Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

  At last he finished, folded the paper and looked at her under his heavy black eyebrows. He has lovely eyes, she thought, but they are tired and sad.

  “Can you read?”

  “Oh yes, sir,” she said stoutly, making it sound like a lie. “I can do my alpha beta and my name.”

  “Will you take a message?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you know the man that come in by the gate this morning and talked to the ladies making ruffs?”

  “Yes, sir. The Lady Dowager called him Father Hart, and he said he was to be Mister Hart. He asked about you, sir.”

  Becket nodded. “Take the message to him and no one else. Do not let Mr Anriques see you do it.”

  She almost said she would, she was so anxious to lay hands on the letter, but no, that would be too easy.

  “Then it’s two more pennies, sir.”

  “You said a penny . . .”

  “That is for an ordinary message, sir. This is a secret.”

  He smiled cynically at her. “How old are you?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, sir.” Which was true.

  “And your name?”

  “I am called Thomasina. Shall I come back?”

  “Only if there is an answer.”

  She curtseyed to him, took the letter and the money, put it inside her bodice and skipped down the stairs. She opened the letter quickly, just within the door, and read what he had written. He only wanted an immediate secret meeting with Hart, that was all. But he had drawn a little stick figure instead of signing it, a stick figure of a horse with a horn on its head.

  LII

  WHEN SIMON AMES CAME from the dining-hall after dinner, faithfully carrying half a loaf of bread, some cheese and salt-beef, he found Becket sitting cross-legged on the bed in the Eightpenny Ward, whistling through his teeth.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  Becket did not look at him first. “Well enough.”

  “Was it the falling sickness?”

  “In a way. I saw the rainbows and smelt the roses, but after I lay down they went away and I felt better.”

  Simon smiled with relief. “The doctor said it was possible if you were careful that the falling sickness would go away again. Here, I have brought you some vittles.”

  “What makes it happen?” Becket asked with his mouth full. Simon shrugged.

  “Some excess of phlegmatic humour, no doubt.”

  “He prescribed tobacco for it.”

  “Then let us smoke a pipe,” said Simon, feeling he could do with one.

  “Dr Nunez is very hot for tobacco,” said Becket. “Why?”

  “He imports it from New Spain . . .” said Simon, “. . . I believe.”

  “If he is so rich, why does he not bail you out of here?”

  Simon paused. “Perhaps he will when he thinks I have learnt my lesson.”

  Becket had taken out his pipe and was filling the bowl. Now he looked at it before lighting it.

  “What a pity to smoke something that puts money in the pockets of bastard Spaniards.”

  “Perhaps we should grow our own.”

  “Ay.” At last Becket lit his pipe, sucked gratefully at it and passed it to Simon, who did the same. Becket smiled. “At least the doctor’s medicine agrees with you better now,” he said casually.

  Simon’s eyes narrowed. “You have remembered some more?”

  Becket wanted to kick himself. Simon Ames had always been too sharp to fool for long.

  “Well, it comes back to me,” he said. “Above all when I am not trying to remember.”

  “Excellent. Surely soon it will all come back.”

  Becket nodded, took back the pipe. “If only I could free my legs,” he said, “then I think I would be quite happy.”

  “Are the irons so very irksome?”

  Becket sighed. “Not as bad as if it were still my hands as well, but . . . Yes. Now I am recovered I want to run, not shuffle. I want to try some sword-practice.” He rubbed at the bruises the rings made on his ankles when he forgot and tried to take a longer stride, and was irritated to find a hole worn there in one of his nether-stocks.

  Simon was blinking down at the chains thoughtfully. “We could try filing one of the links,” he said, doubt in his voice.

  “Too slow. And depend upon it, there will not be any such thing as a file here.”

  “Perhaps aqua fortis, a very strong solution of aqua fortis might weaken the iron enough to snap it.”

  “What is aqua fortis?”

