22

The door to the cellar slammed shut, and Clarenceux was left in darkness. He heard the bolts being fastened. All he had managed to see of his accommodation for this, the last night of his life, were the stone steps leading down into the blackness. It was damp and very cold. It stank of urine and decomposing excrement. It must be a large cellar, he thought, and the shutes of the privies on the floors above must empty into barrels stored down here.

He reached for the wall. The smell made him feel sick. He already felt queasy from his interrogation and now he felt worse. The pain in his right knee had slightly abated, and he could walk. But it was still difficult to put weight on it.

He took a step down in the darkness, keeping his hand on the wall. A small stone or piece of plaster dislodged, fell from the steps, and splashed into the water that covered the cellar floor.

Clarenceux stopped. At this time of year, in this temperature, everything would be damp. His own house had no cellars, but those of his neighbors were often flooded. His neighbors said the flooding was a benefit, for the urine that fell into the barrels rotted the wood so that the liquid seeped out and was dissolved in the water. But Clarenceux was sure the water did not go anywhere. It just sat there in winter: cold, stagnant, and stinking.

Still touching the cold wall, he carefully eased himself down onto the step. His knee ached terribly. He heard shouts from upstairs and a few men walking about. Then nothing.

A rat scampered through the water in the darkness.

He ran a hand over the velvet of his doublet. By now they would have found the book. And they had Henry Machyn. They would torture Machyn until he confessed everything. And when he did so—whatever it was that he confessed—he, Clarenceux, would be deemed guilty of all the same offenses. He too would be tortured, and even though his confession would hardly tally with Machyn’s, they would both be condemned. His name was everywhere in the book. He was Machyn’s social superior, so Machyn would be considered just a foot soldier in whatever battle he was fighting. Clarenceux would be judged the leader.

He remembered Awdrey’s face and her golden hair as she had lain in bed the previous night. And Annie, in her bright-eyed innocence, sitting on his knee a few days ago and talking to him about things she had seen in the city.

What were they doing to his house? He hoped they would be restrained. And Awdrey—was she too in prison somewhere? How were they treating her? And what about Goodwife Machyn? If they had arrested her husband they were bound to want to question her too. He imagined her being arrested, those sad, brown eyes shocked and fearful. O God, he prayed, please do not let any harm befall either of them.

He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, feeling the anger rise. It was Machyn’s fault. That was the truth. What was it he had said about his recognizing a sentence from the book of Job? What could he remember of Job? Should a wise man speak vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the wind from the east? Should he reason with words of no value? Or make pointless speeches? You cast off fear and fail to pray before God, for you have confessed your sins with your own mouth, you choose the way of cunning. It is your own mouth that condemns you, and not mine. It is your own lips that testify against you.

Machyn was probably testifying at this moment. Are the consolations of the Lord small for you? Is there any secret in you?

Is there any secret? Clarenceux clenched his fist and pressed it against the stone wall. Machyn had overestimated him. The man had had too high a regard for his learning and his influence. And he himself should have known better. A lesser man had taken advantage of him, and he in his vanity had succumbed.

Walsingham had been right in one respect. He had been complacent. He had been naive. And now he was going to die.

“I AM INNOCENT!” he yelled, the sudden words like color across the darkness. “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”

What would it feel like, the rope around his neck? But no, he did not need to fear that. He was going to be tortured to death. Would he fear death if he felt only pain?

What would they use to bring it about? He shivered in the cold. He had heard about a contraption they used in France. They called it the rack. He had read about it in his copy of Sir John Fortescue’s De Laudibus Legum Angliae. Fortescue had been so horrified by the very idea of the rack that he had not described the instrument in his book. Instead he had described the anguish, worse than death, experienced by guiltless knights who were tortured until they confessed to treasons so they might be killed quickly rather than be subjected to further torment.

There was nothing he could do now but wait and pray.

Where was God in this? Could this, in any possible way, be His will? That a man should be tortured to death for a crime of which he was completely ignorant?

This cellar had been deserted by God. He was already entering the kingdom of the dead.