CHAPTER 16

KING DEATH

 

 

 

A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi

 

A precipice in front, wolves behind

 

 

 

Black, coiling, seeking.

The year 1537 brings death through England like the spawning bream brings the eel back up the rivers to every dyke and every pond. It is a year they will all want to forget.

No sooner is the winter reed-cutting finished than a bloody flux comes into many homes, carrying away those already weakened by the winter. The carpenter at Wroxham is caught quite off guard and cannot produce enough coffins to meet demand; many are buried one or two weeks after death. It is an ill omen.

Then comes news soon after Candlemas of the judgment on the Lincoln rebels. That fiery vicar of Louth, and Nicolas Melton the cobbler who so proudly bandied about the key of Lincoln Cathedral, both hanged at Tyburn. The Abbot of Kirkstead – a very noble and even-handed man from what Pacificus remembered – along with three faithful monks, hanged at their own town of Horncastle. They say it was the women, not the men, who went berserk when the king’s monks were brought out to die. Pacificus wonders if there would have been anyone to bury him if he’d been caught like they were – things like that matter more to him now than he ever thought they would. Other ring leaders are hung, drawn and quartered at Guildhall, including the ambitious lawyer Thomas Moyne of Willingham; the brothers Nicholas and William Leach; Philip Trotter; Robert Sotheby; Roger New and Brian Stanes.

All this Pacificus hears aghast on the abbey staithe, from a wherryman from whom he is supposed to be buying more pigment. At first he cannot believe the high-handedness of the king, or Cromwell, or whoever. Lincoln has brought forth forty thousand souls as suppliants before their king; does that count for naught? If he kills their mouthpiece what does that say but that he would hang them all if he had the manpower? Damn his weakness! What is a monarch for but to protect the people against the nobles? And I didn’t notice any of them swinging at Tyburn this spring! But the wherryman isn’t finished.

“They says, brother,” he so confides, all sotto voce that many nearby will make the effort to hear it, “that even the crowd what watched it had had their fill of blood by the time they drew the fifth man – that they did groan at the sight of the innards such that the executioners feared they would be lynched, and that they did cling to the ankles of the other prisoners to make sure they was dead before they was taken down to be drawn. What d’ya say to that?”

“Nothing, Jack, and nor do you.” Pacificus looks at the old gossip sternly. “And don’t you speak, or even think, against the king’s justice – else you’ll be praying someone’ll be there to pull your ankles too, before you know it!”

At that, people on the abbey wharf started to go about their business. The walls have ears, and Cromwell has eyes everywhere. A groat can be made these sad days for a bit of tittle-tattle. Pacificus leaves for Saint Helen’s today with a heavy heart. What ill omen was this for the York lawyer, Robert Aske? The oath of a king – is that what he had said? Yes, that was it – all the laws of England are held together by the oath of the king. Dear God, what a poxy thread that has turned out to be for the Lincoln men – a king who cannot even keep troth with the wife of his youth, nor even his mistress.

His fears are justified, for Henry breaks his word. Robert Aske is taken that very spring on the pretext that the Cumberland earls – chiefly Sir Francis Bigod – have rebelled and so broken the truce. Caught in the trickery is almost every man who led the field with Pacificus at Scawsby Leys: Sir Thomas Percy, Sir John Bulmer, Sir Stephen Hamilton, Sir Nicholas Tempest, Sir William Lumley, Sir Edward Neville, Sir John Constable, Sir William Constable, Sir Robert Constable, Adam Sedbar, Abbot of Jervaulx, the Abbots of Barlings, Sawley, Fountains, and the Prior of Bridlington. At first most people thought it was just the lion roaring; these, after all, were the great northern families of the realm, the voice of a third of the kingdom. Surely it was meet, at the very worst, that they should appear with nooses around their necks, for the king to condemn them, and then the queen to win them back with a suppliant’s tears. That, at least, was tradition. But Pacificus now sees a regime that has lost all bearings on hereditary and moral rights. Now everything and anything is permissible by force or by stealth, Inter arma enim silent leges²⁶ – it’s like having that lunatic Machievelli reincarnated.

