Death by Disputation (A Francis Bacon Mystery Book 2) (20 page)

Chapter Thirty

Clarady:

You have proved yourself, more than once, to be a willing partisan. Easter, May Day, Rogation; you have followed whithersoever they have led. I believe the time is ripe for you to say, “I can be trusted. Let me be of service.” We hope they will employ you as a messenger, thus enabling you to obtain proof in the seditioner’s own hand of his treasonous intentions.

If Wingfield is the center, Steadfast must be well inside the circle. He is your friend and peer. I would suggest you declare yourself to him first.

“Be strong and of good courage, and do it: fear not, nor be dismayed . . . until thou hast finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord.” 1 Chronicles 28:19-21.

From Gray’s Inn, 20 May 1587

Fra. Bacon

P.S. Have you heard nothing from your uncle about that knot? Or found a chance to look inside the bursar’s desk? I am unhappy about the lack of resolution of Leeds’s murder, even though I know it cannot be our first concern. Aeschylus noted a thousand years ago that in war, truth is the first casualty. Perhaps justice is the second.

Chapter Thirty-One

The following Sunday, Tom was invited to dinner again with the Wingfield family in Babraham. The parson also asked the chinless William Grady and another man with skinny legs and a wart on his nose, who posed no competition and could thus be ignored. To his further relief, Tom found himself seated opposite Abraham Jenney. Facing a pig in a wig rather than a beauteous woman, he could focus better on the talk.

Alas, nothing of interest was said. Jenney and Mr. Wartnose entertained the table with a spirited discussion of total depravity, a favorite topic in their study group. Jenney loved to think of himself as a veritable wellspring of sin — which was a form of pridefulness, so in a roundabout way, he was right.

Tom broached the topic of the conformation of the ideal church, hoping to stimulate a revealing remark. He earned himself a genial lecture from John Barrow on the hierarchy of congregation, classis, and synod. Informative, if rather abstract. Francis Bacon certainly knew these things already.

Bacon had told him to push harder. The time was ripe and the need was great — Tom’s own, as well as his spymaster’s. He wanted action, forward motion. Something definitive.

He decided to push. Leaning forward over the table, he looked directly into Jenney’s beady black eyes and said, “You can trust me. I’m ready to serve however I can.”

Jenney blinked at him, at a rare loss for words. Barrow jumped in, answering with a warm chuckle in his voice. “Glad to hear it. Perhaps you could pass along that honey you’ve been hoarding.” He grinned. “We all trust you, Tom. I hope that means you trust us too. We support one another in our daily struggles. Isn’t that right, Parson?”

Parson Wingfield launched into an account of a period of diminished zeal he’d experienced yesterday and his efforts to revive it through prayer. Tom smiled through his teeth and passed the honey pot across the table.

Had they deliberately misunderstood him? Or deliberately deflected the talk? They claimed to trust him but kept him at arm’s length. He waited until the parson’s story wound down, then tried again. “I must tell you, Parson Wingfield, how much I admire the way you’ve planted a company of the faithful here in Babraham. We have righteous community knit together by the true Word, not fetched willy-nilly by command of man’s law. It’s as if you’ve built a church within a church.”

A ringing silence descended. Not so much as a spoon clopped against a wooden plate. The sound of sparrows twittering vigorously outside the open window filled the echoing emptiness left by Tom’s words.

Jenney wore the expression of a cow that has been struck between the eyes with a mallet. Barrow rubbed his freckled cheek with a broad hand, his lips pursed as if straining to press out some suitable response.

Parson Wingfield smiled blandly at Tom. “Yes,” he said. “The congregation is the church, each member a plank, our faith the nails. In that sense, I am its carpenter.” He frowned. “It seems overweening to compare myself to
the
carpenter. The shepherd of a flock . . . but that metaphor is a bit tired.” He frowned at the others, who regarded him with patient smiles.

Patience, colored with relief?

The tension in the air evaporated as the parson babbled on. “A rock in a harbor, perhaps. Or better — the harbor itself.” He shook his head. “Watery images. I do get thirsty. Would it be seen as Romish for me to keep a cup of wine in my pulpit? My throat does become dry sometimes, and I fear the people at the back might not hear all the words of my sermon.”

The man was so self-absorbed he was practically wan-witted. He seldom spoke of anything besides his own interior condition and how much people liked his sermons. Tom realized with a disheartening sense of work wasted that Parson Wingfield was no more the center of a Puritan conspiracy than the pope himself.

***

After dinner, everyone milled about the yard for a while, chatting. Tom lent half an ear to Tribulation’s story about a conflict among her hens while he watched guests and family members going in and out of the house to fetch something forgotten or bid Mrs. Wingfield good-bye. The parson wandered in and out, having brief conversations with this one and that. If he was not the chief seditioner, then it must be one of these other men, his closest colleagues.