  “A kind of liquid fire, an alchemical paradox. The elements of fire and water are opposed, as you know, but if the right counter-elements of air and earth be combined, then a water may be made which is in appearance like water but in quality like fire, since it chars anything it touches.”

  “How could I make it?” Becket wanted to know.

  “To be sure, you could not, but an alchemist or a goldsmith might have some.”

  “Hm. Aqua fortis, you say.”

  “Very strong aqua fortis. But there is the other problem that if Newton finds out he will beat you and put you in the stocks.”

  Becket shrugged. “So? By my reckoning he might do that anyway.”

  “His rule, though tyrannical, is not irrational. His main concern is to prevent escapes and rioting, since he is fined for them.”

  “Ah.”

  “Now, will you come out of the ward, sir? There are many down in the courtyard who want to hear your tale of Zutphen and anything you can recall of Sir Philip Sidney.”

  “Lord, why is everyone so hot about a skirmish over a fort?”

  Simon shook his head. “Sidney has become a hero for the way he died.”

  “There was nothing heroical about it. If he died like everyone else I have seen who took sick from a wound, then he was raving or unconscious.”

  “For the Almighty’s sake, sir, keep that to yourself. Besides, it was the way he commanded in the skirmish before Zutphen that was heroical. It is not so often that the flower of the Court’s chivalry spend their lives to let common soldiers escape. More often they ride the commoners down in their haste to get away. All the people know it was Sidney’s doing that they dealt so honourably and only lost thirteen men.”

  “Well, that is true, at least. I was astonished myself.”

  “Zutphen has become a watchword. The ballad-sellers have printed a dozen tales of him, and the stories have gone round of how he gave the water to the poor soldier. He has become a Protestant martyr, a pattern of chivalry.”

  “Hmf,” said Becket cynically. “No doubt it suits the Earl of Leicester to have everyone praising Sidney for his heroism and nobody asking how it was we had no scouts.”

  “No doubt. Will you come and tell the tale, sir?”

  “Oh, very well.” Becket was ungracious. “Tell them they will have to wet my whistle first.”

  In fact, as Simon had suspected he would, Becket told the tale very well, once someone had passed him a cup of aqua vitae. He stood by the ruff-makers so they could hear while they sewed and Cyclops sat nearby as his bear-leader. Afterwards they passed a hat round and gave him three cheers. When Cyclops had had his cut, Becket poured quite a respectable number of pennies and groats into his purse and said he would have been less willing to sell his buttons if he had known the value of mere hot air. One of the ruff-makers smiled up at him.

  “To be sure, sir, have you never seen a lawyer posing in it marten and brocade, which is very fine-looking stuff but mortally expensive?”

  Becket grinned and bowed at her. “I had forgotten,” he said. “Along with much else, ma’am. Had you heard the accident that happened to my wits?”

  “Then it is true you lost your memory?” said the recusant lady, trimming a vast long strip of linen with needle-lace that she was working at an extraordinary rate.

  “Yes, ma’am. After Zutphen, all is fog.”

  “What a terrible thing,” mused the lady. “I had wondered why . . . er . . . why a h
ero of Zutphen was in the Fleet.”

  “It is not so bad as the Tower, ma’am,” Becket said meaningfully.

  “Indeed not. Lord above, I would not wish my worst enemy in the Tower; there are so many ill tales of the place, especially of poor Catholic priests that have suffered there, like Father Campion.”

  Simon, who was one of the inquisitors who had interrogated Father Campion, looked at the ground and found himself glad that Becket had forgotten so much.

  “God have mercy on them,” said Becket piously.

  “Amen.”

  Simon frowned with puzzlement. He had never taken Becket for a religious man, though to be sure such experiences as his had turned more blasphemous men than he to God. Then he saw the way Becket was looking at the recusant lady, who was industriously plying her needle again with a considering expression on her face. Ah, he though, with a small puff of disappointment, so that’s the way of it. Awkward as he was with women, even with his wife, it always amazed him – the easy way so many men could lie when they lusted Which pun amused him as well.

