“I did not badger, as you call it,” Osborne protested. “I only suggested you might advance your step a little.”
Osborne looked at Thomas as though expecting him to defend his right to be critical, but Thomas said nothing. “The soul of active lust is energy,” Osborne went on defensively. “Otherwise, the assault upon the lady’s virtue will carry no conviction.”
“I have more energy in my little finger than you do in your entire body, Osborne!” Keable declared roundly.
“You mean more impudence in your little finger than brain in your noggin,” said Osborne.
“Come, make peace!” Thomas said, raising his voice now, his own face red with irritation. “What is it St. Paul declares? The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. We are all members of a common body. You, judicious Osborne, the eye; you, hot-blooded Keable, the hand. We must therefore work as one, not aggravate these divisions by oversensitivity to criticism.”
“I’ll content myself to be the hand,” Keable said sourly when Thomas had finished his speech. “If Osborne will be less the ass.”
“Shall I shut my eyes, then, while you play the fool?” asked Osborne.
“Neither ass nor fool,” said Thomas, dividing a disapproving stare between the men. “Continue in this discord and the play will be ruined. There will be no play, I repeat. There’s not an iota of merit in this brainless dispute. Be men, both of you, and not annoying children.”
Thomas turned his back on the two men as though his last words had concluded the matter, but Matthew could tell that his friend had achieved only a temporary truce. The hatred between Osborne and Keable had been set; words of another would not placate them.
Suddenly Matthew’s attention was drawn to the appearance of a new player on the dais. The newcomer wore a handsome velvet jerkin and cape and a fine broad-brimmed hat with a feather and the other accoutrements of a gallant. Thomas whispered: “This sterling fellow is the Prince of Love. He takes his name from the protagonist of our Christmas revels, the Prince d’Amour, but in Osborne’s masque he is another shepherd transformed by love from rustic to gentleman worthy of this much-abused lady’s hand.”
“It’s a handsome suit he wears,” Matthew whispered back. “Who is he who plays the part?”
“He whom you have waited for,” said Thomas. “Crispin Braithwaite.”
Matthew took a harder look at the shepherd hero, now that he knew who he was. Crispin Braithwaite appeared to be in his early twenties. He was of middle height and fair complexion with a long, aristocratic nose and a small mouth above which was a light blond moustache. His voice was strong and well modulated, and as he struck the pose his part required, he lifted his right arm and extended it with the self-assurance of one fully comfortable in his body. Braithwaite spoke of his unrequited love for Clorinda, for her devastating beauty, directing his gaze to the floor, where Wilson, playing still the object of the Prince’s affection, reclined as if asleep. Suddenly Braithwaite drew his sword and turned on Keable, who during the former’s speech had been standing with a smoldering expression directed at Osborne.
There was an angry exchange now between the prince and the satyr, and in the next minute Braithwaite and Keable had drawn swords and commenced to thrust and parry vigorously.
This part of the performance interested Matthew, for it was action rather than mere words alone, which he only partly followed and whose superfluity he found suspect. Moreover, it had much the same quality of dance—a dignity and order and grace of movement that appealed to him, especially since it was accompanied by tabor and flute, for all manner of music he dearly loved. Both men were nimble of foot and they handled their weapons expertly, at least in Matthew’s judgment, and he could almost imagine that the fight was no mere playing but that it would presently be consummated in the death of one of them.
“Lay on, Keable,” shouted Osborne from the sidelines. “Hollow your body more. Note distance and proportion. Thrust, thrust!”
The noisy conflict had drawn a large company of Templars who were not among Osborne’s players but who, upon hearing the clanging of swords and Osborne’s shouts, had drifted into the Hall to see what was going on. These, knowing the participants well, took sides, and ignorant of
the symbolic import of the combat, called out encouragement to whomever of the two they preferred. Keable’s partisans took up Osborne’s mocking phrase and began to chant, “Lay on, Keable, lay on,” while those who favored Braithwaite, the larger group, urged their hero to finish his opponent off.
