It was some minutes before he reappeared and it was obvious that he was involved in an argument with the custodian.
The latter, a squat creature with carbuncled, toad-like features, peered out and scrutinised me. ‘If ’is lordship wants quarters for gentlemen ’e shouldn’t send them ’ere. Separate room, indeed. Where am I going to find a separate room?’
‘Hold your tongue!’ the captain responded. ‘You’ll do well enough out of this prisoner. Master Treviot can afford to pay well for a few comforts.’
With a grunt the jailer opened the door wide and, still grumbling incoherently, led the way into the building.
‘Just sign for him and we’ll be on our way,’ the captain ordered.
The two of them entered a room on the right that was obviously the jailer’s personal domain. There the formalities were swiftly concluded. The captain came out and he and his men departed. Toad-face locked the outer door with a key attached to his belt, then double-bolted it for good measure.
‘In ’ere.’ He led the way into his sanctum, a narrow, evil-smelling cabinet strewn with rank straw that squelched underfoot. At a table scattered with the remains of at least one meal sat a younger version of toad-face, burly and with an unkempt mane of black hair. ‘Young ’Arry ’ere will attend your honour,’ the master of the tower declared, with heavy emphasis on the word ‘attend’. ‘You’ll want blankets — all our guests do.’ He indicated a heap of stained and torn woollen coverings lying in a corner on the damp ground. ‘’Elp yerself. Penny each. You’ll be arranging your own meals, I dare say. Twopence each dish brought up to your cell. Twopence for emptying slops. All payments a week in advance. We ’ave to ’ave money up front so’s you don’t go to the stake still owing.’ He smiled, obviously relishing the prospect of my imminent fiery destruction.
I was still so dazed that I could scarcely take in what was being said. Somehow I found myself stumbling up the winding staircase clutching a couple of the ragged cloths ennobled with the name of ‘blankets’. Young Harry followed, urging me to the top level, where a door stood open. The chamber within was large enough to accommodate a rickety truckle bed, a low bench that obviously doubled as stool and table and, leaning ominously against a side wall, a set of stocks. The only other furniture was a wooden slop bucket. Wind and occasional flurries of rain blew in through holes in the glass of a high, narrow window.
‘Best room in the ’ouse,’ my guardian declared. ‘We’ve ’ad some wonderful wild ’eretics in ’ere. See that there ’ook?’ He pointed to a large iron half loop protruding from the wall some ten feet above the stocks. ‘’Unne, the ’eretic ’ung ’isself from that ’ook. Of course that was afore my time and afore Old ’Arry’s time, too.’
The lugubrious jailer spent another couple of minutes itemising the rights and ‘privileges’ of prisoners. I might have anything brought in — meals, linen, writing materials, books (so long as they had been vetted by ‘them as understands ’em’). I might also receive approved visitors. All these favours, of course, were available at the customary fixed rates. At last Young Harry produced a candle from his pouch, lit it from his lantern, handed it to me and left me to accustom myself to my new surroundings.
I sat on the bed, mentally and emotionally numb. ‘Heretic. Heretic. Heretic.’ The word hammered in my brain. What was it Ned had urged — ‘Don’t go to the stake for your friend’? Was I about to do just that? Or would my end be quick and private? In either case it would have been better if I had perished on Hampstead Heath at the hands of the mysterious assassin. But then what would have become of those I cared about? Well, at least they would not have been tarnished with my shame. Ralph would have been looked after by the Goldsmith’s charitable funds. What chance would he have now, growing up with nothing but dishonour, because all his father’s assets had been seized when he went to the fires of Smithfield as a condemned heretic. That word again!
I raised my eyes to the hook my jailer had mentioned. It was not difficult in this awful place to see why a prisoner, with only death by burning ahead of him, might take his own life. But, according to Thomas Poyntz, that earlier occupant of this cell had not committed suicide. He had been brutally murdered within inches of where I now sat. Since that tragedy more than twenty years ago how many wretched men and women had lain in utter dejection on this very bed, or been left overnight in the stocks, or manacled to the iron rings in the wall. I held the candle higher and saw marks scratched into the stone. Names. I made out ‘James Sawyer, mercer’ and ‘Hugh Baldwin — Christian’. There were other writings, most of which I was unable to decipher in the feeble candlelight. But one was clear — and — poignant: ‘FATHER FORGIVE THEM THEY WOT NOT WHAT THEY DO.’ God in heaven! What times we were living in! I laid down and drew my meagre coverings over me, shivering with what might have been either cold or fear. The candle I left burning, unwilling to surrender to the dark and the hideous images it harboured. I had little expectation of sleep.
It was, therefore, with some surprise that I opened my eyes to discover late-autumn dawnlight slanting in at the window. Stark and menacing though my surroundings were, there was something comforting about the confident sequence of night and day. The passage of the sun and moon in their orbits suggests a permanence, a cosmic normality that seems to reveal the affairs of men in their true proportion. I recovered from the panic that had followed my arrest and began to martial my thoughts. I was not a Lutheran. Nor did my enforced lodgement in the Lollards’ Tower make me one of those truculent native fanatics men called Lollards. I was a respected member of a worshipful company. Surely that would count in my favour; if and when the bishop or his officers examined me, I would soon be able to clear my name of the stigma of heresy — or so I tried desperately to convince myself.
Meanwhile, I had more urgent matters to attend to. News of my incarceration would already be slithering along the streets, lanes and alleys of the capital, whispered from door to door, casement to casement, distributed by the carters along with their merchandise. Members of my household would be being besieged for information. They would all be worried and fearful. As soon as the duty jailer appeared (this time a younger, healthier-looking fellow by the name of Michael), I sent him out to fetch pen and paper. With them I wrote a carefully considered letter to be delivered at the Sign of the Swan. It explained that I had been detained on the mistaken assumption that I had become tainted with heresy. This was untrue, as I would make clear as soon as I had the opportunity. Meanwhile, they were to carry on as normally as possible and heed John Fink’s instructions as though they were my own. I addressed the message to Fink, with orders to read it to the assembled household and to assure all callers that Treviot’s was conducting business as normal. I knew this would not make much impression either among my own worried people or among the wider community watching with interest, not to mention the wardens and brothers of the Goldsmiths’ Company, some of whom would be delighted to see the fall of the house of Treviot. However, I could do nothing more in absentia and I needed all my energies to extricate myself from the mess into which I had fallen — or, to be more truthful, into which I had rushed headlong.
Chapter 23
Being shut away from the world did have one advantage: it freed my mind from distractions. Now I could think. The Lollards’ Tower was cold, damp and uncomfortable but I had extra clothes and wrappings brought from Goldsmith’s Row, as well as a supply of paper and ink. As soon as they arrived I huddled on the bed wrapped in my thickest cloak and tried to set down all the recent events, make some sense of them and banish the clouds of bewilderment. It took until the evening of my first day’s incarceration to martial my thoughts in some sort of order. After much scratching out and rearranging this was the result: