James Forrester - The Roots of Betrayal

Thomas opened the front door and Clarenceux let Annie step in first. She took her muddy shoes off as instructed, and ran up the stairs. Joan, who had been carrying Mildred, put her down on the bottom-most stair and let her start climbing. Clarenceux followed behind Mildred, patiently. When she reached the top, he clapped at her achievement, smiled at Awdrey, and then went up to his study.

He looked at the manuscript on his desk, to remind him of where he was in his heraldic work, and crossed the chamber. He lifted the chitarra in one hand and strummed the strings with the other. A discordant series of low notes rang out.

All his thinking froze. It cracked, like a mirror, into jagged edges.

He struck the strings again, only to hear the same discordant noise. Lifting down the instrument, not caring for its delicacy, he pulled off the grille that covered the sound hole and felt for the document. It had gone.

He trembled, uncertain what to do. Then he threw the instrument to the floor and stamped on the rounded wooden back. Sinking to his knees, he turned the pieces over. Oh Lord! Have mercy upon me! Jesus Christ, Lord, restore to me this thing, I implore Thee. If I have ever sinned against Thee in any way that deserves punishment, please let it be in some other manner .

He crossed himself. All the people who knew he owned the document were Catholics. That included all the Knights of the Round Table-all the men whom Henry Machyn had given a knightly identity and enlisted to help guard it. Two of their companions had died for the cause: Daniel Gyttens and Henry Machyn himself. Five of them had been imprisoned for protecting it. Several had demanded that he hand it over to them. Nicholas Hill had been one of these, or “Sir Reynold” as he had been known. James Emery, “Sir Yvain,” had been another. Rebecca Machyn’s brother, Robert Lowe, “Sir Owain,” had similarly been unhappy at the prospect of Clarenceux holding on to the document.

Then he remembered Rebecca Machyn. Upset and dismissive. Running away. He crossed himself again. No, no, let it not be . But even as he whispered, he knew he was deceiving himself with prayer. Of all the people who knew he owned the document, she was the most vulnerable-she had said so herself. The Knights of the Round Table all knew she was very close to Clarenceux. They knew that he would confide in her. She knew the layout of his house-the whole idea of hiding the document in a stringed instrument had been hers. And she had mentioned that people had suggested to her that the document be stolen.

Clarenceux clenched his fist and hit the floor. She had not just taken something and given it away; she had destroyed their mutual trust. She had set aside the decision that they had reached together-that this document was too dangerous to fall into the hands of Catholic plotters. It would result in civil war, in the burning of men and women for heresy. But she had given in to the pressure of others. She had put them above him. The protection he had offered her-that was nothing. No wonder she had said she did not want to see him again.

He shook his head in disbelief. The Knights of the Round Table would expect him publicly to endorse this document and declare it authentic in his capacity as a herald. Even if they failed in their plot to remove Elizabeth from the throne, they would implicate him. They would name him in their confessions. He could see his house being searched again, his possessions destroyed. He could see Walsingham demanding that he be tried for treason. He could see his wife forced to go into hiding with their daughters.

I cannot do it. Not again. I am not strong enough. Not now . Tears began to form in his eyes. He hated this weakness in himself but it was undeniable. He was crying. He struck the floor again, nausea growing in his stomach.

But how could she have broken into this house? She must have had help. Where was Thomas?

Clarenceux got to his feet. He breathed deeply, wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and walked to the staircase. He descended rapidly. At the foot he pushed the door open and stepped into the hall.

“Thomas!”

A few seconds later he heard the old man’s footsteps. Thomas entered. “Yes, Mr. Clarenceux?”

“Who came here this morning? While I was at church?”

“No one. I can assure you.”

Clarenceux struck the wall with his fist, fury rising within him. “No, someone did!” Then he recalled that he had not checked the manuscript the previous night because of his argument with Awdrey. “Who came here yesterday, while I was out?”

Thomas frowned. “Sir, after you left in the morning, no one came here. Mistress Harley went with the children and Joan to call on Lady Cecil. When they had gone, I went with the stable boys to order a delivery of new hay.”

“No one called?”

“I was not here, sir. But as far as I know-”

“How long was this house unattended?”

Thomas considered his answer carefully. “An hour at most.”

“Could somebody have entered during that time?”

Thomas did not answer. His face was growing whiter. “Sir, I made sure everything was locked, as per your instructions. The front door and the back.”

“I am asking, could somebody have broken in?”

“Sir, if someone wanted to break in, they could have picked the lock. A good locksmith has no great difficulty opening a warded lock.”

“I know that, Thomas-I know about skeleton keys. But something has been stolen from this house. Something very precious.”

“Is it one of your books, sir?”

“No! It is not one of my books. I was keeping a…a document.” He put his hands to his head. “All our lives are at risk, Thomas. We must disappear again, all of us-like last December. I thought all that was over. But I…I am going to be involved in a treasonable plot. If I am alive in another week’s time, it will only be by the grace of God.”

Clarenceux glanced at the end of the hall. Awdrey was standing there. “Does that mean we are not going to Antwerp?” she asked.

“Damn it, woman, no, we are not going to Antwerp. We are going to run for our lives.”

In a chamber of his house near the Tower, Francis Walsingham sat studying the code. Being a man who felt the cold, there was a fire in the hearth beside him.

He had begun systematically, noting the number of times each letter appeared. But then he had realized something. The letter C appeared by itself, and in twos, threes, fours, fives, sixes, sevens and eights. Four C’s might be a single letter or they might be a combination of two double C’s. But eight C’s could not be four CC’s. These eight combinations represented four separate letters or words at most. And given that DCC- appeared so often, CC was probably a letter. But he had written down a list of all the three-letter and four-letter words he could think of, and none of them fitted in a way that allowed him to make sense of any other part of the message.

He started to see more problems. Had this been written by someone who spelled more phonetically than he? Was it even in English? This was a Catholic plot, after all: Latin was more likely, or French. Castilian was possible too. The commas did not seem to make sense either, being too close together in places. Indeed, that suggested the letters were words, which rendered his theory about the various combinations of C void.

Frustrated, he screwed up the piece of paper he was working on and threw it into the fire. He closed his eyes and tried to remain calm. After a minute he reopened them, took another piece of paper, and started again. This time he wrote a list of all the short Latin words he knew.