Martyr

Chapter 25

The iron fist of Topcliffe and his pursuivants came at first light, just as Cotton was saying Mass for the Countess, her two children, and her staff in a second-floor chamber. The manservant, a tall young man named Joe Fletcher, raced down the small flight of stone steps at the back of the hall, but by the time he reached the front door it had already been flattened by a battering log. Joe stopped dead in his tracks, confronted by a wall of dazzling blades, blazing pitch torches, solid leather chest armor bearing the Queen’s escutcheon, and heads encased in steel morions.

Topcliffe stood at the forefront of ten dark-clad men, casting a menacing, moving shadow from the light of the torches fanned out behind him. Those with him included London’s chief pursuivant, Newall. All but Topcliffe had their swords drawn and there was much shouting and stamping of boots. Acrid smoke streamed from their torches and from the sotweed pipe stuck hard between Topcliffe’s teeth.

Topcliffe took a step toward Fletcher so that their faces were no more than a foot apart. He was half a head shorter than the manservant, but exuded twice the power. “Where are they?” he growled, smoke billowing toward Fletcher. “Bring me straight to them or I will kill you where you stand.”

Upstairs, the Lady Tanahill’s hands shook with terror as she cleared away the sacred vessels. Cotton gathered up his vestments, ducked through into the stairwell, and climbed two steps at a time to the third floor. His heart pounding, he went through a great chamber into a garderobe tower, and up a few more steps into a cramped privy closet that housed the jakes. There was clearly something wrong with the pipework, for the stench of human waste was atrocious.

He flicked open a concealed hinge and lifted the jakes, revealing a hole in the floor. The Countess had shown him this place after the other dinner guests had gone. The hole was big enough for a man to slip through but no more. Cotton half-turned and sank to his haunches, then dropped into the hole, pulling the jakes back into place above him. Immediately he was enveloped by total darkness. He had no candle with him and even if he’d had one he could not have used it, for the smell of burning wax would give him away. He prayed that the Countess-the only other person in the house to know of this place-would remember to replace the concealed hinge.

Joe Fletcher was backing off from Topcliffe and the pursuivants, fearful for his life but saying nothing. Suddenly Beatrice appeared at the bottom of the stairs. She was not tall and it must have been obvious to all the men that she was merely a child. “Put down your swords,” she said in a firm voice that showed remarkable self-possession and courage. “Put them down, I say!”

“Who are you?” Topcliffe bellowed at Beatrice.

“I am Beatrice, maidservant to the Lady Tanahill,” she said boldly. “Who are you, sir?”

“Never mind who I am, girl. Where is your mistress?” Topcliffe saw the Countess framed in the doorway by the stairs. She looked slight and frail. “Ah, Lady Tanahill, what a pleasure to see you. Now, where is Southwell?”

“Southwell?” she said. Her voice was barely audible.

“Tell me now where he is or I will tear this house apart, board by board, panel by panel, brick by brick, for I know that the priest is here. And I will have him, however long it takes.”

The Countess could scarcely breathe. She had hidden the sacred vessels in a secret compartment in the paneling in the chamber above. Topcliffe had been to this house before, to taunt her over her husband’s imprisonment and to seek evidence against him in his papers. He had found nothing, though he had searched for a day and a half. It was after that visit that she’d had the hiding hole built beneath the jakes by a carpenter introduced to her by her friends in the Church of Rome. It was a construction of breathtaking complexity and ingenuity, so hidden within the fabric of the house as to be undetectable. To find it, a pursuivant would, indeed, have to tear the place apart brick by brick and stone by stone until there was nothing left.

When she didn’t reply, Topcliffe confined the servants to the kitchen and Lady Tanahill to her chamber. Outside the house, he had fifteen more men, who surrounded it on all sides, watching over every doorway and window as the sun came up. Systematically, he and his cohort began searching the building, stamping heavy-booted through its multitude of rooms. He looked in and under every coffer, bed, and cupboard. His men hammered or tapped on every panel of the wainscot looking for one that sounded different. In the library he cast down all the books in his quest for a false bookcase that hid a doorway. He took each of the servants aside one by one and threatened them with torture and execution. “If you tell me now where he is, you will be spared. If we find him and you have not divulged his whereabouts, then you will be racked and executed for treason with all that entails.” These words he even used on Beatrice. When it was Rose Downie’s turn to be taken into another room for questioning, he handled her even more roughly than the others until they were alone. Then he told her to sit down and poured her some wine.

“You’re a pretty girl, Rose,” he said.

Thank you, Mr. Topcliffe. Rose took a seat, the baby in her arms.

Is it difficult for you working among these base and filthy Papists?

It is easy enough, sir. They are good people. They do me no harm.

