Low Treason

by Leonard Tourney

  “Agreed,” Tom replied, grinning now for the first time since he had appeared outside her window. He leaned toward her so that the wound in his forehead gaped in the lamplight like a second mouth, and whispered urgently, “You tell your husband, Mistress Stock, to beware of the Basilisk.”

  “The Basilisk, you say?”

  “A fabulous beast that has set his foot in London.” She looked at the boy uncertainly.

  “I’m not mad,” he explained, seeming to perceive how his words had confused her. “I heard Castell speak of someone named Basilisk. It’s a password at least, a person very probably, and if so, I warrant you this same Basilisk is Castell’s master.”

  “Where might Matthew find this Basilisk?”

  Tom shook his head. “I don’t know. I wish I could tell you more.”

  “Well, never fear,” she said, rising from her stool and gathering his empty cup and plate. “An ounce of mirth is better than a pound of sorrow and, yes, makes a good weight, too. Here’s a goodly day before us with you home safe again. Go to William’s and wait word from me. I will find Matthew and warn him of Castell’s treachery and his danger to the state. My husband knows Sir Robert Cecil, the Queen’s Principal Secretary. He’ll be quick enough to take notice of the jeweler.”

  “I’ll go, with all my heart,” Tom said, smiling again. Joan bolted her door behind him and hurried up the stairs. The whole house was awake now, and within the half-hour the men would be at the looms and the shop a beehive of industry. She knew she must take time by the forelock. She called to Betty to prepare her things for the journey. It would take the day to travel the thirty or so miles to London and she must dress herself and repair her face from the spoilage of the night. Every minute lost increased her husband’s danger.

  Matthew awoke from sleep fully intent on seeing Cecil first thing that morning. And he would have done so had he not found a second message, stuck with a glob of pitch to the door of his chamber and scrawled on cheap paper as though the writer could not spare more than a half minute to the writing of it. It said that if Matthew wanted to converse with Tom Ingram he might do so by showing his face at Paul’s Cross, at the foot of the fountain there, at nine o’clock.

  Matthew didn’t know what to do. After his escape of the previous night, he knew it was well past time to invoke the aid of his powerful friend Cecil, now that the danger to himself was clear and that to the state sufficiently implied, at least by hearsay. But then, too, he hated to lose the chance of seeing Tom Ingram, of discovering Castell’s treachery first hand. And so by nine o’clock he was standing at the appointed place in a drizzling rain. He waited for an hour. Finally he noticed a baldheaded man dodging puddles in the yard to come to where Matthew stood.

  “You are Matthew Stock of Chelmsford?” asked the man.

  Matthew said that he was and the man introduced himself as John Starkey.

  “I expected Tom Ingram,” said Matthew.

  “Indeed,” replied Starkey. “You shall have him, too, but not here. It’s much too dangerous. Come, let us seek a roof whilst we talk.”

  Matthew thought this was a good idea, and although he was curious as to just who this fellow was, he felt sure that question could wait. He had seen an alehouse opposite them not twenty paces, and hither they went without farther ado, found themselves a bench, and ordered ale. The Morning Star, as the house was called, was crowded and noisy; the proprietor was running around in great excitement, calling to his assistants in a strident, shrewish voice. He was obviously delighted by the rain. It had caused his house to fill.

  “You’re a friend of Thomas Ingram?” Matthew said, raising his voice above the din.

  “Oh, indeed, sir, a very good friend,” replied Starkey, without amplifying on their -relationship. Starkey took in the room with an interested gaze. “He wants to see you,” he said without looking at Matthew.

  “And I want very much to see him.”

  “Good, then. It’s settled.”

  Starkey finished his ale in a long swig. Matthew was unsure as to what had been settled.

  “Where is Thomas?” he asked.

  “He’s in a safe place, sir. Oh, yes, a very safe place.”

  “You will take me to him?”

  “Of course. We’ll go presently. See, now, through the window, the rain is ceasing.”

  “Is he near here?”

