London - Edward Rutherfurd [322]
There had been, even Cromwell had to admit, one unfortunate by-product of all this zeal. The monasteries had been host and comforter to an army of the poor. Old men like Will Dogget had been housed; hungry folk had been fed at their doors. Suddenly in London now there were tribes of beggars with whom the parishes could scarcely cope. The aldermen had appealed to Cromwell, who had to agree that something must be done.
And then there were the stall holders. What was to become of those who, like the Flemings, trafficked before the gates of every London monastery in all the religious trinkets and images that were now condemned? Nothing, it seemed. “Our occupation’s gone,” Mistress Fleming declared. Bitterly they packed up their stall.
A few minutes later, as they wheeled their handcart down into Smithfield, another melancholy sight awaited them. In the middle of the open area, a crowd had gathered. Before it a curious little square scaffold had been set up underneath which piles of wood had been stacked. As they drew closer, they could see that an elderly figure was hanging by his arms in chains from the scaffold and that the wood beneath him was about to be lit.
The reformers were doing good work that day. Along with the statues and the images and the superstitious relics, they had found an old man to burn.
Old Doctor Forest had been told he should die years ago. His crime had been that he was confessor to poor Queen Katherine. In his eighties now, he had been left, half forgotten in jail for some years until, as an afterthought, it had been realized that someone had better burn him or he might die of natural causes. Presiding over this little ceremony the Flemings saw a tall, grim, grey-bearded figure, who, as they drew near, was calling out to the old man: “In what state, Doctor, will you die?”
Hugh Latimer, the Oxford scholar and reforming preacher was a bishop now. If he had any objection to this affair, he certainly gave no sign of it. Gallantly the old man replied that, even if the angels were to start teaching any but the true doctrines of Holy Church, he would not believe them. At which answer Latimer indicated that it was time that he should burn.
But something special had been ordained that morning. Instead of the usual fire, where the victim either suffocated or died of the flames quite quickly, they had decided to dangle the old man over the fire in chains so that he could suffer a slow death that might torture him for hours. Under Hugh Latimer’s supervision, this was now done. But the crowd, for once, had had enough. As the flames and smoke rose, a rush of able-bodied men knocked the scaffolding down and within a minute or two, the old man was dead.
Slowly the two Flemings continued on their way.
“It’s lucky,” Mistress Fleming declared to her husband, “that my brother Daniel makes good money on the royal barge. He’ll have to look after us now.”
“You think he will?”
“Of course,” she said. “He’s family, isn’t he?”
Just then, she heard a rumble of thunder.
But there was no thunder that morning twenty miles away to the east, in the old Kent city of Rochester: only a pale blue sky and a bright sheen on the water of the River Medway as it went silently to meet the Thames around the point.
Everything was quiet as Susan waited.
It had been Thomas’s idea, the previous year, that she should move to Rochester; and though at first she had been hesitant, she was glad in the end to find a pleasant sanctuary in the old place, far from the unhappy scenes she associated with the capital. The children were happy there too. In the modest lodgings near the cathedral, she had discovered a new peace.
But she was not sure about the meeting this morning. Thomas had insisted upon it, and after all his kindness