But they harbor traitors, Rose. Jesuits. These are men who would kill our beloved Queen Elizabeth.

Rose hung her head.

“And they won’t help you find your baby…”

She looked up at him, expectantly, eyes brimming with sudden hope.

“Now, Rose, where is this priest?”

“My baby, sir…?”

“All in good time. First, Southwell.”

Rose clutched the foundling baby to her breast. She had noticed strange looks from the other servants. She could not meet their eyes.

“I promise you, Mr. Topcliffe, I do not know where he is hid. I only know he is here. They told me he was staying. I beg of you, believe me…”

“God’s teeth, Rose, that is not good enough. Talk to the others. Find out what they know.” Without warning, he raised his fist and hit her full in the mouth. The blow knocked her down and the baby sprawled from her arms and slid across the floor. It began screaming. Rose scrabbled around, dazed, until her hands located the baby and she picked it up. Blood was dripping from her mouth and she could feel that a front tooth was loose. Her fingers were bloody, and the blood stained the baby’s swaddling wraps. “That was to prove to the others that you have not betrayed them, Rose. Now get back out there and discover where this priest is.”

In the bleck hole, the stink was overpowering and, at first, Cotton gagged, bile rising in his throat. The hole was five foot square and seven feet high. There was a cold brick seat and nothing else, nothing of comfort. All there was by way of sustenance was a pail of water and a beaker with which to drink it. It seemed to Cotton that the air was stale and there wasn’t enough of it circulating in here. How would he breathe if he was forced to stay here any length of time? He had never known such darkness. This was darker than the blackest night; it made no difference whether his eyes were open or closed. This is what the tomb is like, he thought; this is what it was like for Christ when first He rose in the grave. He felt ashamed of the thought and put it aside; how dare he compare his own plight to the suffering of the Messiah?

He tried to still himself, to quieten his breathing and his heart so that the air might last longer. He drank some water and counted the seconds, then the minutes. The minutes stretched to an hour and then more and more hours. From all around he heard hammering and cracking, the splintering of wood as paneling and floorboards were jimmied and smashed. He knew that he must not make a sound. At one point they were close to him, laughing and joking, swearing and threatening. How could they not hear his racing heart? “Come on out, you Popish dog,” one of them called. “You smell like a dungheap!” Then they all laughed, and one of the pursuivants, barely two feet from him, used the jakes to defecate, jeered on by the others as he strained. It seemed to Cotton that the foul smell redoubled. The same words kept turning and churning in his mouth, though he never uttered them out loud: “ Fiat voluntas dei, fiat voluntas dei, fiat voluntas dei…” God’s will be done.

After sixteen hours, Topcliffe brought in a new squadron of men and sent his first troop home to their beds. Yet Topcliffe stayed. He would remain throughout the night. The hammering and the breaking, the shredding of great tapestries and smashing of glass continued all through the dark hours. In the morning, Topcliffe sent for two builders and told them to bring their measuring equipment. When they arrived at the devastated house, he ordered them to take measurements of every wall and every floor in the building to find a hidden cavity. For many hours they took measurements, arguing and scratching their heads. At one point they were certain they had discovered a space that was not accounted for. When Topcliffe’s men were breaking through the wall, it began to move perilously and they had to run for props to shore it up. Finally they broke through, only to find themselves in the larder. Angrily, Topcliffe sent them away without pay. When they protested, he told them to send their reckoning to the Lady Tanahill.

On the second night, Topcliffe called his men off but left several guards outside, and one in the great hall. “I will be back at dawn,” he told the Countess. “Do not even think of trying to get him out of the house.”

In his hole, Cotton slept fitfully from time to time. The hours passed and he lost track of whether it was day or night. To sleep, he leaned on the bench against the wall, fearful that he would snore or talk in his sleep. He shivered with cold, but that did not concern him much for he had learned about harsh living and deprivation at the Jesuit colleges. The hunger gnawed at his belly, but neither was that new, for he had fasted often. He spent much of his time in prayer and he thought at length of what would happen to him if-when-he was caught. Would he be able to endure a martyr’s death? Many failed, even to the extent of yielding up the names of their fellows. Some men could take the rack without begging for mercy and telling their tormentors all they wanted to know, but most could not. Which category of man would he fall into? It was well and good to long for a martyr’s death when one was not suffering, quite another to hold firm when it was so close.

In the absence of light, his sense of hearing and of touch became more acute. He seemed to hear every sound in the old house, and he could soon move with absolute silence in his cramped hole, feeling his way around brick by brick. Yet his sense of smell dulled, mercifully, so that he longer noticed the stench of the ordure that permeated from the jakes, nor of his own, dumped as carefully as possible in one small corner of the hole.

