As Quiet as a Fish

By Quinton Rumford

Former soldier and builder Seb Gunner is recruited by Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to hunt down Catholic recusants and their priests, as Henry VIII's Protestant Reformation and seperation from Rome gets underway. Later, Gunner is also appointed as the Tower of London torturer and learns how to use the infamous rack to break down heretical prisoners into confessing their networks. One of these prisoners is Gunners own sister. As the captured Catholics begin to fill the Towers slime ridden dungeons and Harry Eight begins to execute his wives, Gunner is seduced by a high shire lady on the bed of the torture rack, actions that soon become an obsession and a threat to his own life. A Catholic group known as the Observant Friars begin to fight back after their charismatic leader, John Foster, exhorts his followers not to give in from the burning stake of his execution. As the brutal fight between Protestants and Catholics gathers momentum, the Archbishop of Canterbury is executed and Queen Mary - a committed Catholic - comes to the throne. Where does that leave Gunner and his dwindling band of priest hunters now?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quinton Rumford
• Release date: Jun 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223900559

Book preview

Introduction: A Palace Garden, 1533

There was a man standing at the bottom of his high rickety ladder hallooing him and impatiently banging on the lower wooden rungs with a thick black book. By his dress and the black hat, he wore, the man was a religious makeweight belonging to the palace Seb Gunner was working on, and the book was obviously a bible.

‘Fat lot of good banging one of those shitty things at me will do you,’ Gunner muttered to himself.

Seeing him peer over his shoulder, Black Hat shouted up at him that he was one of the chaplains to the great man who lived here, who wanted a word with him in the garden, and could the builder make all haste so as not to keep the great man waiting.

As Gunner climbed down the ladder the chaplain flapped his hand in the direction of the garden, said that the great man awaited him there on a seat, and reminded him that he was Primate of all the realm and that as such a common builder should keep a civil tongue in his head and address him as ‘my Lord.’ Since Gunner didn’t know what a primate was he greeted the words with a shrug and set off towards the garden, thinking there must be some problem with how he was constructing the high flint-and-flat-brick walls of the arch and extension, and a bollocking or even dismissal was on the cards. Dismissal he most certainly did not want because he needed the job and the money.

Before he met the Archbishop of Canterbury in the garden of Lambeth Palace, Seb Gunner’s life since childhood had been that of a jobbing builder ‒ thanks to his father’s patient but strict hand with him from the age of nine to fourteen ‒ and a common soldier. In his teens his thoughts had been that one or the other would surely see him through this life.

It was because of a young tearaway’s restlessness that he had wanted to fight. At the age of fourteen he had taken the king’s shilling and run away from home, intent on military service in the name of Harry Eight. They said he must be sixteen to fight, and being big for his age he’d owned up to that in order to get in. It was a necessary lie because he knew that younger boys were taken on as drummers or ammunition fetchers and carriers, and that he most definitely did not want. After a period of training, he was sent to France to uphold the oath he had sworn. They said ‘fight those Frenchies over there as hard as you can with your comrades’, so he’d fought them bravely and strongly and survived. In August 1513, as part of a force of 30,000 men, he had fought against the duc de Longueville at Guingate in the Battle of the Spurs – so-called because the French army had put their spurs to their horses’ flanks in a frantic attempt to leave the field in the face of the charging English. It was the most thrilling experience Seb Gunner had ever had. He had performed well that day, and bravely, and was noticed.

After he got back to England they said ‘you are a soldier, so drill and practise,’ and he diligently spent hours at the archery butts and the straw-man stabbing grounds perfecting his aim and swordsmanship. But apart from a skirmish in Scotland, it was the start of a long period of inaction. He was a young man who had experienced the pulse of war, and once again he became restless for something else. So, he left to go back to building walls in London. Soldiers only got paid and satisfied when they were fighting, and Seb Gunner needed some money and excitement in his life.

