The changing political situation made it necessary for Robert to cross the Channel in August for consultation with his business contacts in the Netherlands. I received occasional letters from him during late summer and early autumn and they only increased my sense of foreboding. He hinted at threats and even actual violence being offered to English merchants in Catholic lands. He wrote of secret emissaries being sent by Catholic activists to friends in England with the express purpose of promoting rebellion and promising money and troops to aid in overthrowing the anti-papal regime.
In the first days of October it seemed that their strategy was working. The long-feared storm broke in the distant northern counties. The first we heard of it in London, around 7 October, was that all Lincolnshire was up in arms, that the people were demanding the monasteries should be restored and Cromwell handed over to the leaders of the revolt. Wild rumours rampaged through the streets. A rebel army was marching on the capital. According to which story you believed, ten thousand, thirty thousand or fifty thousand angry Englishmen, led by gentlemen of the shire, were on the road south and picking up more malcontents as they came. The government firmly denied these rumours in leaflets hurriedly printed and distributed to every household. The rising, we were told, amounted to no more than a peasant rabble that had already been suppressed by the king’s generals. This reassurance was received with widespread cynicism. If peace had been so easily restored, people wanted to know, why had the king and court hastened to take refuge in Windsor Castle, the strongest royal fortress in the land?
In the midst of the general panic, I received another letter from Robert. It was brief and, to judge from its uncharacteristic scrawl, written in haste.
My hearty greetings to you and your mother. Here is much grave news. The King of France has sent troops against the English port of Calais. It is believed he intends to secure it as a base for an invasion fleet. Here in Antwerp several foreign merchants have been arrested and imprisoned with no charges put forth. I am so far safe, praised be to God, but obliged to go very warily about my business. Yet the worst news is that Master Tyndale, that great servant of God, is dead. He had escaped detection for some years but was recently discovered and betrayed to the authorities by a wretch sent over from England for the purpose. Three days ago he was brought to the stake near here and there strangled before his body was burned. Thus does Antichrist muster his forces. We must be vigilant. I have written nothing of this to my good lady wife and I pray you to say nothing that would alarm her. Should I be unlawfully detained here or should anything worse befall, you may receive no more letters from me. I shall write when and if I can and am in hope to return safely in about two weeks.
Your assured friend,
Robert Packington
It was a relief to know that my friend was safe but I was worried that he spoke of Tyndale in this way, almost as a personal friend. Two weeks passed with no more news. Then three. Then four. I called several times on Margaret Packington, hoping to discover that she had heard from her husband, while at the same time not wishing to let her see my own mounting anxiety.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the City was becoming almost unbearably tense. We heard that the trouble in Lincolnshire had been dealt with. The ringleaders had paid for their treason with their lives and the country was quiet once more. But we were allowed scarcely a breathing space. By the third week of October the contagion of rebellion, though no longer a threat to the nearest shires, had spread northwards. What we could gather from messengers and travellers suggested that the whole of England between the Humber and the Scottish border was in the hands of men who called themselves ‘pilgrims’ and who were intent on forcing Henry to reverse his policies. They commanded tens of thousands of followers — too many to be defeated in battle. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk had been sent north with all the troops they could muster but no one believed that the royal army was big enough to crush the revolt or that, if it came to a pitched battle, the king’s men would advance against their own countrymen. Many citizens who could do so were fleeing to the comparative safety of the countryside. I made sure that the members of my own household were safe. At the beginning of November I sent down to Hemmings as many of them as could be spared.
Then, in the midst of all this gloomy turmoil, there came a piece of good news. I had retired for the night on Sunday 12 November when one of my servants came to my chamber with a scribbled note: ‘Thomas, thanks be to God, I am returned safely and have much to tell you. Come with me to first mass in the Mercers’ Chapel. Robert Packington.’ The early office was performed at five o’clock so I extinguished the candle immediately and settled to sleep, happier than I had been in weeks.
The following morning I was up and dressed in good time. I took a lantern and stepped out into West Cheap. It was dark and made the more so by a thick mist drifting up from the river which so mingled with the smoke from household fires that I could see no more than a few paces before me. I had just passed the bulk of St Mary Bow, whose coloured windows were illumined from light within, when I heard a loud noise ahead of me. It was something between an explosion and a heavy blow upon an anvil. I could not recognise it at all. I stopped. Listened intently. The street was now quiet again, save for the sound of water dropping from the eaves. As I set off again, a frenzied commotion broke out — screams, shouts and cries of alarm. Cautiously I lifted my lantern higher and strode forward. A small crowd had gathered around the Great Conduit, the square building housing the water fountain that stands at the junction of West Cheap and Poultry. There was nothing unusual about that; labourers congregated there every morning hoping to be hired. But there was something different about this gathering. Everyone was grouped around a tableau at the base of the west-facing wall. Drawing closer, I saw two men kneeling beside a third who lay on his back upon the stone paving.
‘What’s happened here?’ I demanded.
One of the kneeling men looked up. His face was pale in the lamp’s lurid glow. ‘This poor fellow’s dead… killed… But, I don’t understand… There was no one near him… Yet… well, see for yourself, Master.’
I bent forward. There was, indeed, a gash in the dead man’s dark cloak and the lamplight glistened on what was oozing from it. I shone the light on his face — and recoiled in horrified recognition.
Chapter 10
‘Witchcraft, that’s what it was. Must have been.’ The speaker — a dark, straggle-haired fellow with the stench of the tannery about him — stood up. His long face in the lamplight was pale and lugubrious.
I was too stunned to make any reply. I could scarce breathe for the emotions surging in my breast — anger, horror, grief — and disbelief. ‘This could not be,’ I wanted to cry out. ‘Dear God above, this could not be!’ I knelt on the wet stone and peered closer at the lifeless face. It was strangely calm and expressionless. But there was no doubt. Here was all that remained of Robert Packington.
The tradesman was now raising his voice to address a rapidly gathering audience. ‘Here is a great evil, Masters, the work of Satan himself and his bondsman.’
Several people in the crowd threw questions which the self-appointed narrator answered with gestures and a quavering voice that would have done justice to an actor in one of the Inns of Court plays. ‘Why, here’s this fine gentleman walking across the street, holding his lamp high — thuswise. Steps forward this foreigner from the doorway yonder.’ He glared around, gathering his audience with his baleful eye. ‘He shouts some curse or spell and points — like this. There comes a doomcrack from the very portals of hell. Our gentle neighbour calls out.’ He paused and lowered his voice. ‘But straightway he falls down — ’