The Abbey Close Read online

  ‘I,’ began the secretary, his eyes flitting away, ‘I shall inform his Grace you men are come.’ He scraped back his chair and stood, turning towards the tall doors that marked the entrance to the Archbishop’s privy chamber. He rapped before pushing them open and sliding in. Danforth turned to Martin, a grudging respect in his eyes. ‘Bampot?’ he asked, an eyebrow arched.

  ‘Am I not half a Scot, born and reared? Insults and oats for breakfast, Mr Danforth. Part of my nature.’

  ‘As behoves an ass.’

  ‘Ah, comme c’est drôle! I like that very much, my friend. Yet it roused the fellow, did it not? I suspect his lugs will burn for a while.’

  ‘I was raised to believe that Scotsmen and the French were louts to a man. I can see why, now. Put those reeking gloves back on.’

  ‘Ha! I was raised to believe all Englishman have tails.’ Before he replaced his second glove, Martin wagged it behind himself. ‘I own I’m glad he took fright. I’m all talk, in truth.’

  ‘That, at least, is something,’ said Danforth.

  Clasping his hands behind his back, he looked around the entrance hall. Tapestries hung on the walls, all religious scenes. He smiled up at the Virgin, a dove in her hands. Inside her halo golden flowers blossomed. He ran a finger over it. All at once it was rough, soft, smooth, warm, cold. A guttering wind invaded the room, making the bottom of the tapestry ripple, and a candle on the desk flare before dying. He strode to the desk, his lip curling. In his own offices – at home in Edinburgh and in the Cardinal’s various lodgings, his papers were neat. Some men didn’t deserve the office of secretary.

  ‘What’s keeping that damned whoreson?’ Martin had crept up behind him and was eyeing the desk’s clutter. ‘As lax in tending his office as he is unfriendly.’

  ‘I daresay the wretch is telling his Grace that we handled him a wee thing roughly. It is an offence to threaten a man of the Church.’

  ‘Not, I reckon, if the threat is of one higher in degree. Stung by the rebuke, so I am, sir.’

  ‘No sting is so sharp as that which gives us which we seek.’

  ‘Hmm. Is that from your reading at the university? A quote?’ Martin had lowered his voice. Danforth almost smiled at the sudden earnestness.

  ‘Of course not. It is ghastly, of my own sudden composition. That, Martin, is extempore.’

  ‘If you say so. I’ll own though, I wish I had real learning.’

  ‘You speak French, and Scots, you read and write passing well. His Grace would not employ you otherwise’

  ‘That’s not learning, not really. I wish I’d been a university man, I mean.’

  ‘There are divers paths to knowledge. I was a poor student, apt to retain only what pleased me and not what should. Yet–’

  Danforth was cut off by screeching door.

  ‘His Grace bids you enter’, said the secretary, his eyes fixed on his seat. Danforth gave him a little bow before stepping towards the privy chamber. Martin did not. Instead, he stepped in front of the little man for a few seconds and appraised him with a hard state. Then he made a sudden jerking motion with his head. It sent the secretary scurrying for his desk. Danforth averted his eyes from the little scene, fighting another uninvited smile, and stepped inside.

  2

  Gavin Dunbar rose from his high-backed chair, gripping the neat desk before him with slender hands. His rich robes, cream and gold, swirled about him. Danforth inhaled the flat, stale smell of incense, picturing old churches, his father’s smile, childhood summers. Dunbar proffered his ring for them to kiss.

  ‘Gentlemen of his Grace the Lord Cardinal,’ he said. ‘And come on his Grace’s business. What news? Sniffing out heretics? Looking for books to grace St Andrews’ libraries? Or does the master not tell the dogs why they must retrieve the stick?’

  ‘Good morning, your Grace,’ said Danforth, removing his hat and bowing. ‘I am Simon Danforth, English secretary to the Cardinal. Here is our commission.’ He handed it over and clasped his hands over his stomach.

  Dunbar slit open the seal. His bushy eyebrows rose and fell, his lips moving soundlessly. When he had finished, he looked up at them without expression. ‘Slanders touching the estate of the Church, eh?’

  ‘Yes, your Grace,’ said Danforth.

  ‘The Cardinal bids me trust in you fellows.’