Which was how, that day in 1533, Gunner found himself standing before the seated archbishop in his dusty working clothes, unsure what he should say. The archbishop was a silver-haired, clean-shaven man of medium stature – forty-five- fifty years old, maybe? Gunner noticed his small, pale hands and blue eyes. He was smiled upon kindly by the black-hatted cleric, who gestured for him to sit on the bench, next to the fine silken folds of his robes. Gunner’s protestations that his clothes were too dirty to place alongside the mighty Primate were waved away in a gentle manner so he plonked his dusty arse next to God’s anointed right-hand man in England.

Gunner had no religion, nor did he want any. He had been careful to hide this because the man was his customer, but now he blurted out the fact that he was a man without faith and, with the archbishop’s goodwill, would prefer to stay that way. He tried to say it respectfully and honestly for he reckoned the great man was about to try and do his duty and make a God-fearing Christian of him...before giving him a rollocking and throwing him out.

The archbishop smiled, and laid a hand on Gunner’s arm. ‘Walk with me for a short while, away from prying eyes and pointed ears.’ He said in a low, gentle voice.

As they strolled side by side, the tall begrimed builder and the smaller, rotund archbishop in his ankle-length finery, the highest cleric in the land spoke quietly but assertively.

‘Master Gunner, I will be open and frank with you from the start. I want you to come and work directly for me as soon as you have finished the extension to my palace.’

Gunner whipped his head round towards the archbishop, a look of dismay on his face.

‘This may seem like heresy coming from the senior cleric in the land,’ the archbishop ploughed on, continuing to walk, ‘but having no faith will be a good thing for the duties I wish you to carry out for me on behalf of the king. And should any good and Protestant show of Christian faith be required, my friend, I will do enough praying and kneeling for both of us while you concentrate on the job in hand.’

He paused for a moment then, to let his words sink in.

‘Simply put, Master Gunner, the English landscape of religious observance is shifting and ripe for change. Under the laws of this realm and king, popery is heresy and the days of the Catholic priests and their Mass-mongering and local dominance over simple, uneducated yeomen, their womenfolk, and children, are coming to an end. Since the start of Henry Tudor’s Reformation, we have detected an alarming trend: many of the great shire houses outwardly front as Protestants but underneath practise as Catholics. We wish to put an end to that. The Catholic snake must not be allowed to bite the reformist Protestant Church in its rump and inject its papal venom therein. We, my friend, are going to put a stop to these heretical agents of so-called Romish sacrificial grace from spreading their poison. We will quash their counter-reformation before it gains any further ground. They must be taught that the spouting of their liturgy is a treasonable act that is leading many of our laypeople in a spiritual direction that is unnatural, and anathema to this great and Protestant land.’

The archbishop stopped, and blinked rapidly, as if surprised by his rising vehemence.

Gunner was too stunned to say anything.

After taking a couple of deep breaths, the archbishop turned to his builder, placed a small hand on Gunner’s elbow and ushered him forward again.

‘Master Gunner, let me tell you that the king’s court is awash with conservative traditionalist plots. France, allied to Spain, are forever threatening invasion to shore up Catholicism, and Rome has excommunicated Henry Tudor and our Church because of his marriage annulment. Among our noblemen and ministers of state there are too many contradictory opinions, too many intrigues and shades of hidden dissent, and not enough agreement and loyalty. And, dare I say it, among our senior clerics there are too many versions of what side of the Christian divide our God should occupy.’

He paused, turned again, looked up into Gunner’s eyes. The archbishop’s calm but frank rhetoric was holding him in thrall, and the ex-soldier and builder couldn’t hide the blaze of interest that sparkled there. Gunner mumbled something unintelligible and nodded, then let his silence declare his interest and acceptance. ‘To root out these Mass-mongers and those recusants who would harbour them,’ the archbishop continued, ‘I need a private band of hardy fighting men to carry out certain private duties with a view to promoting and maintaining our lawful Protestant Church. You need pay no mind to religious argument, however eloquent or heartfelt it is expressed, and that is why for you it is good that God will not enter your duties. Having no faith, Master Gunner, will be an advantage . . . You have a question?’