  He thought he would leave Becket to his attempts and wandered back to the spot by the door to Eightpenny Ward that he had made his own. Soon one came to him who needed a letter to a lawyer drafted and he was kept busy all afternoon.

  LIII

  BECKET WAS NOT A man who spent much of his time reminiscing, being generally too busy either avoiding creditors or acquiring them. He was now inclined to bless his memory for hiding away from the Queen’s pursuivants like a fox gone to ground, agonising though it had been at the time. He had enough on his conscience without the Queen’s ruin on top of it all. What manner of angel had robbed him he could not say, although in a superstitious corner of his fancy he suspected that the ghost of his old friend Tom O’Bedlam had had a hand in it somewhere.

  However, this newly reclaimed ability to recall the past, to understand what he had been doing, was a nearly voluptuous pleasure after his weeks of confusion and uncertainty. He spent much of the rest of that day sitting idly whittling a piece of wood with his eating knife while entire cities re-emerged from the clearing internal fog. Some areas of his memory he passed over lightly because they hurt; he saw no reason to think of that earlier time he had spent in the Netherlands as a young man, when Romero and Adam Strangways had tortured and tricked him into betraying the city of Haarlem to the Spaniards. Agnes Fant nee Strangways he likewise preferred not to recall. Eliza Fumey was a newer wound, only lightly scabbed over: he knew he had a son he had never met, three years old now, who called a wealthy London burgher his father. When she knew she was with child, Eliza had arranged her own marriage with as cool and calculated an eye as she would have done for her daughters. She had been adamantine in her determination not to marry Becket, despite all his desperate promises: he was a drunk, she said, a roaring boy, a bravo, a fine swordsman, a brave friend and a dear lover, but a husband – no.

  Perhaps that was just. He had spent four years under the generous patronage of Sir Philip Sidney, teaching courtiers the right use of backswords and rapiers, and he had done well enough at it, but he had spent every penny he earned and more and he had no idea on what. To marry and settle down . . . it was something he could conceive of, could make attractive little phantasies of a London house, and a wife and children, and that was as far as he got.

  Alternatively there was always Kate at the Falcon, and the Dutch girls had been delightful, if only he could remember their names.

  His journey to Rheims had been counted out in golden filigree buttons – the others had been put to a more proper use. For vanity Becket has caused a very fine suit to be made for him in Amsterdam, decorated with Sidney’s jet buttons, the first time since his father disowned him that he had possessed a first-hand doublet and hose, tailored specifically for him. He was delighted with it and found it greatly improved the way respectable women looked at him.

  Now considering what it had been through with him, and considering that unlike himself it did not have the power of healing, it was in good condition. He would pay the little tailor in the Fleet to mend the depredations of the pursuivants.

  Rheims had been difficult. The English Seminary was in a small house in a back-street, and they had been welcoming to him. He lied as little as he could; he made no claim to be well-versed in the Catholic faith, only he said he kept to it because it had been his mother’s faith. He presented himself as humbly desirous of learning more about it. He said he had gone to the Netherlands with Leicester and then deserted for Parma’s side as soon as he could – something done often by genuine Papists.

  The Jesuits questioned him kindly, as did their chief, the notorious Father Parsons. Why had Parma sent him to help in this secret mission to England? Well, Becket was a man who knew the back alleys of London and had credit with Laurence Pickering, the King of Thieves, and might help to run the old nun to earth. It was logical enough, it hung together, and along with Sidney’s artistically forged letter from Parma, it was sufficient for them to trust him. Becket found himself wondering how such unworldly men as these could be so grave a danger to Queen Elizabeth and her kingdom as Walsingham believed.

  He ate with them in the refectory, listening to Ignatius Loyola’s writings being read aloud, answering “Amen” to prayers he had scarcely any understanding of, and trying not to look at the lurid paintings on the wall which depicted more varieties of martyrdom than even Topcliffe’s imagination might encompass. Becket was particularly offended by the sickly expressions of forbearance glorifying the martyrs’ painted faces. Blood and broken bodies he could deal with, but sainted anguish put him right off his vittles.

