar of the fire, lying in the darkness of the chamber. It was built within the thickness of the double-wall between the refectory and the chapter house, and measured just six feet in length, five feet in height and four feet in breadth. It was only large enough to take two men, but it was secure. Surrounded by a mass of thick stone, it was impossible to see even when looking up the refectory chimney, due to the constant blackness of the soot and the setting back of the door. It was also designed so that the smoke would rush up past the door, allowing the occupants to breathe. As Clarenceux knew, the flames and smoke would rise past the door regardless of whether the fire below was small enough to fit in the hearth or large enough to engulf the entire undercroft. The fire would burn for days-he estimated three-but all he had to do was to lie here and wait. He had some bread in a pocket to help with the hunger.

He coughed again in the darkness and waited, thinking ahead. Walsingham would have to pass on the news that the building had been engulfed by flames and he had been inside at the time. The complete destruction of the building would mean that Awdrey would be told that he was dead, and she would read the letter at Sir William’s house. She would recognize the route they had taken two years ago, or Thomas would; and it would take them three weeks from now to cart that table all the way to Devon. By then he would have reached the house and could rip up that last letter. Even though it would be advisable for him to have his face stitched up, he could have that done in Oxford. After three days, he would wait until nightfall, and then let himself down the chimney; bathe and wash his clothes in the great fishpond as best he could; dress himself; and head into Oxford across the fields. He had enough money for new clothes, food, and the surgery bill; he would not need to leave a name. He would dress like a husbandman and sleep rough on his journey to Devon. It would take him seven or eight days.

The roaring of the fire was growing. The speed of the draught and smoke ascending the chimney gave the impression of being at sea in darkness, in the belly of a ship. Clarenceux held the door shut with his foot and looked forward to the darkness and the noise being over.

The first hour gradually passed. His attention turned to his face and how much it stung. He held his cheek to make the wound close up. The events in the refectory returned to him, and he reminded himself how he had stabbed Joan Hellier in blindness-not in order to revenge Rebecca, but to keep the document safe. To preserve the queen. To prevent a war. He was glad it had been that way-Rebecca would not have wanted him to be vengeful. But by the same token, he was glad that he had been able to kill Greystoke, even if the man was already dying from Alice’s shot.

The document was no more and his family was safe-those were the main things. Whatever happened now, he had succeeded.