D. Wilson - The Traitor’s Mark

Lizzie received the news in shocked silence. She sat at the table, head in hands. At last she muttered, ‘Bart will get free of this burden sometime, won’t he?’

‘Oh, yes, certainly,’ I replied, with all the conviction I could muster, ‘as soon as Black Harry is brought to trial.’

‘That could be quite a while yet, couldn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Then I wish you hadn’t told me,’ she said miserably.

‘You think I was wrong?’

At that she flared up. ‘God in heaven, yes! Of course I think you were wrong. I don’t know how you could deliberately prolong Bart’s agony. Don’t you think he’s suffered enough? But that’s between you and your conscience. All you’ve done by telling me is make me a partner in your stupid cruelty. Do you expect me to say, “That’s all right, Thomas, you did the right thing”? Now I’ve got to share your problem. What am I supposed to do? Tell Bart you’ve let him down? You know how much he respects you. He would be shattered. Or do you want me to keep the truth from him, to deceive him in order to keep your guilty secret?’

Ned tried to calm the atmosphere. ‘Lizzie, Thomas didn’t have a simple choice between right and wrong. He had to choose, on the spur of the moment, which course of action was less wrong than the other.’

‘I might have known you’d take his side,’ she snapped.

‘’Tis no question of taking sides. I know not what I would have done in his position. What I do know is that we all have a responsibility to support Bart until this terrible charge against him is dropped and the real villain is brought to justice.’

Lizzie showed no sign of being mollified. Neither of my problems had been resolved by this discussion. It was as well that I was not left for long to brood on them. Next morning a troop of the archbishop’s guards arrived to escort me to Groydon for another meeting with Cranmer.

I decided to take Bart with me. I am not sure why. It may be that I half-intended, as we travelled, to explain my rejection of Black Harry’s deal. Or, perhaps, I hoped he might learn something about the larger issues at stake and see his own problem in their light. In the event, my motivation was of little consequence. As we rode, I did not raise the Aldgate affair and events in Croydon would push it into the background.

As soon as we arrived at the palace we went in to dinner. The great hall was very full and the reason soon became apparent. Cranmer’s high table was filled with distinguished guests, all of whom had obviously brought attendants with them. From my vantage point at the bottom end of one of the lower tables I saw the archbishop surrounded by several senior clerics, as well as gentlemen whose costly court clothes indicated their importance. At a distance I recognised only one of these notables but that one was highly significant. If Anthony Denny had left the touring royal court for talks with the archbishop, those talks must be of the utmost importance. Some of England’s grandees of church and state had come together to discuss matters of high politics. Like it or not, I was to be caught up in their deliberations.

During the course of that day and the next morning Bart and I made conversation with several of our fellow guests. Among the more obvious common concerns was the situation in the capital. The plague was apparently showing no sign of abating. Opinion differed as to whether the death toll was rising or falling, though all agreed that this visitation was the longest in living memory. The king and court were still keeping their distance. The Westminster law courts remained closed, and the jails overcrowded as a result of the backlog of cases waiting to be heard. The beginning of the legal term, already transferred from Michaelmas to All Saints Day had once again been postponed to 12 November and it had been decided to hold sittings in St Albans. Those obliged to remain in the stricken City were running short of food because farmers and wagoners were unwilling to risk contagion. Preachers, of course, were unrestrained in identifying the cause of the visitation. Some declared it God’s curse on a nation that had cut itself adrift from Catholic Christendom, while others were equally certain that divine wrath was being vented on a disobedient land still clinging to the vestiges of popery.

Political news was largely taken up with rumours of imminent war with France – the first military adventure in a quarter of a century. King Henry, it was confidently asserted, would be following his friend, the Emperor, in lighting more human bonfires of heretics. Those who claimed to have knowledge of the inner workings of the royal court spoke of the emergence of bitterly opposed factions – ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ – the latter being a new word imported from Germany. There was much debate about who would be the next powerful minister to follow Wolsey, More and Cromwell to disgrace and death. Some said it would be Bishop Gardiner. Others prophesied the imminent fall of Cranmer. Most observers seemed to be agreed that the present meeting at Croydon was a gathering of Protestant leaders to plan their political strategy.

The next day I was told to wait with others in an anteroom for my summons before the archbishop and his colleagues. That summons came in mid-morning. I entered the library to see eight men sitting around a long table. A vacant space was pointed out to me and I obediently took my place. Ralph Morice sat at Cranmer’s left hand, and was taking notes. He addressed me very formally.

‘Master Thomas Treviot, goldsmith of London, you are here to provide information to this committee and to answer any questions we may put to you. You will regard everything said within these walls as spoken in confidence and you will now take an oath to that effect.’

An attendant handed me a Bible and, with one hand upon it, I swore myself to secrecy.

Cranmer spoke. ‘My Lord (he inclined his head to the thin-lipped, thin-faced man on his right, who, as I later discovered, was the Earl of Hertford – brother-in-law to the king and uncle to the young heir to the throne), gentlemen, I have already intimated to you the ways in which we are indebted to Master Treviot. It would be no exaggeration to say that without his tenacious pursuit of a dangerous gang of subversive seditionists we would not now be in a position to tear up by the roots the papist plot we have been considering. I have commanded his presence because he has had close contact with the seditionists and is in an excellent position to answer any questions we may wish to ask about them. But first I have a pleasant duty to perform.’

He nodded to Morice, who silently slid a sheet of paper across the table. I read the few lines written in a scrawling hand:

I, Henry Walden, sometimes known as ‘Black Harry’, do solemnly confess that on 1 September in this year, 1543, I did feloniously enter the house of Johannes Holbein, King’s Painter, in the Aldgate ward of London, and did there assault and kill a servant of the said Johannes Holbein, to the disturbance of the king’s peace. I now repent me of this deed and affirm – that I alone deserve such punishment as the king’s justice may impose. And further I acknowledge that the attribution of this felonious deed to any other than myself has no foundation in fact. Signed by me of my own free will, this 23 day of October in the year 1543.

Henry Walden

‘I thank Your Grace,’ I said. ‘This will relieve an innocent man of a great burden.’

I was, indeed, delighted for Bart and Lizzie. This was what they – and I – had wanted all along. If I did not feel overwhelmed with joy and relief it was because a question nagged at me: what price had been paid?

Hertford began the questioning. ‘Master Treviot, this Walden fellow has given his word to help us apprehend his superiors in the plot. How reliable do you think he is?’