65

Monday, December 27

Cecil looked out of the window at the boats moored on the Thames and saw the sun bright on their masts and rigging. A barge was being rowed up the river, taking someone from the Tower to Westminster. He heard the clock in his chapel chime. Eleven o’clock. Where is Walsingham? Two hours late—this is not like him. He strode from the writing chamber through the next room and to the top of the stairs overlooking the courtyard of his house. “Where’s Walsingham?” he called to the groom waiting at the foot of the stairs. The young man looked terrified and shook his head. “Go and find him.”

Days of anxiety had come upon him and weighed him down. While there had been progress he had been calm, thoughtful, methodical. Now it was almost two weeks since they had last heard news of Clarenceux’s whereabouts. And Cecil was torturing himself with one thought above all others. Clarenceux has taken the chronicle out of the country. I have failed.

He returned to the writing chamber, to go through his list of consequences. He had written two sides of paper, thinking through each eventuality; but as he knew only too well, the truth was probably stranger than anything he could imagine. He set down the papers again and let his mind return to the problem of Hackney Church.

It had to be Hackney. The names of the Knights all pointed to Lord Percy, and now he could see that the dates suggested June 1537, the date of the late earl’s death. Alnwick, Wressle—these places might have once been Percy’s favored homes but this was very definitely a London plot. The search of Percy’s old house at Newington had revealed absolutely nothing. Nor was there much advantage in going to Sheffield. The dowager countess had never loved Lord Percy, never even spent much time with him. The tomb had to be the key.

But it was now the twenty-seventh. Walsingham had had men located in Hackney, near the church, for a full week. And there had been nothing. Any news would have been better than this silence—even if Clarenceux had been marching on London at the head of an army, that would have been something to work on. But no. The plot had simply dissolved and Clarenceux had disappeared. Somehow the wily herald had eluded him.

Cecil sighed again, shut his eyes, and tried to calm himself. He could feel his heart beating like that of a man facing the gallows.

He picked up another piece of paper, containing the epitaph on Lord Percy’s tomb. It had been very carefully transcribed but there was nothing surprising or suspicious about it. On one side it said:

Here lieth interred Henry Lord Percy, Earle of Northumberland, Knight of the most honorable Order of the Garter, who died in this Towne the last of Iune, 1537, the 29th year of Henry ye 8th.

And on the other side of the monument there was a quotation from the book of Job, chapter seven, in which Job explains his desire to die. How apposite for the earl of Northumberland, who certainly wanted to die after the execution of Anne Boleyn. But it had nothing to do with a Catholic conspiracy or a chronicle.

“Mr. Secretary, sir. He’s here!”

The groom he had asked to find Walsingham came into the chamber followed by Walsingham himself. Walsingham was filthy from the mud of the roads but he strode in despite his dirt, holding his hat in one hand. He had not even bothered to remove his sword.

“Summerhill, in Chislehurst, Kent,” he said. “Clarenceux has definitely been there—with the Widow Machyn. They left together on the sixteenth, according to the report of one of the cottagers on my cousin’s estate.”

“The sixteenth? Eleven days ago? And no word yet from the ports?”

“None—unless it has arrived since I’ve been in Kent. I came straight here.”

“Who owns Summerhill?”

“A Catholic sympathizer—or so I suspect—by the name of Fawcett. My cousin says there have been priests in the area in the last twelve months, and although no one knows where they go, Summerhill is the most likely place. It is an old house, with many nooks and corners.”

“Have you arrested Fawcett?”

“No, he seems to have disappeared. Which is suspicious in itself.”

“Probably hiding in one of his own priest holes,” said Cecil, putting down the paper containing Lord Percy’s epitaph.

“I will send Crackenthorpe to search the property with his men. They will find him, if he is to be found.”

“No doubt. But we want this man alive.” Cecil poured two glasses of white wine from a flagon on the table and handed one to Walsingham. “I have to say I am worried, Francis. I am beginning to think I have been wrong. All the time you have believed that Clarenceux is the ringleader of this plot, but you did not convince me. I was waiting for some certain evidence, and none was forthcoming. But evidence is not truth; I should have remembered that. I suspect I have given Clarenceux the benefit of the doubt too often and for too long. Now we have eliminated almost all the others from any real culpability: only Clarenceux and the mysterious last Knight remain at large.”

“He has been to Scotland, France, Spain, and the Low Countries in the course of his career.”

“Quite. He could be anywhere in Europe. I suspect you have been right all along; he is the protagonist. And to think my wife and sister-in-law stood as godmothers to his daughter…I have been too trusting.”

“Sir William, you should not be so hard on yourself. You have done all you could, I am sure.”

Cecil stiffened. “I’ll thank you, Francis, for not patronizing me. You know as well as I do that if one works as hard as one possibly can, and still fails, then there is no merit in the work or in oneself. It is only success that matters. If you and I foil nineteen plots out of twenty to kill the queen, we will have failed.”

“Do not worry. We will not fail.”

“Good,” snapped Cecil. “Looking at your filthy state, I trust there is something more substantial than wishful thinking and womanly compassion underlying that rhetoric. You can begin by renewing the guards watching the south coast ports, including the quays and hythes of London. If Clarenceux has tried to leave the country, I want to know. If he has already sailed, I want to know when he left and where he was going. As for Summerhill—search it all the way down to its foundations.”