A Pack of Lies (16 page)

As Widow Tyford reached the head of the stairs, she saw the linen press gaping open, the bed upended, and the three armed soldiers beating the wall and, giving a short, choked cry, she staggered in a swoon and it was all her maidservant could do to shut the chest lid and lay her mistress unconscious across it. A malevolent glint of assurance lit the eyes of Priestcatcher Eliott: ‘Fetch the sledgehammer. I believe we are searching close to the mark!’

A terrible silence fell over the house, split at last by the blows of the hammer. The house itself seemed to groan at the blows, as the bricks stove inwards on a mean little cavity. But it was not the loam or bricks that cried out, only the man concealed inside the priesthole as flying bricks struck him in the face and body.

They pulled out the Jesuit covered in brickdust and blood, and had manhandled him down the staircase before the Widow Tyford regained consciousness. She woke to find Eliott’s face thrust close to hers: ‘For the receiving and concealing of a Roman Catholic priest, a fine of one hundred pounds. For the hearing of a Roman Catholic mass,’ and he shook a poor crust of bread and an empty goblet in her face, ‘a fine of twenty pounds. I trust, Magistrate, that I am correct in my knowledge of the law? I have had much practice in
this
house, have I not, mistress? Though I have never taken their ferret of a priest before. This is a good day’s work.’

‘You may be right in your knowledge of the law, Eliott,’ muttered Magistrate Pole, ‘but as to your Christian charity . . .’

The widow sat up and perched unsteadily on the edge of the carved wooden chest. ‘You know full well, Richard Eliott, that your persecution has beggared me and my family. We have no money to call our own. All our savings are gone in fines. We have nothing to pay you with unless you take the sweat from our faces and the blood from our veins. If your soldiers have found above ten farthings as they searched, it will be a thing of amazement to me. You have bled this stone dry, Master Eliott, may God forgive you your tyranny!’

Richard Eliott showed no surprise. ‘I have a cart outside, mistress. Let the magistrate be my witness that everything I confiscate is confiscated according to the law. I hereby seize on your goods and chattels in payment of the fine, and if the sale of your furniture does not raise the sum, I shall return to seize on your land and buildings! Your male servants I arrest for aiding the papist spy. You may thank my bounty that you keep your freedom. There are plenty of women of your kind in the Bridewell Prison. Indeed, I shall see you there yet, I dare guess.’

To and fro the soldiers went, emptying the house of its furnishings. The magistrate fretted and twittered
about the emptying rooms, protesting at the roughness of the men, but the Widow Tyford sat impassive on the press, her eyes on her lap, her lips moving in a silent prayer. (If Eliott could have proved she was praying in Latin, he would certainly have carried her away in chains.) Only when the soldiers pushed her roughly off the chest and carried it away to the cart in the yard did she break out in loud sobbing and fall on her face along the splintery floor.

Eleanor heard voices in the hall, and ran to greet her betrothed. ‘Richard! What brings you here, sweet friend? Are they the men you command — those men in the yard?’

Richard Eliott revelled in the warmth of the greeting. ‘To say true, my business brought me by your door and I thought to bring you a present as I passed.’ He snapped his fingers and two soldiers poised at the tail of the cart heaved a carved wooden chest on to their shoulders and brought it into the house. ‘A press for your marriage trousseau, mistress, since such you must have now that you have consented to be my wife. Shall it be set down in your chamber?’

Eleanor clutched her fingers to her mouth in an ecstasy of delight. ‘Oh my dear Richard! Yes, yes, have them take it up. What a sweet gentleman you are indeed to be mindful of me when you are about your business. I shall soon believe that you love me,’ she added flirtingly.

‘Oh believe it, lady! Believe it! My heart is yours entirely and you are never far from my mind working or waking, sleeping or stirring.’

‘But where does it come from? Where did you find it? Such pretty carving!’ she exclaimed, as the chest rocked and jarred its way up the narrow stairs. ‘Are you escort to a cargo of furniture, my dear?’

‘Confiscated!’ he declared proudly. ‘I come from
raiding a den of heretic Catholics where I cornered a foul Jesuit priest. See him bound there in the cart!’

Eleanor peeped nervously past her fiancé at the black-clothed prisoner wedged between the furniture. ‘Oh well done, Richard! Good work! Do you hear that, Mother! Richard has caught a Jesuit!’

