CHAPTER 35

MICHAELMAS EVE

 

 

 

Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem

 

The one hope for the doomed is to give up all hope of safety – virgil

 

 

 

“They’re closing the gate.” Mark rejoins the group at the back of Will Short’s forge in the castle yard.

“Then let us stay quiet and out of sight.” Pacificus crouches under a workbench feeling very old and ill-humoured. The women have tended his wounds with such remedies and cures as can be found in the shambles, but he charged them not to be seen in the main part of the city, lest they be recognised. By now they will be approaching the unguarded section of wall with the weapons. They will have to work fast to retrieve them while the guard is being changed. “Are you ready?” he says to Richard.

Richard nods and they head out into the dusk, leaving Mark, Piers and Simon at the forge. Will and Tom are still working at the front, keeping an eye on the castle yard. Their shop has a rear staircase to the walls, so it is ideal for the night’s work. Richard’s heart is in his mouth, thumping louder than his feet on the worn Caen limestone steps. The night is still, but not too cold. The wind has blown itself out, leaving an unnerving quiet over the city. He reaches the wall first; no sign of a watch. He gives Pacificus the hand signal that all is clear and they move to the parapet.

“No, the other end,” Pacificus whispers. “I told them the other end of the wall by the keep.”

They move swiftly to the part of the wall where the steps mount towards the keep, and there below them they see the squat forms of Beth and Moll with their bundles. Pacificus makes Richard secure the rope to himself before letting it down. One slip of the wrist and the whole night will be over before it is started. Moll and Beth tie their bundles to the rope end, giving a tug to signal they are finished. Richard and Pacificus together haul it hand over hand, hand over hand; always looking and watching, always listening and praying. Pacificus is mainly using his right arm, for the left is weak from his wound. He can see the women heading back down the bank in silence. They do well to be away from this place, and their trails through the dewy, ungrazed banks will hopefully complete their deception. For Pacificus’s plan is to relieve the turnkey of his keys, Elizabeth Fenton of her fetters, and then feign an escape over the castle wall by rope, all the time hiding out at the forge until the gates re-open in the morning. And while the city gates, streets and London road are searched, they will smuggle her away in the dung cart to Dragon Wharf, where Pieter will be waiting to take them to Yarmouth the next night, and from there with Toppes’ Pelican to Antwerp. It’s not the best plan he ever made, and he could have wished for a little more time at the prison, to watch the movements from outside. But things are as they are, and he knows the balance of any campaign is with the Lord of Hosts, so he is content to let it be.

“Easy now as they come over, lad. Good, that’s right.”

They handle the hessian bundles with care, one for each man’s back, and are soon away back down the steps. Simon primes the matchlocks with wad. These are more for show, for deterrent and wounding if need be. They don’t expect to use them, but as Simon himself had said, “speak soft and carry a big stick”. He’s been coughing again, but has told no one about the blood. He is apprehensive too, more about meeting the woman he abandoned with child than the danger of rousing the sheriff’s men at the guardhouse. He sits by himself, chapped fingers trembling over the steel, checking the locks, the wicks, keeping other thoughts at bay. Not long to wait now. The guards usually take a turn of the walls when they come on duty before going to their card games. The slow hum of coals and occasional gust of the bellows are the only sounds now. Piers squats like a squirrel under the bench, the whites of his eyes looking skyward through the opening. Richard fits his sword belt, and tries to make sure no one sees that his hand shakes like a wet dog.

Eventually they hear the new guard on the wall, the coarse joking, the tread as heavy as clay, scraping along the flags like foot-worn travellers.

“Were you ever afraid?” Richard says. “In the siege of Rhodes, I mean.”

“Half to death,” Pacificus says without hesitation. “At the sight of two hundred thousand men, anyone would soil his breeches. I know I did.”

“You did?” Simon speaks finally.

“That I did, brother, but I was too weak and vain to tell anyone, especially you.”

“Me?” He wished he had.

“Well, I knew you were inclined to believe the myth of the paladin invincible. I didn’t want you to think less of me. I was a hypocrite, and I am sorry for it now.”

“What was it like?” Piers says. “Do tell us about it!”

