Saturday, February 8
Clarenceux awoke with Thomas opening the shutters to his chamber. He had no idea how long he had slept—but it was not as long as he needed. He blinked in the light.
“Sir Gilbert Dethick is here to see you,” said Thomas.
Clarenceux assessed his wine-night-befuddled mind, shielded his eyes, and raised himself on one arm. He remembered the promise he had given Dethick—to set out on Tuesday. Damnation! But that promise seemed like a small wave sipping at the shore compared to the great, mountain-high wave approaching. That was what forced him to get out of the bed, to grab his doublet and throw it over his shirt, and take his sword. Fyndern was by the door, holding it open. Clarenceux strode past him, with his sheathed sword in his left hand.
“Sir Gilbert,” he called to the old man on his horse, “I acknowledge my fault. But there is nothing I can do. My wife has not returned, nor my daughter. Nothing you can say will persuade me that I should neglect them to undertake a visitation.”
Sir Gilbert looked coldly at Clarenceux. “A man came to me at the College this morning. He did not give his name. He told me that I was to deliver this message to you. He said: ‘Tell Mr. Clarenceux that if he wishes to see his wife and daughter again, he is to bring the document to Oxford and hand it to the gatekeeper of St. John’s College, addressed to William Willis, and to do it before noon on the feast of St. Valentine. If he fails, to them shall be done what has been done to the traitor in the house opposite.’” Dethick’s horse was skittish, and he pulled on the reins, turning it. “I want none of this, Clarenceux. I have delivered that message, even though I am no one’s errand boy. And now I deliver my own. Do what you are obliged to do, without further delay.”
Clarenceux looked from Sir Gilbert to the door of the closed house. “This man who spoke to you, what did he look like?”
“Does it matter? He was short, fair-haired, about thirty years of age.”
“And he mentioned something done to a traitor in the house opposite?”
“I still expect you to set out on the visitation,” said Dethick, “although I pardon you the delay. We may not like each other, Mr. Clarenceux, but I respect that a man’s priorities are not always those of his profession.”
Clarenceux looked at Fyndern, then at Thomas. He turned back to Dethick. “Mr. Garter, I will set out tomorrow. It seems that my private life as well as my profession demands that I ride into Oxfordshire. I will not take any clerks or pursuivants—not on this journey—just my own servants. However, I would ask one thing of you. Will you accompany me across the road?”
Dethick raised an eyebrow. “Across the road? Into the house?”
“Have you any idea what is in there?”
“Your business is your own business,” replied Dethick, and he turned as if to ride on. Fyndern, however, stepped swiftly in front of him and took hold of the bridle.
“Let go, boy!” shouted Dethick “Give me my way!”
“A moment of your time, I beg you, Mr. Garter.”
Dethick glanced at the house and, after glaring fiercely at Clarenceux, dismounted.
***
The door was unlocked. But no sooner did Clarenceux push it open than the stench hit him. It rushed out of the darkness of the house to smother them and stick its soft, swollen fingers down their throats. Boiled and scorched meat was the smell that greeted them—but so overpoweringly that it was far worse than the smell of an unventilated kitchen. Clarenceux gagged, but covering his face with a hand, he proceeded cautiously along the dim corridor inside, aiming for the light of the kitchen at the end.
He stopped at the top of the steps leading down into the kitchen. Dethick stood at his shoulder; Thomas was behind him. A ghastly sight lay before them. A woman’s headless body lay in the middle of the room—her upper part front down, prone across an upturned tub, her lower limbs on the floor, still kneeling. Clarenceux recognized the dirty russet-colored dress that Sarah Cowie had worn when she had called at his house. To the left was a large fireplace on which stood a cauldron. It had boiled dry but it still contained what was left of the woman’s head.
Clarenceux walked into the room feeling nauseous. Behind him he heard Dethick stumbling out, retching. In the cauldron he saw the loose dark hair stuck to the metal and patches of skull exposed where parts of the flesh had fallen from the bone. There was much fat and swollen white skin. The jaw had loosened and the lips come away, revealing the roots of the teeth in the skull. The eye sockets were emptied where the eyeballs had burst open. On seeing this, coupled with the smell of the boiled flesh, Clarenceux had to turn away.