Eliott coloured deeply with pride. ‘I confiscated the furniture from that den of vice and wickedness — but I paid in cash for the press: I would not have you think I pilfered it from the State!’

‘I would never think that, Richard! Indeed I would not. You are a kind, good, honourable man and I thank God that he has brought me such a husband.’

Much as he would like to have stayed, Richard Eliott’s duties urged him to hurry away with his soldiers and his prisoner and his confiscated goods, and Eleanor hurried upstairs to rejoice in the gift from her betrothed. A press for her trousseau! What a dear, chivalric thought, and on a day when he had other such important work in hand! She ran her fingers over the birds and animals carved in oak. The hasps were undone. There was no padlock to it. She lifted the lid and found that it was not empty. ‘Linen too!’ After all, linen is an important beginning to any bride’s home-making. She fingered the sheets, her heart stuffed with tender sentiments towards her beloved Richard.

Then she drew back the top sheet and found the one below red with wet blood.

The horror snatched her breath away. As she jumped back, she caught her foot in her gown and stumbled and sat down. Her eyes were on a level now with the press as the bloodstained sheet was thrown back over the side and an elbow flapped vainly to hook itself over the rim and a bloody hand dropped limply on to her knee.

‘Magna est Veritas et praevalebit . . . Non omnis moriar . . . Water, for the love of God.’

She thought to slam the lid and run for help. But to reach the lid she would have to lean across the man in
the press. Her legs seemed to have turned to water, and every time she tried to rise, her treacherous petticoats ensnared her feet and overbalanced her. She tried to scream, but it was as though her vocal cords had been plucked out. The question kept struggling for a place in her mind: Why had Richard presented her with a man’s body in a chest? It must have some meaning. She stared at the hand on her knee and it gradually tightened into a fist, clasping her dress.

‘God forgive me for a coward, but I fear to die in a linen press. May I not be shriven!’ A head emerged a few inches from her own. It was a face of absurdly childlike innocence, not above twenty years old. The boy looked about him in astonishment. ‘What is this place?’

‘Who are you?’

‘Who are
you
?’

‘This is my chamber.’

‘Then why am I in it?’

‘That’s what I asked you!’

The conversation congealed again, like a stream refreezing into ice. They stared at each other until gradually understanding dawned on Eleanor. ‘You were hiding in the chest. You’re a Roman Catholic! You’re a Jesuit!’

‘A member of the Society of Jesus, yes mistress.’ His eyes gleamed with pride.

‘But you were captured! I saw a priest in the cart yonder! Richard captured you!’

This news struck horror into the young man. ‘Ah! Father Hart was taken, then? God be with him. God give him patience to make a good end . . . He was so much better hidden than I! He was so much better a man than I! He converted me to the True Faith. He was one of the Mission of Fifteen sent by the Holy Father himself from Rheims. I was nothing but the idle son of a good Catholic house until Father Hart came to us and preached. I begged him to admit me to the Society and
he agreed and heard my vows — and now he’s taken and I’m not!’ He made an effort to climb out of the press, but slumped back, panting with pain and frustration.

‘How came you hurt?’ she whispered, thinking he had perhaps attempted suicide, that most unforgivable of sins. Who knew what these devilish spies might not do?

‘The pikemen. They drove pikes into the chest. I pray their idleness in searching has delivered me into gentler hands. Are you a friend of the Widow Tyford? Did she convey me here? Am I to escape after all?’ Large tears filled the young man’s eyes at the shock of sudden hope.

‘No! Widow Tyford is a Catholic! We never speak her name in this house!’

The realization that he was in the hands of a Protestant after all dealt the boy a bitter blow. ‘So be it,’ he said and mumbled something in Latin.

‘Here. Lean on me. You must lie on the bed while I fetch a surgeon to you.’ Eleanor said this as coldly as possible and felt quite polluted by the touch of his heretic hand on her shoulder, more so by the blessing he clumsily offered her with one bloodstained hand as she helped him to the bed.

As she turned to go she asked, ‘What will become of the Jesuit — the other one, I mean?’

‘He will be put to the rack — as if the rack could stretch the law of God out of its true shape! But he will never recant! He will never betray his mission! And if his soul is patient and his tormentors merciful, he will be hanged soon.’

‘No!’