Pacificus visits Mistress Fenton three times before Easter, as time and chance allow. They are polite meetings and he does not again venture to offer her moral or marital advice. They find a common interest in literature and so he is able to supply her with rare editions borrowed from Saint Benet’s library, as well as his conversation. Once he stays for two hours discussing Boethius before either realises the time. He also visits the children on average once a month, with Mark now in attendance. It has taken a while for Mark to gain the children’s trust, for certainly Beth had never liked him when they were growing up – the puffed-up squire’s boy who bragged he would one day be her master. But eight-year-olds say all sorts of careless things. There are traits of his father in him for sure, but we – none of us – are our past only. This squire’s son turned novice has his faults and blind spots as anyone does, and yet is a young man of ability and sense struggling to surface in a strange world, in even stranger times.

Pieter’s health has never fully recovered and it is Mark who helps overhaul Pieter’s two boats, and Mark who shows them how to get the best edge on the scythe for the reed-cutting that winter. And where would they be without Mark when it comes to clearing the dykes and slogging it out with a scythe among the reeds? Beth sees a different side to him, but cannot help still despising him as somehow complicit with his father in their own family ruin.

The boys on the other hand, particularly Piers, come to regard him as an elder brother; when Mark is there the two of them work harder, more efficiently and with less argument. And of course if they have their work done early, there is always time for matchlock drill and rapier fencing when Pacificus or Simon is there.

Richard is filling out now, partly because he works hard but mainly because the boy is growing into a man. Pacificus enjoys his company, loves teaching him. Piers will be a natural swordsman in five years, there is no question. Mark will be adequate, if a little ham-fisted to be elegant with a blade. But it is Richard whose developing skill really delights Pacificus. He is so diligent and exact, so earnest and grateful for encouragement – so eager for the approval of a father.

Simon, meanwhile, seems to be slipping further and further away; the more he reads the Tyndale New Testament with Beth, the more distant he becomes to his brother. They argue now about things they once took for granted: the Real Presence, papal authority, even the need for priests. He seems to Pacificus like a different man, as twisted in his theology as his face is physically, as if he would let all Christendom burn if only he could have his own interpretation of the Scriptures, with no reference to church tradition or the early fathers. Sola Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, he bleats like a recalcitrant Lutheran when Pacificus tries to persuade him with reason or history. Unless it is Paul or a gospel, there is no arguing the point; he will not listen. When eventually the thing descends into name-calling, they give up and stop talking about religion altogether. Once Simon apologises for being too argumentative and not peaceable, but no more than that once. And Pacificus remembers that day well, for it comes just before death strikes the household.

 

King Death comes to the cottage soon after Corpus Christi. It is the time when Pieter, Beth and the boys are working hard to bring in the marsh hay – fodder so necessary for the cattle’s winter feed. The day starts like any other: the same sun, the same birds, same wind in the reeds and same chores awaiting them in the kitchen or river or field – a day like any other. Would God that it were! No one knows how the fever finds them, cut off as they are, but they all get it. Waking up a little shivery, a tad achy, the older ones think it is no more than a summer cold. But soon after the early chores are done, and it is time to break their fast, not one in the eel-catcher’s cottage can stand at all. Sarah is the last to collapse, which is a mercy, for she manages to strip the children, making them drink as much as they can. She opens the shutters, but even then it is hardly enough. They lie like fevered corpses, sweat pouring from every gland, delirious and helpless. Beth has Samuel whimpering and sighing near her. She dreams ten times an hour that she is making him drink or wiping his brow, only to come round for half a second to realise that she cannot; that she has not even moved. It goes on until they lose track of time – the splitting head, the racing pulse, the lips and mouth parched like a desert, the limbs and torso burning like a furnace.

It is Simon who saves most of them. He’s heard word of a small outbreak in Wroxham, and he’s come near to the cottage to call to them, so that they’d be warned. But when there is no answer he comes closer. Then he sees the chickens wandering in and out of the cottage door, and he knows there is trouble. He goes straight to work when he sees them all lying there; strips of wet cloth for their brows, water to moisten their mouths.

