Becket nodded. ‘Did my lord Treasurer Burghley, your esteemed father, not like my informing the Queen of his dealings in guns with the Spanish?’
Cecil looked away, coughed. ‘It was less sinister than it may have seemed,’ he said. ‘My father may have dealt in guns and indeed he may have made money at it, but all the guns and shot he sold was the smaller weights, the sakers and falconets, never the culverins or demi-culverins. The Spanish are well outgunned by us still and always shall be.’
Becket inclined his head.
‘Further it was no small help to him, as a way of gathering intelligence.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Although he has never been thoroughly convinced that the Spanish intend war.’
‘I am.’
Cecil leaned back in his chair, shifted his hunchback a little, nodded. ‘So am I, Mr Becket, but my father will not have it so. As for me, whenever I desire to understand what the Spanish might do, I imagine Mr Secretary Walsingham as the King of Spain and then I know. It has never failed.’
Becket smiled back at him.
‘What do you want from me?’
‘Why did you take service with Edward Dormer?’
I waited for Becket to explain about his brother, but he did not. He shrugged. ‘I need money, he offered it. Why should I not?’
‘He is one of Parma’s men. I have it on good authority that he was sent into England last autumn with a mission to kill a mapmaker for Parma and that he did his work well and further killed your own brother.’
Becket was very still. ‘How do you know this?’
‘I have … sources.’
‘Ah.’
‘I have been wondering why an independent captain with Parma’s money to spend, is sitting about in Dunkirk with two hundred men idle and half a dozen likely little forts to take within a day’s ride.’ Cecil put his fingers together and made points of them, ‘Only wondering, you understand, I do not know for a fact that he is planning anything. Yet here he is, here is Parma’s gold and I would like to know why.’
‘And?’
‘I should take it as a great favour from you, Mr Becket, if you could stay your hand for long enough to find out what he is up to. Hmm?’
Becket nodded. ‘And if I find it out?’
For the first time Mr Cecil looked at me. ‘Send me your black with a message. I shall do whatever is necessary.’
Becket smiled, his first true smile for a long time, quite a charming gentle smile for so big and ugly a man. ‘Mr Cecil, it shall be a pleasure.’
And Cecil stood, Becket stood, Cecil held out his well-ringed hand for to shake right hands and show there were no hidden weapons, and then we left him there.
Becket got in a fight that night with an ugly bruiser that stared at me and then made offers to buy me off him. The man laughed when Becket said I was freed and had my manumission with me, saying that no one frees a slave until they are too old to work and by God she was juicy enough to have plenty of work in her. And Becket struck him with his fist, struck again and again, until Lammett and I pulled him off the man.
Lammett saw no offence in what the man had said, while Becket growled, ‘I’ve never done the work of a pimp and nor will I start now.’
And then he looked at me sidelong and considering. Next morning he roused me early, said he would make an honest woman of me. Which offended me, for I told him I am always honest. But he brought me to one of their smaller plain temples that was for the English to worship in, and spoke to the priest who would not do what he desired since I am not a Christian.
Becket was angry and protested, and the priest fluttered his hands as if Becket were upside-down instead of me and told him many times that until I was a Christian he could not do it. Nor would he baptise me on the spot at Becket’s orders, no matter how Becket might shout.
‘What was it you asked of him?’ I said, as he stamped away from the place.
‘I desired him to marry us.’
And I smiled. Men are so strange. He had never asked me, after all. Nor had he asked my family, nor paid a bride-price. It warmed my heart even so, and I put my arms around him and kissed him.
‘You know I killed my last husband for beating me?’ I told him. ‘Are you not afraid?’
‘Of you, Merula?’ he said, then looked up through his eyelashes with the boy’s grin that always melted me. ‘No, never.’
That night we held hands and jumped over the candleflames three times, which a friend of his said was as good as a priest and better for the thing being sealed in drink and no damned prosing.