The archbishop had noticed the hesitant opening and closing of Gunner’s mouth.

‘These private duties, my Lord,’ he said. ‘Will they involve . . . er . . . killing folk?’

‘On occasion, yes,’ Thomas Cranmer replied. Then he held up an index finger. ‘But in my or the king’s name, supported by the correct legal indictments and warrants prepared by Thomas Cromwell, the monarch’s first minister and vicar general, and for treasonable crimes only.’ He again looked Gunner in the eye. ‘Of course, it’s possible there will be the odd occasion when you may have to operate in secret, outside the restrictions of common law, through word of mouth only. Does killing someone who is a threat to our country’s religious stability and very existence as a sovereign state bother your conscience?’

It was an alarmingly direct question, and Gunner met it with a steadfast expression. ‘It does not, my Lord. I would welcome the chance to cut down the king’s enemies again. I have already done so in France and in Scotland.’

‘Yes, I know. I know much about your past, Master Gunner. Having been told by the agent with whom I contracted for the building work several months ago that you were formerly a soldier who had fought overseas for the king, I took the liberty of checking with the captain general of the army you went to France with, and in turn with the commander of your London group, Captain Josia Kenwith.’

‘Captain Kenwith was a fine and brave commander, my Lord,’ Gunner said. ‘I was proud to serve with him.’

‘He says the same about you. In fact, he told me that your bravery during a certain battle in Guingate ensured his survival.’

It was true. He had pulled Kenwith from under a fallen French cavalry stallion whose unseated rider was about to remove the trapped captain’s head with his sword. Gunner smote the Frenchman with a mighty blow, extricated his commander, and they carried on pursuing the fleeing French, despite Kenwith having a badly broken leg. He had then carried the exhausted captain back to camp where they celebrated their victory with the others. Such blood-tingling action had provided an outlet for his restlessness. It was a pity the experience had never quite been repeated. After Guingate, apart from that trip north of the border, Seb Gunner had borne arms at home all the while feeling that he’d made his mark and was made for soldiering. Even as a thirteen-year-old working on buildings with his strict father in and around the teeming streets of Southwark, he had always been brawling in the streets, and usually winning, against bigger and older men too.

As if reading his thoughts, the archbishop smiled. ‘There will be many battles ahead, Master Gunner. Battles, perhaps, that will provide a certain satisfaction for a man of action that cannot be found in the building of a good wall, however true its construction.’

Gunner, feeling a rising tide in his breast that he didn’t fully understand, looked away and said nothing.

‘How old are you?’Cranmer asked.

‘I’ll be thirty-five in October.’

‘Have you been blessed with a wife . . . children?’

‘No, my Lord. I have decided not to marry.’

‘Oh? May I ask why?’

‘They would not be best served by a man with my habits. I am too much a wanderer, and she and any children would be a burden to my lifestyle.’

‘Any other family?’

‘My parents are both dead and I have a sister I have not seen for many years. I take what I need as a man from harl...er, ladies of the night.’

Cranmer snorted. ‘Your honesty does you credit,’ he remarked. ‘Can you read and write?’

‘Yes, after a fashion. My figures are good as measuring is important when putting up a building.’

‘I’m sure. Well, if that after a fashion ever becomes a problem when carrying out your tasks, you must let me know and I will find a suitable tutor for you, or even act as one myself.’

‘Thank you, my Lord.’

They had reached the far end of the enclosure and were nearing two gardeners on their knees, weeding. At the archbishop’s approach the pair sprang to their feet, swiped the hats from their heads and stood looking down at their feet. Cranmer ignored them, took Gunner’s arm and steered him round, and they started back. The servile attitudes of the gardeners reinforced the archbishop’s power and position to Gunner, who was now flushed with excitement.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Cranmer continued. ‘Men know everything or they know nothing, Master Gunner. If the former, they are liars and spinners of tales; if the latter, they are ignorant of their surroundings and equally of no use to you. The truth will always lie somewhere in between. Be ruthless. It will be your job to root out treasonous heretics and their unnatural practices. Nothing else will matter.’ The slim, pale hand found Gunner’s arm again. ‘Money and other inducements will be offered to you to look the other way. As that great Roman orator Cicero said, the belief will be that any fortress can be stormed, any siege broken, providing there is a way in for a donkey with a load of gold on its back. Naturally enough, condemned folk will go to any lengths to save their skin. Do not be tempted by any of them for they will drag you down with them.’

Gunner had never heard of this Cicero but he understood the message.

They walked on in silence for a few steps.

‘This is a complicated business for a simple man,’ Cranmer suddenly said, ‘and I mean you no discredit by that, Master Gunner. Misinformation blends with half-truths and personal religious sentiment to produce a miasma of ethereal facts that are then subject to an individual interpretation until even God would not understand their origins. We are flawed by our preferment and the times, and the only way for you to find your way through this fog is to have a secure reference point to begin with. And that, for you, Master Gunner, is me.’

Gunner nodded. Cranmer was using too many words unknown to him, but he had the gist.

The archbishop stopped and turned towards him. This time there was no physical contact, only the locked gaze of his pale blue eyes.

‘There is only one rule, you see,’ he continued in a soft voice, ‘and that is that you remain loyal to me and to the king.’

‘Yes, my Lord,’ Gunner replied, practically in a whisper.

‘Your orders will come from me only, or from someone I trust. His Majesty, of course, must be kept out of it but will know from me every outcome of your work. If you feel any change to this system is needed, let me know. By the power invested in my office I can fix anything ‒ spiritual, monarchical, political, or practical. Anything, Master Gunner.’

Cranmer smiled, then continued to walk at a measured pace.

‘Who will command this band of men, my Lord?’ Gunner asked.

‘Ah!’ Cranmer exclaimed. ‘I have engaged your old captain, Josia Kenwith. And he has asked for you to be his number two.’

Gunner smirked and nodded his head. He wasn’t surprised. ‘Kenwith is a most wise choice, my Lord,’ he said in a low voice.

‘And one that I suspect didn’t come as a surprise to you, eh Master Gunner?’

‘No, it didn’t,’ Gunner said. He took in a deep breath and added, ‘I shall look after him for you as I did before.’

No more words were exchanged after that, until they reached Gunner’s ladder under the scaffolding. The slim white clerical hand again found Gunner’s dust-laden arm as they came to a halt.

‘I have just one other bit of advice you would do well to remember, my friend. All our history is written by the victorious, not the vanquished. England needs men like us to make victorious history.’

Seb Gunner would remember those words. He felt flattered, befriended, excited, and potent. The archbishop’s ‘my friend’ resonated in his head as he climbed his ladder. With the suddenness of a thunderbolt out of an overcast sky a shower of golden stardust had dropped into his lime-mortared lap from the hand of one of the most powerful men in the land.

Chapter One

Lady Celandine Seething – 1536

Since the first burning at Hatfield nearly three years earlier, Seb Gunner had grown into his role. Gone was that early excitement as he tossed the flaming brand into the monastery buildings and gleefully pig-stuck any fleeing monk from the back of his horse. Now he was a confident commander in charge of twenty selected and trusted men, twelve of whom were with him tonight. Josia Kenwith was long gone, tossed from his bucking horse during another burning monastery eighteen months ago and kicked in the head by the frenzied beast. He now drooled permanently on an idiot’s pallet in a madhouse in Wapping. And the forty or so men that had first swelled the ranks under Kenwith had been whittled down by desertion or been thrown out due to incompetence.

