CHAPTER 18

MAÎTRE L’AMBASSADOR

 

 

 

Sapiens nihil affirmat quod non probat

 

A wise man avers nothing he cannot prove

 

 

 

William Beccles, cellarer, is pacing the granary floor barefoot. He clutches his stomach like a woman in labour, all the while proclaiming in his broad dialect the evils of the age and the wickedness of men in general. Pacificus elbows his way into the centre of the torch-lit cluster to see the corpse. Prior Thomas is ordering that it – he – whatever it is – for in truth it is difficult to tell – be taken down for examination. Pacificus interjects that it would be best to leave things untouched for the sheriff to see.

“But we cannot even know who it is!” the prior objects.

Pacificus takes a torch from the hand of one of the brothers, and approaches the bloody carcass. It is suspended two feet from the floor by ropes attached under the arms which have themselves been bound tight. Guts and many quarts of blood form a pool underneath – he has been opened while still alive. Skin is flayed from the back but these wounds have already partially scabbed, whereas the sideways slash across the belly is still dripping. The naked, bloodied corpse hangs forward but it is impossible to find any identifying features, such is the beating it has taken, seemingly on all sides. Pacificus brings the torch close to examine the head wounds.

“What is it, brother?” Beccles says, his voice trembling with horror and dread.

“This man – ” Pacificus says.

“ – then it is a man,” Prior Thomas says, still keeping his distance.

“Yes, gelded; with his parts stuffed in his mouth.”

“Not another of our number, surely?” Prior Robert again.

“I don’t think so,” Pacificus replies, trying to push out of his mind the suspicion forming there. “He’s too tall – and by the looks of him, he’s been tortured first, though I don’t think they ever intended him to live.”

“Holy Mother of God!” William Beccles exclaims.

“Tortured?” This time it is a white-faced Prior Wulfric whose voice gasps from the edge of the darkness.

“Oh yes, brother; tortured for something he knew, brutally and for some time before they let his innards out.”

“Saint Margaret preserve us, no more!” Wulfric steps back, his hand clapped to his mouth.

“Oh, there is more, prior.” Pacificus’s eyes blaze red at him in the firelight. Somehow, he knows it: this thing is linked to Wulfric. “For I’m thinking they did not get what they wanted. Do you see with what rage they bludgeoned his brains out? This was an instrument as heavy as a fuller’s club, but with deep, sharp edges. A mace, perhaps?”

At this there breaks out groans of horror and agitated discussions, before the assembled monks disband to the dorters, leaving the granary locked up against any intrusion, with a very distressed and frightened Brother Porter left to guard all against the coming of the sheriff.

Pacificus breaks his fast in the refectory when morning comes, his mind in turmoil. The cadaver is Filcher, and he examines the mystery, probing its possibilities. Suppose Filcher had other enemies at the abbey? Suppose he was followed – or more likely, supposing he was tied up somehow in this business with the relic and the gold. What better guise for carrying out his negotiations than a travelling player? On the other hand, he might have found someone else to bribe and run foul of them, but how likely is that? No, he was brutally tortured – and it must have been by more than one man – for something he either had or knew.

The sheriff is as thorough as a man can be that whole week long, but without anything to show at the end of it, save several rolls of vellum with his witness statements. He can be forgiven this time, Pacificus thinks; there are wheels within wheels here.

Pacificus himself has an alibi for that night, but he is also not slow to notice Prior Wulfric has mentioned nothing of the scuffle he saw in the lavatorium. That by itself lends credence to his suspicions about Wulfric, yet the prior seemed squeamish about the gore, and genuinely so, but was this another elaborate façade?

The brothers from the disbanded Hickling Priory still maintain a detachment from almost everyone else. Their prior Robert is, if possible, even more aloof and solitary than the Binham brothers. But whereas these Hickling Augustinians stride about the enclave as if they owned it, the Binham men, like sheep, are never seen in less than threes. Pacificus knows well what this means; these men are in mortal fear of something or someone. He meets Prior Robert one night on the night stair to the dorter. He is ascending after Nocturnes, having stayed behind a long while to meditate after the others had gone up, and there is the Augustinian coming down. Pacificus is half-asleep and backs down, for he has only just started. Aeyns does not acknowledge it, nor even make any attempt to explain where he is going at such an hour.

