Gloriana's Torch

by Patricia Finney

  Rebecca went whiter, and her eyes became like gazelles’ eyes. She sat still, not breathing, truly a gazelle in the gaze of a lion.

  Go, go, whispered Lady Leopard.

  I looked and there was a window that opened to the air, at the flat end of the ship, aftwards, looking over the rudder. They had had the best cabin on the ship, being the owners.

  I took Rebecca’s hand and led her to the window while she stared and paled and paled and stared. Through the little window, I could see the sea, only a little way below, dirty, to be sure, but water is quite soft if not too far away.

  More shouts. She was little and I was big, and I had lifted her like a child while she was sick. So I picked her up and pushed her through the window, head first, skirts and all, shoving her through past her bumroll, she squawking a little in shock. She pitched into the water with a muffled cry, her skirts billowing around her, and then with my Lady Leopard blinking down on me with distaste from the rudder, I squeezed through still knotting my leopard skin, dropped it and followed her laughing, with a great splash.

  Well, she was drowning now in a sodden tangle of silk and canvas, and I was surprised at the foul saltiness of the water, but I found her head, and got it above water, and when she grabbed at me, I caught her by her hair and towed her to the side of the next ship along, where we clung, gasping and watched the men in their bright helmets and breastplates, carrying their dark guns, marching on board the Anriques’ ship and claiming it and its cargo impounded for the Holy Office.

  High above was Michael, still leaning over the yard, staring down on the soldiers tramping over the deck. Had he seen us? Some of them shouted up at him, one pointed a caliver and he sidled along the yard, riding it like a horse now, to the very tip where it hung over the water. A shot rang out, a hole in the sail … He stood on the yard and dived.

  Water is very hard if it is a long way away. I hoped the fall wouldn’t kill him.

  Rebecca was gripping the anchor chain next to me, her small hands slipping and gleaming while she wept, gasping harshly through her square mouth, as if she were in childbirth. Poor lady. I patted her shoulder and pulled her along with me to the next ship, where she suddenly began to moan and tear at her breast-wrappings of canvas. Suddenly I understood that the canvas was shrinking and killing her. I found her little knife in her belt and cut through the lacings of her bodice and then her stays where I had bound her up in all her cloth that morning, like a baby, and she breathed better. Then I found the fastenings for her great kirtle of silk and the farthingale and cut that free, and dragged her on to the next moored ship, riding and rocking.

  There was no sign of Michael. No doubt he had drowned.

  We felt our way on round the ship, and we found a little place where the steps went up from the sea, and we crawled out there, and hid, at the bottom of the steps, dripping with foul, cold water, my man’s suit as heavy as lead around me. I could not swim or stay on the surface any longer. Rebecca sat on the steps and gripped her hair in her fists and wept as silently as she could, ah ah, she prayed to her strange word-god, and wept and moaned, silently, while the men in breastplates began searching the ship. But then she looked at me.

  ‘How was he taken?’ she whispered.

  ‘At the harbour master’s place,’ I said. ‘They waited for him.’

  ‘Had he … had he met Francis Ames, his brother?’

  ‘The man who took him said that Francis Ames was his friend, bought for money.’

  ‘No, no, his elder brother. They must have the name but nothing else. Did they meet?’

  I shook my head. ‘He met many people this morning.’

  ‘In his hat … a gull’s feather?’

  Then I laughed and thought of the familiar-faced harbour master’s clerk. What cold nerve to stand and watch your brother taken. I liked him already and I told Rebecca of it.

  ‘And it was certainly the Holy Office?’

  ‘When he swore by Jesus to give me the signal, he named them that.’

  She gulped hard. ‘Oh, may he die quickly.’

  I smiled at her. ‘Your man faced them as a warrior.’

  She stared at me as if she was not sure whether I was making fun of her, but being upside-down I do not do that. Then she put her hands across her body to hold her arms as if she was holding herself in one piece by force and shuddered.

  ‘Thank you, Merula,’ she said sadly. ‘I suppose you had better go now.’

  ‘Go?’

  ‘Run away. Escape. You can be free now.’