  “No, I’ll take you by boat to where he is.”

  “By boat!”

  Starkey laughed. “It will be all the quicker and I’m sure you’ll agree that haste is in the interest of both of us.” Matthew paid for them both and then followed Starkey out into the street. It had been a typical summer storm: a furious downpour one moment, a placid drizzle the next. The paving stones were shiny and many pedestrians had returned to the streets. Starkey walked slightly ahead of Matthew, briskly, maintaining a steady stream of discourse concerning the local antiquities, a subject on which he was apparently an expert. He could tell during whose teign such a building was constructed, give a name to this church or that inn, identify the present proprietors of this place of business or that. The man’s energy seemed as inexhaustible as his discourse. Matthew could hardly keep up and when they at last reached the river Matthew was breathless, but Starkey seemed fit and eager to continue on what he assured Matthew was the last leg of their journey.

  “There now, not more than a middling time from the Morning Star to here, just as I said.”

  Matthew looked out over the broad expanse of river. It was somber and peaceful. There were boats upon it of various sizes—barge, lighters, the ubiquitous wherries carrying passengers to this place and that, and there was a tilt boat, an elegant craft with a long canopy running its length and uniformed men with halberds standing at attention on its deck. The boat was towed by a smaller craft manned by a half-dozen oarsmen who were straining at their work. The tilt boat was obviously heavy and the river ran against them.

  . “I have a wherry at the foot of the stairs,” Starkey said proudly when they had come to Paul’s wharf. He pointed down to the riverbank where a stone landing jutted from the shore into the stream. “She’s a small craft but very tight.” Smiling, Starkey scanned the river. The tide was right, he said, and then he asked if Matthew was a sailor and Matthew replied that indeed he was not, that he had been upon the water only a few times before in his life and had not thought much of the experience.

  “Brace up, man,” cried his guide cheerily. “You’ll be reunited with your friend in no time at all.”

  “In God’s name, where is this place you’re taking me to?” Matthew asked, casting a cold eye on the file of skiffs and wherries tied up at the foot of the stairs.

  “Downriver, just beyond Wapping,” Starkey replied, beckoning Matthew to follow as he clambered down the wet stones.

  Matthew knew Wapping. It was some distance from the Tower, down a long street with alleys of poor tenements and cottages occupied mostly by sailors and victuallers.

  Matthew hurried to catch up with his guide, who had already arrived at the wharfs end and was presently staring down into the river below. It was still drizzling. Some boatmen were huddled under a tattered canvas at the end of the wharf cooking their dinner over an open fire. Matthew could smell the smoke and their dinner, trout or sturgeon, fresh from the Thames. The men looked at him curiously as he walked past them.

  Below, crowded among a good many other small boats, was Starkey’s wherry. Matthew looked at it doubtfully. Pointed at each end, the length of two men, maybe three, it was much in need of paint. Starkey told him to board; Matthew descended the ladder and stepped cautiously in, startled by the little boat’s giving beneath his feet, the lateral slipping. On water now, not on land. He sat down with a thud amidships. Starkey, watching from above, laughed good-humoredly. He untied the line and cast it into the boat, then descended the ladder, told Matthew to move to the stem, and took the place amidships Matthew had occupied. He took an oar and used it to shove the bow of the boat int
o the stream, then he picked up the other and began to row with long even strokes, his smile gone, replaced with an expression of grim determination.

  Matthew watched the City glide past, solemn and gray in the drizzle. There went Bracken’s wharf, there the three cranes, then ahead, Stilliards. On the south bank of the river he could see the Liberty of the Clink, the theaters, and the steeple of St. Mary Overie’s Dock. Soon they were in midchannel and Starkey ceased rowing, letting the oars

  trail in the water like broken limbs. The current carried them now. Matthew stared down into the water. Its surface was pitted by rain and its depths further obscured by the overcast sky, yet occasionally he glimpsed the fugitive shadows of fish, debris, and once the remains of a dog, bloated and ghastly, floating along beside the boat, just beneath the surface.

