Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

  “Th . . . thank you, sir,” came the answer, the voice shockingly educated. “God bless you.”

  There was painful shuffling, a few more muttered curses as the man tripped on the corners of beds, and he had gone.

  Becket lay down and turned himself over, hating the sour jingle from round his feet, pulled his cloak around him again. Then he found that Simon was still awake and, from the gleam of teeth and eyes, was smiling at him. He scowled.

  “Anything to get that stench away from here,” he hissed defensively and shut his eyes.

  XLVI

  HE WOKE AGAIN IN the grey foredawn with a cramp in his belly. He remembered his stupid impulse of the night-time and cursed himself because, after all, he could have worn two shirts and been a little warmer. On the other hand, until he ran out of buttons, he was rich as things were reckoned in the Fleet. Simon was still asleep, curled neatly under his worn cloak, one of the few silent sleepers in that whole ward – a welcome attribute in a bedmate. Becket thought sadly of breakfasts he had eaten a couple of months before in the Low Countries: one in particular when the perennial Dutch fogs had whited out all the land around. They had crossed the river in front of Zutphen before dawn and found Sir John Norris where Becket had expected him to be, entrenched in Warnsfield Churchyard. There they waited for the fog to clear so they could ambush Parma’s relief force to Zutphen. Swaddled in the mist, the camp had been full of the smell of breakfast. The best smell in the world, he thought it – collops of looted bacon frying, and autumn field mushrooms and sausage, and big hunks of bread fried in the same fat. Dyer and Fulke Greville had been there, laughing at him as he shook the skillet over the camp-fire between two grave-stones and swore when the fat spat on him. He was doing the cooking because he had bet them all that he could, each of them five shillings or a Spanish ear, whichever they could come by first. Greville’s servant had brought out silver plates looted from somewhere and served up the feast, and Sir Philip had come out of the vestry where he had set up his command post and joined them. Being Sidney, he could not simply enjoy the breakfast, but he had to reduce them all to fits of laughter by making ridiculous poetical discourse ad-lib on the glories of fried bacon and . . .

  A firework of excitement made his heart thunder inside him. At last he had remembered something! Indeed the memory shone and echoed in the empty cavern of his skull, so strong the smells were making his mouth water. There was more: afterwards, since the fog had still not lifted and nobody could see more than a couple of yards in front of his face, Sidney had wanted another lesson in sword-play, to make him ready for the battle. Becket had taken one of the blunt swords and gone through a veney with him; as it were, almost a dance. Every move was there, bright and clear against the dreaming fog, as if it had happened moments ago instead of last autumn, before . . . before . . .

  Whatever door had opened to let out the happy memory suddenly swung shut again. Still, it was something. It was true. It was real and his breath came short with excitement. He shook Simon’s shoulder until the clerk came frowstily awake, muttering and scratching at flea bites.

  “I remember,” he said, eyes blazing with it. “I remember being in the Netherlands last autumn.”

  That got Simon’s attention. He sat up, yawned and smacked his lips. “Tell me,” he said.

  Becket told him, far too happy to recall his caution over his convenient friend, and Simon nodded and asked pertinent questions.

  “So you know you were Sir Philip Sidney’s sword-master,” he said. “And he took you with him to the Netherlands. Was that all you did there? Were you helping him in his soldiering?”

  Becket shrugged. “I must have been, though I do not remember it at all.”

  “Were you with him when he was wounded?”

  Becket shrugged again and spread his hands. “I told you all that came to me. It has neither a beginning or an end to the tale. I know not even why I am not still Sidney’s sword-master – it was a pleasant office, though I think he had not paid my fees.”

  “That I can tell you, since anyone else will. Sidney died at Zutphen.”

  Becket’s face darkened and he put his hand to his eyes. “I told him,” he muttered. “It was nothing to do with his not wearing his cuisses – damn it. I had none either, there’s no armour made will stop an arquebus ball, and it is better to be nimble. No, it was that they did not cut his leg off.”