Pacificus raises these things with Prior Thomas. “Are they part of our house or not? They eat with us, but will you find them one time in ten at Vespers or Terce? And they work? Or do they – ”

“Brother, things are complicated here, and I am prior,” is all he can get out of Prior Thomas. “You have my word this is all noted and reported to the bishop, but I cannot act beyond his authority in this matter. Trust me, you must just leave them be for now.”

From this day on, Pacificus is rarely separated from his basilard. This is a deep business to be sure; he cannot fathom it.

 

Then strangest of all comes the news, towards the end of the week, that no less than Eustace Chapuys, ambassador for the emperor, has departed from London for Saint Benet’s. He visits ostensibly to escape an outbreak of French pox in the city. Bishop Rugge has offered him lodging at the palace in Norwich but he has refused. “No, Saint Benet’s out on your marshes, my dear bishop. This will be just the thing: tranquillity and contemplation.”

Rugge understands exactly what it means, and tells Pacificus as much. “Watch that magpie like a fox. If he’s not after our eggs then I know nothing. Watch him; watch Wulfric too – he will make treaty with us now, so I’ve heard.”

“Heard from whom?” Pacificus leans forward to the edge of his chair in the bishop’s small dark study with its smoky fire, a place where he seems to spend more and more time these days.

“Now then, Pacificus, you can’t expect me to reveal all my sources.” He leans forward at the desk and gives a knowing smile. “Don’t worry. You’ll know all you need, when you need, only we must close this reliquary business with Wulfric before Chapuys reveals his hand.”

“And you are sure he will speak with us now?”

“Oh, yes. Particularly after that grisly set-to with the player in the granary. A bad business, that; wouldn’t be surprised if Chapuys had a hand in it.”

“And he will talk with me? But not your other sources?” Pacificus doesn’t like this one bit. Who in hell’s teeth are these others, anyway?

Rugge mutters something whimsical about velvet gloves and iron fists. “For once you are my soft solution, Pacificus, so bring him in. We’ll give him what he wants – an abbacy even – so long as it is at Saint Benet’s and nowhere else. Wulfric knows where he is safe; he knows.”

Pacificus nods and gets up to go, but the bishop holds out his ring for yet another kiss. Pacificus frowns at the imposition, thinking of Cromwell’s ape again – plus apparent posteriora eius,²⁷ but even so he complies with the courtesy. Does he need all this reassurance of fealty now? Does he think he can no longer rely on my conscience?

Rugge interrupts the internal monologue of resentment. “Remember, brother, Chapuys is a talker – the sort of player who’d get you to save your castle by surrendering your bishop. Just warning you ahead of time.”

 

Pacificus arrives at the castle prison in a less than congenial mood. Why have a velvet glove and an iron fist working separately? He feels vulnerable and exposed, and this he does not like. It shows in the brooding, lowered brow, which Elizabeth Fenton sees and questions at once.

She is looking well, and she has new clothes – no doubt from you-know-who. He does not mention it for fear of sounding jealous. The thought crosses his mind that it would be a pleasant thing for every man to have someone like her to talk things through with, but he says that he is not at liberty to discuss it. He gives her what news he has of her children, and when she is done wringing from him every last detail, with return messages following, he then also produces the books from his satchel. She clasps her hands to her breast in delight, then places both sets of fingers over her lips as each volume is laid upon the table. She is as excited as a young maid at her first rush-bearing festival, and for a moment Pacificus imagines her to be twenty years younger.

They talk together of Langland and Gower, comparing favourite verses, though never do they coincide. Eventually they talk piously about Marie de France’s Lais, though the intimacy of the subject matter gives him a dry mouth and a beaded brow. He must swallow hard as he talks. She thinks this modesty fits him well, and later admits that she has never discussed these things with another man save her father and brothers. “My husband was the best of men, but he did not approve of any worldly books – only the Scriptures.”

“And you disagreed?”

