“Thomasina, you must get out of the prison.”
“Why?” It was the recusant lady Becket/Strangways had spoken to a few days before.
“My dear, think. In a few minutes someone will tell the gaoler that Mr Strangways had a beggarmaid helping him, and then Newton will take you and make you tell him where the man has gone.”
That thought made her gasp, though it should not have been news to her. Life at Court has made me go soft and slow, she thought to herself; I would have been long gone, once.
Cyclops was gripped by two of Newton’s henchmen while Newton raised his cudgel, when there was a ringing and a banging at the outer gate.
All the drama ceased while Newton hurried to answer then reappeared with four of the Queen’s Yeomen guarding a blond and exquisite courtier in watchet-blue stain. His pale eyes blinked at the rows of prisoners in the courtyard, stunned at some sudden turn of fate that had flung him like a comet from the stellar spheres of the Court into the more earthly realms of the prison. He was made to stand with the Knight’s Ward. Thomasina knew him for one of the Queen’s gentlemen, though she had forgotten his name.
But Newton had a confession to make, one Thomasina suspected he otherwise might have spent the day avoiding. The Yeomen listened gravely to his whispered explanation, while his wide pocked face worked with anger and fear and his fingers clenched and unclenched on the cudgel.
Moments later the Yeomen had marched out through the double gates again.
“The pursuivants will be here inside the hour,” said the recusant lady, smiling and nodding as the white-haired Dowager joined her. “You must go to Father Hart and warn him.”
Thomasina said nothing, only gazed up at the lady.
“Where does he live then?” she asked.
The lady hesitated, exchanged glances with the Dowager, who nodded imperceptibly.
“Do you know the door in Whitefriars with Our Lady above it?”
“What’s that?” asked Thomasina, genuinely ignorant.
“A lady standing on a serpent, but her head knocked off,” explained the Dowager kindly. “It is a figure of Christ’s mother.”
“Oh.” Thomasina thought hard. “Yes, I know it, my lady.”
“Up two flights and on the left. Tell him what you have seen and ask him to pray for us.”
Thomasina nodded. The two exchanged glances again and the Lady Dowager bent down to her. “Sweeting, you have a wise face, I think I can trust you in this. Here is a letter for the priest; it tells him all I know about my poor lost sister-in-law. Take it to him and tell him that he must protect you as well, since the pursuivants will be looking for you.”
Thomasina swallowed hard as she put the paper under her bodice. “You are kind, my lady, but –”
“Hush. Go while no one thinks to stop you. Through the kitchen, out to the woodyard and through the lesser gate. Godspeed.” Bony fingers gripped Thomasina’s shoulders and propelled her in the right direction.
Holding her breath with fright, she scuttled across to the kitchen door, ran in under a servant stumbling out with a jack of beer for Newton, and the whip, through the greasy-floored kitchen where the boys were shoving each other on tiptoes to peer through a window as Cyclops was tied to the flogging post, never mind the basket, out the back door to the woodyard, mercifully unguarded in all the confusion, and through the woodyard to the little gate in the wall.
For a moment Thomasina stared up at it, heart hammering, believing she could already hear the shouts as the pursuivants came after her. She tried the latch tentatively, but it was bolted and padlocked shut, a waste of time. The wall was smooth and high. She might pile up logs from the woodpile to climb over, but it would take too long. In the distance, beyond the noise of Cyclops’s flogging, her fear-sharpened ears heard the great doors of the prison opening at the shout of the Queen’s warrant.
There was a six-inch gap under the gate. Could she? She bent down to it, tried her head, her shoulders, got on her stomach and eeled and scrabbled in the frost-rimed mud, sweating with panic at someone coming to fetch wood and finding her, sweating more when a nail caught her kirtle over her hips, shoving and squirming until the ancient velvet of her kirtle ripped in yet another place, and then her hips were though and her knees and she was in a tiny alley at the back of the prison.
She ran blindly, her throat thick with terror, realised she had run the wrong way and ran back, threading westwards by instinct through alleys that had been her old haunts once, towards the Liberties of Whitefriars. Behind her she knew there was a hue and cry for a beggarmaid.
LXI
UNDER THE BARRED WINDOW of Snr Gomes by Fleet Bridge a pile of rags stirred and moved. Dame Mary Dormer, Infirmerar and Mistress of Novices, stepped down from my clouds and shucked her dreaming habit like a moth its chrysalis, to wear once again the withered velvet caterpillar of her waking self. Bitter pain grated all her joints and aqua vitae her head and she heaved herself up, muttering. Snr Gomes was opening the barred gate and he tilted his head at her.
Mary hawked and spat and wiped her nose on her trembling arm.
“Come to do business,” she slurred. “Brought my ticket and . . . and the money.”
The gold was still in the velvet purse Bethany had brought, not all of it spent on forgetful booze. It was none of Snr Gomes’ business where she had got the money, so he let her in and a few minutes later the gold passed one way over his polished counter and a small leather package passed the other. Ever suspicious, my daughter-in-law opened the package and found the book with the unicorn embroidered on its cover, checked inside and smiled. She wrapped it again and put it in the pocket of her petticoat, under her kirtle, and hurried out the door, heading for Westminster.