  Danforth bowed his head, but his heart fluttered. He hoped Dunbar would not read pride. ‘Danforth ... Danforth,’ said the Archbishop, touching a finger to his lips. ‘You are, I believe, the tamed Englishman come out of that hell-blasted realm.’ His hand danced over his chest in an abortive attempt at crossing himself. ‘Aye, I’ve heard of you.’

  ‘The same.’ Danforth frowned, deflated. He had not expected warmth from Dunbar, but he had hoped there might be some recognition that they had a common enemy. Instead the Archbishop seemed to be sneering at him. ‘And with no loyalties to the kingdom that bore you, I trust? Nor to its king’

  ‘None. The antichrist Henry has shown himself rather an enemy than a friend to Christendom.’ Danforth had seen the king once. It was during one of the great progresses through London – a tall man sitting astride a charger, arrayed in rich velvet and jewels. Rings of noblemen, retainers and guards had surrounded him. All that had really been visible over the throng was a sturdy arm waving high in the air, sunlight glinting off a multitude of rings. Danforth had also seen the coronation entry of the king’s concubine, Anne Boleyn – a thin-faced, unsmiling shrew with black hair and large, haunted eyes, dressed as a maiden queen despite the bastard in her belly. He shivered inwardly at the memory, unwelcome and unwanted.

  ‘It is so. And now the great whale declares himself supreme sovereign of this nation.’ Dunbar shifted his gaze to Martin. ‘Your name?’

  Danforth was pleased to see Martin bow, only ruining the effect with an open smile as he rose. ‘Arnaud Martin, your Grace: French secretary to the Archbishop.’

  ‘I see: Danforth the tamed pet Englishman and French Martin, the half-frog.’ Danforth sensed Martin’s spine stiffen but was grateful he kept his jaw taut. ‘Pray tell me, gentlemen,’ said Dunbar, amusement on his wrinkled, aquiline face as he sat, ‘how fares our ... most worshipful father in Christ in keeping good office, when he sends his secretaries out of his lands and into mine? Perchance he has no other use for your toil. I understand he has flown south.’

  Danforth cleared his throat. Dunbar was fishing for gossip, and he would not be the one to give it. ‘The Cardinal has gone to the army, your Grace, to better serve the king. Yet before he did, he had news of these bruits. About the appearance of slanderous bills attacking his Grace, and so attacking the Church and realm. Your Grace might see from our commission we are to stop it.’

  ‘This,’ said Dunbar, jabbing a finger at the letter he had dropped to the desk, ‘speaks of slander ... of defamatory bills in my lands.’

  ‘It is so, your Grace. The Cardinal would have you take action against the malefactors.’

  ‘Would he now? I hardly require counsel in tending my own garden.’

  ‘Yet his Grace thinks it right that the great men of the Church work as one in stopping the spread of the Lutheran heresies. And their agents.’

  ‘Oh, you have knowledge of the slanderers, eh? You think Lutherans have made their home in Glasgow?’

  ‘I ... well ... I can think of no others.No others who might gain by bringing the faith and its leaders into hatred, the hatred of the people. Lutherans, Lollards, any of that rabble, you – your Grace sees?’ Danforth felt himself faltering. It was not going how he’d hoped. His voice sounded hollow, whining even. Had Martin noticed?

  ‘I must say, these bills sound most wicked. Hatred of the people, eh? Deliciously wicked, indeed. What is their nature?’

  ‘Oh, they are vile, unseemly things, your Grace, vulgar. Such filth sucked out of Christian pens! Neither Juvenal nor Horace: I think our friends might finish a jug of ale before they finish an alexandrine–’

  ‘I did not a
sk for a study of their style’ snapped Dunbar, thumping his fist on the desk. ‘What matter touching the Cardinal was contained within them? What did they say, man?’

  ‘They ... They touch upon his private affairs, and his friendship with Mistress Ogilvy.’

  ‘Ah, that. It makes easy prey for prating tongues.’

  ‘Indeed, sir. The Cardinal’s friendship with the lady is spotless. Their children are legitimate, born before he was ordained; they are faithful servants of the Church, acknowledged by the Holy Father.’ Danforth’s Adam’s apple jerked like a marionette. He didn’t like to dwell on the subject of the Cardinal and Marion Ogilvy. But, as he reminded himself, the great Wolsey had kept Joan Larke as a mistress. Few men’s private lives could stand up to scrutiny. His own could not. He pushed away the thought of fumbling, of hitched skirts and dropped breeches.