“What? Being scared enough to soil my hose, or the siege of Rhodes? Oh. Well, it was as bright a day as we ever saw, just two days after the feast of Saint John. I was up at the English Langue – that is, the priory where we lived – when I heard the cry go up from the watch that finally he had come.”

“Who?” Piers and Richard say in unison.

“Mustafa Pasha, Suleiman’s brother-in-law.”

“On his own?” Piers waits, breathless for the story.

“No, not quite. When I looked over the north wall of the fortress I counted over a hundred galleys, and there were another three hundred vessels off the coast – dare say such a thing will never be seen again while the earth lasts.”

“Oh. Not alone, then,” Piers says.

“Not one wit,” Simon chips in. “He had a hundred and twenty thousand men and a further sixty thousand Balkan peasants for labour – like locusts from hell they were. And a week later Suleiman himself arrived with more fresh troops so the artillery could keep up their bombardment of our landward fortifications day and night, week on week, with infantry attacks in between, all through the late summer. But the Langues of Provence, Spain and England held their positions.”

“Then on the 4th of September,” Pacificus continued, “two huge gunpowder mines exploded under the bastion of England, bringing down twelve yards of wall which filled the moat. It must have seemed to Mustafa that his god had sent him a perfect way into the bastion.”

“Oh, no!” Piers is spellbound. “What did you do?”

“It was our section of wall,” Simon answers. “We were sworn to defend it.”

“The Turks rushed to the gap like flies to meat, but we English brothers under Fra Nicholas Hussey held an inner barricade, and we were soon joined by Grandmaster Villiers de l’Isle. It was hot work, I can tell you. We regrouped and sallied forth on the heathen, driving them back and capturing the Turkish standards.”

“You took them, Hugh,” Simon says.

“No more than the brothers who fell in the rout.”

“But was that the end of it?” Richard asks.

“It was not. Twice more Mustafa repeated his assault on the damaged bastion of England and twice more the English brothers drove him back, helped by some Germans who had rushed through the town to aid them. The Saracen lost over two thousand men during these assaults and Pasha himself had to be dragged away by his own men after all around were fleeing. He decided to risk everything on a final assault and on the 24th of September, watched by Suleiman from a hillock, they came at us and the bastions of Spain, Provence and Italy with everything they had. Wave after wave of Turkish infantry followed, skies as black as hell with the powder, the gunfire shaking your ribcage until you thought your innards would collapse. They came to the walls, fighting us with matchlock and scimitar. The bastion of Spain changed hands twice that afternoon, and the sea beside the Italians was red with blood. We had only about two hundred dead and less than that wounded, but Mustafa lost three thousand that day.”

“So you showed him, didn’t you!” Piers says.

“They were still out there, spread over the land like the plagues of Egypt. Suleiman was enraged and paraded his entire army to witness his brother-in-law Pasha shot to death by arrows. He spared him only after one of the elders pleaded for his mercy.”

“Nice brother!” Piers says, looking at Richard, who in turn is looking to the back stairs of the forge where they too will soon be going to face their fate on the battlements. He wipes sweaty palms on his hose and nods.

Pacificus continues, “Suleiman was about to pack up and raise the siege when an Albanian deserter was brought to his tent, claiming we had lost so many men they could not face another assault. So he appointed a new commander, Ahmed Pasha, an elderly engineer, who resumed the barrage on the walls, which were by now badly damaged in many places with nobody left to repair them. Some Turkish slaves escaped and began to burn the town, but they were soon rounded up and executed.”

“And it was then,” Simon adds, “at the end of September, that a servant of the Prior of Castile and Grand Chancellor d’Amarel, was caught shooting messages into the Turkish camp. After torture, he implicated his master, and Andrea d’Amaral was solemnly degraded from his vows in front of the whole order – ”

“Doesn’t sound very harsh – ” Richard says, his sense of justice inflamed.

“ – and beheaded for treason,” Pacificus adds. “All October and November the barrage continued, but weak though we were, we beat them back.”

“November! Could you not get word to the heads of Europe?” Richards says.

“Yes, many times but – ” Pacificus says, his voice trailing off.

