The Queen's Captive Page 18

  Arm in arm, they navigated through the stream of apprentices hustling to work, and maids heading to market, and school boys with satchels slipping through the crowd like fish darting through shallows. Carts and wagons rumbled past. The bells of several churches clanged in oblivious discord, and from the river with its hundreds of boats and wherries came the screech of seagulls and a shout of “Oars!” and between the buildings Honor glimpsed the thicket of masts of merchant ships bobbing at anchor beyond London Bridge. The crisp air carried the smells of fresh lumber, fish, and burning charcoal. A boy jostled Honor’s elbow as he dashed by her and then bumped a woman ahead carrying a basket of bread loaves. A loaf tumbled out and the boy caught it and tossed it back into the basket and ran on without breaking his stride. Honor laughed.

  “You’re in a good mood,” Richard said as they sidestepped a mound of horse dung steaming in the November chill.

  “I’m just glad we’ll see George before he sets sail for home.”

  He nodded. “And I’m glad I can finally repay him.”

  She felt the same. Weeks ago George’s courier from Amsterdam had returned the last of her jewelry, and today, as soon as they saw George himself, they would discharge the loan he had so generously extended when they had so desperately needed it. A great deal more debt still hung over their heads, but Honor was adamant that George be repaid first. Friendship. Another of life’s blessings to be thankful for.

  “Will you sup with Sir William again tonight?” she asked, thinking of loyal friends. Richard had been in the House of Commons for three days, and as a novice in its arcane procedures he was relying on Sir William Cecil’s guidance.

  “Into the small hours again, I imagine. Along with Peckham and Kingston and the rest. Plenty of organizing to be done for the vote.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. The House had begun debate on several of Queen Mary’s bills, and the first—a proposal to return the Crown’s ecclesiastical revenues to the Church—was a seemingly mild request from the Queen, since it involved only her personal income. If the House couldn’t muster the opposition to defeat even that, what chance did they have of defeating the far more significant Exiles Bill, scheduled next? “I thought you had all the support you need.”

  “We will. Members of the House will be furious as soon as they realize they’ll have to make up the revenue shortfall through taxation, from their own pockets. We just have to explain that to enough of them.”

  “But the vote will be called soon, won’t it? Will you have time?”

  “That’s why I’ll be at Cecil’s most of the night.” When she frowned in concern he assured her, “Don’t worry. We’ll win this one.” But then he added darkly, “We have to. If we let the Queen give these revenues back to the Church it could embolden her to try giving them back land.”

  Unthinkable, it seemed to Honor. Almost every man in the House of Commons, or his father before him, had bought up the rich, rent-producing manors and estates that had flooded the market when King Henry had dissolved the monasteries and pocketed the cash for himself. They would never relinquish such property on their own. But this ecclesiastical bill had originated in the House of Lords, whose members had a very different view. The nobility abhorred the rise of the merchants and gentry they called “upstarts.” Baron John Grenville, who sat with the lords, hated Richard for buying the abbey where his aunt had been the abbess, and also—and far more deeply—for his father’s death. Honor could not forget Grenville’s leer of pleasure in church when they had all thought Adam was dead.

  She was about ask what strategy Sir William Cecil had planned for defeating the bill, but her question would have to wait, for they had arrived at the Mitfords’ house on Bucklersbury Street. It was the home of George’s elder son, Timothy, and its imposing facade proclaimed his success. Timothy had established himself as a goldsmith and jeweler just as successful as his father. As Richard knocked at the door, Honor admired the orchard and garden just visible through a high lattice fence.

  The door opened a crack. The first thing Honor heard was weeping.

  A maid’s face appeared, drained of color. She opened the door and without a word, as dull-eyed as a sleepwalker, she beckoned them to come after her. Honor and Richard shared a puzzled glance, then followed her into the great hall where they found the family apparently in the throes of a hasty departure. Open trunks, satchels, caskets, and scattered clothing lay helter-skelter like the belongings of a decamping troop of soldiers. The communal dining table was littered with the half-eaten debris of a roast pork supper. Servants bustled in grim silence, packing.