Beth remembers him there. When she looks back later, she recalls his voice speaking kindly, gently; remembers him holding the cup of cool water to her lips, fortifying her in the struggle for life. She does not remember him taking Samuel’s body from her side, to lay him out for burial. Neither does she see him do the same for little James, golden hair and pink cheeks now as pale as a sheep’s bladder.

It is enough to break his heart, he thinks, to see both bodies laid out there, looking so peaceful on the kitchen table – the jaw bound, a candle at the head and feet. Poor mites! What will the others say, if they survive? The fever breaks for all but Beth somewhere in the early hours of the morning, by which stage Simon has been able to get word downriver to Pacificus and Mark. Exhausted by now, Simon is only too glad to sit with Beth, while the others find fresh sheets. The last stage of the sweats – for those who survive – is a long, deep sleep. As they come through, Pieter and Sarah are able to talk for a short time, but nothing is said to them of the bairns.

“You sleep now,” Pacificus says. “We will tend to them.”

At the foot of Beth’s bed, where Simon hunches motionless, Mark sits and prays, so fervently that Pacificus begins to feel concerned. “Come, lad! You’ve done enough of that. God has heard you. Now, what about – ” he whispers it “ – coffins for these two poor children? There is wood in the barn.” He nods and goes to it, like the labour of love it is.

When Mark is gone out, Pacificus lays a hand on his brother’s shoulder, and Simon crumples. “Oh Hugh, to think that I have just found her too!”

“She still has strength; do not fret,” Pacificus says.

“So much to say to her… so much I wanted for her, so much she might have become, said, done… I didn’t know this was how it felt – to be a father, I mean.”

“Peace, man; she will mend yet. Now, get some rest yourself.” Simon does rest, and is thankful when Mark wakes him two hours later, to let him know Beth’s fever has broken and she is sleeping well.

They bury the little children four days later when the others can stand. Sarah and Beth are inconsolable, weeping for hours at the coffins, crying until there are no more tears, just retching guts and bent backs heaving in time with impotent sobs. The house will never be the same again, can never be; they all know it. The boys are very quiet for many weeks after, exhausted from the sweats and stunned with grief.

Two little lights have gone out in Sarah’s heart. How can you refill such a void? God had made her, old as she is, their mother, and she couldn’t even nurse them through their first serious sickness. It feels to her like having someone pitchfork her viscera onto the ground.

And what of their real mother, so far away? How will she take the news? It is Pacificus who carries it, with two locks of golden hair, one week later on his way to see the bishop. She takes it with a pathetic sigh, then a near total faint. Their hair is lighter than she remembers, but then of course it is summer now. She is not well herself. The food the mercers have brought at Cromwell’s command she has been sharing with the destitute in the lower cells. He suspected as much at his last visit. But now, weak though she is, she will hear every detail of their passing – a mother’s duty. Pacificus tells her all he can remember of the informal funeral, and it seems to give her comfort. They had been laid out in new clothes, their bodies washed, their hair combed.

She pushes down the voice inside her mind condemning her for not being there – and, even worse, whispering that she has, by her confinement, become surplus to her children’s needs. She enquires after this kind leper and novice who did so much. He wonders whether he should tell her Simon’s identity, but he has sworn not to. What had his brother said? Better she hate a whole man in her memory than pity what he had by sin become. He tells her Mark is Hamberly’s son and she smiles unaffectedly. “Yes, I remember him. God bless him for his kindness. Did he, too, not get sick? Nor you?”

Pacificus shakes his head, but will not say what he is thinking. This month Mars is in the ascendant and, as all know and fear, Infortuna Minor produces martyrs – and he wouldn’t lose her too. She makes him go over the funeral details again. What did they sing? Who said what? How are Beth, Richard, Piers? Are they eating well? Tell them to take marjoram, lavender, sage and just a touch of rue with their food. Have they smoked the house yet? He answers as best he can, and omits to mention that he and Simon almost came to blows about the propriety of burying children in unconsecrated ground, without a priest. He feels profoundly relieved that Pieter, Sarah and the children were not present to see them quarrel. He has an instinct that in arguing for the traditional position of the church, he was betraying some more universal law of love. In a way he cannot fully explain, it helped Pacificus see how involved he has become in their lives, all of them. In the uncertainty that pervades almost everything else in his life, nay in all of England for that matter, this at least feels right – common kindness, ordinary faith, protecting the small, the vulnerable, the abandoned.