Tom could walk back to Cambridge with them, at least. Perhaps that was their plan too, to wait until they were out on the open road to catechize him about his commitment.

Then Steadfast came up to him, shooing Tribulation away with a flick of his hand. “You wanted to perform a service, Tom; here’s your chance. We need a letter taken to a butcher in Dry Drayton.” He drew a packet from his sleeve and slipped it into Tom’s hand. He instructed Tom in the coded greeting to be used to identify himself and what reply should be given.

Here it was; the step forward he’d been wanting to take. Tom looked Steadfast in the eye. “You won’t be disappointed.”

Steadfast shrugged, but he also smiled to show he understood the threshold being crossed. “Be sure to say good-bye to my father before you leave.”

***

Abstinence met Tom at the edge of the yard. “I’ll walk with you to the road, if you like.”

“I do,” he said. “Very much.”

Instead of going directly across the fields, she led him toward a path running through the small woods that lay between her father’s land and the neighbor’s. As they walked around the woodshed, they passed out of sight of the house and yard.

She led him a little farther along the winding track. Tall, skinny trees contended for the light, their canopies waving in the winds high above their heads. A few patches of bluebells lingered here and there. Small white flowers dotted the briar twining thickly over heaps of fallen branches.

Abstinence seemed to be aiming for some particular spot. Tom saw nothing to distinguish the place, but when she reached it, she stopped and turned to face him. She ducked her head, bit her lip, and studied him through her thick lashes. “I think you like me, Thomas Clarady.”

“I do like you, Abstinence Wingfield.” Tom bit his lip as well, wondering if he was finally going to get that kiss. “I think you like me too.”

They beamed at one another. That much was settled.

“Are you going to marry John Barrow?” he asked, wanting clarification on that point in particular.

“Not if someone else should ask for me.” Her tone made it clear whom she hoped the someone else would be.

Tom held her gaze, his sober expression a warning of the serious nature of his next words. “I am still subject to my father’s will, you know. I’m not free to choose for myself.”

Abstinence poked her pink tongue through her teeth. “I understand.” She took two steps and stopped in front of him, right under his chin, right up against him, smelling of soap. She tilted back her head and parted her strawberry lips.

He was a mortal man, made of ordinary stuff. He kissed her.

She wrapped her hand around his neck and kissed him back, filling him with molten sunshine. He filled his arms with her rich, warm body, pulling her hard against him, twining one hand in the silken flow of her hair. The cosmos whirled around them while they drank each other in. Tom felt his shirttail being tugged out of his hose. His fingers worked free the laces at the neck of her shirt and plunged inside to grasp a heavy breast.

“Yes,” she breathed against his neck, and her breath set his skin on fire. “Yes, Tom. I want it to be you.”

“Abstinence,” he moaned, and with the utterance of her name, his wits crashed back to earth. He broke the kiss and pushed her gently away, holding her at arm’s length. “We can’t, sweetling. We mustn’t.”

“What?” Her blue eyes slowly focused into a glare. Her lips, ripe and bruised, twisted into a puzzled frown.

Tom wanted to scoop her into his arms and start over, but he couldn’t. No gentleman could. He was a deceiver, a spy, here to expose her father, or at least her father’s friends. He could not abuse her girlish trust.

He took a deep breath, released her, and stepped back, holding up his hands to keep her at bay. “Abstinence, dearest, we must stop. You’re a maid, and I —” What could he possibly say that would make any sense at a time like this? “I have work to do.”

She gaped at him as if he were the most skit-brained nidget under the sun. Then she gave a furious little shriek, turned on her heel, and stalked away, tossing a last barb over her shoulder as she went. “You don’t have any idea
what
you’re doing, Thomas Clarady.”

That much, at least, was certain.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Tom, still reeling from that earth-moving kiss, made his way to the main road and turned, he hoped, in the right direction. Dry Drayton lay five miles to the northwest of Cambridge, which was five miles yet from where he stood. He looked forward to the long, solitary walk. By the time he reached his destination, his wits might just have cleared.

He waited until he had reached the northern fringes of the town before scouting about for an old-fashioned alehouse — the humbler, the better. He found what he was looking for and ducked under the lintel into a low room, dark and smoky. Perfect. Neither godly folk nor university men were likely to patronize this establishment.

He found a table in the farthest corner and ordered a mug of ale and a jug of spring water. When those were brought, he sent the alewife back for bread and cheese, feeling hungry again in spite of the ample dinner. Then he called for a candle and carefully opened the letter, searching for traps — a hair under the seal, a dusting of flour in the fold — and found none.

The message, written in Steadfast’s bold hand, was brief:
Round Church, Thursday, three. Urgent. Tell the others.
He memorized it, refolded the page, and replaced the seal, warming it on the blade of his knife over the candle flame. When he finished his repast, he left.

