Saturday, February 15
Clarenceux did not speak as he closed the door to his bedchamber for the last time, nor as he walked through the house to his study. He said nothing as he checked the kitchen and the buttery. Only when he came back up to the hall and saw Thomas and Alice did he utter the few words, “Let us go,” before leading them down to the front of the house, locking the door, and taking Brutus’s reins from Fyndern. His silence continued as they rode toward Thame—he in front, Thomas a short distance behind him, Fyndern and Alice at the back. Every so often he would check to make sure they had not fallen behind; then he would nod and continue.
They reached Chipping Wycombe late in the afternoon and settled at an inn. Still Clarenceux did not speak. He sat in his chamber by himself, staring out of the open window. After it was dark he sat in a wooden chair with a tankard of beer that Thomas brought up for him. He said he was not hungry. Thomas ate in the hall, sitting apart from Fyndern and Alice, leaving them to their conversation and flirtation. It was long after dark when he went back to the chamber to check on his master.
Clarenceux was still sitting in the same chair when Thomas walked in, carrying a candle. He set it down on the table.
“I didn’t think it would end like this,” said Clarenceux. “I recall my father in his last years, staying alive desperately. There was an occasion when a priest came to his house, and he asked my father to tell him about his life. My father responded by saying where he was born, and what the status of his father was, and where he had grown up and whom he had married. And then he started to talk about when he fell ill. Within four sentences he was describing his sickness. Where and when he first experienced each symptom, how much the symptoms hurt, which seasons and phases of the moon caused the most pain. What things he had had to give up doing and how he was managing despite his incapacities. Each subsequent sentence was more about his illness than him. He had become his illness. His body had become the church in which his illness worshipped.”
“That is not your fate.”
“I feel the same inward-looking desperation.”
“You have set yourself upon a path, but how you resolve it is still up to you. You can still turn off that path—you know that; you are still a free man.”
“The killings, Thomas—the spying, the fear. The hurt. I remember asking Henry Machyn whether, by taking his chronicle into my house, I was risking any danger to my family. He knew I was—but even he could not have imagined how much. And I remember him asking me why I was a Catholic. That is something that has been much on my mind recently; I suspect that it is about loyalty. The more I think about it, the more it strikes me that loyalty has been the driving force of my life and betrayal my greatest fear. My whole life as an antiquary and herald is about the truth, and loyalty to the truth, whether that be the truth of the past or now. The young can betray each other and they can turn against the past, but we must be loyal—to our wives and to our queen, and also to our God and to ourselves.”
“I think the young also have a sense of loyalty. Fyndern would follow Alice to the Gates of Hell, and maybe even a few steps further.”
“Love is not loyalty. Fyndern has the makings of a good man—but not if he slavishly follows his desires and allows himself to be manipulated. Alice is a little vixen; she has barely got a loyal bone in her body.”
There were many things Thomas wanted to say; among them that Clarenceux was a poor judge of young women for the simple reason that he distanced himself from them; and also that a woman like Alice could be just as devoted as a young man. He had noticed the looks the girl had cast toward Clarenceux. But the latter was clearly not in a mood to be argued with, so Thomas let the matter rest, and returned to the hall.
Much later, Fyndern had tried showing off his card skills to two travelers staying at the inn—but he was tipsy and made so many mistakes they were left distinctly unimpressed. They quickly beat a path to their chamber and left him alone with Thomas and Alice in the hall. Thomas urged him to go to bed but the boy wanted to stay up all night, he said, and drink with his friends.
“Go to bed,” commanded Clarenceux suddenly from the doorway, looking across the candlelit hall.
He was standing in his shirt and breeches with bare feet and no doublet, but his sword was at his belt. His hair, longer and more unkempt than it had ever been before, was now half-gray. His untrimmed beard was even more gray than his hair.
“Fyndern, tomorrow you will get little or no rest. You must sleep now.”
Fyndern got up from the table, unsure whether to trust his impulse to laugh at Clarenceux or his instinct to obey. He looked at Alice. “Mr. Clarenceux, you must not light that fire at the abbey,” he said with a slur to his voice. “You will die in the flames—and Alice will too.”
Clarenceux raised his voice. “Fyndern, go to bed now!”
The confidence of the beer vanished. Clarenceux stared at him as he bowed to Thomas and Alice and made his way past him, and went up to his chamber.
When he had gone, Clarenceux took a seat.
“Should we not all be going to bed?” asked Alice.
Clarenceux leaned on the table. “Yes,” he replied.
Alice said, “Good night,” and left.
Thomas looked at Clarenceux’s brooding face. “Don’t place any faith in what the boy says,” he told him. “He has no vision this evening. He made many mistakes with the cards.”