We drank ourselves dizzy on bad aqua vitae, dancing around the tables to their whistles and drums. Even their music was strange to my ears, though beautiful, but without any bones to it, music like the cows and sheep of their country, no music with leopards or elephants in it at all. Nor did they dance in ways I understood and when I sang for them they found it strange also, although they liked it when I took their big drum and beat it in ways they hadn’t heard before, to make a song out of drumbeats as we do at home.
So there I sat, the next night, thinking of the forest, thinking of the wide plains, thinking of the round houses and carved compound of my King, thinking of the horses we herd and thinking of the Lion Sun that hunts clouds to eat them.
And this was how I spoke of gods to the young man, whose Spanish money we had taken, Edward Dormer. At first there had only been the hungry writhing of his desires in his godspace. Here was another hairy ghost hopeful of exploring my woman’s cave, I thought, to find out if a black cave was darker than a pink cave perhaps. Would he offer money or trinkets, food or marriage, I wondered, since I had shown him I could fight. Although Becket had said grudgingly that he was a fine swordsman, far better than Becket himself now his hands were bad.
It would be better not to waste time. I told him I was free and I told him I was not a whore, which shocked him. But he ordered aqua vitae and even offered me some, which was more courteous than many of them.
He was, in his own northern way, upside-down and had studied for to be a priest of the Suffering Jesus before deciding to serve him with a sword instead. It was interesting and he told me the god-tale of his Suffering Jesus, which I was glad to hear, but in the end I said something that upset him and he ran away.
That was the day that word came: the Spanish were in the English Channel, they were fighting the English ships. Becket was angry with me that I had talked about gods with the man, which was ungrateful since I had kept Dormer with me so he would not know of Becket having another meeting with Cecil. But Becket said that the followers of the Suffering Jesus burned anyone who worshipped other gods, or even the same one differently, and so I must go and apologise and be sure Dormer wouldn’t arrest me or hang me, which Becket said he could do nothing to prevent if it was for heresy.
When I found Dormer in his lodging he was in a strange state, full of excitement with his Suffering Jesus god vast and bright in his godspace. I was afraid to speak to him. And then he desired to make a spell to drive out what he thought was a demon, which was my Lady Leopard. I let him do it, said the words he asked me to, and of course Lady Leopard, who is only one trunk of the great Tree of God, smiled with her whiskers and lay down to stretch and purr and was not in the least driven off by it.
That was when my godsight began to rise and I made my mistake. I saw the gracefully carved thing he worshipped, the idol in the shape of the Queen Moon, the Lady of All, and I told him of seeing her in the Jesus temple, and I told him how no one can divide the infinite Light, although our eyes make smaller patterns of it to save our sanity. All we can do is turn towards or away. And for a moment I thought I had helped him, but then all in his godspace turned black and he became full of rage and hatred and fear.
But I could not leave him with such black and hungry hatred in his godspace. Why am I upside-down if not to be a speaker of gods to men and of men to gods? So I spoke to Dormer, tried to explain to him and all that happened was he bec
ame more and more frightened and angry until he was clutching for his dagger and I, inconveniently upside-down, stupidly upside-down, with Lady Leopard dancing about me, I spoke on, telling him what I knew of his most secret plans and thoughts, confirming all his terror.
Then he was there. My son. His fetch had come to find me. The little boy I had left behind such a long while ago, little fat-fisted chubby boy, who smiled and laughed and shouted for me and I turned to embrace him and then … Then …
The flash of a knife in the corner of my eye, the white stiffening and focusing of Dormer’s, like a snake striking, the blow in my chest …
Fire in my chest, fingers round my neck, so sudden and when I was full of sorrow and love for my son’s fetch, I went down … My little boy shouted, and suddenly his fetch turned and swelled and became a handsome man, very like his father, with his now-living snake wrapped round his arm. He became a shadow-warrior, he took power from the fever that was killing him and fought Dormer for me, wrestled him out of the dreamtime, held Dormer off for long enough that Lammett could come and see and save my life.
