Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

  As soon as his legs were freed and he was out of the boat, Becket had straightened his back and looked around, putting his hat on his head with care.

  The sleet had stopped as the world chilled. Early-morning darkness shrouded and silenced all the mass of humanity living in the city; it seemed as if he and his guards were the only men awake. Their breath puffed into the stiff air as if they were chimneys and frost prickled at Becket’s cheeks. The river ice had been roughened by thousands of boots and some skates since it formed, though Becket was uncertain enough of his feet to slip occasionally. Their steps scraped and creaked on it and occasionally startled a skinny rat away from the rubbish heaps.

  At last they had passed the closed and shuttered City and climbed the steps of the boat-landing by the derelict palace of Bridewell. Becket was getting breathless from weakness and lack of exercise but they took no notice and marched him briskly up the path that ran beside the Fleet River. He knew the path, knew the river. He knew that generally it stank like the open sewer it was, but now it was frozen and all mortality with it, so that the turds and bones that had been in it when the frost came before Christmas were still there, miraculously preserved in rough dirty glass. At one place, close against the stone, he glimpsed the waxy remains of a whore’s deadly sin, one small fist in its mouth and its eyes closed tight.

  He looked away from it quickly, blinking up at the teetering four-storey-high buildings on their left. He knew them. He nodded as they passed the Bridewell Bridge and nodded again as they turned left up Bride’s Lane past the little old church.

  “If I did not know better, I might think you were taking me home,” he said facetiously to Munday, who had put his poignard away again.

  “Be quiet.”

  “This is all familiar to me, sir. Are you not pleased?”

  “No. Quiet.”

  “There is a boozing ken up that way. I forget its name,” Becket went on, seized with an urge to tease his tormentors. “Will you take a quart of beer with me, for sentiment’s sake?”

  “I’ll not tell you again,” interrupted Ramme. “Silence.”

  Becket tutted, full of ridiculous pleasure to be seeing something other than stone walls. His mind was fizzing with images. Yes, he knew this part of London. It was as familiar to him as . . . well, the back of his hand has become strange to him, considering its colour and shape. And here was Fleet Street, and that way was Temple Bar and that way was Ludgate and that way . . .

  “Ah,” he said, “the Fleet Prison. I see.”

  Ramme growled, turned suddenly and hit Becket in the belly. Now they had to pause while he doubled over and must lean against a wall until he got his breath back. So unprovoked and casual a blow alchemised Becket’s black fear in a heartbeat to black rage. For seconds together he shook with the red blind urge to kill. When he could breathe again, Becket said softly, “Pray they hang me, Mr Ramme. I have a great deal of satisfaction to take from you.”

  “He did warn you,” Munday pointed out self-righteously.

  “A famous deed, to strike a gentleman in chains,” Becket pointed out, still sustained by his anger at being treated like a slave. He was also emboldened by the familiarity of the buildings, as if he were backed by friends who would fight for him. “And all because Mr Ramme’s writ dose not run in the Fleet.”

  Neither of them answered, nor did they look at each other. Becket showed his teeth as he rubbed the bruise in the pit of his stomach and jangled the links. Something had happened, high up amongst the courtiers around the Queen. He knew perfectly well that he was a pawn, but now he also knew that he had just been captured and transferred to someone else’s power. He had no idea whose, only the fact that it could not be Davison’s made him feel as if he were really being freed, rather than simply transferred from one prison to another. In the Fleet he might meet someone he knew, might find someone who would answer the questions marching round his head as pointlessly as Dutch soldiers doing drill. And if he was out of the Tower, perhaps there would be no treason trial, no hanging, drawing and quartering at Tyburn after all. Doubtless they would hang him in any case, to be on the safe side, but at least he would be whole on the Day of Judgement and able then to hunt down Ramme and Munday, if not before.

  They moved him on while he was still coughing, over Fleet Bridge, up Fleet Lane and into the gatehouse of the prison.