Either in response to Osborne’s goading or because of the appearance of friends to whom he did not wish to appear the weaker of the contestants, Keable now strove more fiercely, and the swordplay began to take on the appearance of real combat. Keable was thrusting and slashing at his opponent desperately, and Braithwaite, his earlier composure gone, responded in kind.
“My God, they’re fighting in earnest,” Thomas cried, elbowing himself through the spectators. Then, over bobbing heads and waving arms, Matthew saw Keable make a quick thrust and draw blood.
Braithwaite cried out that he had been hit, dropped his sword, and somehow managed to sidestep a second thrust that, had it been true to Keable’s aim, would have found a fatal home in his heart.
The bloodletting proved to be the climax of the duel, and the spectators grew strangely silent where all was commotion before, as though they themselves were responsible for the two gentlemen’s loss of control and consequent bloodshed. Breathing heavily and clutching his left shoulder, Braithwaite stared accusingly at his opponent, before sinking to his knees in a faint.
Thomas called for someone to fetch a surgeon and, as a more immediate measure, clean cloths from the kitchen. Several Templars scrambled to comply, although most of the onlookers made no show to move, as though they had never seen a wounded man before or understood how it was possible for a sword to pierce the flesh.
Meanwhile Matthew had come forward to see how he might aid the wounded man.
Braithwaite lay on his back. He had regained consciousness, but his eyes were glassy and his chest still heaved with the vigorous exercise and, perhaps too, fear. From his mouth
proceeded a string of appeals for a priest to shrive him, and curses aimed at Keable, who remained standing at a distance, sword in hand, seemingly more astonished than gratified at what he had done.
“Peace, Braithwaite,” Osborne said, looking down at the fallen man. “You’ve no need of a priest. Your wound is only a scratch. Anyone can see that.”
Cloths were brought from the kitchen, and Matthew applied them to Braithwaite’s shoulder. Matthew could see that Osborne was wrong about the wound. The sword’s point had penetrated deeply, and there was a great deal of blood soaked into the velvet sleeve of the doublet and now into the rushes. With the cloth, Matthew bound the wound as well as he could while Braithwaite, as white as chalk, asked in a quaking voice where Keable was.
Keable stepped forward a little but said nothing. Then Braithwaite, getting up on his elbows, declared: “Damn you to Hell, Keable. You struck me on purpose. You came near to killing me and may have yet.”
“It was you who first grew heated,” Keable charged, his own voice trembling.
“Nay, you, sir,” Braithwaite insisted. Someone brought a flagon of wine to give to the wounded man, but Braithwaite would have none of it. He said he would not drink with Keable standing there gloating. “I found you angry when I entered. Because of a quarrel you had with Master Osborne.”
“By God, I’ll not accept blame for this,” Osborne said, looking about him wildly. “It was an accident, as any man could see. What was between Keable and me had nothing to do with the quarrel between you two.”
From the sidelines, Wilson spoke up on his chamber-fellow’s behalf, declaring the hit to have been an accident, and no one voiced an opinion to the contrary, although Matthew, who had seen the whole of the incident, had grave doubts. Wilson
continued, “The men were skirmishing in play, not dueling. It was per infortunium and contra volutatem suam. A felony must be done animo felonico.’’
Keable told Wilson to keep his lawyerly drivel to himself and called him a learned ass and a piddling knave. Looking around him as though he were still playing a part in Osborne’s play, he said he needed no defender of his action, for if it was not an accident, then it was the result of a reasonable provocation and he would say as much to any man.
Thomas told Keable to be silent, for he had done enough mischief for the morning, and he said Keable should look to his standing in the Temple rather than threaten his colleagues, who meant only well by him, and Keable stalked off, shoving some of the spectators aside.
Now Osbome announced in a nervous treble what was painfully obvious to them all, that the rehearsal was done for the morning, and he suggested all stand clear of the Hall, for he had no doubt but that the proper authorities would be looking into the incident and declare it all per infortunium, as Master Wilson had earlier proposed. As he spoke, Matthew helped Thomas get Braithwaite to his feet. Thomas wanted to take Braithwaite to the infirmary, but Braithwaite said no. He told them to take him to his chamber instead— anywhere out of the sight of Keable.
