Blood Ties (2 page)

To these, and many others, my heartfelt thanks.

Thomas stepped from light into darkness, from warmth into a chill mist. It flowed around him, probing for weakness, piercing his thick cloak, settling into the old wound rendered raw and new again by this night. The knee gave; a slight stumble forward, a hand reaching out to support him under the elbow. Shrugging it off, he lurched one step, then another, forcing the leg to its work. No one could mistake his limp, but he was the leader here and he would not be helped.

The walk was not long, a minute’s stride across the Green, less. Yet the fog swallowed the path and he only knew it when he strayed from it, for the ground had a crust of frost, its crunch different than the gravel. Really, he should have let the Tower’s officer go first –
what was his name? Tucknell?
– but when he’d arrived and told him the reason for his visit, the old warder’s face had betrayed such horror, Thomas had thought he might actually be refused. The signature on his pass had ended any protests. The Fox’s signature always did. But now they were embarked on their mission, it was important to show who was in charge. Especially as it was clear, from the plainness of his clothes, the shortness of his hair and beard, that Tucknell was a Protestant.

They had covered perhaps half the ground when a black shape burst from the mist. He had stepped off the path again and suddenly there was a blur of feathers, a carrion scent, a demonic caw. As the creature’s talons reached for his face, his knee buckled again and he reeled backwards with a cry, banging hard into the man that followed close behind.

‘Easy, Master Lawley. Easy.’ The man – Tucknell – held him under his arm, raised a lantern. His voice was calming. ‘It’s one of the ravens, no more. I warned you to stick to the path.’ Setting his burden upright, he added, ‘Been a cruel winter for everyone, including the birds. He thought you were after his hidden food.’

At another moment, Thomas might have laughed. There was a time, in Portugal, when he’d fought for scraps with sparrows and crows. God’s missions had a harsh way of testing the faithful. That was their point. And yet, if he’d had the choice between those simple days of preaching and begging through an alien countryside, and this night’s work in his native land …

That glimpse of a memory made him think on humility, the virtue his teachers had always found hardest to instil in him, the proud ex-soldier. He had no need to dominate this man. He only needed him to do God’s will. With a half-smile, he said, softly, ‘Perhaps you will lead the way now, Master Warder.’

The freezing mist seemed to pool thicker about the chapel doors, yet no one seemed anxious to seek shelter from it. Tucknell fiddled with the keys in his hand, the three labourers leaned on shovels and picks, avoiding each others’ eyes. Even Thomas felt a reluctance to proceed. Outside the iron-studded doors, the frigid air was at least connected to the world of the living, their footprints in the frost a trail back to light and warmth. Ahead, within the darkness, lay a deeper cold – the realm of the dead. And they were there to violate that realm.

After a few moments watching plumes of breath stripe the night, Thomas shifted, made to speak, to command. Before breath could become voice in him, the warder pulled him slightly to one side, whispered, ‘Sir. Let me ask of you once more. Beg of you. Do not do this. It is a sin.’

‘I have my orders, Tucknell. And you have yours. You saw the signature on the papers. This command comes from the Queen herself.’

It was not strictly true, but the officer was not to know that. He drew back, seeking Thomas’s eyes.

‘I know our gracious sovereign Mary has little reason to love … she who lies here. But to thus despoil her tomb?’ His voice softened. ‘You are an Englishman, sir, and a gentleman I can tell. Let us spare an English lady further humiliation.’ Off Thomas’s silent stare he cried, ‘For Jesu’s sake, man, hasn’t she suffered enough?’

Thomas leaned in, so his voice, softened now, beguiling, would not carry to the waiting, shifting men.

‘I do not like this either, man. But we have had reports that this woman may have taken something with her to the grave. Something that may … be of use to Her Majesty.’

Tucknell’s face twisted, as if containing a violent struggle. ‘She took nothing with her save a prayer book and the clothes she wore. I know, sir, because I was there.’ The struggle overpowered him. ‘I know because I helped to kill her and to bury her afterwards. May God have mercy on my soul!’

‘Amen.’

