All my prayers and wishes were of no avail then; there was a pause, and then I heard the latch of the door moving, the unmistakable sound of the door itself creaking open, then a footfall on one of the loose and creaking oak floorplanks.

When I saw that the visitor had a lantern, and would soon see both myself and Grove’s body, I knew I could hide no longer, so I reached forward and grabbed him by the neck, and pushed him backward out of the room.

My antagonist had little strength, and put up almost no resistance to me in his surprise and terror. It took scarce a second or two to wrestle him to the ground on the landing, stop the lantern from setting fire to the entire building, and then see who he was.

“Thomas!” I cried in the greatest surprise when the feeble light played across his ashen, frightened face.

“Jack?” he whispered hoarsely with even greater astonishment. “What are you doing here?”

I released him quickly, and brushed him down, and apologized for manhandling him. “What I am doing is very simple,” I said. “I am escaping. But I think maybe you have some explaining to do.”

His head fell when I said that, and he looked as though he was about to burst into tears. It was very strange, all this conversation—a priest and a fugitive, huddled close together on the landing, talking in whispers while in the next-door room only feet away there lay a still-warm corpse.

The look on his face, I may say, would have hanged him in any courtroom in the land even had the jury not known the long and bitter story which had led up to this event. “Oh, dear God, help me,” he cried. “What am I to do? You know what I have done?”

“Keep your voice down,” I said testily. “I have not gone to all the trouble of escaping just to be caught by the sound of your wails. What’s done is done. You have been stupid beyond belief, but there is no going back. You cannot undo it now.”

“Why did I do it? I saw the warden standing there, and even before I knew it, I had accosted him, and told him a complete pack of lies about that servant of his.”

“What? Thomas, what are you talking about?”

“Blundy. That girl. I told the warden that Grove had gone back on his word, and that I’d seen her sneaking into his room tonight. Then I realized…”

“Yes, yes. Let’s not get into that. What did you come here for, anyway?”

“I wanted to see him before it was too late.”

“It is too late.”

“But surely, there must be something I can do?”

“Stop being childish,” I snapped back at him. “Of course there isn’t. Neither of us have any choice. I must run; you must go back to your room and sleep.”

Still he sat there on the floor, clutching his knees. “Thomas, do as I say,” I commanded. “Leave it to me.”

“It was his fault,” he moaned. “I couldn’t stand it any more. The way he treated me…”

“He’ll not make that mistake again,” I replied. “And if you keep calm, we’ll both survive to see you with a bishop’s miter. But not if you panic, and not unless you learn how to keep your mouth shut.”

I could not bear to remain there any longer, so I pulled him to his feet. Together we crept down the stairs and at the bottom I pointed him in the direction of his room.

“You go back to your room and sleep as best you can, my friend. Give me your word you will say nothing and do nothing without discussing it with me first.”

Again, the wretch just hung his head like a schoolboy.

“Thomas? Are you listening?”

“Yes,” he said, finally raising his eyes to look at me.

“Repeat after me, and swear you will never mention anything of this evening. Or you will hang us both.”

“I swear,” he said in a dull voice. “But Jack…”

“Enough. Leave everything to me. I know exactly how to deal with this. Do you believe me?”

He nodded.

“You will do as I say?”

Another nod.

“Good. Go away, then. Good-bye, my friend.”

And I pushed him in the back to get him walking, and waited until he was halfway across the quad. Then I went back up to Grove’s room, where I took his key, so I could lock the door, and his signet ring.

The plan that had leaped, fully formed, into my mind was so simple and complete that it must have been due to some inspiration, for I must modestly admit that I could hardly have devised such a perfect solution unaided. What had happened was perfectly clear, and Cola’s document confirms it. For that was the day Lord Maynard had dined, and the great contest for his favor had taken place between Grove and Thomas. As might be expected, Thomas was outwitted, out-thought and humiliated. He had never been one for public dispute, but had prepared himself so much, and worked himself into such a fit of anxiety about the encounter, that he was barely capable of speech. Grove, instead, was ready, for he had encountered Cola and knew that the Italian would be the perfect foil for demonstrating his orthodoxy and robust defense of the church.

So the Italian sat there, thinking he was engaged in a conversation about philosophy, while all the time Grove was showing his fitness for a parish by disagreeing with everything he said. Easily enough done, since Grove removed Thomas from the contest by ignoring him and battering him with insults until Thomas despaired at being constantly interrupted and walked out, I suspect so that no man might see his tears. I believe he went mad from despair, and denounced Grove to the warden shortly after in some half-thought-out act of desperation. Then he realized that it would soon be exposed as a lie, and a malicious one at that, so he went one, fatal, step further.

Not a goodness for a man of God, and yet I knew that Thomas had much good in him; he had shown me that time and again. And even had that not been the case, I was bound to him and owed him my assistance, for he was not only a friend, he was quite incapable of looking after himself. The loyalties of Lincolnshire I have mentioned before.

It was the possibility of aiding myself at the same time which indicated that some guardian angel must be about, whispering into my mind.

I should return to my narrative, however, and say that by the time I left Grove’s room with his signet in my pocket it was nine o’clock by St. Mary’s, and I knew that I had eight hours before the jailer would come to my cell in the castle and discover my escape. My movements were unconstrained and I was at total liberty to do whatever I wished. What I wished to do at that moment was kill Sarah Blundy, as it had long been clear to me that only through the death of one or the other of us would this diabolical contest be brought to an end.

I knew, of course, that this was impossible. I could no more kill her with my own hands than she could kill me. Others had to do that and, just as she had laid a trap for me, that I should be hanged, so I could do the same to her.

It was slightly before midnight, I think, that I made my way through the fortifications that still surrounded the town and avoided the night watch. Certainly I heard the great bells of the city making their mournful toll as I walked swiftly across the fields parallel to the London road, which I dared not use until I was past Heddington Village. Dawn was beginning to come over the horizon by the time I approached the village of Great Milton.