“It was not my place to say.” She looks down to her lap, but he can see the corners of her lips catch in a smile. She lifts her eyes and gazes past him to the window. “But if I had a disagreement with our sect,” she says, “it was this way they shunned the whole world; not just its sinful ways but also its art, its literature, its philosophy. As if an un-Christian man – even though he were made in the image of God – could not produce anything worthy to be studied, admired or discussed. By cutting ourselves off from the world, I fear many of our number will not be salt in it.”

“Come out of her, my people, and be ye separate, less you partake in her judgments.” Pacificus is aware of the dilemma. As a monk, how can he not be? They forget this, these schismatics.

“Ah, so you know the Scriptures, brother, but I cannot think it means we should leave the whole world to go unsalted. God says, by Moses in Deuteronomy, that the pagan cities he would give them were beautiful cities, and were not they wicked nations? I fancy they were.”

“We” – he means we monks – “have managed to be separate, but, I hope, also integrated. Perhaps you have missed your vocation.” He is teasing her and she smiles coyly. Even so, he could imagine her as a wonderful abbess.

“It is easy for you monks. You are hand in glove with the state – at least you were. You will find it different when you are hounded about as we are, and perhaps that is why our people so scorn the world in its entirety – ”

“What, that they are excluded?” Pacificus says.

“Yes, they have no leisure perhaps, but maybe someday there will be a place for them, a country of their own, where men may worship and believe as they choose. Perhaps then they will be free to write, to sing, to paint beautiful things.”

“Maybe, or they might stay the same, or force everyone to be as they are, or perhaps it is God’s will for them to stay and change this isle, for surely it’s all change here now.”

She does not think it could be so and they talk of the possibilities of new lands, as if he himself were a heretic like she. When they touch upon the Spaniards’ New World, he feels his heart rise, unusually so, but perhaps it is just her. Maybe everyone yearns for a new promised land, no rules or rulers, no gibbets, no scaffolds. Luther looks back to Augustine, Zwingli to Origen, Michelangelo to Arcadia, Rugge to the bishop kings of the old time – even he himself to some vague chivalrous past, when pious kings deferred to yet more pious Popes, a time before all these schismatics – a past he now suspects never existed. Then perhaps it is Eden they all seek. Perhaps that is the danger.

Then, to end the sad procession of captives, here come these lunatic Anabaptists – and what do they want? Only the lot of the early church, a small remnant in a pagan society, struggling to convince a sceptical world that they are not seditious but the only answer to the deep needs of the rest. He knows the argument all too well by now, had it hammered into him good and hard by his brother, and is by no means won over. If anything, Pacificus sees the unlikeliness of it, a small possibility illuminated for the briefest moment in the rays of late afternoon sunlight against the darkened gritstone of her cell walls. How small and fleeting is an idea, a possibility. So easy to ignore these visionaries, to be a coward caught up in the business of life, too fully occupied for such insubstantial things as dreams and truth.

They talk easily, their conversation ranging over many thing – poetry, art, music. When it comes to art, Pacificus cannot resist telling her of his own work. He hates himself for it – it is not humble, it is vainglory – but he does it nonetheless.

“I… I – er – I have come to believe – nay, hope – and I only speak from experience – that when I paint, I worship God by it – my painting, that is.” He is fishing for a compliment and he knows it, so he adds, “Though many times I fear that it, and everything else I have done, is not much, nor cannot be acceptable to him.”

She says that without faith it is impossible to please God. Why does she always say things like that? Always faith, always something amorphous and unattainable. Worse yet, she goes on to admit she cannot in conscience look upon religious art in the style in which he paints, without some pain. He questions her further, pushing down in himself the personal rejection and the feeling that he need justify himself.

“It is all part of the world that murdered my husband and orphaned my children.” She swallows the tears and gives him a stare he will never forget. And then she says – perhaps to repay him, he fancies – that she thinks there is much to commend the new art.

Things start to warm up. He will not be told about art, not by her. Has she been to Florence or Rome? He has. Has she seen the way these Renaissance men think; how reduced their view of reality is? To what madness it may lead? He has – or at least thinks he has. He tells her about the way Michelangelo carves – or half-carves – men emerging from the rock. He, Pacificus, had thought them half-finished, but no, the sculpture itself is the statement; men are emerging, evolving to greater and greater possibilities.