While they were leading Braithwaite off, Matthew noticed Jacob Flowerdewe come in. The Hall was quickly being emptied, although not so much in response to Osborne’s order as to the lack of any more to see of interest. Jacob approached the spot where Braithwaite had bled, and looking down at the remnant gore, he shook his head disapprovingly and muttered something under his breath. Then he knelt down to scoop the bloody rushes into his arms with the nonchalance he might have shown had a nobleman’s horse defecated there.
Ten
THEOPHILUS Phipps grew queasy at the sight of blood. It had always been so with him, since boyhood, when his gruff, overbearing father had dragged him to Tyburn to see a traitor get his deserts. Father and son had stood within the very shadow of the block, pressed in by half of London, it seemed, to Phipps’s distant recollection. With seething resentment, Phipps remembered it—resentment not at the traitor, a misguided soul who wept at the prospect of an ignominious end, but at his father, who forced the experience upon him. He remembered his father’s mocking jibes, the enmity disguised as paternal counsel. The father’s contempt for the frail, blond son—the spitting image of the sickly mother.
Phipps had stood close enough to smell the hooded executioner’s garlicky breath and the traitor’s desperate sweat.
Then down had come the ax, and blood spat all over young Phipps’s face and jerkin, while the traitor’s head had rolled into its trough like a cabbage. His father had laughed and administered a manly thump upon the son’s shoulders and said a bloody baptism was good luck and yea, a lesson too for any young gentleman.
But Phipps had been horrified and disgusted. He fled from his father, and since then, he had had no stomach for public executions nor random violence. Nor could he endure cockfights, bearbaitings, dogfights, duels, or the sight of dripping and oozing carcasses in butchers’ shops, even though such sights were difficult to avoid in London, a city afflicted with blood lust and blood sport.
Phipps had entered the Hall during the final thrust and parry of the champions of Lust and Charity and thereby been an eyewitness to Braithwaite’s disaster. Immediately he had felt his stomach chum, his shirt grow moist with sweat, his heart flutter with incipient panic. He prayed none of the onlookers turned their gaze from Braithwaite and his assailant to him, for he was sure he looked quite as undone by the spectacle of Braithwaite’s bleeding as was Braithwaite himself.
And Braithwaite did look awful. His eyes were yellow with fear. Even as he cursed, groaned, and pleaded to be shriven of his sins, even as Osborne assured him the wound was but a scratch and that simpleton Wilson cited chapter and verse on law.
Pompous ass, thought Phipps of Osborne. Osborne had not been the one pricked. It was easy enough for him to give assurances, to enjoin the fallen Braithwaite—a better man than he—to endure his pain like a true son of the Middle Temple.
Having had a stomachful of it all, Phipps returned to his office, relieved to find that the Treasurer was still away. Hutton would be fit to be tied when he heard of the duel, or however it was to be construed.
Phipps sat down and looked over the sheaf of letters that had arrived that morning. Most of it was the small business of the Society—rents and accounts of merchants, a letter or two inquiring about membership. There were even several personal letters for Hutton that Phipps discreetly examined, being as he was perfect in the art of epistolary snooping. But he could not concentrate on the contents of the letters, nor was there much there to require his concentration. He kept thinking about Braithwaite’s blood and what its shedding might have to do with the Templar murders. For Phipps had
spotted Matthew Stock amid the throng in the Hall, bending down over the wounded man as though hanging on any incriminating last words.
Phipps was still pondering the mystery of this connection when the door opened and Keable appeared. Keable was wearing his cap and gown again, but his face was still flushed and sweaty from exercise. He had the look of a fugitive, and Phipps suspected the handsome but irascible young man was being widely blamed for the bloody outcome of the duel.
“They’ve carried Braithwaite to his chamber,” Keable said, without even so much as a good morning as a preface. “A surgeon has been summoned.”