Only I was half-dead. Not afraid. The pain was on the floor in my bleeding body. I was standing up, naked but for my leather skirt, smiling at my handsome son, who told me his name was Snake for the moment. This was wonderful and right. But my heart was breaking, for if he come here to me, he must be close to death, very close. Those who are not upside-down hardly ever go spirit-walking in the dreamtime, and I had never found my son in the dreamtime before, which I would have if he were upside-down as well. So he was dying and I knew nothing of where he was.
And yet it was not important to me then. I spoke to him and embraced him and I showed him my Lady Leopard, and he showed me his god, the clever Trickster, and we spoke as we had never done before. We walked together in the wide plains of the dreamtime, where the zebra and the leopard are reflections of each other. He said if I had such a place to hunt in, he understood now why I had left him for it. And I wept then for his strength and kindness, such a fine man my sister had made of him. We climbed mountains together, my son and I, and travelled across lakes; we hunted words as they scuttled over the sky, herded songs that shook their manes and dipped their horns and pawed the stars, and bowed kindly to let us ride them.
Perhaps you hairy ghosts who are so like gods in what you can do, perhaps you would say we did no such thing and it was all a fever dream. Both of these things can be true, you know. You wish the world to be tidy with a thing either one thing or the other, each answer yes or no. And I say the world is luxuriantly curled upon itself like a fern, and a thing can be one thing and the other, both yes and no, and each speck of dust may choose where it lands. And we are both right.
But at last I said farewell to my darling son who was grown so fine and strong and said he had something more to do before he could return to the dreamtime. Perhaps the kindly sun of that place had given him strength to fight his fever. So I jumped down into myself again and found I was sick and burning and my chest like fire. Becket had gone, had left me to ride with Dormer and Lammett.
A hairy ghost boy that was not my son was sitting next to the bed, staring at me. I rubbed my eyes and sat up with the sweat rolling down my back under my ugly shirt and reached with a shaking hand for the horn cup of watered wine that Becket had put there.
The boy flinched away and said to me, ‘You do it.’
‘What?’ I had learned a little Dutch, only because it is like English in its way.
‘You … something, something … tell Englishmen.’
He held up a packet of paper with black marks and wax on it. I took it from him and the boy ran out the door and clattered down the stairs.
It was enough. My fever was low enough so I could think and function in the world, my chest hurt with the wound and the bandages griped and burned and every move made my head rock and hurt. I swallowed down all the watered wine, poured myself more and slopped half of it out on the rushes, drank it down and shivered. Then I pulled on my doublet and a leather jerkin that I could not fasten for the cause it was not made for anyone with breasts and pulled on my breeches also, and my cloak and boots and went to the door.
The place was almost empty for many of those who had stayed there were in Dormer’s service. I staggered to the stables, needing to pause and take a breath every ten steps, and found one boy feeding horses. First I asked, then I shouted and frightened him into letting me take one, and then I mounted and rode out the gate, still light-headed, wobbling in the saddle as if I had never ridden before.
I asked in the streets of Dunkirk, and found that the councillors were mainly at supper or had gone to bed and that yes, many horsemen had taken the road westwards and southwards along the coast, which led after only a few miles to the great port and Citadel of Calais.
In the end it was easy because the Englishman at the door who asked my business heard what I said of David Becket and immediately led me to where Robert Cecil was drinking tobacco smoke by the very fine fire in his lodgings. I longed to get near to it, since I was shivering and sick and my head felt it would burst like a rotten melon. I bent one knee to him, since he was important among the English, and gave him the packet, then waited, rocking and basking in the warmth, while he read it.
Then he smiled at me as he drew paper towards him and began writing very fast.
‘So Her Majesty was right all along. It is Calais. Where is Becket?’
‘He went with Dormer. The boy he told to bring you this, wouldn’t do it and gave it to me.’
Cecil nodded and rang a bell. A slender young man came and bowed. Cecil gave him the packet with his letter. ‘Take this to my lord Admiral Howard on Ark Royal immediately, and if the Prince of Nassau’s ships stop you, he may read the letter also. Waste no time.’ The young man touched his cap and strode out, leaving Cecil to look at me and lift his brows. ‘Will you take some wine?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, enjoying his expedient courtesy, and he poured with his own hands and I drank, wishing for water in it, but no matter. It was warming.