He recognized the butcher in Dry Drayton from the Whitsunday service in Babraham. Tom uttered the words Steadfast had given him: “Our friends salute thee.” The butcher gave the prescribed answer: “Peace be to thee.” He took the letter and went back to his work.

Tom pondered the message as he made his way home. The Round Church was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, an ancient structure just past the point where the High Street met Bridge Street. An odd place for a meeting of the godly, being a stronghold of the most conservative members of the established Church and filled with idolatrous images. Perhaps that explained the choice. Who would look for radical nonconformists there?

Tom chuckled. Another sly bit of Puritan humor, no doubt.

Thursday
must mean this coming week, else a date would have been supplied.
Three
must indicate the hour and it must be afternoon. They could hardly lurk about the churchyard in the wee hours like ghosts and he doubted the church would be open all night.

Who were the others? Would the leader himself attend? The man in Dry Drayton might be responsible for his own small group, organizing some part of the main event during commencement. But then why wouldn’t he be the one sending the summons?

No, this letter had come from the top. The words had been written by Steadfast, probably at his father’s direction. A brief note written hastily after dinner. That’s why Steadfast had reminded him to be sure to bid the parson good-bye before he left; to make sure he knew Tom had accepted this first task. True, the parson had seemed overly self-absorbed, but perhaps all seditioners possessed an excess of vanity. It could simply be their nature.

Bacon would know. And he’d be pleased by this forward step. Tom knew what his next instructions would be: go to that church at the appointed hour and observe the proceedings — without getting caught.

***

Thursday afternoon brought rain in thundering gusts. Tom was glad. The bad weather let him cover up well for his clandestine rendezvous. In his black cloak and deep hood, he looked like any other academic hurrying across the market square with his shoulders hunched against the wind.

He had no excuse for visiting that church if anyone he knew saw him. He hadn’t been invited to the meeting and shouldn’t even know about it. And he could hardly pretend the butcher had read the letter to him with the man himself standing right there.

He’d tossed and turned the night before, racking his brains to no avail. Why should he suddenly decide to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher? He had the chapel in his college or Great St. Mary’s in the center of town if he needed a bit of grandeur. Visitors made a point of taking in the Round Church, but Tom had been living in Cambridge for months. Why should he choose one of the worst days of the season to see the sights? He had no answers.

He couldn’t simply stay away and stick to his normal routine. He had to go. That’s why he was here: to push, to pry, to take risks and catch a dangerous rebel. He had to take this chance, even at the risk of being caught.

What would they do to him? Not much, he’d bet; not for the first offense. His sin was curiosity, nothing more — that they could prove. He’d be lectured, not beaten. Not hanged from a roof beam? Not this time.

There was more at stake than his skin, however. If he were caught lurking about the church, whoever caught him might think, “Better safe than sorry,” and bar him from the godly community as a spy. Then he would never be able to identify the seditioner and be forced to slink back to London with his tail between his legs, a failure. They wouldn’t allow him to return to Gray’s Inn. He probably wouldn’t even be able to stay at the university, not even in a different college since nobody wanted a traitor in their midst. All his father’s efforts on his behalf would come to nothing. He’d have to go home to Dorset and start from scratch. Never see Ben again. Never see Trumpet.

No. He would go, he would hide, and he would listen. He would learn something useful that would put him a step forward on his path to success.

Tom arrived a few minutes early and found the churchyard empty, too empty to linger in. No one would meet outside on a day like this anyway. He’d have to go inside. He opened the heavy west door just wide enough to slip inside and dodged across the entry to hide behind one of the massive columns ringing the ambulatory. He stood there, drawing shallow breaths through his open mouth, waiting for his heart to stop pounding so he could hear.

The nave was silent; not a whisper, not an echo. It smelled old and damp, with a faint, lingering scent of incense. Tom peered around the column. No one. No men in tall brown hats, no priest in long black robes.

Was he early? Late? The bell tolled as he asked himself those questions; he was right on time. His stomach churned with doubt. Could the note have meant three o’clock in the morning? Impossible. Or three
men
, with the time arranged in advance by regular practice?

He circled the ambulatory, moving swiftly from column to column. He walked as silently as he could, acutely aware of the soft pat made by his leather soles at each step. He had the sense of a shadow moving ahead of him but could be certain of nothing inside this strange round chamber on so dark a day.

As he reached the last pillar, he heard a sharp squeak of wet leather on the polished marble floor. Footsteps pattered into the entryway. He felt a gust of chilly wind as the door thumped shut.

Someone had been hiding behind the pillars also, circling around, avoiding him. Waiting for him? Watching him?

A chill unrelated to the dismal day sank into his bones. The message had been a test and he’d failed it. He had walked right into a trap.