From Elizabeth’s cell he goes to Bishop Rugge, who is excited about a forthcoming trip to London, where he will meet with his fellow bishops.

“I want you there, Pacificus, need you there!” he says while Pacificus is still kissing his ring. “Come – take a seat and let’s talk awhile. This meeting of bishops will be all important in determining the Ecclesia Angelica. We of the old religion will need strength of both wits and numbers if we’re to win any ground from men like Cranmer and Salcot – did I tell you Salcot never even moved to Salisbury after he was made bishop – without papal authority? Good God, man, what is the matter with you? You look like a bulldog chewing a wasp! It’s not that unhappy business of the Lincoln faithful? We still have some hopes for that northern parliament the king promised, you know.”

Pacificus explains that, yes, it is that – the arrests of the northern nobles – but other events as well; an outbreak of the sweats has left some dead near the abbey. The bishop offers condolences and orders some wine. They sit in a private drawing room away from the comings and goings. Everyone needs space to think, not least Rugge with all his schemes and plans. Click, click, click – like clock mechanisms. Round and round like millstones, grinding the affairs of men as small as dust before the winds of time.

There is the possibility of a rising in the west country, and perhaps a rising even here in Norfolk, he says. “Mind, those west country Cornish are a breed apart; hardly Englishmen!” Pacificus lets the remark go. He’s not here to bicker. Besides, the bishop grew up in Repps near Yarmouth, where they have more truck with the Flemish and the continent than with Englishmen in the western reaches of England.

The bishop waves the air as if he is shooing a fly. “The fire smokes like the upper reaches of Hades, and you never get the sun here at all, but at least there is room to think,” he says as it billows again. “And don’t worry about that ghastly tapestry with all the mildew. I have a new one coming from Calais next month – friend of a friend, you know, in touch with certain useful men in the French court; might be beneficial soon.”

Click, click, click; wheels within wheels. Doesn’t he ever tire? He’s excited today for some reason, his fingers scuttling over folios, letters and parchments like gilded mice, never still, never resting for a moment. Behind the desk, a rail on the panelling carries his correspondence, all tucked in line like feathers on the wing of an albatross. The table is spread with a red and black rug, and on that his pewter ink pot and quills, a glass vase with dead flowers and some chronicle of the Wars of the Roses, its binding near completely gone. So he’s reading up, too.

After the briefest pastoral chat regarding the sweats, he’s back on to the details of his trip to London – where he’ll stay, who he’ll need to meet first, with whom he’ll dine on night one, night two, and so forth, who must be watched, who must be leaned on.

“You will go on ahead of me, make sure the rooms are suitable – and safe. I do say it’s a scandalous business that Henry took our London house on Bishopsgate and gave it to some minor courtier! But don’t worry, Pacificus, we’ll have it back, no doubt, when there is a reckoning.”

There he goes again: our house; we’ll get it back. Does he really think I give a cottar’s gong for his London house?

“My lord, perhaps I might visit Robert Aske and Thomas Percy while in town?”

“You will do no such thing! Have you lost your mind?” He rises from the desk and leans over it on his knuckles. “We are no use to them, nor to the cause, if we are caught; you may depend on that! No, brother – distance, distance! We play the game as we can, and carry it forward by what means we can. They may get a reprieve, they may not, but either way, there are bigger things at stake here than individual lives – they know that, and so do you.”

Ah, amputate and quarterise – Rugge would have made an efficient general but a bad captain.

And then finally comes the bishop’s feverish plan, the reason for his excitement. He has a scheme to remedy the bishopric’s financial trouble; namely pilgrimage.

“Now of course we never had any relics worth visiting at Saint Benet’s, not like Bury’s or Canterbury’s. No one bothered to come on account of Saint Margaret, poor girl. But supposing there were? Supposing we had a relic so famous, so efficacious – with genuine provenance – that men and women would flock from every part of the realm to make votive offerings!”

The bishop takes a seat by the fireside, lifting a knowing eyebrow at his subordinate.

“But forgive me, my lord, the injunctions of last year were not favourable to pilgrimages, relics, nor yet the use of images.”