  Now here was a great singing in my head, and a laughing from my gods, for this was fine. To have my freedom was a fine thing, if I had ever lost it, which I had not. But I had come to find my son and I still had no idea where to start.

  ‘I am not your captive,’ I told her. ‘All that has happened has been at the will of God. I am here to find my son or his spirit and take him home.’

  She blinked at me in astonishment, as if I could not have a purpose other than freedom, as if I had no quests of my own to seek.

  I took off all my clothes and squeezed them out, stood and stretched. It was good to feel the sun on my breasts again, not to be imprisoned in cloth. Well, I did not like the oily look of the water but I had to find my leopard skin. The sun was going down, perhaps they would not see me.

  There was a hippopotamus splashing and gasping, and round the edge of the quay came Michael, pushing a bolt of floating wood. He saw me and paddled over and I helped him up the steps.

  The tide was going out as the sun set, and while my mistress was helping Michael and talking to him, I slid back into the water and paddled from one ship to the other until I came to the Anriques’ ship, which was now flying the flag of the Holy Office.

  At the back of it I ducked under, looking in the murk and mud and dropped spars and cut anchors, for my leopard skin. My Lady Leopard would have nothing to do with this, but at last my fingers brushed soft sodden fur and I brought it up, still tied, and paddled back to the steps under the overhang where I had left my mistress and found her still there, still sodden and bedraggled, though if she had had the sense to take her clothes off, they might almost have dried. Though her petticoat was dyed with the colour of her skirts, her bodice hung from her where I had cut it and there were cuts in her skin where I had been in a hurry. She still shook and twisted her hands together and tried to push back the tears coming out of her eyes with her fists. I touched her arm, shook myself and showed her the jewels I had rescued.

  Then she smiled and so did Michael. Michael took a necklace of pearls with him and went out to the shops and drinking dens that serve the docks.

  While the darkness deepened swiftly, I climbed to the quayside and paced along it, quietly on my bare feet, waiting. There were guards on our ship and soldiers of the Holy Office at the gates. Once there was a clatter and shouting as one came through that they knew.

  I went back to where Rebecca was hiding, and as I went, I knew that someone else was quietly walking that way. I paused and then followed, stalking him. He was walking along the quayside, looking at the water. He asked questions at the other ships’ anchor-watches.

  He turned his face and I saw it, knew him for the clerk who had had a gull’s feather in his cap. So I paced up behind him and whispered to him, ‘Are you looking for Rebecca?’

  He moved fast for a hairy ghost. He had his arm at my throat and a knife prickling my neck under my ear before I could dodge him – he was a warrior where his brother was none. I smiled at the neatness of it, let my muscles relax. Lady Leopard was watching from a mooring post.

  ‘Shh,’ I said. ‘Mr Ames, if you wear a gull’s feather for a sign, give it to me and I will fetch her.’

  Slowly he let go.

  ‘You saw me today when my master your brother was taken,’ I told him, speaking the blue-green tongue of the English. ‘Now give me your sign.’

  He gave it to me, and I went to where Rebecca still sat, waiting. Now I knew what she had been waiting for,
apart from not knowing where to go and having no clothes to hide the ugliness of her skin.

  She told me to bring him and so I did and he hurried down the steps to clasp her in his arms, and she wept into his shoulder.

  ‘I am so afraid of burning,’ she said, ‘Simon is so brave, he said he must come, but I am so afraid…’

  To burn to death is very bad, I thought, as I stood at the top of the steps to keep watch, with my arms folded as a warrior. The Suffering Jesus must be greedy.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rebecca, I could do nothing. Not without getting arrested myself…’

  ‘I know that. It would have been pointless. What information did you have to tell him.’

  ‘This.’ He whispered in Rebecca’s ear.

  She frowned and stared at him. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘It cost the life of my finest spy to get it. Take it to the Queen, it may help her.’

  ‘The galleases are for the Miracle of Beauty. That’s all?’

  ‘That’s all. It is the greatest secret of the Spanish enterprise. Admiral Santa Cruz told no one after he set it in motion. I had it from one of his counting-house clerks. The Duke of Parma knows, but that’s all.’