“In the old days, our fathers – nay, even the ancients like Plato and Aristotle – looked back and knew things had been better, and they worked to improve the world without hoping for too much. But these dreamers will make us all mad with their talk of the limitless possibilities for ourselves and our society.”

She lets him go on and have his little rant. When he has said his piece, she is ready with her rejoinder. “For myself, I think the metaphor of men trapped in rock is an apt one. Perhaps it is too close for comfort, or some choose to misinterpret it – ” and now she turns the fury for her husband’s death onto him, “ – particularly those who are content to keep the old order unchanged because it suits them.”

There is nothing more to say. She has been monstrously unfair, he thinks. Celibacy weighs light again, and they part with cold courtesies. Two minutes after he has gone, she relents and wishes she could have apologised. It’s because the monk is so frustrating and confusing to her. How can he see so many things, feel so many things, and yet remain the enslaved eunuch of such a system? Thoughts crowd in on her, redoubling her fury, and she cradles the knotting in her bowels; but then she stands up straight, treading the paved floor with clenched fists – kicking the straw. If he had defended the church by saying thus, then I would have said thus, and thus. And if he had tried to counter with that, then I would have… her eyes alight on the books. Ah, but he did not say anything, only slunk away like a wounded puppy. Men are so frustrating! She lays her hand on the Langland and sits, restively, once more. He has been kind, very kind, she thinks, then adds: to the children.

 

Ambassador Chapuys arrives two days later on the Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile Pacificus has not been idle. If Rugge is to be believed, the reluctant Wulfric has been scared – by the murders – into opening negotiations with the bishop through Pacificus, but not until the other main contender for the relics is virtually at the door. Wulfric is either the cleverest negotiator or the maddest gambler Pacificus has yet come across. He approaches Wulfric on two occasions during the preceding days, both times making clear the extent of the bishop’s offer, but neither time getting an answer. “I will think well on it,” is all he says, “and I will give you my answer presently.”

Pacificus sees what is happening: the fellow is holding out to weigh both offers. What should he do? Shake the answer out of him? Rugge said he must be gentle with Wulfric, and he usually obeys orders. Nevertheless the sands are almost drained through the glass in this case, and it is always easier to better a known offer. Tenure of any English monastic house is uncertain in the present hour, so anything Chapuys offers under the emperor’s protection is bound to look more attractive.

And then, of course, there’s old Hastings and his guilty conscience; Pacificus doubts anything could be done to help him, even for old times’ sake. His own conscience is by no means unsullied either. In times past he has maintained a clear rationale for bearing arms against the Ottomans. But this – this intrigue over bones and pilgrimages, just to save one religious house? It smacks of abominable self-interest and he knows it. What should he do? He decides to suppress his doubts and act for the bishop, rather relinquishing the responsibility of questionable acts to someone in authority. It is easily and painlessly done.

Perhaps what is less excusable is the way he involves the Fenton children as accomplices. Simon is not there when they agree, but makes his mind known soon after. The Fenton children on the other hand, along with Pieter – though not Sarah – had been only too happy to repay Pacificus for all he had done for them.

The children take up positions around the abbey in accordance with his instructions on the Thursday evening at sunset. Pieter patrols along the abbey wharf and outside the abbot’s lodging in his flatboat pretending to catch eels; Beth, Piers and Simon in the outer precincts and amongst the fishponds, herbarium and gardens; and Richard, Mark and Pacificus in the inner precincts. If anything is said, any private meetings are held in cloister, wharf or gardens, they must see and hear it. Mark shadows Wulfric as closely as he dare, as does Pacificus. Richard is dressed as a visiting page with the ambassador’s party, but the other children are not so fortunate, having muddy rags and little else.

Chapuys stays with ten retainers in the abbot’s lodgings. Prior Thomas has graciously given way to him, laying on a special banquet with roasted swan and three other poultry dishes, all shot by his own fair hand. He proves an excellent host, all teasing and bonhomie. Chapuys is obviously impressed by him, and perhaps it is as well Prior Thomas knows nothing of the skulduggery going on all around him.

Pacificus is invited by request of none other than Chapuys himself, sent for after Vespers to join them for a dish of strawberries – and Sack, the strong, sweet Spanish wine Chapuys has brought as a gift. The cook marvels about it as he leads Pacificus up the stairs. “Three shillings and fourpence a gallon that, and we’ve heard tell he’s got some aqua vitae to follow! Not short of a shilling, these Frenchies!”