  He remembered that Tom Hart and he had joked about it on the way from Calais to Dover. He liked Father Hart, he found regretfully; he was a good companion who behaved like a gentleman and preached no sermons at him. They had more in common than Becket had expected: both younger sons, both disowned, though for different reasons. Both of them were hideously seasick in the four-day crossing as the autumn gales bounded the small packet-boat over the waves, which gave them a bond of shared squalor.

  At last on dependable earth again, after answering the questions of the Tonnage and Poundage men and paying their usual bribes, Becket and Hart sat down to eat for the first time in days at a waterside boozing ken in Dover.

  They were both too hungry to talk at first, but at last Becket leaned back, let out his belt a notch and lit his pipe.

  “Now what do we do?” he asked. “Do we got to London to search for the old nun?”

  Father Hart coughed at the smoke and waved it away from him.

  “No,” he said. “First we find her family.”

  “How the devil do we do that?”

  “She told me she was the Infirmerar of her convent and its name – Father Parsons wrote to the Mother House and they had the records, which named her originally Mary Dormer and gave her family residence.

  Becket nodded. “That simple, eh?” he said.

  Father Hart smiled at him. “Of course,” he said with irritating serenity. “Since we are doing the Lord’s work, naturally He will help us do it.”

  “Hmf.”

  And at first it had been that simple; Becket could hardly credit it. They bought horses and went to Sussex and on their fourth attempt found the Lady Dowager Dormer, a recusant and sister-in-law, if she had known it, to a witch. Father Hart said Mass for her and all her household, heard confessions, baptised babes and married the Lady Dowager’s eldest granddaughter. Ann, her youngest, was ardent for the church and Father Hart confided to Becket that he was in hopes she herself might go to France and become a nun there. Becket pretended to find this a good idea, although privately he thought it a criminal waste of a woman.

  They all travelled up to London before Christmas and took lodgings in the Liberties of Whitefriars. Becket was nervous being back in his old haunts, although he had avoided Fleet Street and Eliza Fumey’s shop. With Father Hart he investigated boozing kens and went armed with g
old to see Pickering, the King of Thieves. At last they got wind of the witch who was known as the Spoiled Nun and went to the Falcon to speak to her.

  She was not there, but her granddaughter Julia was, self-important, busy, agreeing that her grandma certainly had such a Book of the Unicorn, called it her treasure, and sometimes hinted darkly that the Queen would give money for it. Father Hart had been cock-a-hoop at that. Becket had wanted to find the old woman, take her book by whatever means necessary, and then, he said, get out of the country. But no. Father Hart could not countenance such simplicity. He must first offer a Christmas Mass of thanksgiving at the place where the Lady Dowager lodged and what must the Lady Dowager do but invite all her Catholic friends to it.

  Here Becket’s newly recovered memory came to a dead stop. He remembered the crowded dining-room and Father Hart’s reverently laying out his Mass things that he kept in the false bottom of his chest: the folding crucifix, the tiny chalice and paten, the small box of Hosts. He even remembered Father Hart’s strong voice beginning to intone the Asperges, the sequence of prayers, some obscurely muttered, which were becoming familiar to him, though he sat and drank next door, worried at this foolishness. Then . . .

  And then the hammering of boots and mattocks on the doors, both sides of the house, the congregation looking at one another in fear, Father Hart’s voice rising, firmly continuing with his Mass, the locked door crashing open, a glimpse of Ramme and Munday’s faces, greedy with triumph, himself drawing blade and charging into the fray and then . . .

  Blank. It was the blink of an eye and he was waking in Little Ease, with his hands crippled.

  Becket’s mind shied away from that, like a horse from a blazing stable. He saw no purpose in pursuing it either. No doubt someone among the people who had been in the crowded room had been a pursuivant or a traitor; such a thing was to be expected in London. And Father Hart had been a fool to say Mass at all, whatever he thought his duty was.