  ‘But isn’t there—’

  ‘Rebecca, in the matter of intelligence, often all you can know is a small part of the whole, but sometimes the small part you hold is the key. Make sure this gets to the Queen.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll take it to Walsingham.’

  ‘No. The Queen. He does not tell her everything and Burghley is taking money from Spain. You can tell her that too. But give it to the Queen only. I saw Michael buying boys’ clothes for you. When he comes back, you must go to the two-master, the San Antonio. The captain is one of ours.’ He kissed her again. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I hoped Simon would not bring you.’

  ‘I made him. Is it true that if you breathe in the flames deliberately, your lungs shrivel up and you die quicker?’

  He patted her arm. After all, no death is easy.

  And then he was gone, slipping away into the shadows again, then walking directly from the ship with the Holy Office flag over it, yawning and rubbing his eyes, a resentful harbour master’s clerk kept up to deliver a message, and he spent ten minutes complaining of it to the soldiers at the gate until they let him pass for sheer boredom.

  David Becket

  West Country, Spring 1588

  In the comfortable bed in the best guest-chamber at Becket House, with its crewel-worked curtains hanging down to keep out the bad airs, David Becket dreamed he was only a boy, a boy full of mixed fear and delight at the drama and excitement that had overtaken his life …

  * * *

  His pony clattered past men sweating to unload cartloads of paint and painter’s spirit that had been taken from the dockyards on the South Bank of the Thames. He trotted on under the hedgehog’s winter armour of traitors’ heads perched above London Bridge Gate, and imagined Fr Campion’s skull praising the skies with empty eye sockets for the landing of the Papists. The pony’s small hooves clopped on under the high brick arch.

  All the bridge houses were empty except for a couple of cats glaring from the roof of a privy hanging out like a swallow’s nest over the Thames.

  The pony slowed to a walk and sidled, for all the boy’s drumming heels, not liking the emptiness and darkness. Also, to be fair to him, Smudge was tired from the long gallop up the road from Greenwich.

  They came into a long, narrow street entirely surrounded by tall, shuttered houses, with light dropping into it only from the oblong of sky above. The boy kicked unmercifully, hearing more voices, and the pony ungraciously clopped on. Through another arch and onto a wide place where you could look west and east at the river, eerily scoured of traffic. Eastwards gouts of smoke blackened the sky. Westwards was more smoke, coming he thought from the kilns in Scotland Yard, next to Whitehall Palace. Why were they firing the kilns?

  It seemed that anyone with a boat had gone upriver away from Parma on the incoming tide. Many of the ships that had been in the Pool of London had cut their anchors and fled on the ebb, hoping to get past Tilbury without Parma noticing. Another arch, lower this time. Where was the Queen’s Captain of the Rearguard?

  Another wide place with a rail each side where there was theoretically a drawbridge that had never been raised in all his memory. He could hear a sound of chopping with axes right underneath, and something complicated involving ropes and barrels seemed to be happening over the side. A cart was blocking the street, men were heaving barrels that smelled of bad eggs, shouts of ‘Steady! To you, heave!’

  It was there, under the arch, that he finally found the man he had been sent to. The Queen’s Captain of the Rearguard. A big bear of a man, very impressive, standing foursquare on the cart shouting orders, his morion helmet gleaming dully over black curls, a scuffed buff coat covered by a fine, blued steel breastplace and over the chest hung the gold chain of esses only worn by a high officer of state.

  ‘Sir!’ called the lad, sweating and praying his voice wouldn’t break. ‘Sir, Captain Becket, sir!’

  The man turned, took in the boy’s sweat-marked pony and frightened face. ‘Donne,’ he said to a young man in front of him, ‘go back along the bridge and make sure every window is shut, every shutter bolted, but each house must have its door open. Understand?’

  ‘Aye, sir. Windows shut, shutters bolted, door open.’

  Becket jumped surprisingly lightly from the cart as Donne flourished his hat and jog-trotted back down across the bridge. He came over, took the pony’s bridle, led them both aside.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Greenwich, sir. And they’ve took some ships that was trying to get out on the ebb.’

  ‘The palace?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Parma’s standard is over it.’

  ‘How many tercios?’

  ‘Don’t rightly know, sir. Lots. More men than you could count.’