Although Gunner was happy with his condition, there was one thing he had to do something about. He badly needed a woman. Not a dirty, much-used, spotty-faced old whore or a passing fancy but a regular companion he could share matters with and think about in the odd moment ‒ and, of course, tup regularly. He’d been on the lookout for one for a while now but his lifestyle was that of a troop leader who spent all his time with his men and horses in barrack-type accommodation at Croydon or Lambeth Palace, or out hunting illicit Catholic priests. The lifestyle did not lend itself to meeting women other than Croydon whores, whom he had now forsworn as being beneath his status as Thomas Cranmer’s right-hand man. It just didn’t seem right any more to fuck smelly over-painted harlots in creaking rooms or back alleys when you worked with and for the Archbishop of Canterbury. And any pestiferous disease passed on by them – and so far, luckily, he had managed to avoid such a thing – would quickly put him at risk of losing his much-valued preferment.

True to his word he had given his utmost to every Cranmer command in those first years and burned seventeen small monasteries and eight larger ones. He had also caught thirty-two priests and arrested many of their harbourers. And twice now – the last occasion a fleeting meeting arranged by the archbishop himself out of gratitude for his labours – he had sat and talked about catching priests to King Harry himself. The mighty monarch, a man of action whose likes included jousting at the tilts and hunting, was most interested in some of the methods Gunner had learned to use, and revelled in the more bloodthirsty skirmishes. He once slapped his ample thighs in glee as Gunner related a particular ruse he’d used for locating the sermonisers when they were hidden. Ever the generous voluptuary, Harry had even offered Gunner a silver tray of sweetmeats which, too nervous to take one and eat it in the king’s august presence, Gunner had clutched awkwardly on his lap throughout their chat.

When I return to this turning earth for my next life, he had thought as he rode out of Hampton Court after first meeting England’s mighty Tudor king, I shall come immediately to this life. No wasting of my first thirty-five years, no soldiering or building. I will become an instant hunter of priests from my birth. I was born to do this.

And always Cranmer’s words rattled around his head: All our history is written by the victorious, not the vanquished. England needs men like us to make victorious history.

Gunner had his own take on what he and his men did, another saying prepared for anyone who wanted to hear it: We hunt Catholic priests, we catch Catholic priests, and they burn at the stake.

––––––––

The facts, as Gunner had learned them, were simple enough. Earlier that month, the mighty King Harry had executed his second wife, Anne Boleyn, in favour of Jane Seymour. Anne was supposedly dispatched on the grounds of incest with her brother George, witchcraft, adultery with other young men of the court and conspiracy against her husband the king. Seb Gunner knew little of all this, and if he had been asked would simply have said that kings could do with their women as they wish, be they concubines, high-class whores, wives of other men or actresses from the stage. Change them like they did their mind, horses, robes or anything else. The ruler of the realm may tup anything that takes his fancy. Henry might be considered a wanton philanderer and heretic by those who followed the Romish way, but as King of England and leader of its Church, to Gunner’s way of thinking he was entitled to have what and who he wanted when and how he wanted them. He was governed only by his own conscience. Archbishop Cranmer called it noblesse oblige – oblige the noble monarch in whatever his little heart desires, Gunner thought that meant; although, being a builder and former soldier with no learning to speak of other than that gained on the shit-soaked streets, he wasn’t sure. What he did know for sure was that if he, Seb Gunner, was the King of England, he’d have every beautiful woman that passed his way every day except Sunday – known hereabouts as the Lord’s Day – and then he’d have them twice over for good measure, one for this God they all cared so much about and one for himself, see if he wouldn’t.

And to demonstrate the fact of royal entitlement he was prepared to become a human pig-sticker and make fat little burning monks squeal and run before his sharp blade. This, he’d said excitedly to Cuthbert Lang as they rode away from that first blazing monastery in Hatfield wiping crimson blood from their swords, was what we as the king’s and the archbishop’s personal priest hunters were put on this pestiferous earth for. And there had been more, many more ruined monasteries and dead monks, each one more righteous and more satisfying than the last.