“Nonsense, Pacificus. It was the misuse of pilgrimage – people shirking their work too often and worshipping, rather than venerating, relics and images. No, Cromwell has spent his shot on this one and made the position clear: the door is still open for us, and…” he is whispering now, “God has all but placed in our hands a reliquary that will secure us a goodly future!”

“And this relic?”

“That you will know in good time, my friend, but be assured it is of impeccable provenance and international acclaim – and not far away, I wager. Now – tell me about the Binham brothers and how they settle; how Wulfric seems to you. You have been watching them as I asked?”

“Well, they seem to keep close, they hold private conferences, and I would say they are distanced from the other brothers by some matter of their own. It might help if I knew what I was watching for. Are they connected with this reliquary in some way?”

Rugge leans forward, frowns his serious frown and whispers again. “This is a delicate matter and we cannot use any coercion, or we’ll likely lose everything. Watch them all, but particularly him – Wulfric. See where he goes, whom he corresponds with; we are not the only interested party – here or abroad, we can’t be sure who he knows.” Rugge leans back with a broad, optimistic smile. “For my part I will make sure among our brother bishops that pilgrimages have their prominence in the bishop’s book. All this is a side matter, I know, but we cannot march, nor yet dream, on an empty stomach.”

 

Pacificus arrives in London as instructed, to ready Rugge’s rooms, and finds himself in time to hear aghast that the northern nobles will be hung, drawn and quartered for treason within the week. You’d think that the northern pilgrims would amass and descend in fury on London to put the king on a gibbet. But Cromwell, wise as a serpent and innocent as a wolf, has decapitated the whole uprising – two hundred and sixteen souls will swing for the north. Lords, knights, half a dozen abbots, thirty-eight monks and sixteen parish priests – and of course poor Robert Aske. Part of Pacificus would like to think that if he had remained a minor lord, his serfs and freedmen would rise against tyranny to rescue him, but his romantic and chivalric naiveté is fast wilting under the scorching duplicity of these modern times. Perhaps they remake all of us in their own image – cynical, deceitful, unworthy of God and men. The executions are spread out between Tower Hill, Tyburn, the Guild Hall, and Smithfield Market – it’s always nice to have a side show when you’ve finished your shopping.

 

“You should have seen the Strand! I counted over fifty-two goldsmiths,” Mark says, tumbling through the door of their personal lodgings at Ely Place with provisions from the market. “I never imagined there was so much silver in all the world!”

“You’re late.” Pacificus has been in a foul mood, waiting for news but not wanting it. “And I suppose you forgot about the other thing.”

“No, I’m afraid not.” His face falls with shame at letting the wonder of silver distract him, forgetting that this, Wednesday, 12 July, is an evil day.

“Well then, don’t stand there like a limpet – spit it out.”

“The date is brought forward because of the queen’s birthday.”

“To when?”

“Today, brother, today. They say old Darcy, Percy, Robert Aske and many others will be executed this very afternoon at Tower Hill. Master, master! Don’t look at me like that; it frightens me! Brother, where are you going?”

In truth, he hardly knows himself. He has kept his word to the bishop and not visited the Tower, but feels an overwhelming sense of loyalty to the condemned lawyer. He walks swiftly in the shade of the old houses in Shoe Lane, crossing the Fleet at Ludgate Hill, and passing Saint Paul’s on Paternoster Row. At every turn it seems there is some small friary, priory or nunnery being dismantled under the watchful gaze of some self-made man or his clerk, each remaking the old enclaves after their own uses, some for slum housing, some for townhouses.

But for these busy reclaimers of the old world, all of London has forgotten their business today. It is not often you will see so many great men meet their maker at Tower Hill, or indeed, how substantial a portion of the northern nobility could be wiped from the earth for raising an objection to the current ideas of a handful of southern men.

Beyond Watling Street the crowd becomes like a living thing bound for Budge Row and then Candlewick Street, the stream fed all the while by yet more bodies from Dowgate and Walbrook. Here come the proud city people, some with liveried servants in attendance, some in litters, yet others heading for the riverboats to avoid the throng. Pacificus is left among them; the velvet chamberlains, the clerks with inky fingers, clothiers with gauche doublets made from offcuts, constables with keys hanging from belts under their paunches. Some of them seem unlikely spectators for such events; they must have made an exception for such a spectacular line-up.