“They were busy fighting each other,” Simon explains. “Still, we were not the only ones in trouble. Suleiman’s army was weakened by exhaustion, disease and famine. He couldn’t go on fighting all winter, so he made a fair offer to the townsfolk: peace, their lives and food if they surrendered the city. But threatening to put them to the sword and under slavery if he had to enter by force. The grandmaster was obliged by the island’s leaders to accept a three day truce in mid-December. But it did not go well. The locals demanded further assurance of their safety and welfare from Suleiman, and that’s when he swore by the beards and graves of his ancestors to have all their heads. He ordered his men to begin the bombardment of the town again. By the 17th of December the bastion of Spain fell once more, and after that it was only a matter of time before the whole city went.”

Pacificus rubs a hand over his face and hair. He can feel the sweat all over just at the thought of it.

“Was there really nothing you could do, having come so far?” Piers says.

“Some wanted to fight on,” Simon looks cautiously at his brother who is staring intently towards the light of the forge, “death rather than dishonour, but the ramparts and walls were mostly rubble by now. To continue was suicide. On the 20th of December the grandmaster asked for a fresh truce, and this time we got good terms for us and the islanders, better than we had hoped for. On the evening of the 1st of January 1523 we marched out of the town in parade order, to the sound of a lone trumpet blast, banners flying and in full battle armour, and the drums beating a regular tattoo. We went to the island of Crete, the last crusading state, in fifty ships, defeated and homeless.”

“And you came back to England?” Mark says.

“Aye, we came back, I for my body, him for his soul, and so you see us this day, for the rest you know.”

 

“They’re at cards, me lads; Father says you can do what you will now.” It is Tom Short at the cloth partition.

“I thank you, Tom,” Richard says. “We are in your debt.”

“Ha! Well, master, the devil may pay for aught I care.” Tom takes one last look at Pacificus. “Go easy on Turnkey Salcott; he ain’t a bad’un at heart, and he’s been gentle to your mother, Master Richard.”

“He’ll suffer no harm by us,” Pacificus says. “Now on your way, young squire, and look to your father.”

“That I will – God speed you!”

After these farewells, Pacificus says to Mark, “You remember your part? Wait ’till Piers sends that arrow, then off to the wall with the rope, and over you go – do not look back, not for anything. Rejoin the womenfolk and stay still ’till morning. You understand?” Mark nods, and Pacificus takes his head in one hand. “Then God speed you, lad.” Then to the others: “We make our prayer to God for the defence of true justice; we owe no man harm here, so aim low if you must, and by God’s grace we will leave this place alive with your mother unharmed. Brother, are your legs troubling you?”

“Stiff from all this tarrying. Give me your hand and let us away.”

Piers holds his father’s bow and basilard, Richard the matchlock and sword. Each staring to the door of their departure with uncertain eyes – hands greasing their weapons. A moment later they are on the stairway to the wall with Simon behind them. He wears again the black garb belonging to Mark’s father, with the ebony mask. But this time he cannot walk far without a support, and his breathing is strained by the time they arrive on the wall. They pass in silence to the foot of the keep, then mount the steps towards the door. These upper chambers hold a great hall and the one-time royal quarters of that first Henry, with a parlour, bedrooms and a chapel. Most rooms here are now cells – one had been Rugge’s three years back – but they are the jailer’s lodgings too. They listen at the door and glance about them: from this vantage point the city lies spread beneath them. Pacificus sees the Erpingham gate and the cathedral spire. He wonders what the bishop is doing this night; if he has taken seriously the chance to amend his life. He can hear no sound at the latch but the scratchings of the rats and chatter of women.

Pacificus enters the deserted and unlit corridor. Piers almost barges past him, for he knows his mother will be in the first cell on the right. In a trice he is whispering at her door and his eyes light up like a primed matchlock when her voice reaches his ears.

“Piers? Piers?”

“Yes, Mother! Here to set you free!”

“What, you? But who – ”

“Do not fret, it is all arranged; Pacificus and Simon are here.”

“Simon? Who is Simon?”

“Do you not know? Pacificus’s brother; he is just coming in now – he was a knight too.”

But even as he gabbles his almost incoherent greeting, she is echoing, “His brother? But Cecil is dead! Did he not say as much?”

Her bewildered questioning is cut short by Pacificus’s voice. “Look to it! You two guard this door, Richard and I will get the keys.” The sound of quick steps fades on the other side of her door, leaving the chattering of Piers and awkward shuffles of another near him. Her hands and ear are on the weathered oak, her heart quickening that her prayers should be answered in this way, but she is also shocked to contemplate that the man who inflicted such a deep wound is now but inches from her fingers. She recoils from the wood and through Piers’s words speaks as tentatively as you might put forth fingers to flame. “Cecil?” The restless steps stop, but no answer is forthcoming. “Is… is that you, Cecil?”

“That’s his name, and Mama, you should have been there when Miller tried to take us off the ship; he stuck him like a goose!”

“Cecil?” she says, ignoring her son now, her voice belying her urgency.

“Come, Simon,” Piers whispers. “Will you not say aught to my mother?”

But Simon shoos him away with a wave of the hand, turning to the wall, then again back to the door. Tonight he faces all his demons, every one of them. Every sinew screams that he should run. The door is there, the stairs. He is no man’s slave to have his past dragged up again. Are all men’s actions ripples that go on forever? Must all sins be present in the universe, unforgotten? Why in Christ’s name must he be involved in the restitution of his past? Would it not increase Christ’s glory to attend to all things with each sinner in absentia? Dear God, there she is calling my name again; now I know how Adam felt. He’d be anywhere else in the world right now. Where in hell is Hugh?

 

Pacificus holds a wheellock to the head of the lad who acts as servitor and watchman for the Salcott quarters. He had been slumped asleep on a low bench by the outer door. “Your master in, is he?” The wretch never heard them coming and even now has the look of a man who is unsure whether he wakes or dreams. “Come now, to your feet, and knock for your master.”

“Are – are you going to shoot me?” He abandons his cudgel on the floor, backing along the wall.

“That I will, if you do not ask Master Salcott to open to you: in a plain voice – a plain voice, you hear?”

“Aye, I’ll do it, that I will and gladly, only keep your finger shy of the trigger. I am my mother’s only son, and she relies on me.”

“Then do as you are bid, or she’ll be a widow.”

He raps his knuckles softly, then harder, on the double oak doors of what was once the great upper hall of King Henry, son of William the Bastard.

“What is it, Elfric?” A woman’s voice from within. “Can’st thou not leave the master alone while he is at meat?”

“No, Sal, I must speak with him. He will want to know it.”

She tuts but does not argue. Within a minute there are more steps, heavier ones, and the clank of keys. “God’s blood, Elfric, I gave you this work to save my legs at eventide!” This voice, as rich and full as a chestnut tree, sounds through the keyhole as the doors open. “But I perceive you would have me up every hour and see your mother starve. What is it? Oh – ” The door now opens, revealing a small antechamber constructed for his use. Salcott is forced back in at the point of a gun. “Brother, it is you!”

“Yes it is. Who else were you expecting?”

“Well, they said there would likely be a rescue party but – ”

“They?” Pacificus feels that shudder, that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, such as a man might have who begins to see that he has been strung along in a chess game.

“Why,” Salcott whispers, “the Earl of Surrey has come with twenty men.”

Pacificus’s eyes narrow like those of a fox. He twists Salcott’s collar tight round his throat and buries the gun into his temple. “What?”

“Catch him an Erpingham, so I heard him say.” Salcott starts to shake and sweat, but he nevertheless controls his speech to a whisper. “Now, dear God, brother, you and me’s had no cause for falling out, and you must go now if you would escape, for they are here!”

It is even as he says this that a young retainer with Surrey’s livery appears in the corridor beyond Salcott, as if to call him back. But when he sees Salcott hauled up against the door by a Benedictine monk, and then finds himself staring down the barrel of a wheellock, he lets out an unmanly shout, and hastily retreats out of sight, summoning his fellows.

“The keys!” Pacificus tightens the collar.

“The earl has them – I swear it. They knew you were coming.” The sound of twenty sets of boots in the corridor causes Salcott’s eyes to bulge as wide as eggs. “For God’s sake, brother, go now while you can.” Thud, thud, thud, like a giant millipede, like the infidels pouring over the walls, the force of numbers against the right, the spirit of the hive over against the cause of justice. Pacificus’s lips and fist are as tight as stone – to come so close. For a second longer he tries to find a way to seize control of the situation, not to retreat, not to see darkness triumph. He feels Richard at his elbow, hears the infernal march of injustice reaching their own end of the corridor.