  He was bidden to stand and wait respectfully with his hat in his hand while they called for the Deputy Gaoler. Joachim Newton came lurching out of his private lodgings, still pulling on his jerkin, growling and grumbling. Soft words passed between them, Munday produced a paper which provoked Newton to take his hat off, put it back on and address a great many sirs and your honours to both of them.

  A Privy Council warrant, Becket thought to himself.

  The next thing that happened was another long wait. At last Newton returned with a fistful of leg irons and a mallet. Becket sat on the end of the bench and looked knowingly at him. They were not irons that could be unlocked: rather, once on, they must be removed by a blacksmith. He yawned ostentatiously and put out his left foot. It was the Deputy Gaoler himself who did the honours with the rings and bolts and the mallet.

  “Christ,” he said conversationally, when the hammering was over, “what is it about me that frightens you so?”

  Ramme boxed his ears as if he was a servant to silence him. Becket made no protest, but sat and stared at Ramme. The mountain of fury inside him warmed him like a baker’s oven, all the more for its being unexpressed. His soul basked in its unaccustomed glow. Then there was business with keys and a lantern, and money must be paid before they could pass through the great double gates. One locked behind him before the second was unlocked, and then they were in the courtyard, empty except for the stocks, pillory and whipping post in one corner.

  Another iron-bound door, more rattling of keys in Newton’s clanking bunch of at least twenty. Up the stairs, through another locked door and into a dark vaulted chamber that stank muskily of men. Becket picked his way carefully between the tight-packed beds, freighted with dreaming souls huddled up in their blankets, mostly two to a bed. Newton’s candle-lantern swung and caught shoulders and noses and made unreliable encroachments on the kingdom of shadows. Some of the men were waking up and their eyes glinted as they watched what happened. One man, made hideous by an old sword-slash down his face that had taken out one of his eyes, sat up and scowled at them.

  “What do you want, Newton?”

  Newton instantly lifted his cudgel and took a few threatening steps towards the man, who sneered at him.

  “No business of yours, Cyclops,” snapped Newton and Cyclops snorted and leaned back with his hands behind his head. Nobody else dared to say anything. Most pretended to be sleeping. They tramped to the end farthest from the door, where an old fireplace showed no signs of a fire despite the bitterness of the night, unless one could be made with old turds. They stopped in the corner beside a bed with only one man in it, Becket scraping and jingling as he went.

  Whoever had tenure of the bed was one of those pretending to sleep, huddled up with his cloak over his head.

  “Sit,” snapped Ramme, as if to a dog.

  They were being watched covertly by most of the men in the room now.

  “You might as well put me in Bolton’s Ward straight away, Mr Newton,” said Becket, insolently ignoring Ramme and Munday. “I have not a single penny to give you as garnish.”

  “Fourpence a bed per night if you share,” put in Cyclops helpfully.

  Newton growled at both of them. “Your friends are paying,” he said to Becket and Becket smiled sweetly as he sat on the edge of the sagging straw mattress.

  “What friends are those?” he asked. “I was not aware I had any in the world.”

  “Shut your mouth,” snapped Ramme.

  “Lord, what have I done to deserve such kindness,” said Becket rhetorically as he took off his new shoes and decided against removing his nether-stocks, since they gav
e some protection to his ankles against the rough leg-rings.

  Ramme leaned down to him and growled, “Tell us, and all this will be done away with.”

  The relief to his soul that he was out of the Tower, his warming spine of anger and their ridiculous precautions against someone who could still barely hold a sword turned strangely to laughter. Becket thought it might be the first time he had laughed properly since he came to empty wakefulness in Little Ease. Perhaps he made a point of it. Ramme’s lips tightened and almost disappeared.

  “Give me back my cloak,” he demanded meanly.

  Becket grinned at him, laid himself clinking down beside the other man and pulled the cloak tightly over him.

  “My need is greater than yours,” he said insolently.