They pass the ambassador’s retainers in the hall and on the landing. No courtiers they, Pacificus thinks; you can dress a man in silk stockings and velvet, but the face of a soldier remains unmistakable – the hardening of the brow, the coldness in the eyes of one who has spilt blood like pouring water. He looks each one in the eye and thinks there are at least three here he would be glad not to meet in a dark alley.

Chapuys is nursing a large glass of Sack by the fire. He still wears his large fur travelling cloak over his grey silk doublet with its bright silver buttons, and his small deep-set eyes brighten as Pacificus enters the room. “Ah, bien! Bien! Frère Pacificus, you will forgive me. I have your English summer cold.” He does not get up but rather sniffles into an embroidered handkerchief. “Ah, insupportable! But better than your sweats! Ah, forgive me, please sit with us!”

It is just them, the prior, and Chapuys’ wiry retainer – a hawkish cavaliere, his hair jet black and smooth as a cat, keeping his own counsel by the door. Pacificus observes him carefully, to see how he is armed, before giving Chapuys fuller attention. He only has a sleeve dagger, good – that makes two of them if it comes to it.

“You must not mind François; he cannot help his face. But he is very helpful in other ways on occasions, n’est ce pas, François?”

The man bows slightly, as a bull might if you yanked its nose ring. Pacificus had not thought Chapuys even noticed where he had been looking. Those little Savoy eyes of his are sharp ones. He’ll be more careful next time. “I cannot eat fruit now. It will unbalance my humours. Frère Pacificus will have mine.”

He gestures for Pacificus to take the bowl, but he refuses. God, these French are rude – wearing his Florentine velvet hat at table! No, I won’t eat your strawberries; poisoned for all I know. He raises a hand of gentle refusal.

“Oh, but you must.”

“Tout à fait délicieux, et je vous remercie, mais non, monsieur.”

“Ah, so you have a little language. But of course you have.” Chapuys raises his eyebrows above the brim of the glass. His lips purse tight in a deliberate consolidation as he does so, and for a long moment the two men stare at each other across the fireplace.

The prior tries to lift the atmosphere with an anecdote about strawberries and the Bishop of Wells, but he knows no one is listening to him by now. Chapuys waits until he finishes and then raises a finger to command attention. “My dear prior, you have been a host par excellence ce soir, but I would like some minutes alone with this brother, if you would oblige me.”

“But of course, ambassador. In fact there are some matters to which I must attend in the abbey.”

“You are very kind, and have my thanks.”

When the door is closed, Chapuys replaces his glass on the table and joins his fingers together, brooding. “François aime bien les fraises, n’est ce pas?” François walks round the table and takes a chair beside Pacificus. “Oui, je les adore.” He starts to eat them, his face close to the bowl, like a peasant. But what will he do when the bowl is empty? Pacificus cannot watch his front and back at the same time.

“You know why we are here?” Chapuys mumbles through his steepled fingers. “But of course you know. You want the same thing.”

Pacificus has had enough of games. He swivels round and kicks François’ chair from under him, at the same time drawing the basilard dagger tied to his own arm. Before François can even remove the spoon from his mouth, his face is pressed hard into the bowl of strawberries and a blade is prodding his jugular.

“Mon frère!”

“Do not cry out, or I swear you will both die. Reach for that blade, François, and it will be the last thing you do.”

“Mon frère – ” Chapuys whispers.

“What I want, Chapuys, is justice for the men who murdered a novice here last March, and the player who was butchered within these sacred walls last week.”

“But wait – wait! The man Filcher was our initial negotiator. It was not we who did this. I swear it upon the Virgin. In fact, we thought it was you – this is why we have come with such an escort.”

“And the novice Bede?”

“I represent the Holy Roman Empire! What need have I to murder novices? The emperor has personal reasons for wanting what you have here, and he is prepared to pay generously for it. There is no question of murder – really. Mon frère, please!”

There follows a brief time for the cogs to turn. Chapuys is telling the truth, he thinks. That does not leave many other candidates. He wishes he could even now be watching Prior Robert and the Augustinians. God, how could he have been such a coxcomb not to see what was under his nose?

