I accepted a beaker of wine from a servant and moved towards the womenfolk gathered around Margaret Packington and Robert’s older children. I fully expected to find her still greatly shocked, not only by the loss of her husband, but also by the manner of his death. It was a relief to discover that, for the moment at least, she was more angry than grief-stricken.
‘Who could do this wicked, wicked thing?’ she demanded after I had repeated my condolences.
‘Whoever it was,’ I said, ‘we will find him. That I promise you.’
‘I pray that you do,’ Margaret replied, gripping my hand tightly. ‘And when you do, I beg you, bring him here to me. I want him to see the children he has so cruelly orphaned.’
‘I have already begun to make my own enquiries,’ I said, ‘just in case the coroner has difficulty — ’
‘Pah, coroner!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’d as soon trust the man in the moon to find my Robert’s killer. Do you search diligently and if you lack for any help I can give, do not hesitate to ask.’
I thought carefully and, after a pause, I said, ‘Robert was much loved and deeply respected by everyone who knew him. I cannot conceive that anyone…’ I stumbled to find words that would not add to Margaret’s distress. ‘But it seems that somebody paid good money to have him attacked. Do you know of anyone who believed he had a real grievance against Robert?’
‘Bishop Stokesley,’ a voice behind me suggested, ‘or the clergy of St Paul’s, or My Lord of Winchester or the Duke of Norfolk… the list is a long one.’
I turned to see Augustine standing there, grim-faced.
‘Do you really think it that simple?’ I asked. ‘Is the Church’s faith so fragile that its leaders will break every law of God and man to protect it?’
‘’Tis not about faith,’ Augustine replied bitterly. His eyes were agleam with fervour. ‘We are at war with the forces of Antichrist.’
There was that military image again; the same Latimer had used in his printed sermon.
I drew Augustine to one side. ‘I doubt such talk is helpful to Robert’s widow,’ I said quietly.
‘Why not?’ he responded truculently. ‘’Tis the truth.’
‘Your brother was no heretic,’ I said. ‘It can only distress Mistress Margaret to hear him compared to simple-minded Lollards, rural clods with a smattering of theology who presume to challenge the doctors of the Church. Robert was well-educated, a man of standing, not an itinerant tailor or pedlar selling his home-made theology to silly women. The Church is certainly at war with such as them but not with Robert Packington.’
Augustine gripped me by the arm, so tightly that his fingers felt like talons. ‘Robert said that you were struggling to come to terms with God’s truth. Can you not see what is happening before your eyes? You talk of ignorant Lollards. Is Dr Crome a lean-witted yokel, or other university-trained men like Bishop Latimer and Archbishop Cranmer? And what of Master Cromwell? The King has placed him in charge of all church affairs and for certain he loves God’s word. These are standard bearers of Bible truth, which must and will triumph, however many of us have to shed our blood for it.’
I was finding Augustine’s zealotry uncomfortable and wondered whether he had drunk too much wine. For the moment I could not escape as he steered me into a space beside a large livery cupboard. ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ he whispered confidentially. ‘Do you remember the big bonfire of Tyndale’s Testaments the former Bishop of London, old Tunstall, made in Paul’s Yard a few years ago? Well, can you guess who paid for all those copies? No? ’Twas Tunstall himself! What say you to that?’ His self-congratulatory grin was nauseating.
I smiled, muttered something and tried to extricate myself, but he had not finished with me. ‘This is how it was,’ he said. ‘I was in Antwerp with Tyndale and he was angry with the printers for certain errors in copies recently made. He wanted to set in hand a new printing but had no money for the work. So I said, “Leave it to me; I’ll raise the money.” I came back here and went to see Tunstall, posing as an ardent papist. “Will you pay me to buy up all the pestilential Testaments I can find?” I asked. He eagerly agreed and I bought for him all the faulty copies. So you see, Tunstall had the books, I had his thanks and Master Tyndale had the money for his new, better print run.’ He giggled and now I knew that he was drunk.
‘I must have a word with Humphrey,’ I said, at last detaching myself.
‘Aye, do,’ he said, ‘and help us find Robert’s killer.’
I was only too glad, a little later, to say my farewells and return home.
Chapter 16
That night I lay awake for a long time. A wild wind rattled the shutters and occasional draughts penetrated my curtained bed, making the candle flame veer and tremble. By its light I read Tyndale’s little book. Not systematically. It seemed that this supposedly seditious volume was connected with Robert’s death, so I searched it for any violent denunciations of bishops, priests or abbots which might have provoked hostility from the religious establishment. I could find none.
My mind drifted from the unhelpful text to remembered snatches of conversation. Advice, observations, warnings Robert had offered a young man who, at the time, had paid little heed to them. He had told me that I was more aware of my weaknesses than my strengths. I knew, now, what he meant. Instead of standing up to the savage blows of fate, I had collapsed into self-pity and despair. Lizzie, in her more direct way, had made the same point when she accused me of unloading my responsibilities on to her. If I was to be truly a man, I would have to have faith in myself.
Perhaps this was what Tyndale was saying. He made several references to ‘faith’. I took up the small volume again. ‘Faith is the mother of all goodness and of all good works, so is unbelief the ground and root of all evil and evil works.’ So the translator wrote. Dimly I began to see how the clergy might regard such teaching as a threat. If faith — something essentially personal — was all a man needed to live a good life, what need of masses and decked altars and elaborate ceremony? Tyndale and his friends were bidding fair to make priests redundant.
The following afternoon Robert’s funeral was held. I arrived early at the small parish church of St Pancrate in Needlers’ Lane, knowing that the event would draw a large crowd. Even so, I had to shoulder my way in through the west doorway. Many tradesmen on Cheap and the adjacent streets had closed their premises as a mark of respect and because they wished to be present at the obsequies. The coffin already lay on trestles in the chancel. An area at the front of the nave, before the rood screen, had been cordoned off for dignitaries and principal mourners. Some senior members of the Mercers’ Company had already taken their places there. In their ceremonial robes they looked rather incongruous perched on the stools provided by the verger and his assistants. After a brief word with the verger, I was allotted one of these seats and took my place on the north side of the nave opposite the pulpit.