  Ramme started forward to take it from him by force, but Munday held his arm and whispered at him. He stopped.

  “You had best learn some manners,” Ramme hissed.

  “Go and find someone else to bully, you pox-brained Court catamite,” Becket said, putting his head on his bundle and his hat over his face. He ignored the passing punch in his ribs that his insult earned him. It was worth it.

  XLII

  TO ACCOUNT FOR HER absence from Court, it was given out that Thomasina must visit her mother, who was on her deathbed. The story made Thomasina wonder wistfully if the woman was in truth still alive; she had not seen her since her father pocketed the silver he got for his daughter and the gypsies tied a rope around her neck and led her away.

  Thomasina left the Court before dawn in one of the Queen’s own carriages and rattled and rumbled her way past Charing Cross and up the filthy, slush-ridden, frozen-rutted disgrace of the Strand to the Earl of Leicester’s London palace, which gave onto the river. There, in the spicery, she changed quickly to the patched velvet rags that still carried the smell of incense and horses and brought back to her memory things she had fought to forget. In that guise, the Earl introduced her to Mr Benson, his major-domo.

  “You are to admit this child at any time she wishes,” he ordered and the major-domo’s face remained bland and obedient while his intelligent eyes took in her size and shape and the cleanliness of her hands and considered it all.

  She used walnut juice to stain herself a little and then sat and dabbled in the ashes of one of the fireplaces. She had lost the habit of dirtiness at the Queen’s Court. While she was not so fanatical about stenches as the Queen, the mere ability to shift her smock every other day kept her clean and fresh as a lily in comparison to what she had been.

  She had her knife hidden up one sleeve, strapped against her forearm, but she knew better than to think it would be any protection. The money she had brought she rolled in a cloth round her wrist.

  And then she took a deep breath, passed through the kitchen to filch some bread and a small pie for practice, and slipped out the back door that gave onto Leicester’s magnificent stables.

  Here she sat on the neatly raked manure heap for a while to warm herself and look about. For ten years she had hardly ever left the Court, except on Progress, when she travelled in a carriage or a litter or sometimes on a little fat white pony. The Queen’s favour and her bright velvet and silken embroidered clothes marked her apart from others even more than her size, as if she herself were an ornate jewel worn on the Queen’s breast. She had had no longing for freedom, had not felt herself to be a prisoner at all. True, she was numbered among the Queen’s pets at first, before the Queen learnt to know her better. So? Would the Queen’s lap-dogs prefer a life on the streets to the chicken and pheasant they ate every day? Of course not. Even brute beasts had more sense, although she recalled that one of the courtiers had taken the trouble to ask her once if she minded. She had laughed at him, but made allowances later when she found that he was Sir Philip Sidney and also a poet.

  And here she was, stripped almost naked in comparison to what she normally wore, shivering as the cold gathered itself around her and found the spaces between her rags, willingly venturing beyond her safe haven on an ill-defined quest for a mysterious book. Without any doubt, she was mad.

  She at the pie and hid the bread in the pocket under her skirts and jumped down from the dung-heap to wander out into the noisy street.

  She passed the length of Fleet Street from Temple Bar to Ludgate and back, getting her bearings. As always before, the world was full of broad gowns that jostled her and gentlemen’s swords that poked at her, baskets that swiped at her head, horses whose hooves threatened her skull. She saw some children playing by the huge midden on the border between Westminster and the City and they stopped their game to stare curiously at her. She stared back as insolently. Otherwise the street was full of giants who saw only a beggarmaid. She did not beg, though, since she no longer knew where the regular pitches were and who had tenure of them and had no desire to offend anyone.

  For a while she stood and listened to a ballad-seller’s singing of his latest broadsheet, and resisted the impulse to cut any purses for she knew she was out of practice and rusty at it. Once she had been a upright man’s valuable property: by day she had filched for him and by night she had climbed amongst the roofs of London and crept into the citizens’ bedrooms to steal their jewels and gold. As the man boasted before he pawned her to Paris Garden, she was better than a child because while she was as nimble, she was stronger and more sensible. At the time she had been proud of her skills.