  ‘Indeed. Would that his Grace was not so strong in condemning the like fault in others, eh?’ The corners of Dunbar’s lips twitched. ‘Where are these bills?’

  ‘We have destroyed them, your Grace,’ said Danforth, ignoring the odd look he drew from Martin. He felt his heart speed at lying to a churchman and prayed again that his face did not betray him.

  ‘You’ve done what? What possessed you, man? This business falls within the cognizance of my courts; you have destroyed evidence, you and your master.’

  ‘Your Grace, the bill that we took yesterday had lain for some days; it was near frozen in place. Others were set behind it. No wardens had acted. The people laughed. This has been happening for some weeks, as we understand, unchecked. We do not know how many more have been and gone. You have the power to stop it, your Grace. Help us stop it.’

  Dunbar fixed a curtain of grey hair behind an ear and eased back in his chair. ‘You and your master will allow, I think, that the times carry weightier business than this. Across the kingdom men are preparing to fight for the Church. Leave this matter with me.’

  ‘You ... your Grace will take action against the Lutherans?’

  ‘There are no Lutherans in my lands. I would know. It is the Cardinal who takes up men who have their roots in foreign lands, not I.’ Danforth’s chin jutted. ‘His Grace has more enemies than hairs upon his head, alas. I would that it was not so. Of course, I also wish he was as zealous in matters spiritual as temporal. It will be some of the university men grown bold.’ He nodded. ‘Aye, that’ll be it. As their Chancellor, I shall take the lusty fellows in hand. When the times allow, I shall begin a commission of my own. You are right in one thing: it does not befit the Church to have men within it who bring disgrace. I’ll dig ‘em out. You might carry this news back to his Grace, with my ... reverences.’

  ‘Yet ...’ faltered Danforth, ‘surely Your Grace could do morely.’ Morely! Not even a word. He bit his tongue, hoping Dunbar hadn’t noticed.

  To his credit, the Archbishop did not laugh. ‘I am not,’ he said instead, ‘so fallen in my wits that I need the counsel of clerks. I’ve burned more heretics than you’ve had new boots. Off you trot.’

  ‘Uh, the Cardinal bid us tarry until the matter is concluded, until the perpetrators have been brought to task or the bills ceased.’

  ‘Tarry as you wish. None of my concern. But the inquiry, when I bring it, will be none of yours. And you need not think your meddling will be forgotten. If my courts find no libellers to answer for their crimes, you’ll have the blame of it. For the moment, I shall order the market cross watched. You may go.’

  Danforth and Martin bowed in unison, ignored by the Archbishop, who was already looking down to his desk as he reached for paper and a quill. Together they left the privy chamber. Dunbar’s secretary tilted his head up at them, balancing his spectacles. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Danforth realised he had been listening at the door. ‘It was a pleasure, sir,’ said Martin as they strode around the desk.

  They blinked out into the light. The sun was making an effort for November, but it was a losing battle. ‘Why,’ asked Martin, ‘did you not pass the bills?’

  ‘Wheesht,’ replied Danforth, looking around. The courtyard was still mobbed. Although the servants did not seem interested, one never knew which ears were listening. ‘Later.’

  Regaining their horses from the shoeless boy, Danforth mounted Woebegone and led them back to the highway. ‘The Town Council maintain this roadway passing well,’ he said. ‘Would that all of the king’s highways were so well attended.’

  ‘Never mind the roadway, sir! Why did you not pass the Archbishop the verses?’

  ‘The Cardinal should see them. I think the Archbishop is no friend of his.’ That was diplomatic, he fancied. ‘He might hold an inquiry, for the sake of form, but our naughty verses would then be read in open court. That would rather magnify their slanders than bury them. We must deal in this matter privately.’ He spoke as though lecturing a schoolboy.

  ‘Sir, you’re quite a cunning wee agent beneath the airs.’

  ‘Well,’ said Danforth, feeling generous, ‘I shan’t forget that it was your rough tongue gained us an audience. He cannot now deny knowledge of these bills, nor let them spread.’

  ‘A fine job of work, if you ask me.’