Razing that first monastery to the ground had kindled a commoner’s atheist hatred in Gunner for everything those monks and their religious fortress represented. He and his men had heard many lurid, Cromwell-inspired tales of these great nests of monastic luxury and sodomy. The fat little matins-mumblers, with two retainers to look after each of them, lived off lay folk by manipulating their worst fears of the devil and offering the false protection of the Catholic scriptures, and taking everything material from them in exchange; tupping each other in acts of lust while binding the poor to the yoke of a treasonable religion that made them poorer. It was enough that they were servants of Rome; add to those men dipping into each other’s larded bodies and Gunner needed nothing more to justify his brutality in the service of eradicating the foul bastards.

How the recusant Catholic families that occupied the houses from which he dragged the outlawed priests were dealt with was not his concern, unless the archbishop had specifically told him to bring them in as well. Catching the papist filth was all he really cared about: they were the counter-reformation poison he’d been instructed to seek out and remove to the dank prisons of the Fleet, the Marshalsea and, for the higher bred, the Tower, prior to their trip to the West Smith Field execution grounds. On behalf of the king, Cranmer and Cromwell saw that they were dispatched in the foulest way, there was no doubt about that ‒ unless they were important Tudor grandees, or they had a direct line to the king. For them it was the Tower and an ‘examination’ from Cranmer and his council of affiliates if they were high-status religious clerics, or Cromwell and his Court of Augmentation Commissioners if they were considered secular or above religion but able to pay, after which some of them were released with a heavy fine and dire warnings. But not all, some of those landed dignitaries who were identified with the pagan Antichrist – the Pope – also lost their estates and hereditary titles and the income that went with them, or were summarily burned, or both. It was loudly said abroad that both the Toms, Cranmer, and Cromwell, had turned up to watch William Tyndale being roasted alive at the stake, and the beheading of former Lord Chancellor and court favourite Sir Thomas More – former pulpiteers who themselves had held the pious lives of men in their sullied hands and had manipulated and scared them into Catholic compliance with devilish threats through the murmurings of the confessional. Just as it was with everyone else, their own croaked last words were drowned out by the roars of the rapturous crowds carried by the smoky, acrid winds that swept across West Smith Field and Tyburn or St Giles, where an old hanging site had swiftly been resurrected with a new scaffold to cope with the demand.

After a while Gunner and his men had grown bored with watching the executions. The thrill for them was hunting the heretics down and bringing them in. Watching them die with their agonised eyes fixed firmly on the hereafter as they cried out to their illicit god soon lost its allure.

––––––––

At 12.30 on a late May night that had started out lit by a bright ratcatcher’s moon, the dozen mounted pursuivants of Gunner’s group passed the stark, burned-out ruins of the former monastery at Hatfield. A smiling Gunner nodded knowingly at Cuthbert Lang alongside him and they shared an old memory of the place. Burning down that building had been one of the first acts of their preferment – it was the way King Harry, Cranmer and Cromwell had chosen to announce their reformist intentions to the world. And Seb Gunner, Cuthbert Lang and his brother Cecil had been in the arson party and watched as the fat little monks ran screaming from the fire. Many of them never emerged at all. Perhaps they knew they were being made an example of, that the sharp blade of Harry’s reformist wrath awaited them on the other side of the flames, and had therefore decided to die in their cells instead. It was the first time Gunner had come across folk who were prepared to lay down their lives for a faith. He could understand someone dying for an English king in battle, ownership of good fertile English land and a house, even for his family perhaps; in his cups he could probably make a strong argument for dying to protect the honour of a good woman. But for a god who lived through a high priest in faraway Rome? To his untutored mind only a true madman died for that.

From that day at Hatfield, he knew better the strength of faith and what some people were prepared to endure on its behalf. Not that it made any difference. He despised them all and their profane credo and debauched habits – more with every day that passed. Killing and arresting Catholic priests made him happy and contented, such that he awoke every day raring to go and repeat the exercise all over again.

Nothing about the malevolence of Thomas Cromwell surprised Gunner, but that such a mild-mannered, gentle, and learned man of religion as Cranmer could be so off-handedly