  Timothy Mitford, a lean young version of his father, sat slumped on a chair at the cold hearth, his head down, like a broken puppet. His grandmother sat on a stool, clutching a child’s straw doll to her breast and quietly weeping. Timothy’s wife, Alice, helped a maid hurriedly pack armloads of children’s clothes while holding back tears herself. Timothy’s brother, Roger, who was to be married in four days, was tossing gold candlesticks to a footman to pack into a trunk when he noticed Honor and Richard. He gaped at them, his normally cheerful face haggard and bleary-eyed.

  “Roger, what’s happened?” Honor asked anxiously. Her gaze swept up the staircase where three little children huddled together on a stair, their eyes huge with uncomprehending fear. In another room, a baby wailed.

  Richard set the gift box on the table and said soberly to Roger, “What’s amiss, my boy?”

  “Master Thornleigh. Mistress…dear God, you have not heard.”

  They exchanged a glance of dismay. Roger plowed a hand through his disheveled hair and said, as though suddenly remembering, “Account books,” and turned to quickly look into a trunk, searching, then dashed to another trunk, then another.

  The old lady fumbled the doll, dropping it, and Honor went to retrieve it for her. Richard stopped Roger in his tracks and gently sat him down at the table and asked again what had happened. Roger blinked, as hollow-eyed as if he had not slept for days. “They took him…we were at supper…”

  “Took who?”

  “Father.”

  Timothy, at the hearth, groaned in misery.

  “Who did?” Richard asked. “Why?”

  Roger told it all. He and his brother, though passionate about their Protestant faith, had always been careful to hide it, unwilling to follow their father into exile. But a month ago a zealous friend of Timothy’s had ordered some religious pamphlets printed, but then could not come up with the cash for the printer, so Timothy paid. He did it in secret, but a disaffected neighbor got wind of it and told the parish priest that the Mitfords were spreading heretic filth. Timothy, fearing arrest, prepared to flee to Antwerp. George, here for Roger’s wedding, had been set to sail with Timothy today. Then, last night, the subdued family had just sat down to supper when the bishop’s men banged on the door.

  The old lady sobbed in a new spasm that made Roger flinch.

  “They came for Timothy?” Richard said, to prod him back.

  Roger nodded. “They started to drag him away. Father stopped them, asked where they were taking his son. To the bishop’s cells, they said, and after that he’ll burn. They had him almost out the door when Father stopped them again. He told them that Timothy did not do the deed.”

  There was a strangled moan from Timothy. “He told them he had done it.”

  Richard and Honor looked at each other in shock. George had taken the blame for his son’s action. And been arrested. And now, it seemed, the rest of the family was preparing to flee. No wonder. It would be just a matter of time before officers of the bishop’s court arrested both the brothers for questioning, and Alice too—likely even the old lady. And if their answers deviated from orthodoxy, any one of them could stand trial for heresy. Then, if they did not abjure their beliefs at trial, they would suffer death by fire.

  “Have you the means to sail immediately?” Richard asked, taking charge. “I can have my agent arrange passage for all of you on the next tid
e.”

  “And we can give you money,” Honor added quickly, though she was so shaken by George’s arrest she could hardly keep her voice steady.

  Roger said, “I thank you, sir. Madam. But we are well provided. Our father saw to that.” His mouth trembled. He hunched over and buried his face in his hands. A little boy on the stair burst into sobs. His older sister, white-faced, threw her arm around the child to comfort him.

  It was too much for Timothy. He jumped up from the hearth, his face a map of guilt and pain. He bolted for the door. But Richard stood in his way and caught him by the arm. “Where are you going?”

  “To tell them the truth. Let me go, sir!”

  “Don’t be mad, boy. If you confess, they’ll kill you.”

  Timothy tried to wrench free. “They’re going to kill him!”

  Richard held him fast. “Your father knew what he was doing. Look around you. Look at your children. Your family needs you.”