Here are the wisest men in all England, the men who know for sure which way history will turn, for they will never themselves lift a finger to make it otherwise. Even a gambler at the king’s new racecourse in Newmarket – yes, even he risks something on the outcome. For surely no man ever backed a winning horse, but a contending one. Great saints, even Norfolk’s father eventually declared for the crown at Bosworth, but this rabble are like the Stanleys who wait ’till the battle is half won before they choose sides. A plague on them. They are worse, for at least Stanley fought, but these merely appear at the winning post and serve the first across the line. And look at them now – none shows the least shame or embarrassment, yet all go in the same direction, shoulder to shoulder, quite as large as the forty thousand of York or Lincoln. Though these are pilgrims of pleasure, voyeurs of someone else’s history. On and on they mill, picking up a second and third class of rabble from Cheapside: bakers, barbers, blacksmiths, bottlers, bowyers – all fresh from work. What a marvel, he thinks: pilgrimages are frowned upon because they take men from their work, but it is permissible for a nation to go to ruin to hang yesterday’s saints and today’s traitors. England will make a new virtue of it no doubt, with new saints.

Candlemakers, chandlers, cooks, cobblers and cordwainers. Ostlers, ewerers, farriers and fowlers. And in every nook and cranny between, there are children – laughing, shouting and crying, most not knowing even why they are there. Pacificus sees the Tower turrets up ahead, and squeezes off from the crowd to walk quickly up Hart Street, that he might come round the back of Tower Hill and so hopefully get closer. But the throng is already a thick mass by the Augustinian house of the Fratres Cruciferi – in the process of being demolished for the mere price of the building materials. Crowds pour through the rubble like rats, some scrambling up to an elevated position atop an arch or half-demolished stairway stopping in mid-air, twenty feet from the ground. Pacificus pushes through the groundlings despite their cursing and occasional raised fist, until he fetches up before the very scaffold and butcher’s tables.

Sir Thomas Percy is making a short speech; he says he was ever the loyal subject of His Majesty – always a wise thing to do if you have any family left. Perhaps it would have been well for him and England if he had not been, Pacificus thinks. What, with forty thousand men behind him, he could have swept Norfolk and Shrewsbury from the field, taking London within a week. God’s blood, this monarch is not worthy of this line-up of subjects! He can see Robert Aske in a cart behind the scaffold. There will be no more speeches after Percy; once the knife work begins, the screaming will drown out all.

Old Darcy is taken from the noose half strangled, and then they place it round Percy’s neck. Francis Bigod takes the scaffold while Percy is raised up, and Darcy is handled onto the butcher’s block and sliced from his navel to his chest. His screams come high-pitched and breathless. He turns his face sideways. He can’t bear to watch his intestines being wound on the large bobbin. A minute later, Percy is dragged past with purple face and the rope burn on his neck. His eyes widen at the sight of old Darcy, or what is left of him. He’s choking out his Ars Moriendi in Latin. Soon, he too is being drawn. You can tell he wasn’t expecting it to be so protracted, so dreadfully painful.

Next they hoist Sir Francis, and after him the three Constable brothers. Robert Aske is waiting behind them. Darcy’s quartered carcass is carted away in a barrow to the groans of women on the edge of the crowd, and the Constable men go one after the other like lambs to the slaughter. Bigod is keening with intolerable pain as they burn his organs in a brazier before him. Pacificus’s and Aske’s eyes meet as he ascends the scaffold. Aske tries to smile, but brave as he is, he cannot hide the terror, much less walk without assistance – his breeches are stained. The crowd is cheering in the main. They are all worthy subjects of their monarch, made for each other, but this lawyer, he shouldn’t be here. Oh Jesu, he should not. Oh God, let the rope finish him, or if you’ll not act, I will. Aske is hoisted but his neck is not broken; he is still moving when the constable stretches out his hand to untie the rope. Pacificus will not let this happen; he will not let them butcher his friend. He will put a stop to it.