  “You were there, at Zutphen?”

  “Oh ay, somewhere about. In fact, now I think of it, I was riding one of his horses. Once the fog lifted so we could see, there we were – about five hundred of us; and there they were – the Spaniards had four and a half thousand, well dug in, horse arrayed, arquebuses poking over every bank of turf. God’s blood, I nearly voided my guts.”

  “Why did you not know they were there?” This question was harshly put from another bed by the strongly built man who had lost an eye, Cyclops.

  Becket laughed. “Well, sir, there are generals who are curious to hear what is coming towards them and send scouts to find out. And then there are generals who think scouts are a waste of good cash because they know what Parma would send with a convoy, and that could be hardly more than a couple of hundred men, what? And they know it by God’s gift and because they are the Queen’s favourite.”

  “It was my lord of Leicester’s fault then?”

  “Who else? Oh ay, he was on the other side of the river, dug in with the rest of the army and safe enough. We came across the river to Sir John with the noblemen and their horses, all afire to fight the Spaniard and win honour for the Queen.”

  There was a certain amount of muttering. Becket showed his teeth again.

  “But Leicester has not the wits of a . . . of a spring lamb. Of course it was his damned fault we were caught napping because we had no scouts. And most of the English knights there egging each other on and in terror of being discovered to fear. I am no knight, thank Christ, I told them to withdraw. But it was not so simple as that, for we had the river at our back, between us and the rest of the army, and the Spaniards knew it.” He fell silent for a moment and then continued, a far-away sound in his voice.

  “We saw them. I said ‘In God’s name, withdraw; they are entrenched, we can ford the river now.’ But Sidney said, ‘The Spanish horse will surely charge us while we are going down to the water and then they will bring their arquebusiers out of the trenches to the bank and shoot us at their leisure. Those on horses will no doubt mostly live, but all the commoners will be trampled and drowned and shot to pieces.’

  “To be sure he had the right of it, he was a good pupil. He decided that honour dictated the English knights must keep the Spaniards busy to give the footmen a chance to cross. He ordered the foot to begin crossing over as soon as the cavalry fighting started. So we mounted and lined up and we charged them.”

  “What was it like?” asked another voice. “What happened in the battle?”

  Becket was in the full flood of reminiscence, to enraptured at his new-found memories to improve on them or notice he had acquired an audience. “It was a better battle than most, for at least I was not in the front line of a pile square, where I usually end up.”

  “Ay,” pointed out the man with one eye, “but if you had been a pikeman you would have crossed before the cavalry.”

  “Well, Sidney gave me one of his horses; how could I refuse?”

  “He knew Sir Philip Sidney?” someone asked reverently from behind Simon. Simon was afraid of breaking the spell and only tilted his head a little.

  “He was Sir Philip’s sword-master,” he whispered. “Quiet.”

  “Still, it was a damned luxury, riding a horse, not hefting a pike and only a little toothpick of a lance to carry.”

  There were whispers travelling like waves of the sea, far back to the other end of the ward, and movement, as many of the men came closer to listen.

  “There we were, charging together, and the Spaniards so surprised we would attack them when we were so outnumber
ed, they were not ready for us. We punched straight through them, scattering them.”

  There was a muted cheer. “Did the Spaniards run?” asked someone eagerly.

  Becket spat and grinned. “Jesus, no, they gave us better sport than that. Wherefore should they run when they outnumbered us and had us in a cross-fire? We charged them and pushed them back, but then we had to pull back again ourselves, because they were shooting us down. Second time we charged them, Sidney’s horse went down, so I gave him mine.”

  “Why?” asked the eager man who was now sitting on the next bed with his head thrust forward, listening intently. “Was it the love you bore him?” Cyclops snorted.

  “What?” asked Becket. “No, he was our captain and he had to be seen, and it was his horse anyway. Besides, it was safer from the musketry on foot, I thought, and I saw some good pickings from a few of the dead Spaniards.”