  The trail was sickeningly familiar to Honor. Richard was with her as they made their way to the one place she had hoped never to see again. Northward they walked in frozen silence, holding hands so tightly her fingers were almost numb. Westward they turned along crowded Newgate Street, all the way to the city wall pierced by the massive arch of the gate. Wagons lumbered through it, and people streamed, coming and going about their business. Newgate Prison rose in three stories above the arch, and felons peeked out in misery from its barred windows. A mad-eyed girl with an ear cut off. A wildly bearded man branded on the forehead.

  Outside the city wall they turned north onto Pie Corner, where the road broadened into the wide expanse of Smithfield fair-ground. Cattle and sheep were sold here all year round, the farmers walking the livestock in from Essex, Suffolk, and Kent. Horse markets were held regularly, too, and every kind of mount was bought and sold, from priests’ mules, plow horses, and ladies’ palfreys, to finely bred Arab hunters and Barbary coursers. In August, Smithfield was home to Bartholomew Fair, when throngs tramped in from all over the country. Jugglers, balladeers, fire-eaters, and clowns milled with pickpockets, lovers, families, and whores. There were contests in wrestling and archery. Bakers hawked meat pies, gingerbread babies, and saffron buns. Country women sold asparagus, scallions, radishes, cherries, and ripe, fragrant plums.

  But now, in the thin, cold November light, the merriment of August was only a memory. The empty cattle pens were a bog of soupy mud, the grass a blight of brown, and hoarfrost iced the Elms, the name given in grim jest by Londoners to the trio of gallows ever since, years ago, these gibbets had replaced a stand of elm trees. There was no scent of fruit pies and cinnamon buns to overcome the stench from the slaughterhouses and tanneries crammed, by law, outside the city walls, where the waste of entrails was slopped daily into the Fleet Ditch. Yet the place was almost as crowded as on any fair day, for Smithfield was also the city’s execution ground. People had come to see a burning.

  The crowd, perhaps a hundred men and women and children, formed a wide semicircle around a roped-off square of sand that the night’s frost had turned to rutted muck. At the center of the square a wooden stake ten feet high was impaled in the ground. A narrow ledge was nailed to it two feet from the bottom, assuring that when the victim stood on it they could be seen by the whole crowd. There was no victim yet. At the foot of the stake lay faggots—bundles of sticks and twigs—and straw was heaped kneehigh on top of them. This was the pit. A lone guard stood sentry. A platform for dignitaries, with three tiers of wooden benches, rose at one side, deserted.

  Amongst the waiting crowd, many had come for the sport, snatching an hour off work for the thrill of watching the primal drama of death, and they chattered and fidgeted in eager anticipation. A man yawned as he swung a little boy up onto his shoulders. A skinny woman suckled her baby and gossiped with a blowsy friend who was picking her teeth. Three youths wearing the blue smocks of apprentices had brought a small hogshead of beer that was perched on the broad shoulder of one, and they clinked brimming tankards to toast the event. But many more of the onlookers stood in the mute stillness of mourners. Honor knew by their long-suffering expressions, pinched with anger and dread, that they were secret Protestants.

  “There,” Richard said, pointing.

  She turned. Twenty or so people had broken away from the crowd and flocked alongside a procession on horseback, plodding up from Pie Corner to deliver the victim. The grim parade passed Honor and Richard close enough that they heard the people’s jeers.

  “Stinking heretic!”

  “Burn, you God-cursed Lutheran!”

  Leading the procession were a dozen guards armed with spears and swords. They were followed by a member of the Queen’s council dressed in a fur-trimmed brown velvet robe. By law, one councilor was designated in rotation to attend each burning. Following him came four stolid officials representing the mayor. Then three black-garbed priests representing the bishop of London. At the rear, a mule dragged a wooden hurdle and on it, strapped down by lashings of leather, his wrists bound in front with twine, lay George Mitford. His face was as bleached as boiled linen, and his red-rimmed eyes stared out of sockets so dark they looked bruised. He was barefoot, in a filth-stained shirt and breeches, his hair matted with mud and sweat. Ragged children tagged after him, daring one another to toss handfuls of muck. One pitched a clump of dung that splatted his shoulder.