In the army, at Boulogne, more than two decades earlier, he had watched a surgeon disembowel and dismember a dead man—and then carefully boil each limb in a large cauldron, so the clean bones could be taken back to England for burial. But that had been done formally and properly, in the open air, and for a solemn reason. It had been an unpleasant exercise, but it had been motivated by honor and respect. This was quite the opposite: a horrific thing intended only to put fear into him, and one that dishonored the murdered woman.
He crossed himself and left the kitchen.
Outside, he blinked in the light. He walked to Fyndern and took the reins of Dethick’s horse. “Go and find the constable. Tell him a woman has been murdered in a house in Fleet Street and that her head has been boiled. Her name was Sarah Cowie. Say that the house is in the tenancy of one John Greystoke, a man in the employment of Mr. Francis Walsingham.”
“Sir, I will. May I look first?”
“If you feel you must.”
Dethick was leaning against the front wall of the building, looking green.
“Sir Gilbert, I will set out on my visitation tomorrow.”
Dethick straightened himself. He took the reins of his horse and mounted. He said nothing but pulled on the reins and rode slowly back toward the College.
***
After they had given evidence to the coroner, Clarenceux and Thomas took the horses for exercise. They rode silently beyond Islington and as far as Stoke Newington, returning by way of the main road to the city. The Tower of London, the cathedral tower, and all the lesser steeples of the city bristled against the horizon as they rode back southward. They passed a flock of sheep on the road, and a man carting chickens into the capital. A timber cart was stuck on the side, its wheel broken by a deep rut. Thomas sensed Clarenceux’s anger from his rigid posture and his knuckles as he clutched the reins.
Across the sky was a pale golden light, as if the sun was trying to break through the clouds but was forbidden from shining on the city today. At Kingsland, Clarenceux deliberately rode off the highway toward an enclosure of cows, over some rough land that was the vestige of a common. There he stopped and dismounted, and walked along a narrow path, leading Brutus to a wider area, where the trees surrounded a grassy mound and a small stream ran nearby. He let Brutus nibble at the grass on the mound and stood still, looking at the stream and across the fields.
Neither man spoke. Thomas believed that he knew what his master was thinking, yet at the same time he knew that these thoughts were going further, building higher, digging deeper. The man had been crushed into the darkest corner of his soul—and yet he was still unconquered.
“I am going to bring it to an end, Thomas. There is no other way.”
“Sir, forgive me—what do you mean?”
In the distance, the city bells began to ring the hour.
“I am going to destroy all my enemies and the document.”
“How, Mr. Clarenceux?”
“After we return home, I want you to go into the city and buy two more horses and a cart. I also want you to go to Mr. Carstens, the Dutch apothecary that Mr. Knott uses, and buy as much gunpowder as he can sell you. A whole keg—two, if he has so much. When you have the gunpowder and the cart, I want you to bore a couple of holes in the bottom of that iron-bound oak chest in the old shop and take it to Thame Abbey. I will give you detailed instructions.”
He stared across the fields, listening to the noise of the stream. A shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and cut its way through the leaves of the trees.
Clarenceux continued, “When the day comes, you will wait at an inn in Thame, the Saracen’s Head. I will tell the captors to take Awdrey and Mildred there. You will then send me a date as a code, via Alice. If it is them, choose an even number; but if there is bad news, make the month a winter one. If they are dead, choose the present day’s date.”
“You don’t worry that you are being too hasty?”
“I would sooner bring down the judgment of Hell and all its dark angels now, and destroy my enemies now, than let them ruin another life. Or allow them the luxury of planning their next move. Do not get me wrong; I have been thinking and planning a long while now. I will hand over the document to the people who have stolen Awdrey from me—and I will do it in person. They will not be able to leave with it until I hear she is safe. But when I do hear…that is when I will destroy the building and everything in it.”
“But Mr. Clarenceux—that means you too will be destroyed.”
Clarenceux turned to face him. “Think about Awdrey. Think about my daughters. I have no doubt that they will grieve for me—but their lives are at stake. I want my daughters to have a chance of life and that requires me to risk everything, including my own life.”
“But Mr. Claren—”
Clarenceux held up a hand. “Thomas, no more. Your part in my plan is going to be vital. It has to be done, so let us do it well.”