“Please, mon frère, release François, and let us speak together as gentlemen.” Chapuys removes his hat to reveal a thinning head of grey hair. He is the same age as Pacificus and looks it.

Pacificus releases François, but cautiously and not before having his weapon. “You thought those acts of unspeakable violence were committed by me?”

“But of course. You are the bishop’s man, it is known to us, and with your past – ” Chapuys shrugs, turning down the corners of his mouth in that particularly French grimace, as if to say, “Well? What can you expect?”

“My past?” Pacificus is feeling ill disposed towards his bishop, but without reason on this occasion, for the information has come from another, more illustrious source.

“But of course. You did not think you could simply disappear? Your grandmaster Philippe Villiers de L’Isle-Adam was a favourite with the emperor, as I’m sure you know. He spoke of you often.”

“He was a noble knight, a great soldier.”

Chapuys nods. “I knew him too, though not closely.”

Pacificus releases pent-up breath, placing his basilard on the table as he does so. “And so the emperor wants the saint?”

Chapuys leans forward. “Look, I know your bishop has ideas for her, but he is behind the times. The big houses will fall – the Cluniac house at Lewes is in negotiations even now – c’est l’inévitable.” He gestures in resignation. “I did my best for Queen Katherina, God rest her, against that Boleyn whore, and I will do what I can for Princess Mary, but you see the times, non? I have it from someone at court that a new act to ban the veneration of relics altogether is being drafted, and then where will the saint’s holy bones be? Maybe cast into the heretics’ fires! No, you must obey the emperor in this. It is your duty as a true son of the church. We will find a way to make it up to the bishop, but we must act in the wider interest. Alors, as Mary is the mother of Christ, so Helena is the mother of the Church Triumphant. If Cromwell should get her…” Chapuys makes a swift sign of the cross then, half-throwing his arms up in despair, or at least as much as he can muster with his summer cold. “Merde, we shall not think of it!”

“And Prior Wulfric and the brothers?”

Chapuys waves his hand again – they’re good at this, the French – this time dismissively. “Strange man. He will get some of what he asks – you know he will deal with none but me!” He now begins to gesticulate with his free hand – Pacificus has forgotten how much the continentals do this. “Bringing me all this way when I am unwell! Yes, yes, he may be near the saint, but as for a new Order of Saint Helen, or his plans to see the mother of Constantine raise up another Church Triumphant from her bones to renew Christendom – well, we must let the emperor decide later.”

“And God.”

“Yes, but of course – and God.” He gives Pacificus a steady stare. There is a difference between polity and piety, mon frère.

“And these injunctions against venerating images – you are sure?” These ambassadors didn’t get where they were by telling the whole truth.

“Oh yes, absolument, ami, and pilgrimages too; little by little these filthy varlets nibble away at true religion like rats. They will not stop, I tell you, not until they are as godless as the Lutherans.” He picks the glass up once more, swirling the contents as if conjuring a solution. “I am told many hundred pious friars, priests and monks have starved to death in Newgate, the Marshalsea, and other places this summer – there is no law in this land. You are under the hand of pagan despots. We must stand together, non? Or else be divided, and fall.”

When he sees Pacificus nod, he continues carefully, “You will not, I hope, stand in our way? We have come prepared to take it back with us – you understand?”

Pacificus sighs. “No. I won’t stand in your way – ”

“Ah, bon! This is what I wish to hear!” Chapuys sits back in his chair. “I have so little good news for the emperor these days, but this at least is something.”

“But take heed of the Augustinians,” Pacificus cautions, “for they are in this business up to their elbows – ”

“Yes, I see. My men will see to it. François!” He turns to his retainer – who by now has cleaned his face and is standing back at the door. “Allez! Vite! Take Armand, Jacques Touland, and those three fat ones; fetch me Wulfric. Take no excuses, and watch out for these Augustinians. Allez! Maintenant!”

“I will go too, ambassador. I am afraid that if there be mischief abroad in this cloister – ”

“Not quite yet! There is one other matter we must discuss first.”

He waits while Pacificus reseats himself. “That concerns me?”

“Oui.”

“My past?”