‘Of course.’ The Jesuit seemed puzzled by her surprise. ‘That antichrist Eliott — ‘Priestcatcher’ they call him — he’s sent four saints to the rack and the rope this very year . . . Now I must steady my mind to bear my own fate patiently.’

She was by the door now. ‘What is your name, Jesuit?’

‘Peter . . . Father Kirby, mistress,’ said the boy, who was so new to his vows as to forget his brotherly title now and then.

‘I shall go now,’ she said, though her hand rested on the doorhandle for a long long time.

Five minutes later she returned with a ewer and basin and set to tearing into shreds the sheets which had come in the oak press.

Eliott laughed at the informer. He laughed at him and then he knocked him down and had him thrown in gaol for trying to pervert the course of justice. He kept the grin on his face afterwards. It gave the lie to a horrible coldness that pressed against his heart.

Eliott slapped his palms on his thighs decisively. He would ride over to Eleanor’s house at once and tell her the comic business of the informer. Eleanor a covert Catholic! Ha! Eleanor shielding a priest! It was the funniest thing he had heard for a year. He laughed out loud to prove it.

He rode at full tilt, wanting to surprise Eleanor: it is always fun to startle a kitten. He was so impatient to tell her the joke that his wait at the door seemed endless. He banged loudly.

Then Eleanor’s mother opened the door. She must have mistaken him for someone else in the bright sunlight, for she went ashy pale. He cut short his greeting and hurried by her, explaining, ‘The strangest thing, mistress! Such merriment we had this morning! I must tell it to Eleanor before the mirth splits me!’ He looked around the living room, but there was no sign of Eleanor — only a pair of candles smoking on the table and Eleanor’s father staring at him as if he were some strange intruder. ‘Forgive me if I startle you, sir. Where’s my lady?’ (Candles lit in sunlight?)

‘I . . . I don’t know.’

So Richard leapt up the stairs and knocked on her
chamber door. ‘Good morrow, sweet lady. Such merriment we had this morning . . .’

She snatched the door open and gazed up into his face as if he were a fiend out of Hell. His heart stumbled in its beat. Such a look! ‘Did I affright you, maid?’

‘Yes. Yes, yes, you affrighted me, Master Eliott. What do you want?’

So uncivil? He eased his way into her room. ‘Such merriment we had this morning . . .’ he began again to say. ‘A villain came and informed that your family was a nest of covert Catholics, ha! ha!, that you even had a Jesuit hidden away in this house of papism and heard mass and were . . . preached to . . . by . . .’ His sentence bled to a stop as though it had been pressed to death by the weight of his heart. For out of the closed chest, between lid and side, hung a corner of black cloth. As his eyes rested on it, it was slowly drawn inside and disappeared. She saw his eyes go to the chest.

‘Is your trousseau almost ready, mistress?’ He stepped towards the press.

She darted in front of him, shielding the press. ‘Almost ready, my lord . . . But it is unlucky for a bridegroom to see his bride’s wedding clothes before time.’

Eliott’s face broke into a snarl. ‘
Why, you mean to wear black, lady
?’ And pushing her aside, he threw open the lid and bodily lifted out the man hidden inside.

For a minute, for a lifetime, the whole house fell silent. The door creaked, and when it swung open Eleanor’s parents stood outside, the wife clinging to her husband. They were a party to the treachery.

Richard Eliott did not want to speak. He had no words in his head. But it seemed that if he did not, no new word would ever be spoken again: the world would lapse into everlasting silence. ‘Who . . . are . . . you?’ he mouthed into the face of the young man whom he held by the revers of his black gown. The boy dropped his eyes.

‘He is my lover,’ said Eleanor with slow deliberation. ‘I cannot marry you, Richard. I do not love you. I love this man and we mean to marry. So kindly unhand my betrothed,’ and she went and put her hand through Father Kirby’s arm.

‘I don’t believe you, mistress,’ said Eliott.

‘Why else should a young man be hidden in my chamber, hidden from you? I vow to you, he’s slept in this chamber every night for two months and this I swear to.’

‘He’s a priest, lady — a filthy, heretical, soul-stealing Jesuit — and you are a Catholic viper out of a brood of Catholic vipers.’

She maintained her calm better. ‘Which would be worse, Richard? That this man was my lover or that this man was a priest?’

‘Oh, a priest, woman! A priest! This is the stuff of damnation!’