He lets out a roar of impotent rage, unleashing a flash of fire power towards the corridor to stem the tide. The ball ricochets from the stone lintel with a spray of sparks. Shouts, stumbling, a halt of steps. “Lock the doors, Salcott!”

Richard and Pacificus bolt back down their own corridor to where Piers and Simon are waiting with weapons raised.

“What was it? Where are the keys?” Piers says.

“No time to explain. We must go – now!” Pacificus shoves Richard past him towards the outer door. “Take your brother, find Mark and get over that wall. I’ll help my brother get down.”

“Without Mother?” Piers says.

“The earl and twenty men have been lying in wait for us. Now go before you are taken too.”

Even so, Richard has to near drag Piers away. At one point he clings to the handle only to hear his own mother pleading with him to go. Down the corridor Simon hears the grinding of iron hinges.

“Not enough time,” Simon says to his brother, taking his sword from the scabbard and placing it within reach on a ledge. He flexes his sword arm, and then loosens his clothing. He should have seen this coming. Under his lazar woollens he is wearing his Hospitaller surcoat, the white cross showing near luminescent in the scant light. “I will hold them here; you see to those lads.”

“You cannot hold them; now come.” Pacificus takes his arm. “Brother, this is not the way.”

But Simon shakes him loose, gaze fixed steadfast on the bend round which the earl’s men are about to arrive. “Aut viam inveniam aut faciam⁴⁵ – did you not used to say that, too? I will hold them long enough. Hugh, for God’s sake let me do something right in my life! Go! Please, just go!”

And Pacificus understands. He will not sully this sacrifice with remonstrance, only make it worthwhile by looking to the living. He nods and savours the last glance.

“Then God be with you, my brother, my friend,” he says in farewell. “You are a knight of true valour.” And he slips through the outer door.

Simon hears the door shut, feels the waft of night as he stands alone. He hears her voice again in the darkness, calling him. But there is no time to talk, the rattle of boots grows to a pitch that seems to shake the very walls. “I pray, madam, that you forgive me.”

And she cries out, “I do, Cecil! I do!”

He feels the pulse of life in him more strongly than at any time since the great siege. “This time,” he repeats to himself, “this time.” He will not run this time. Even if all the furies should breach that corner, he will not run. No, this time he has something he loves enough to die for, and so he is ready to live. The first three men around the corner almost crumple into one another when they see the surcoat on the man standing silhouetted by the arrow-slit window. It is the sight of him that buys Pacificus and the others the most time of all. A holy knight, a paladin of Almighty God, is no ordinary thing to these home-grown young household toughs, who in their hearts despise their role as the earl’s thugs, and could think of nothing better themselves than to fly the standards of liberty against the infidel. Even the most ignorant of these men know the tales, the miracles, the myths, the Song of Roland. He might have been an apparition, or a spirit for aught they knew, and if it were not for their captain, the duke and the other men behind them, they might well have run away, or dropped to their knees.

But they do not, and when the fighting starts it is over in less than a minute. First Simon’s matchlock brings down their captain, followed swiftly by swordplay at close quarters, which sees four more fall badly wounded. Sir Cecil Erpingham, for all his condition, has lost little of his expertise with a blade, though his limbs are by no means as swift as they were. Even a few moments later, with seven balls lodged in his own body, three of them in the gut, he is still a match for any one of them, fighting like a man inspired, aflame. Only in their twos and threes do they bring him to the ground among the slain.

They trample over him on their way forward, the clatter of boots close to his ear. He tries to trip the earl up as they descend the steps but his leg will no longer move. Outside he hears his brother’s voice urge the lads to hurry on the ropes, then the thud of matchlocks, the whistle of arrows. The earl gives a shout as one of Piers’s arrows misses his head by an inch and embeds heavily into the door oak. Surrey does not see Piers, but he does recognise the monk.