  Back on Fleet Bridge she jumped to peek over the parapet and wonder at the strangeness of a still river, turned to stone like its banks, and then she ran to Fleet Lane to take a look at the prison.

  The gate was being opened for those who had given bond for their good behaviour and were allowed to go out into the City during the day. Many of the men worked, trying to pay off their debts, while others simply dug themselves deeper by boozing all day in taverns. Some of the women wore masks and striped cloaks to ply the only truly profitable trade a woman could learn.

  She took a chance and slipped in amongst the skirts and then dived through the gap behind a woman who had come out to kiss her husband goodbye. While she waited between the gates for the second to be opened, she stayed as still and quiet as she could.

  There was a nerve-racking byplay between the woman and one of the turnkeys, who wanted a kiss as his garnish for letting her back in, and in the end the woman yielded to him.

  And then the gate opened and she could slip into the wide courtyard and join one of the gangs of children playing amongst the rags and scraps of the ruff-making circle. She took our her knuckle-bones from a purse and began throwing the ball and gathering up as practice and nobody took any notice of her at all, since she was small.

  XLIII

  MORNING IN THE EIGHTPENNY Ward was marked by some dim light coming through the high barred windows along one side, the sound of one of the turnkeys opening the door and a chorus of groans and farts. As the queue formed to use the malodorous jakes just outside the door, Becket opened his eyes and looked up into the face of his bedfellow.

  For a few seconds his world lurched and heaved in confusion and horror: he should not be seeing that face, it was impossible. Why? he wondered muzzily, and the memory skittered away again like a rat.

  “Good morning, sir,” said the other man softly.

  Becket sat up on his elbow and blinked. “Good morning,” he said automatically. “Er . . . do I know you, sir?”

  The other was a balding little clerk with a worn woollen doublet and a nervous expression. “Perhaps you do,” he said quietly. “Can you recall me?”

  For a moment the name was on the tip of Becket’s tongue, but refused to come. Growling with frustration, he shook his head.

  “Does the name Simon mean anything to you?” asked the clerk.

  It did, there was no question but that it did and he had forgotten why.

  “I ask your pardon, sir,” Becket said sadly. “An accident has happened to me and . . .”

  “I know,” said the clerk, Simon, very softly. �
��Your name is David Becket.”

  Becket smiled at him and at the repetition of the talisman of his name. “Oh, so Doctor Nunez has –“

  “Shh,” said Simon, with his finger on his lips, “no names, please, Mr Becket. Yes, the doctor has asked me to help you.”

  Greatly cheered, Becket moved to sit up properly and whined as he jerked the manacles on his bandaged wrists. He swore and rubbed his buzzing hands until the pain went away while Simon the clerk watched sympathetically.

  “Do you know why they have loaded me with irons?” Becket asked. “If you know of the accident to my memory, perhaps you know that.”

  “I know they fear you, Mr Becket, so much is plain. But perhaps we can have those taken off.”

  “How?”

  “It is remarkable what money will do, here as everywhere else. Have you anything to sell?”

  Suddenly frightened that he had been robbed, Becket reached for his bundle and found it where it had been. He opened it, discovered his pipe and tobacco and the Bible, then the package the Yeoman had given him. He opened that too, and found two flat pewter bottles, a loaf of bread, a lump of cheese and a sausage, and a small knife in a leather sheath.

  The knife pleased him most of all. Somebody had paid for it in gold and influence. He felt more and more like a proper man again, to own a blade once more. He took it out, careful at the clumsiness and heaviness of his hands, tested the edge, felt the weight, checked the balance. It was an old friend, he knew its worn hilt and where he usually wore it, but the chains stopped him when he tried to fasten the strap at his neck.