“Your future.” There is a pause to allow Chapuys to savour his drink once again, which he does, with a winning smile. “You will know the emperor is occupied with the menace in the east – that matters are acute?”

Pacificus is blunt. “He should have had a mind to it sooner.”

“Yes, yes; there is much, as we say, chagrin at court; that His Holiness went unheeded, and no force was marshalled for your aid during the siege.”

Pacificus sets his jaw; they had another word for it on Rhodes, when two hundred thousand Mohammedans were breaching the citadel for eight months. Chapuys’ playful smile sobers under Pacificus’s stare, and he raises suppliant hands in half-surrender. “Yes, yes, all right, Hugh. It was a disgrace. But neither was the infighting ameliorated by your king and his whore, so let the past be past. We learn from it avec des remonstrances douces et tranquilles, n’est ce pas? And doucement; that is, with meekness and entre nous-mêmes.”

Yes, ambassador, Pacificus thinks, his teeth almost grinding together. We can all twist the words of Saint François de Sales if we want.

“But to my point.” Chapuys coughs. “We are having this conversation because de L’Isle-Adam, de Ponte, de Saint-Jaille are dead, and after this debacle in Tripoli, the emperor does not have confidence in Grandmaster de Homedes. The times being as they are, he needs a tactician, someone consciencieux – ”

“You may tell the emperor that I am flattered, but I cannot.”

“But surely – la gloire, l’honeur – to be Grandmaster?”

“Ambassador, please!” Pacificus spreads his fingers, trying hard to control his blood. “I answer as Achilles did Odysseus, that I would rather be the slave of the worst of masters, yes, even this Tudor king, than rule down there among all the breathless dead.”

“But the Barbary Corsairs grow in strength and impudence; the seas must be swept!”

“I repeat: I cannot.”

“Mon frère, think about your reputation, the survival of Christendom. Vienna might have been another story. He knows that. We are not as strong as we were – please, mon frère – ”

“The answer is still no. By my oath, if God wants a Church Triumphant, let him fight for her himself! I have slain my last infidel.” Damn him, should I show him the scars on my arms, my back, my chest, my soul? We buried the flower of the European nobility – nay the bravest men in Christendom – during that bloody summer, while they held their masked balls.

“I see, I see! And if they order you?”

“Then they should come with more than just pretty commissions.”

“But why? You could be Grandmaster?”

“Because – because – I am not that man any more!” What else can I tell him that he would understand? Tell him about Rhodes, about Lincoln, about York, about God? Tell him about Darcy and Aske at the scaffold? Better that, I suppose, than that Anabaptists are making my head soft, or worse – a woman.

Chapuys can see that the conversation is about to become unnecessarily heated, and that he will get nowhere in any event. So, with a magnanimous gesture with a hand freed from his glass, he smiles once more and bows slightly from his chair. They part amicably, Pacificus returning to the yard to find Richard. But the lad is nowhere to be seen in the courtyard, and it is now dark. Pacificus walks towards the precinct gate with swift steps and increasing pulse. Where is he? Where’s the lad? I shouldn’t have brought him here. Then comes the slap-slap of sandals on the abbey path. Richard appears at the gate, breathless and trembling. “Oh, thank God! You must come quick – hurry!”

“What is it?”

“There were screams from the abbey – the most horrible screams!”

Pacificus loops up his habit and they make all speed towards the great doors. Other monks appear from the guest hall, milling about the abbey’s west door. There is no sign of François and his friends. They dodge past the gathering brothers, darting through the great doors into the cool, damp gloom of the abbey nave.

Pacificus lays a cautioning hand on Richard’s arm, and they pause to listen above the beating of their hearts. There are no more than a few lights burning in the sconces, but even so, they see well enough to satisfy themselves there are no signs of trouble here, and no screams can be heard now. Through the gloom and the small pools of light, they see Prior Thomas standing near the altar with a few others who have come from the dorter and through the south door. But they too are searching for the source of the disturbance; they are not part of it.

“Quickly now,” Pacificus says, towing Richard along by the arm, skirting the abbey interior, taking the shadows of the left ambulatory. They are only halfway down when a hand reaches from the blackness of the crypt doorway, and fastens on to Richard’s arm.