  ‘A fine beginning.’

  ‘But who in hell’s name is doing this? Someone’s writing these things, they don’t just grow – some creature moving unseen, behind our backs, mocking us.’

  ‘That is what we must discover. I might almost think it is the work of some demon.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Not unless demons write in ink on scraps of paper. No, this is some mortal man.’

  ‘Or woman.’

  ‘Some man, with a little learning, and a hatred of the Church. Or an affection for England’s treatment of it. He cannot –’

  ‘An Englishman?’

  ‘Can I finish? I did not say an Englishman. A man who cannot –’

  ‘I do love it when you lecture, just as a note to you,’ Martin interrupted again, with a smirk. ‘You should do it morely.’

  ‘He cannot speak openly,’ said Danforth, raising his voice, ‘for he would feel the flames. And so he moves, as you say, unseen. Or he has done.’

  ‘So we tarry in Glasgow,’ sighed Martin. It was more statement than question.

  ‘No. I have business elsewhere. You stay in Glasgow if you wish.’

  ‘Alone in this little corner of the world? I think not. Where are we going?’

  ‘For the moment to our inn and bedward,’ said Danforth, nonplussed. ‘Above all else, I crave rest.’

  Darkness had fallen by the time they arrived – the days were growing meaner. The sky, Danforth noticed, seemed very low, the stars emerging from behind cobweb clouds. The inn stank of ancient beer, and crane flies danced around the candles, unaware that their time was past. They fought their way between tables of card players towards the bar. ‘Watch where yer gawn,’ one hissed as Danforth jostled him. ‘Tryin’ tae play cairds, for Chrissake’.

  ‘My apologies, sir, I meant no offence.’ The man shook his head, mumbling oaths.

  The pair commandeered a circular wooden table. Martin ordered bread and cheese. Danforth refused. It was a Friday.

  ‘You might eat of the man’s table,’ said Martin. ‘The Church allows it.’

  ‘My customs are my own,’ said Danforth, drawing in his cheeks.

  ‘And welcome you are to them. Pour l'amour de Dieu.’

  ‘I do wish you would not speak in that devilish tongue.’

  ‘And I wish you wouldn’t speak as though you were in your first year at college and keen to let the world know all about it,’ snapped Martin. Danforth opened his mouth to argue, but shut it again. Better to let the man whine and say nothing than rise to a fight. He pursed his lips. ‘Besides,’ Martin continued, ‘you speak Scots and live in Scotland. French is the realm’s favoured second tongue. I can’t seem to shift it since being in France. And I’d be loath to lose the nickname “French Martin”. Makes me sound much more gallant tha
n I am.’ He rested his chin on a hand and fluttered his eyelashes.

  ‘Ach, chase yourself,’ said Danforth. His eyes nipped. Martin had recently accompanied the Cardinal to France, to drum up support for a Holy War against England. They had only returned in August. Danforth had been left at home. The Cardinal had called him his watch-candle: burning with intensity, seeing all. He didn’t mind. Who cared for France? Yet still there had been a shameful little sense of jealousy, of being unwanted and unvalued. It was nonsense, of course, the stuff of schoolboys – but it remained there, secretive and niggling. Somehow Martin had sensed it.

  ‘You know I’ve got the right of it,’ smiled Martin. ‘Sir, something’s been preying on my mind.’ His tone had turned serious with the speed of a candle being snuffed.

  ‘Concerning the Cardinal’s business?’

  ‘No. Jesus, do you ever –’

  ‘Do not blaspheme.’

  ‘Do you ever turn your mind from toil and work? I’ve been thinking about the current broils, the war with England. Although I suppose they might yet become our work.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, with the war and all ... You lodged in London some years, didn’t you?’

  ‘My family were from Surrey,’ he said, knowing it wasn’t an answer.

  ‘But when you were a university man, and when you were a ... what was it?’

  ‘Assistant to the London coroner, and discharging most of the lazy fellow’s duties.’ Danforth’s lips turned down at the memory. He had taken up the position in the short years between leaving the university and fleeing England, but the unpleasant memories were never far from his mind and had become uglier with time. Dead bodies, broken limbs, hysterical people dragged off to be hanged.

  ‘Aye. Coroner. And your father was a servant of the old Cardinal. His Grace told me.’