  There was a ripple of laughter.

  “What happened then?” Simon prompted, praying hard.

  “Well, I saw him coming back, at the head of the retreat, and I saw he could not control the horse, which always was a headstrong nag, so I caught its bridle.”

  “Why could he not –“

  “His thigh-bone was shot to pieces,” Becket said. “I told you it was. But he wanted to be sure we crossed the river orderly while the Spaniards were disarrayed and their cavalry were having trouble with their horses bolting, so he told me not to lead him and he took the lot of us across the river after the third charge went in, as if nothing had happened.”

  “And so he got his death.”

  Becket made a sour face. “No, he got his wound from an arquebus ball, which could happen to any man that ventures on a battlefield. Not his death.”

  “What was it killed him then?” Simon asked.

  Becket shrugged. “Vanity. He would not let the surgeons cut his leg off.”

  “Would that not kill him by itself?”

  “It might,” Becket agreed. “About half the time it does, but to try and have the surgeons search and set a broken thigh . . . He could not bear the thought of coming before the Queen with a wooden leg. She cannot abide ugliness, he said so often.”

  “Did you see him giving his water to the common soldier that needed it?” asked the eager man. “There was a ballad that told of it.”

  Becket seemed to see his audience for the first time, and as Simon had feared it would, it broke the spell and his eyes lost their far-away look. In fact, he looked like a man awakening from a fever dream.

  “Er . . . no,” he said, confused. “But he might have done it, that sounds like him.”

  “What I want to know,” asked a ragged bearded man with bloodshot eyes, “is what brought a soldier who was at Zutphen so low as the Fleet Prison so quickly?”

  Becket’s face stiffened to a mask. Simon was anxious that the sudden excess of phlegmatic humour that had brought back a part of his memory might give him another attack of the falling sickness.

  “He has suffered terrible misfortunes,” Simon put in quickly. “Among which is a strange loss of memory.”

  “Seems to remember Zutphen well enough.”

  “For the first time,” said Becket, thoughtful and pleased. “For the first time in . . . in weeks.”

  “You could have made it up?” sneered Bloodshot-Eyes.

  Becket’s eyes narrowed and his fists clenched. “Do you give me the lie, sir?”

  “No. It’s the truth,” said Cyclops authoritatively. “I have fought with Drake and in France, and his tale is the first I heard that made sense of it. All the ballads talk of heroic chivalry and a desperate battle, but not one of them said it was a fighting retreat.”

  Becket nodded at him. Cyclops was sitting up on his bed with his legs crossed, tailor-fashion. “Moreover, a man inventing himself into a battle will generally come out of it sounding more heroical.”

  Becket misunderstood, being sensitive on the subject, and his face darkened again.

  “Are you saying I am a coward, sir?” he demanded.

  “Not at all.” Cyclops put his hand up placatingly. “Never at all, sir. But I have heard many soldiers reminisce and being one myself, it is wonderful how invariably we have been in the forefront of every charge, and struck the enemy captain’s head off our very selves. Is it not?”

  Becket made a grunt of agreement and continued looking at Cyclops. The turnkey opened the ward door and many of the audience scrambled to get to the jakes, but Becket and Cyclops ignored the rush. It came to Simon then that they were assessing each other, and if they had been dogs they would have been walking around each other, sniffing arses and wagging tails high and slowly.

  “It is,” said Becket. “But I would not claim so much.”

  “Why not? At the moment, you could turn that story into beer and beef in any boozing ken you chose to enter.”

  “Alas,” said Becket wryly, “I see no beer.” He began constructing his suspenders of laces to hold up his ankle chains.

  “What brings you here on a Privy Council warrant?” Cyclops asked directly.

  Becket did not answer for a while, concentrating on typing knots with his disobedient fingers.

  “How did you know . . .?” Simon asked.