  Ahead was London Bridge. It was one of the sights of the City—a little city in itself with its many-storied, timbered houses, stretching across the river like a dam on a millpond. The arches of squared stone and the narrow passages between permitted the coming and going of only the smallest craft. Matthew had crossed the bridge once upon foot, but he had never seen it from this angle before, and he made a note to himself to tell Joan of it as soon as he was home again S'

  “We’ll be shooting the bridge betimes,” announced Starkey, who had been silent all this while and whose presence in the wherry Matthew had nearly forgotten in his fascination with the bridge.

  “Shooting the bridge?”

  “Passing beneath her,” explained Starkey.

  Matthew had not thought about that. But of course they would have to go beneath the bridge. He looked ahead at the great piers and the starlings, the pedestals upon which they stood.

  “Is there no danger?” Matthew asked uncertainly.

  “None to one who knows the river.”

  Starkey wiped his forehead, raised the oars, and began to maneuver the boat toward one of the arches. Matthew noticed theirs was the only craft moving toward the bridge. The others were either standing idly in the water or rowing upstream. “By the way, Master Stock, can you swim?”

  “I? No, not a whit,” responded Matthew, looking uncertainly over Starkey’s shoulder toward the bridge. They were so close now that he could see the faces of pedestrians, make out the signs of the shops, perceive the gruesome outlines of the heads of malefactors stuck upon spikes above the gates as a warning to others so inclined.

  “Marry, a man must learn many a skill in his life,”

  Starkey commented philosophically, drawing a sleeve across his sweaty face, rowing with longer strokes, so that the wherry moved even faster than the current.

  Matthew heard the sound of churning water ahead, not from the narrow passage between the starlings but from somewhere beyond. He looked up at the approaching bridge. He saw faces peering down at the river at him and Starkey in their boat. Arms waved, voices called, a tone of warning without substance. What did they want? What was the danger? Matthew looked at Starkey for an explanation, but the man’s concentration was complete; he rowed rhythmically, staring at his shoes as though the bridge were not there at ail, as though he didn’t hear the roar of turbulent water at his back.

  “Is it safe?” Matthew shouted, alarmed, knowing that it wasn’t, that it couldn’t be.

  “Some of us shall be, pray God,” Starkey replied through clenched teeth, breathing heavily, not breaking his rhythm.

  Then the bridge was upon them, over them, and suddenly Starkey was gone, gone into the water without a word or warning, swimming for safety. Matthew watched dumbfounded as the pilotless wherry swept between the starlings, and he saw the danger, why theirs had been the only craft shooting the bridge. It was a controversy of currents, the river and the sea—the tide rising to counter the energy of the Thames, just where the great river emptied into the Pool.

  Terrified, Matthew gripped the gunwales as the bow of the wherry smashed against the starling and the stem swung violently forward. For a moment the little boat thwarted the stream in bold defiance, then suddenly it capsized, hurling Matthew into the foamy turbulence. Before he knew it he was under the water, thrashing about helplessly in the powerful current, the river twisting and turning him at its will. His lungs bursting, he reached above him, pushed upward against the burden of his clothing, his heavy body, and then, miraculously to him, he broke through to the surface, his head striking something hard and foreign to this watery element. He grasped for the thing, caught it, clutched it to him, knew almost without looking what it would be, the wherry

  or what remained of it, a fragment of wood, splintery, but a solid plank. The plank saved him. He did not go under again; he held on, gasping for air, knowing that he had come as near to death as ever he had, deafened by the roar and half blinded by spray, seeing once and once only the bridge looming above him, but no faces concerned for his fate, no hands reached out to save.

  He held onto the plank until he thought his hands had grown fast to the wood. He was too weak to cry out; he knew it would be futile anyway. No one would hear. Lost in the churning, he would not be discerned from the bridge, for the tidal conflict had drawn all manner of debris into it. His head, bobbing in the foam, would be one object among many.