“Charge him! Charge that monk while he reloads! Go to it, man, damn you,” he shouts at the forward soldiers, the first of which gets a thick head when Pacificus belts him with the matchlock butt, sending him spiralling onto the roof of the forge below the wall. While Piers joins Mark and Richard on the rope, Pacificus drives Surrey’s retainers back two at a time, his sword swinging and singing through the matchlock smoke. Aim low, he had said, but now he will take their heads from their shoulders, every one of them, if they do not retreat to the steps. Which one, he thinks? Which one of you pierced the body of my brother? He fights the thought away. They’re boys not men, these caitiffs, selected by the poetic earl for their comely looks, not fighting spirits. They give way to his tempestuous advance like scattering poultry. He swings again and again, this way and that, like Achilles grieving with every blow for the death of Patroclus. He sees the earl racing down the steps to meet him. Good, I’ll have his fishy eyes on a plate, the coxcomb. But then he sees the men higher up priming their matchlocks. No time. He cannot waste Cecil’s sacrifice. He will not. His eyes meet the earl’s for a fleeting second. He sees the whites of them, sees his rapier ready, and knows him utterly – then runs in the opposite direction, back to the rope.

“Coward!” the earl shouts, trying to get past the four men in front of him on the narrow walkway behind the wall. “Coward! Come back and fight!”

Pacificus chooses not to hear. The earl would be dead by now if he had stayed, but so would he, by those matchlocks. He extends the cuff of his habit so that the rope will not burn him on the rapid descent. He is over the wall like a ferret, the earl and his men swift the wall-head.

They level their weapons over the parapet only to receive a volley of matchlock shot and arrows from the bushes at the base of the castle rampart.

“Cut the rope, you fools! The rope! The rope!” the earl screams in fury, then over the wall, “You will pay for this, monk! I’ll burn your monastery to the ground – hand over the lot of them! Do you hear me, monk? Burn their papist hearts out, and cast them into the marshes!”

Pacificus lets the rope out at almost a free fall, boots scraping on the stone, sending mortar out in a spray of dust. When at last he hears the twang of the rope, he is already more than halfway down, already falling. He lets out a small and rather unmanly yelp at first, then buttons his mouth and stomach for the impact. He hits the steep embankment and rolls forward like a ragdoll, pain shooting through his legs, then his head. He’s tumbling down the bank, amid a hail of matchlock shot; the deep boom above, the thud, thud, thud all around, as ball after ball embeds in the earth near him. One ball passes through his calf muscle, though he hardly senses more than a nick. The wound on his neck reopens as he rolls shoulder over shoulder. The half-torn ligaments and muscles scream through his whole body like shouts of rioting madmen in confined city streets. But soon he has rolled out of sight, if not beyond range of the matchlocks. His body comes to rest under the scrub of hazel, gorse and ash at the base of the ramparts. He hears the voices of the boys, but he feels himself slipping and spinning away from them. His head becomes light and lighter, the voices echoing through his skull and out again. He hears his name, but at first he cannot speak. It is Piers, shaking him. And the shaking works, the dizziness eases. He moves in one sudden jerk onto his elbows and knees, as if to spring up, though he cannot.

“We ran from them – you made us run away!” Piers’s voice is trembling with a sort of pathetic, adolescent rage. His hand is on Pacificus’s arched back, half-steadying, half-shaking, twisting the course woollen cloth with his white knuckles. “Why did you not fight them?”

But Richard pulls him away. “Stop this. We’d all be dead by now. There were over twenty of them, not including the castle guard.” He drags Piers’s hand away. He wants to ask about Simon. The question is on his lips but he dare not. “Pacificus, are you badly hurt?”

Now there’s a question. Pacificus is groaning, his right leg feels like wood and he knows what it means.

But Piers is not finished. “He said we would rescue her – that’s what he said. But we ran away, just like they ran from Rhodes – ”

“Enough – ” Pacificus straightens to his knees.

“You said that we should never fear or run if our cause was just, and now you – ”

“PEACE,” he roars, grabbing Piers by the tunic. “Have done, now!” He shoves the lad aside and says to Richard and Mark, urgently, “Get thee hence before the gates open. Take the back streets through the shambles to Blackfriars; salute no man.”

“But you – ” Mark goes to help him but he is rebuffed.

“I need to bind my leg. I will come another way and meet you there; just go quickly.” He sees their silhouettes lingering, and growls through his growing pain, “Go.”