  Cyclops turned his attention and looked Simon over, dismissing him, as many fighting men did. “I know most things about this ward, Mr Anriques,” he said. “I was awake when they brought him in and I saw the two that brought him, that had ‘Walsingham’s pursuivant’ written all over them. And yesterday I heard Gaoler Newton talking to him and I was curious to learn that his hobbling is in the warrant itself, for generally speaking, Newton is only too pleased to strike off any irons at all for the right money.” Cyclops paused and smiled sourly. “Of course, he puts them back on a week later, the better to milk you, so you should be warned. But that was a curious thing in itself, and stranger still to find that Mr Strangways was a Zutphen also. Generally, we do not find heroes in the Fleet. Nor yet traitors.”

  The words were ugly and hung in the air between them. Ah, thought Simon to himself, his thinking a little dishevelled by lack of decent food, the older dog has just lifted his leg.

  Becket’s fists were clenched again, but then he looked at them and made them open, sighed quietly.

  “Sir,” he said, “I will be straight with you. I have taken the falling sickness from a wound to my head, and as my friend here has said, I have somehow mislaid my memory. I have been as strange to myself as you are to me now. This is the first time I have remember so much, but this much I know. I am no traitor, nor yet no Papist.”

  “A Privy Council warrant is generally for treason.”

  “No, sir,” contradicted Becket levelly, “it is generally for those that the Privy Council believes to be traitors.”

  “Are they not traitors then?”

  “In the end I expect they confess treason,” said Becket bleakly, “whether they are traitors or not.”

  Cyclops grunted and held out his hand to Becket. “My name is Simpson,” he said, “but most men here call me Cyclops.”

  Becket shook hands and found that he could not match Cyclops’ grip. He smiled to hide the pain. “And you are the King of Eightpenny Ward?”

  Cyclops smiled back shrewdly. “Mr Deputy Gaoler might dispute the title.”

  “I think none other does,” said Becket. “Do they?”

  “Not twice,” agreed Cyclops.

  There was a little space in the talk, as something hung in the air unsaid between them. Simon was watching, fascinated. “Shall we come to business?” said Becket quietly. “How much for your protection, Mr Cyclops?”

  Cyclops paused. “I generally charge sixpence garnish a week, but I am happy to remit half of this week’s contributions in return for your tale.”

  Becket nodded. “Will you include my friend here?”

  “Hm,” said Cyclops. “Are you so sure of him?”

  Had they forgotten Simon was there? No; they thought so little of him,
they did not care. He suppressed the urge to argue and waited to see what Becket would say.

  Becket was thinking. “Being the way I am,” he answered at last, “I am not sure of anything. But I would like him to have your protection too, in any case.”

  “Done,” said Cyclops. Becket fished money out of his shirt and philosophically handed over the ninepence.

  Becket looked consideringly at Simon after Cyclops had gone. “Are you offended at my doubt?”

  Yes, though Simon, although I know there is no reason why you should trust me so easily if you do not remember me. Perhaps even if you do. But Becket could not hear his thoughts and so he dissembled and shook his head. After all, Becket had paid his protection.

  Be not so high-stomached, a cynical commentary inside him said. You have always needed the help of those stronger and better-visioned that yourself; how was it different at school when your elder brothers thrashed anyone who laid a finger on you?

  I never much liked it even then, Simon answered himself, feeling suddenly dispirited.

  “What made you remember?” he asked Becket as he waited by the door.

  “Easy to tell. I was wishing for breakfast and remembered how we fried bread in camp.”

  Simon swallowed and smiled a little painfully. “That explains it.”

  “How can I make it happen again?”

  “You have not remembered everything?”

  “No. Only that island of Zutphen. That I was a sword-master seems right to me. It was a trade I loved.”

  “You may ply it again when your hands are well.”

  Becket emerged, smiled sadly, and flexed his hands as Simon went past him.

  “What is the final border of your memory?”