  It sent such a shock through Honor she opened her mouth to cry out to George, but Richard jerked her hand in warning. “Don’t,” he said quietly, sternly. “Not even a word.”

  She closed her eyes in agony, knowing he was right. The Queen’s new proclamation. Anyone showing sympathy for a victim being burned would be arrested and flogged.

  “We’re here to bear witness,” Richard said. “That’s all.”

  She nodded, knowing he was as horrified as she was about their friend’s fate. But they could do nothing to save him now.

  The procession stopped and dismounted. The lone guard at the pit lowered a rear section of the rope barrier, raising a gleeful shout from the people who had come for the show. The whole crowd, gawkers and mourners alike, shuffled closer to the front barrier to watch, and Honor and Richard moved nearer, too, until they were separated from the pit by just two jostling rows of people. Being this close to the stake made Honor’s mouth go dry as dirt. For twenty years she had kept the memories chained in the cellar of her mind, but they sprang back now, snarling. Stepping barefoot onto the stake’s ledge. The splinter gouging skin between her toes. The stench of moldy straw at her feet.

  Six of the guards fanned out, taking up positions along the semicircle and facing the crowd. The city officials and two of the priests took their seats on the viewing platform while two guards stood sentry at its steps. The third priest, an austere man whose gold chain of office proclaimed him as Bishop Bonner’s chancellor, went into the pit and stood beside the wooden stake, where he waited with the impatient air of a man with a busy schedule. Ignoring the crowd, he shook out a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.

  A guard went to the mule-drawn hurdle and pulled his dagger and sliced the leather straps, freeing George. He tried to stand, but with hands still bound he could not get his balance and he stumbled and fell to his knees. Honor flinched at the sight…and the memories. Twine scraping her wrists raw. Summer-hot sand of the pit scorching the soles of her feet.

  The guard cut the twine binding George’s wrists, and he and another guard grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him facedown to the stake, his toes carving channels in the muck. The bishop’s chancellor stepped back to let the guards do their job. They prodded George to stand up on the ledge nailed to the stake. It raised him enough above the piled faggots and straw so that everyone could see him. They jammed his back against the stake, and another guard came carrying a chain that he wrapped around George’s waist so it pinned his arms to his sides, then hooked the chain to a nail at the back and passed it around him again at his hips. George watched the guard
snug up the chain, like a grotesque parody of a man watching his tailor measure him for a new doublet. The chain they wrapped around her chest…its links black with soot…

  Another guard brought two head-sized sacks of gunpowder tied together with a short length of rope, and slung them around George’s neck so that they hung at his sides.

  “Thank God,” Richard murmured. The gunpowder would speed up the burning.

  But this measure of mercy in the brutal ritual brought a low hum of disappointment from several in the crowd. Gunpowder was not used at every burning, and they were not pleased that it was going to cut short their enjoyment today.

  The bishop’s chancellor, this drill dully familiar to him, stepped up to George’s side. Raising his voice so the crowd could be both taught and warned, he intoned the charges to the victim. “At sundry times you have alleged that the sacrament of the altar is only bread, not the true body of Christ. You have alleged that no priest can absolve a man of sin. You have alleged that the blessings and pardons of bishops have no value…” While the chancellor droned these crimes of thought, George closed his eyes tightly, as though struggling to summon every shred of courage to endure. It was all Honor could do to not scream.

  When the bishop’s chancellor was done he turned and walked away, blowing his nose again, and nodded his signal up to the platform of dignitaries. Although the Church condemned a heretic, it handed over the victim to the state to carry out the sentence, saving the Church from committing murder. At the chancellor’s cue, the mayor’s representative on the platform stood. He raised his arms above his head and declared, “Fiat justitia.” He sat, and the crowd hushed.

  The ritual was done. The burning could begin.

  A guard stepped forward with a flaming torch. Honor groped for Richard’s hand. She held her breath as fiercely as if by saving it she could save George’s life.