Thomas watched a tear that had nothing to do with the harsh wind run from this tough soldier’s eye, and wondered at the power this woman, dead nearly twenty years, still had over the living. A power to be turned into a weapon for the Catholic cause, so his superiors in the Society of Jesus believed. But only if he, Thomas Lawley, did his duty now.

‘Come, Master Tucknell. You have merely to show me the way. If there is sin after that, it is I, and I alone, that will commit it.’

The soldier before him hardened, the tears withdrawn. Without another word he turned to the door and fitted into its lock the largest of the keys he carried. It grated there, with a cry like that of the raven defending its cache of food. The doors, in contrast, swung open, as silent as on any tomb.

If it’s possible
, thought Thomas, rubbing his knee in vain hope,
it’s even colder inside than out
.

The mist may not have followed them in, but the shadows caused by their weak lanterns were nearly as thick, walls of black lining the little chapel. St Peter in Chains, it was called. He had seen it by day, knew it brought succour to the warders and their families, to prisoners on a looser leash. By night it became once more the dark centre of the fortress, the last lodging place of those who had displeased the state, who walked across the Green he had just walked across, and were carried back. By night it was a place to be avoided, for unless you desired to spend time with the unquiet dead, why would you go there?

Out of sight of the others, Thomas crossed himself, then allowed Tucknell to pass him, to lead again, moving swiftly to the side aisle on the right. There the warder proceeded more slowly, bent at the waist, his lantern swinging close to the ground in a semi-circle before him. The labourers waited at the doorway, barely across the threshold and Thomas heard, rather than saw, a flagon being passed, a gulping. He knew he should chastise them for their irreverence, within these holy walls. But he found himself envying them their solace.

The lantern ceased its circling, was placed now on the floor. Tucknell stood, head lowered, silent, about six paces before the smaller altar on the right arm of the Transept. Thomas joined him, bent to investigate the flagstone. It looked like any other there, a pitted surface though smooth-sided, half a man’s height in width and length.

‘Are you sure this is it?’

Tucknell made no move to speak, gave no sign that he had even heard, his eyes gazing down as if through the stone to some private past.

Thomas pressed. ‘This stone is like the rest of them, Warder. Was there no mark to distinguish her?’

Tucknell grunted. ‘Distinguish? His Majesty, the late King Henry, God forgive him his sins, ordered that there be no tomb, no monument. Wanted her driven from our memory as swiftly as from his. No funeral tears to stain his wedding day the following week.’ The warder made no effort to keep the contempt from his voice. ‘There is a mark, if you know where to look.’

He pointed, raised the lamp. At first Thomas saw nothing unusual; then, on closer scrutiny, he made out what he’d passed over as just another scratch. A rose was etched there, in the top right corner, faint, tiny, no bigger than a little finger. Perfect. Someone had laboured with care to carve it, to make it beautiful yet inconspicuous. Thomas had heard, among the many rumours, that despite the erasing of her name, the blackening of her memory, a single white rose appeared every nineteenth of May in this chapel, on this stone floor. Someone would not forget her, nor the anniversary of her death. He looked up again, but Tucknell’s face was hidden in the gloom. His voice, when it came, was brisk, uninflected.

‘Shall we proceed?’

More lanterns were lit, hung from brackets on the pillars, perched on pews pushed back, a little cave of light. The scent of old incense, of polished wood and tallow candles was replaced with that of burning oil and, soon, of earth freshly dug. The flagstone, and the four nearest it, were prised up and stacked. The three men set about the earth with a speed that showed their desire to be gone from this place, the clay-rich soil a growing pile, the men sinking slowly.

‘How deep must they go?’ Thomas called.

Tucknell had withdrawn into the darkness and his voice came muffled, as if from afar. ‘Not very.’

Despite his knee, Thomas was unable to sit. He leaned against a pillar, focusing forward, willing the men to greater exertion, to swifter result. He was tempted to leap into the widening pit, to aid them. His training had emphasized hard labour, good works, examples set … but he knew he would just get in the way. The shovel was not a tool that fitted easily into his hand. These days, it was the crucifix. Once, it had been the sword.