Most of all, in the endless hours, he longed for light and reading material. He comforted himself by reciting poems and tracts from the Bible in his head.

And then, in his mind, he began to compose a letter. It was an uncompromising letter to an imaginary prisoner: perhaps to Philip, the Earl of Tanahill, whom he had never met, now languishing in the Tower, sentenced to a traitor’s death; perhaps to those other sacred brothers from the Society of Jesus, such as Campion, who had come here before him and had suffered grievously for it, or to those who were yet to come; perhaps to his friend and companion on this journey, Henry Garnet, now at large somewhere outside London; perhaps to himself, to convince himself yet again that this was God’s will and that He would enable him to endure.

“ Let neither fury nor fiction nor the sword, nor glory of splendid attire, nor bribes, nor entreaties, nor any other violence seduce you from the charity of Christ. You were born to be God’s; by Him you live, and for Him you are to die. It is a death that will confirm the wavering and make the strong yet stronger. The cause is God’s, the conflict short, the reward eternal. The contrition of a humble heart, expressed by your bloodshed in this cause, will remit all sins as fully as in baptism, so great is the prerogative of martyrdom.” Martyrdom. The very word made him shudder. The extreme mortification of the flesh that would bring him as close to the love of God as it was possible to be. How often had he dreamed of martyrdom in the long nights of his college years?

After nearly two days in the hole, he heard a whispered voice and wondered whether it was the voice of God or an angel come for him. It was a woman’s voice, as sweet as the sound of church bells on a summer’s day. And then, above him, he saw a chink of light-a light more blinding than he had ever seen-and he closed his eyes as tight as they would shut and covered his face with his hands.

“Father Cotton, it is me. Anne.” The Countess’s voice was very quiet.

“Is it safe?”

“No, they are still here. But it is late and they are playing cards down in the great hall while Topcliffe is away. I have brought you food, Father.”

“I cannot look at the light. It is too bright.”

The Countess recoiled from the smell. “Father, I am so sorry you have been brought to this.”

“ Fiat voluntas dei, my dear Anne.”

She had a cloth with some food-bread, cheese, pieces of cold meat, some wine-very little because Topcliffe’s men were keeping a close watch on the food in the larder. She and Amy had gathered it together hastily in the remains of the kitchen while Rose Downie was up in her room with the baby. They would not have believed that Rose could betray them, yet she would not meet their eyes.

“Thank you for this food. It is most welcome. And please, do not fret for me. If it is God’s will, then I will be safe. If you feel that any here in this house are in danger because of my presence, then you must tell the pursuivants. You must save them ahead of me.”

“I cannot do that, Reverend Father. Nothing we could do would save us from the wrath of Topcliffe now.”

“Topcliffe? I have heard of him.”

“He is a cruel man, Father Cotton. He will not desist in his search for you until this house is rubble, for he knows that you are here. We are fortunate that this hole is so secure, but it was difficult for me to get here to fasten and conceal the hinges before it was found. I think you would have been discovered if I had not done so.”

Her voice was choked and feeble. He feared she was in a worse state than him. “I beseech you, Anne, endure. For this will end.” He tried to open an eye, yet it merely watered and he closed it once more. Eyes closed, he made the Sign of the Cross and blessed her before she closed the trapdoor once again and secured the hinges.

In the blackness of the hole, the fresh air and food brought Cotton new hope. With the wine and bread, he spoke Mass, then said Grace over the food and began, slowly, to eat and drink.

Topliffe summoned Rose Downie again.

“Tell me more about this gathering. Did this Jesuit priest come alone?”

Rose’s mouth was bruised and swollen. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears.

“He arrived with another man, Mr. Topcliffe, called Thomas Woode. I had never met him before but we were introduced to him.”

Thomas Woode? The name was familiar. “What more can you tell me? What did he look like? What did he say?” Topcliffe pressed her.

Rose described him as best she could but insisted that he had spoken very little. Then, tentatively, she said, “What of my baby, Mr. Topcliffe, sir?”

“Your baby is safe and well, Rose. That is all I am prepared to tell you for now. When Southwell is delivered into my hands, alive or dead, then I will reunite you with William Edmund. Do you understand me, Rose?”

“But I have done all you asked! I know he is here. I know they were having their Mass when you and your men arrived. He must be here in this house unless…” She stopped, seeing the blood rise in Topcliffe’s face.

“Unless?”

She had been about to say “unless you let him slip away” but thought better of it. “Unless he has somehow managed to get away, Mr. Topcliffe. Perhaps there are tunnels from the cellars. I have completed my side of the bargain, sir. Please, let me have my baby back.”

“All in good time, Rose. All in good time.”