London - Edward Rutherfurd [318]
“You mean,” she finally said, in a low voice, “that after leading Rowland to certain death, he himself has now deserted. He is leaving Rowland to die alone? He led him there,” she spread her hands, “for nothing?”
“He is very sick. I think he is very tired.”
“And Rowland? He is well, but about to die.”
“I think Peter is not just sick. Ashamed. I try to understand.”
“No.” She shook her head slowly. “That is not enough.” After another long pause, with a grief in her voice that almost made him double up with pain, she quietly said: “I do not wish to see Peter again.”
And he knew that Peter had taken away everything in which she trusted, that she would never change her mind, and that there was nothing he could do about it.
Dan Dogget glanced up at the sky. He did not often say a prayer but now, surreptitiously, he did so. There was one good thing: his debt to Meredith would be discharged when this strange business was over. “Just let it be soon,” he prayed.
It was nearly sunset when they set out. Father Peter had not felt well enough to attempt the journey in the afternoon; but an hour ago he had seemed to gather strength and, on young Thomas’s orders, Dan had brought the little cart round to the monastery gate.
The atmosphere in the Charterhouse had been tense. Since the executions the previous morning, Henry’s churchmen had subjected the monks to a continuous series of tirades. Earlier, three of the most senior monks had been taken, not to the Tower but to the common jail. “The king is determined to break at least some of them down,” he was told. As for Father Peter, his position was strange. Since he was ill, he kept apart in his cell anyway; but it was clear to Dan that the other monks had effectively disowned him. Even the king’s men had rather lost interest in him. “He only just arrived,” one of the other old lodgers remarked to him. “He was never really one of them, you know.” Yet whatever his disgrace within the community, and even though, as they passed through the courtyard, the monks looked the other way, Dan noticed how his father still treated the former priest with reverence and, when Peter prepared to climb into the cart, knelt down and kissed his hand.
Slowly he conveyed the two Meredith brothers across the city on their melancholy mission. They were going to the Tower to see poor Rowland.
They gained admittance easily at the Tower’s outer gate: Thomas was immediately recognized as Secretary Cromwell’s man. But the cart had to be left outside and it was now that Dan realized how much they needed him. For during the journey, Father Peter’s strength appeared to have ebbed away again. Getting down from the cart with difficulty, he seemed hardly able to walk and though in recent months the monk had lost considerable weight, it took both Dan and Thomas, one on each side, to help him along the cobbled lane between the high stone walls; and Peter was clearly short of breath by the time they reached the Bloody Tower. After Thomas identified himself to the respectful guard, they made their way slowly up the spiral stairway to Rowland’s cell.
Rowland Bull was sitting quietly on a bench when they entered. The last red glow of sunset was coming through the narrow window. Some of yesterday’s calm had worn off. He had been sick again that morning, but only once. Now he just looked pale as Peter slowly sank down beside him. He was clearly glad to see them nonetheless.
As the two of them talked in low tones, Dan found himself watching them with interest. Brother Peter he had come to know a little, Rowland he hardly knew at all. Seeing them side by side now, he observed with surprise how like each other the two men were; Peter’s illness had not only caused him to lose weight but made his face thinner too, so that he and Rowland might have been brothers. It was funny, he thought, but if he hadn’t known otherwise, he would have guessed that the former parish priest was the family man, and the lawyer, with his ascetic, almost ethereal expression, was the