There was a crunch, different to blade on earth, a rending and splintering of wood, a cry from the workman who struck of triumph, the note of it changing swiftly to fear. The three men scrambled out, moved into the shadows, crossing themselves, mumbling prayers behind their hands cupped over nose and mouth. Thomas willed his body forward, the lantern held before him like a weapon, its frail spill of light spreading across till it touched on something white at the centre of the darkness below. As it did, the stench reached him, putrid, some sick sweetness within it, surging out as if from a bottle long corked and suddenly opened, revealing its taint. He gagged, a sleeve raised instinctively to his face. His legs froze, the weak knee locked.

‘Still ripe?’

He had not heard Tucknell approach and he started at the voice.

‘How can that be?’ His own voice was harsh, choked. ‘Has she not lain in this ground for nearly twenty years? Is it true then, all they said of her, that she would defy death?’

The warder, giving no reply, stepped past Thomas and down into the grave. Unwilling to look, unable to look away, Thomas saw what could only be the palm of a hand, bones exposed beneath rotting flesh, beneath a frantic wriggling mass, maggots squirming in unaccustomed light. The smell seemed to hit him again with double the force, yet he could not avert his eyes, despite the sweat bursting from his forehead, his body close to revolt.

Tucknell reached into the moving centre of the horror. ‘Poor lady,’ he murmured. Tenderly, he tucked the hand back into the splintered side of the coffin, then looked up. ‘She is not the one you seek. She has lain here just a year.’ Turning to the men he ordered, ‘Dig deeper, this side. And dig more carefully.’

When the warder was once more beside him, Thomas, mastering his voice, said, ‘Who was it?’

‘Jane Grey. A simple maid, scarce seventeen. Another victim of another man’s ambition.’ The voice grew harsh as he gestured at the ground. ‘Do you know how many headless queens jostle for precedence down there? Three. Her, whose reign was nine scant days, whose rest we have just violated. Within two arms’ span lies another, Catherine Howard, a foolish, vain, girl who yet did not deserve this fate. And before them both, the first to find this false rest, the only one who deserved the title of Queen …’ He faltered, his anger no longer sustaining him. ‘Well, her you shall see soon enough.’

Thomas had not yet cleared the taste of bile from his mouth when the shovel’s note changed for the second time. On Tucknell’s command, the men proceeded carefully, slowly clearing the earth, till a small, squarish casket was revealed, no deeper than the man’s leg beside it, barely as long. Tucknell returned Thomas’s querying look.

‘An arrow case. That was the best that was around to bury her in.’ He handed Thomas a short iron bar, flattened at one end. ‘We shall withdraw, sir, as you ordered. Call us when you are done.’ He looked as if he would say something more, then turned sharply away, herding the labourers outside, all soon swallowed by the mists at the door. All sound went with them and Thomas was alone, in a pool of flickering light, in the loneliness of a grave.

He thought to call out, to bring someone back, the excuse of needing a lamp held. But his orders were clear. No one was to know his true mission. Most would think he was there to put an end to the rumours that her body had been spirited away, that she’d been reburied in her native Norfolk where, it was said, a white hare made a midnight run across the fields from the churchyard on each anniversary of her death. They could believe what they wanted. No one would ever guess the truth. For he was not there to verify what was within the grave. He was there to verify what was not.

He could delay no more. Placing two lamps on the edge of the rough hole, he stiffly descended into it. He expected a struggle, but when the flat end of the bar was inserted under the lid, it gave easily, as if it had been barely nailed down. Two more positions, each with slight pressure, and the lid lifted. His fingers poised in the cracks, he uttered a swift ‘
Ave
’, then began to breathe slowly, evenly, bringing calm into his body, his mind, as he had been taught. He had done some distasteful things in his recent life. But they had all been to the service of God, in obedience to his superiors, the interpreters of God’s will. This task, however unpleasant, was just another, one more bead threaded onto the rosary of his redemption.

He lifted the lid, set it aside, his nostrils prepared for the surge of corruption they had received before. But there was nothing, no scent except … yes, there was something now, mere mustiness and within it something soft, almost honeyed. It was there, for a moment only, and it was gone again, as if someone had held a flower to his face and then moved away. She had lain within this casket for nineteen years. The worms he had seen moving in the dead hand of another short-lived queen, would long since have finished their feast here.