  How long was it before the violence waned, before the power of the river overcame that of the sea and he and his plank began to move slowly into the Pool? He could not say whether his terror caused time to collapse or expand, but it seemed to him hours since he had exchanged the relative security of the boat for the watery grave from which he now struggled to resurrect himself. When he looked at the bridge again it was past hailing. He and the plank were moving, downstream again. The tide had turned, and it was raining harder; the world had turned to water, the waters above and the waters below were converging, he thought, floating, floating.

  Donwriver the stately, tall-masted ships stood like permanent fixtures. He could see smaller craft but they were beyond hailing, too. He continued to drift, past the Tower, past the ships, noticing after a while that the south bank of the river seemed nearer than before. He began to kick his feet to propel himself in that direction. Success helped him find new strength, and within a few minutes he felt his shoe touch the bottom, felt the long stands of river weed caressing his legs.

  It stopped raining. The clouds passed to reveal generous patches of blue sky. The sun shone on the water, on the ships standing in midriver, and on Matthew Stock’s salvation. He cast the plank aside and began to walk, the water at waist level. Ahead between him and the bank a half-dozen boys were standing about knee deep in the water throwing stones at a flock of swans. The birds fluttered their wings and chided their attackers with their frantic bird voices, moving quickly out of range. Ragamuffins by their tattered clothing and dirty faces, the boys took no notice of Matthew, a half-drowned man wading ashore. They were still throwing stones even though the swans were long past. One of the boys wore only a shirt; below he was naked. He stood ankle deep in the river on thin, white legs, urinating in a steady yellow stream and watching Matthew out of the comer of his eye.

  Matthew passed him by, breathing heavily, struggling up the slippery embankment and then collapsing, never in his life so utterly weary. For a long time he lay there like a dead man, face down in a clump of sweet-smelling grass. He was grateful to be alive, grateful to be free from John Starkey who had tried to kill him.

  Eight

  BY suppertime Joan had arrived in London and had found her way to the Blue Boar. When the innkeeper informed her that he had not seen her husband since early morning, she went up to his chamber apprehensively, inspected the handful of personal articles he had left there, and sat down to wait.

  There was nothing else to do. She felt idle and useless.

  The evening air was mild and fresh after the morning’s rain. She opened the window and looked down at the street. Even at this hour it was a fast-moving stream, a feverish scramble in the failing light—folk of all conditions rushing homeward, concluding the day’s bus
iness, anticipating the night’s rest, labors, merriment, or mischief. In Chelmsford, life was a leisurely amble of generous days. London, however, was a kind of mad riot of activity, coming and going, getting and spending in a fury as though it were always the eleventh hour, the last minute.

  She felt a surge of homesickness, thought of her husband.

  Now it was quite dark, the passersby were ghostly figures illuminated by torches; she could hear their voices, vague and diminutive in the gloom. She was far removed from them, looking from her window, dumpish.

  Matthew?

  The black pall of melancholy overwhelmed her, and she fell into a reverie in which she saw her husband, his face pale and his hands cold and limp and lifeless.

  Death by water.

  The image confused her sense of place. She looked about her; yes, it was still where her husband had lain. His impression on the bed, his wallet with his second-best suit, pushed beneath. But then, willful thing that it was, the vision recurred. There was a great expanse of gray water, a horrid stagnant smell, and Matthew floating just below the surface, his face upward toward her, dreadfully stark.

  He had drowned. She knew it, although she could not explain how, and the grief engulfed her suddenly and she began to weep slow hot tears. She was not sure she could go on without him.

  She returned to the bed and, without undressing, lay down upon it. She did not bother to light a candle or lamp. She lay brooding in the darkness, listening, feeling her thoughts as though they were tangible things she could take from her purse and put back again, show to Matthew, or secrete in her bosom.

  She smelled the herb-scented pillow, the country freshness of the rushes on the floor, the faint acrid odor of the chamberpot in the comer and she began to weep again. The tears ran down her cheeks, down the sides of her face.

  Matthew drowned.

  She could not rid herself of the impression.