  ‘I mean, how many banners?’

  ‘At least twenty. More. I heard tell they’ve been bringing them over, fast as they can since they took Gravesend. I heard tell Drake’s dead, sir, of a fever. I heard tell he’s had Mass said in the Queen’s own chapel. Parma, that is. Not Drake ’cos he’s dead, see. Mass in the Queen’s palace!’

  Captain Becket didn’t seem shocked, but only grunted. ‘Horse?’

  ‘Oh, plenty of horses, sir, he sent some men off on horses to see what’s ahead. Poor old Smudge had to run as fast as he could to get ahead of them.’

  ‘What’s his ordnance? Did you see any guns?’

  ‘Didn’t see none, sir. What are you going to do, sir? Is it right the Queen’s gone north, sir?’

  ‘I’m going to amuse the Spaniard. Now what’s your name?’

  ‘Ben Jonson, sir.’

  ‘Well, Ben. You can walk on northwards if you like, because I am commandeering your pony in the name of the Queen. The Great North Road will be blocked solid with carts and folk but you’re small, you might get through. Or you can stay here and carry messages for me in case we can give your pony back, but if you stay here you might be killed.’

  ‘Want to get back to Greenwich, sir, see after me mam.’

  ‘Well, if you try that, you most certainly will be killed.’

  ‘I’ll stay here, sir.’

  ‘Good man.’

  Smudge was already protesting and nipping at being loaded up with sacks full of sawdust when he clearly deserved a rest and a full nosebag. Two men manhandled more barrels into the building next to them. Captain Becket turned to speak to someone else.

  Nosily, not wanting to miss anything, Ben followed the men with the barrels and found them being piled up in the middle of a fine showroom, still lined with bolts of cloth, and nymphs and cupids painted on the walls. Ben helped pour out the sawdust from a sack round the barrels onto fine black and white tiles.

  ‘Why sawdust?’ he asked, coughing. The man shrugged. ‘Captain says. Paint too.’

  ‘What
about the merchant what owns this ken?’

  The man grinned. ‘Captain Becket came with the Queen’s Warrant and some of the Life Guard this morning and turfed the lot of them out at gunpoint. You never heard such a fuss. If Parma don’t come, Captain Becket will be in the Hall of Westminster answering twenty lawsuits by next week.’

  Ben grinned back. ‘That must have been a sight to see.’

  ‘Almost worth it. Almost.’ The man sighed. ‘Seems a pity to blow it up.’

  For two hours they worked to fill London Bridge with powder while to the north, London boiled with terror. To the south, the poorer whores and the bearmasters and tumblers at Paris Garden were philosophically preparing for a new influx of customers. The richer ones had already left, paying a great deal of gold for a boat-crossing that normally cost tuppence.

  Ben found a little brooch of coral and pearls dropped on the floor and pocketed it quietly. He ended up carrying the smaller bags of sawdust, seeing as he was quite strong for his age. He stayed in sight of the Captain, though. Every so often someone would come sprinting up to Becket with a new rumour and some titbits of information about Parma. Rumour swirled around the soldiers on the bridge like counterfeit coin. The Queen was dead, shot in the breast. The Queen was already in Oxford, she’d gone upriver in her barge. The Queen was standing at Tyburn taking a tax in gold off every cart that passed up the Edgeware Road. The Queen was still at Whitehall where fires burned away at the enormous heaps of paper stored there.

  Under the drawbridge at slack water, Thames watermen sweated to draw up an entire wherry snug under the aged oak beams, filled full of powder and chain-shot.

  ‘When will you set light to it, sir?’ Ben asked cheekily, when Captain Becket came past again.

  ‘When I choose.’

  In the houses south of the bridge that lined the Southwark Road, Becket placed men with calivers and arquebuses, grenadoes and bows. Many of them were watermen, with their wherries drawn up behind the houses that had watersteps. Ben wanted to stay with them since it seemed they would get to fight the Spaniard first. They told him no. He whined and protested and was summarily carried back to the middle of the bridge by a lowering giant of a man who promised him the belting of his life if he set foot on the South Bank again. Ben couldn’t understand it at all. Why shouldn’t he get some glory too?