 

Back in the castle keep, lives ebb like tides retreating on the salt marshes. Simon is left alone to see a black pool of his own blood running on the stairs, every now and again catching a line of silver light from the window. His head feels cold and numb, and lighter by the minute. He closes his eyes only to hear her voice again. She is in his head, like a whisper above the groans, gasps and coughs of the other wounded men that lay around him. He hears his name, “Cecil? Are you still there, Cecil?”

He turns his head a fraction to see that he has fallen at her door. “Elizabeth?” He speaks softly through the gap.

“Cecil, I am here.”

“Elizabeth…” His faint breath releases her name like a free vapour. “You raised a fine daughter, and fine sons too.”

When she hears him at the base of the door, she drops to her knees and whispers, “Are you badly hurt?”

“A very fine young woman, our daughter, is she not?”

“Yes, yes she is.” She tries hard to curb her emotion for his sake. “I am glad you have known her.”

“Aye, me too – very glad.” He gasps because of the blood in his chest. “You will tell her how proud I was of her, how much I loved her, won’t you?”

“Yes, Cecil, I will; of course I will.” She slides her fingers along in the narrow gap beneath the door, pushing her hand under as far as it will go; he feels her touch his hair. “She… she is so very like you.”

He reaches her fingers with his own. “Like you, I think – like you.”

“She is wilful – the Erpingham spirit and stubborn pride – sometimes we worried.” Her voice is filled with mirth tinged with regret. “Your brother told me all about you – at least he told me about Simon the leper – said what you did for her, how you saved her – not just from Miller, but you read the Bible with her – ”

“ – saved me more like.” At these words she hears his breathing decline to the gurgling and bubbling of the end. She can discern the words “Pray for me” because she is so near, and so she recites Psalm 23. In his own mind he repeats the words like a man reaching out with all his being to grasp the golden rungs of a celestial ladder: shepherd; leads me; refresheth my soul; banquet for me; cup runneth over; surely goodness and mercy shall follow me; the Lord’s own house forever. And ever. She listens for his breath when she finishes but there is none; he is gone. She remains caressing his hair for some time, all she can reach; her last rites to the dead, this man she had too briefly known.

 

“Why stand ye upon it?” Pacificus bawls again. “Go!”

Mark and Piers drag Richard to his feet. He is reluctant, obstinately so, but they harry him to the edge of the copse and thence across the track to the tenements flanking the northern edge of the castle ramparts. The night watch will not visit this district – he’d be mad to – and besides there is nothing the city fathers wish to protect here. They move swiftly after the decision to leave is ratified by a hundred or more steps, Richard feeling the unease of guilt and failure at every one. They reach Blackfriars within minutes, and encounter no difficulty there, nor in the rest of the brief journey to their lodging.

Pacificus takes a whole minute to emerge from the blackness that befuddles him. He mechanically binds the leg, and then – whether from the loss of blood or darker portents of the mind – returns to the ground in a hunched huddle of breathless distress. He thought he had realigned his narratives – that is, his understanding of how to work the Almighty into bringing success to his own labour – but now the great, looming Goliath of doubt and failure is assailing the ramparts of his own fortifications. He buries his head in the turf, dribbling and hissing as if his head might explode with the pressure, his eyes bursting from their sockets. His stomach twists in the gall of bitterness and anguish. What does he want of me? What?

He has never known what it is to covet death until this moment. Cecil gone, his parents, his other siblings – all gone ahead. How many little white corpses did he lay out for his mother when his father was too broken to attend? How many playmates did he, as eldest brother, send on? Why is he alone alive? What use now is he? What remains to hold him here? The church? It is not his church now, if it ever was. England? Dear God, what is that? These young ones, my niece, their mother? Yes, thrice yes, I have loved them – do love them. Like a drowning man loves driftwood I have, but what of it? Have I helped them, really helped them? Has not God overthrown my best efforts to help them, to rescue her? Is not my life still based on a myth, a lie? Ah, surely if he is the champion of widows and orphans, then he fights in ways I cannot understand, nor ever will. Better that I am gathered up to him, for I am no help here.