“Leyland, is it?” said Phipps.
“I think so.”
“God save Braithwaite, then,” Phipps said. “He may be in graver danger from that penurious quicksalver than from your sword.”
“You saw it all, then?” Keable asked, not without a hint of pride in the act.
“Your lucky stroke—and the outcome; Wilson’s defense of you—for what it was worth.”
Keable laughed scornfully. “Not a farthing. A pusillanimous idiot who takes refuge in big words, that’s Wilson.” Keable didn’t wait for an invitation to draw himself up by Phipps’s fire. He sat down and stretched out his legs like a hunter home from the hunt. He put his arms behind his head and stared up into the mottled ceiling. ‘ ‘Braithwaite’s making much ado about little, if you ask me,” Keable went on. “It’s a mere scratch.”
Keable laughed again, but it was a hollow laugh, with more suppressed terror in it than merriment or ridicule. And suddenly, for the first time in their association, Phipps felt himself to be superior to Keable. He had always admired him before—for his fine air of disdain, his good looks, his foil purse. Now his admiration had undergone a serious decline at the spectacle of Keable’s apprehension. Was he that fearful of being booted from the Temple? Or was it prison that terrified him? Should Phipps remind him that Templars were forbidden by House rules and tradition from suing one another?
“ He sent me here,” Keable said morosely.
“Who?”
“Hutton.”
“What for—disciplining?”
“Undoubtedly. Oh yes, I am also to tell you he will not return for several hours. I met him in the passage. He had word of the duel second- and third-hand from my so-called friends and Templar brethren who have puffed up a misaimed thrust into brazen manslaughter. Such hearsay he lectures against in Hall he now accepts as Gospel, and didn’t even bother to ask for my side of it. ”
Keable got up and began to pace nervously. Phipps told him to rest his feet, that it would not do to wear out the stone, which he would surely do if he continued, but Keable acted as though he had not heard Phipps’s words. ‘ ‘In truth, Phipps, I am glad I was sent here. Not because I am eager for chastisement but because I could no longer bear it in the Hall or chambers. Curse them, they shunned me afterward, as though I were a leper. Even those who cheered me on in the fight, which I assure you were the bulk of them.”
“Marry, Keable, my friend, you’ve had greatness thrust upon you,” Phipps said ironically. “Don’t abuse Fortune. After all,
how many of your so-called friends would have delighted in your death who must now bear their disappointment? Think about it. As for Braithwaite, chances are he’ll recover. In a week’s time you’ll be tossing pots at the same table and laughing about the incident.”
“But what if it turns out otherwise and Braithwaite dies?” “Then it will be as God disposes,” Phipps said.
Keable thought about this. He ceased pacing as abruptly as he had begun. Then he turned to Phipps and asked him if he had anything to drink. He said the swordplay and its aftermath had instilled in him a powerful thirst.
“I think Hutton may have something in his closet. Excuse me,” Phipps said.
Phipps returned quickly with a bottle and two silver goblets of very fine workmanship that the Treasurer kept for special guests. “He’ll never miss a drop,” Phipps said when Keable looked at the wine and the goblets as though to inquire about the wisdom of using them without their owner’s permission.
Smiling his customary smile of disdain, Keable accepted the cup, which Phipps had generously filled to the brim. The two men toasted friends living and dead, but the toast seemed to strike a melancholy chord in Keable. He was only half-finished with his wine when he said: “You know, Phipps, I’ve been thinking about what you said the other night. About Stock, I mean.”
Phipps settled in his chair and struck a comfortable pose. He leaned forward on the desk to give his friend his full attention. “Yes?”
“What you warned me of, I mean.”
“Oh, that. You made light of the intelligence I gave you,” Phipps said.
“True, but-”
“As much as said I was a gossip and nothing more.”
“A thoughtless slander if the idea ever crossed my mind. But I protest it never did. ”
“Well ...” Phipps hesitated uncertainly.
Knaves Templar Page 9