‘Are you recovered from Dormer’s attack now?’
I knew what he was about. He had only his train of servants, perhaps twenty at best. He would take anyone else who could wield a weapon, even a mad black savage. And I was desperate to find Becket who had left me to ride with his friend Lammett the spy, and Dormer, the killer of his brother. So I smiled and said, ‘A little weak, a little lightheaded, but good enough.’
‘Will you come with me?’ His smile was rueful. ‘Becket told me of your … ah … abilities and I have very few men.’
Which was how it came about that half an hour later, with the little hunchbacked councillor and all the men he could gather up in the time, about twenty of them, we too were riding down the road to Calais. That was on the Sunday night when the Armada was anchored in Calais Roads.
And we were there in good time, before dawn, but the man on the gate would not open to Cecil, for all he spoke good French and gave many details of the urgency of the matter. No, M. Gourdain must first be consulted, and in fact, M. Gourdain the Governor must first be wakened and have time to eat his morning bread and beer and sit on the stool and then be dressed by his valet before any of his underlings would undertake to mention Englishmen hammering at the gate to him. There had been some kind of disorder in the town during the night as well, this too must be reported to him. It all took time and meanwhile the English councillor’s son must unfortunately cool his heels outside the gate of the town.
Cecil showed his teeth and eased his bent shoulders and muttered under his breath about how much he hated the French. But there was nothing to do except wait. No doubt Dormer had had a helper to let him in.
At last there was shouting within and much explanation, the doors swung open and there was M. Gourdain himself on foot, with soldiers about him, coming to speak to Her Majesty’s Commissioner. Cecil dismounted as quickly as he could and came forwards with much bowing and courtesy and then expl
ained the matter. What he heard made him very angry.
‘They have taken the Citadel and there is at least one galleas making for the harbour entrance,’ he said to me and his men. ‘I have said that as they are led by a renegade Englishman, we shall be in the van when they retake, especially as M. Gourdain will need to place most of his men on the quayside to deal with the galleases.’
And so it was that Cecil remounted and we swept in an escorted group through the little streets of Calais where many hairy ghosts of another tribe stared and pointed at me until we came to the gate of the Citadel shut against us.
Gourdain and his men hid well back with crossbows and calivers to give us cover and Cecil’s men ran forward with a battering ram to break the gate.
It took a number of tries but no one shot at us and in the end the gate broke and there was none behind it but corpses. And so up the stairs and a man dying by a smoke-blackened and shattered door with groans coming from the darkness and up more stairs and a man sitting with a crossbow at the top of the steps, smoking a pipe.
He stood as we came up, lifted his crossbow, and I stopped gratefully, to lean against the wall and hold my ribs and breathe hard, with the Lady Leopard swirling around me and the chattering about me of those I had killed, for there was a thing coming that might mean my death, and they were naturally full of interest and excitement.
Not now, I said to my godsight as it threatened to break through the walls of the world and overwhelm me thanks to the pain in my chest and the fever in my blood. Cecil went and spoke in halting Dutch to the man with the crossbow who smiled and lowered his weapon. One named Becket had given him gold to wait for Mr Cecil and let him through.
The door to the gun platform was locked. Cecil tried it, waved forward the man with the axe and I shoved past the others, past Cecil, to be first onto the platform. I heard speech, I heard the rumble of Becket’s voice.
Did I love him? Well, the hairy ghosts call the game of the two-backed beast by many strange names but one of them is ‘making love’ and there’s a truth in it rare to the hairy ghosts. To lie with someone, to welcome his mansnake into my woman’s cave, certainly there can be no more than pleasure and the warmth of another body in it. But there can be more and in itself it can be made by the game. Becket had bedded me because he was curious to try a black woman and, like many men, unwilling to let a willing cave escape his mansnake. And I had bedded him because I was lonely and curious to try a white man. And from such simplicity, a more complicated thing had grown.
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