He does not weep, nor feel much at all now. He has not helped them – that is all he knows; his best was not needed, that he feels. His life has had no point to it at all, unless you count the point of a two-edged sword – a work of destruction, the lowest point a man can descend to. He has proved it, his whole life has, and it is enough for him. “No better than my fathers,” he mutters, curled in a foetal position on the dewy sward. “No better.” And there he lies, side on, hearing the slow, even breaths of a man tired of battle. He does not hear the drawbridge raised, the clattering hooves, the march of steel, the yellow blaze of torches. Neither does he fear for the children, or their mother. There is a God in heaven; he will do what is right. Yes, he may choose to use us, even the conceited and the fool, but what right have we to boast or lay claim to his will? He might equally use a devil from hell, or Cromwell, or the king to rescue a widow, to right a wrong. Were not Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus recorded as his servants too? I am tired. I am tired. Oh God, I am so tired.

The soldiers pass round him, torches reflecting on the wet bark of trees, swords prodding into the bushes. He is, as he thinks, within their fullest view, and yet he continues to lie in mute resignation next to his hawthorn bough – his own guard. At least two men stand at times within a foot of his head, yet never discover his body beneath them. When they give up the search and leave for the tenements, Pacificus starts to wonder if he has not been all the while dreaming. He had given himself up, not to danger of death so much as to the vulnerability of absolute dependency, and at that point found succour. A miracle? A sign? He will not dare think it, but wrenches his body from the earth by support of his friendly hawthorn. He is alive, still. And from that there, his grinding struggle along the sewerage culverts to their lodgings is the embodiment of that thought; he is still alive.

 

Mark opens to him, pulling him into the cellar where their baggage is stored, going back to look up and down the street, but nothing stirs – Pacificus has not been followed. Moll is instantly at his side with water and bandages. “He stinks like a sow’s tail; help me get his clothes off. I’ll get some soap – just hold him.”

Moll, quick and efficient as a terrier, is back down the stairs in a moment with more water and soap. “All we got,” she says. “Come on, man, you can at least loosen your own girdle!” Pacificus submits to the ordeal, too exhausted to raise a finger now, let alone an objection. More than once she chides him for not responding to her questions, but he remains silent. Mark too is uncharacteristically inactive, brooding and quiet. It is only after he is half-clothed again and with a mouth full of ale and a morsel of bread that Pacificus can finally pull enough threads of his own inner self together and relate to his surroundings.

“The others?”

Mark sits on a windowsill, though from this cellar he can barely see street level, where the dawn gains her slow conquest of the night. He does not answer, but merely keeps cupping and rubbing his mouth and chin in a nervous manner.

“The others?” Pacificus senses trouble and asks again, louder this time, his connection to present reality flooding back in.

“Gone.” It is Moll who replies from the stairs, where she sits nursing the babe now.

“What?”

“Gone,” she repeats. “Gone to the duke, to escort their mother to London, to plead her cause before the king.”

He lets out a long groan in affirmation, sinking further back onto the sacks on which he sits.

“Piers wouldn’t wait when you didn’t come,” she continues matter-of-factly. “He said you’d given up; that they should look to it themselves. Richard wanted to wait longer, but when you didn’t come, Piers got dressed up like a little lord and made the others do it too.”

He groans again, but she chides him: “Well, she is their mother after all. They have the king’s good opinion, and they were not recognised at the castle, they said. And for all they knew, you had been taken – or worse.”

“But you stayed?”

“Yes, we stayed – ” She starts with her usual scolding comeback but then pauses. He has found her out, and Mark too; they stayed. Moll’s sharpness has alarmed the baby and so she speaks to the child in a mother’s voice rather than to him. “Yes, little peasecod, we stayed for that ungrateful old man; someone had to. And look, precious, he’s here now…” Her voice trails away.

“Did they do the right thing?” Mark walks towards the sacks, then back to the window. “I mean, will they be safe with the duke?”

Pacificus does not answer. His eyes are settled on the rafters where the morning light highlights the cobwebs. He looks where the caught flies are struggling or entombed in their silken chains. At the centre there are no spiders to be seen; they wait in the corners, by the ceiling joists, watchful, out of sight.

They have been gone an hour at least, and he cannot reach them now, even if he wanted to. But even so he feels no gnawing anxiety, only an unexpected and unfamiliar peace – awkward to him because it is so alien. Mark repeats the question, but still gets no answer.