Between him and the scaffold is a tight row of soldiers with horizontally criss-crossed poleaxes, then twenty feet and an assortment of executioners, clerks, clerics and nobles, including Norfolk but not Cromwell – though today must be a personal triumph for the latter more than the former. Norfolk looks, as ever, like a corpse freshly dressed from a mortuary; today burgundy is the cadaver’s colour of choice. If he had loved honour more than power this whole travesty could have been avoided: nay, if he’d loved his religion more than his position, he could have saved England from this tyranny, this butchery.

Pacificus has no trouble raising himself with a hand on the shoulders of two sturdy crowd members, and from there he slides his feet between two soldiers, using their poleaxes as a step to jump into the open space before the scaffold. The whole movement is quicker than a breath. The violated soldiers give a shout, but are so enmeshed by their poleaxes they cannot get free to grab him. The stewards and clerks scatter at one look of the monk’s face, but there are two Tower guards and one courtier who gather their wits enough to draw their rapiers – though even then, they are hardly quick enough for this maniac. Pacificus closes with the first in an instant, pivoting his body round a hundred and eighty degrees along the length of the drawn blade until his left elbow breaks the man’s jaw. His object is to stay the constable’s hand, to buy Robert more time in the noose. Better die there than face the butchers. He barely takes his eyes off him, or Robert’s quivering ankles. He reaches down and removes the guard’s truncheon, and in one movement lets it fly towards the constable’s head. It strikes true and the man stumbles back off the scaffold onto the mud below. But for all that Pacificus is too late; the rope is undone and Robert is crumpling onto the deck. What now?

Pacificus has the first guard’s rapier in his right hand and does not wait for the other two assailants, but rather rushes between them like a wild boar. The first soldier is parried in one blow and his nose broken by Pacificus’s forehead. He falls like a baby. The next is a courtier, whose rapier’s classic Italian-swept hilt indicates to Pacificus, along with his stance, just how he will fight. True to form, the velvet gentleman thrusts his blade just so, according to the Italian school. Pacificus overbalances him and, grabbing his immaculate blue velvet cloak with his left hand, swings him violently into the scaffold. He has barely recovered his beret before Pacificus pummels him unconscious with the hilt of his own sword.

This takes no more than eight seconds, and by now the uproar has started in earnest. He has moments to do what he came for. He takes the courtier’s misericorde dagger, and springs onto the scaffold. Two priests stand aside to the corners of the scaffold, with their new prayer books, as Pacificus goes to work. Robert is lying on his side, hands and ankles tied, panting, and spluttering, “What are you doing here?”

Pacificus cuts the cords on his hands, the tears now coming like hot springs from the depth of his bowels. “Pull your ankles. Spare you.” He’s heaving his sobs and trying to talk through gritted teeth. What now?

He has done this only three times before, and swore each time he could never do it again. And yet here he is. It is called the mercy stroke – the misericordia – a soldier will give it to a dying comrade to speed his end, left arm raised, straight through to the heart. He presses Robert’s forehead against his own. “God save you, Robert! God save you, and God speed.” Robert winces and clutches Pacificus’s shoulder as the blade finds his heart. He gives a long, whispering sigh as life leaves him. A moment later he is limp. Pacificus lets out a prolonged wailing at the same time, as if his whole soul were being torn asunder. At this point he thinks he might just murder Norfolk and tear his black heart out – he can hear the old goat bleating orders to other soldiers. Oh God, that Cromwell were here, then he’d act for sure, but when he staggers to his feet again and sees those pathetic priests he forgets it all. What are men, but grass? It is God he curses and would kill today, for allowing such men and such a world.

He has not thought as far ahead as escape, but no sooner is he up than he sees the empty tumbrel cart arrayed like a ramp to freedom. The Tower guards are rushing to the scaffold now in force and so he takes his chances with the cart. He jumps onto it, getting as much speed as he can in the twelve feet of its boards, and then at the end vaults his body from the small railing at the back, over the soldiers’ heads and crashes headlong into a crowd of sympathetic foundry workers from the Billingsgate works. Two of them, a father and son, help him away back past the ruins of the priory before a search can be made. From there it is a long walk back to Ely Place, and a very long night.