LXII
THOMASINA CLIMBED THE NARROW stairs and knocked on Father Hart’s door. It was locked and there was no answer; she could have passed the letter she was carrying under the door, but decided not to. She sat on the top step and nibbled a meat pie she had stolen in Fleet Street. Occasionally she thought she heard a muffled grunt from inside, but assumed it must be from a pig in the yard.
They came back in the early afternoon, clattering up the stairs, Father Hart in the lead and talking over his shoulder to Becket.
Both men stopped instantly when they saw her.
“What do you want, child?” Hart demanded suspiciously.
Becket peered round Hart and seemed to recognise her.
“She is one of the children in the Fleet,” he said. “What’s your desire, sweeting?”
Thomasina stood up and put her hands behind her back. “I am sent by my lady Dowager with a message,” she said in a high, uncertain voice.
Father Hart pushed past her and opened the door. Becket followed him and Thomasina took her opportunity and followed them both. She had been wondering where the small clerk who had escaped with him had gone, and found out what had been making the grunts as well.
“How did you find us?” Becket wanted to know, as he picked a wing off the chicken and started gnawing at it.
“My lady Dowager Dormer has this address, of course,” said Father Hart.
“Of course?” echoed Becket. “Well?”
Thomasina handed her letter over to Father Hart, who gave her sixpence. Then she waited.
Father Hart skimmed the letter. “My lady Dowager is the Spoilt Nun’s sister-in-law. Since her husband died, she has made her own enquiries, and this is the fruit of them,” he explained to Becket, who was craning nosily over his shoulder. “There is a description and the names of the grandchildren, one of which is Julia, whom we know.”
Becket shook his head. “Julia was hiding something,” he muttered. “She knows where the old witch is, depend upon it.”
“It’s enough that she has promised to bring her grandma to a meeting.”
“Expensively promised.”
“But worth the silver if she does it.”
“If she hasn’t decided to sell us to the pursuivants.”
Becket snorted and then noticed Thomasina still standing behind him.
“Why are you still here?” he demanded rudely.
“Please, sir,” said Thomasina as artlessly as she knew how, “why is Mr Anriques tied to the bed?”
Becket swung round and glared at the man.
“Because he is a pox-rotted informer, eh, Ames?”
Ames made no answer because he had been efficiently gagged, only he closed his eyes.
“Is there any more, maiden?” Father Hart asked hintingly.
Thomasina had no intention of asking for his protection against pursuivants as the Lady Dowager had advised. She rather thought Hart needed her protection against them, not the other way about.
She shook her head, then held out her hand cheekily and waited until Hart gave her a further few pennies. Then she trotted down the stairs and into the tiny courtyard.
There she stood for a moment, her hands on her hips, head flung back looking up at the top-floor window, lips moving as she calculated. At last she set off up the Strand at a steady trot.
LXIII
SIMON AMES KNEW MORE than most about how pain could be caused to a man and was not at all grateful for his expertise. But he had not realised before quite how much it hurt simply to spend all day tied to a bed with a wad of cloth in his mouth.
Becket was horribly jolly, loud and full of jokes aimed at Simon, who could not answer back and probably would not have dared even if he could. He had not realised before either how much of the bully there was in Becket, who had always shown him his kindlier face. All men have two faces, he thought to himself, trying to be philosophical while his shoulders thrummed with cramp and his stomach and bladder ached, perhaps more. We show one to our family and friends and another to our enemies. If Becket had been brought to me as an enemy of the state when I was an inquisitor five years ago, I would have shown him as ugly a face as he shows me now.
In loud, false tones Father Hart and Becket discussed methods of torture while they ate salt-beef and bacon from one of the cook-shops on Fleet Street, swapping hair-raising tales of things they had done or seen done in their chequered pasts. They seemed very friendly together, quite heartily intimate. Ames turned his face away, which was all the movement he had available, and tried to let their voices fade to a mere babble. In a way it was funny, because if they would only take out the gag and give him something to moisten his swollen mouth, he would tell them whatever they wanted to know without any effort or blood at all. He had been planning to tell Becket everything in any case, as soon as Becket showed he had recovered his memory.
He now knew when Becket had done that and could have kicked himself for being so slow. He could see how his actions would appear to Becket, could understand why Becket thought him an informer and would himself have thought the same thing in the same circumstances. It gave him no satisfaction to understand Becket so well. He could not even bring himself to hate Becket which might have helped him bear the treason of his muscles, which demanded movement so uselessly, which so busily knotted themselves into hot lumps unexpectedly and in strange places. To be sure, seen from another point of view, the situation was laughably frustrating. His motives had been of the purest, he had been acting only in friendship, and here was Becket arguing that setting light to his balls would certainly fetch the truth out of him if shoving a dagger up his arse did not work first.
Why does he not take the gag out before my jaw breaks? Ames wondered in misery; why will he not give me a chance to explain?
Father Hart expressed regret that the witch had once been a nun. Becket snorted with laughter that had an ugly cynical sound.
“Well, but she is only a woman,” he said. “What can you expect if she has no husband to rule her? Of course she will turn to whoring; her hot nature demands it.”
“She had a husband. Christ was her husband.”
“He should have beaten her when she first went astray then.”
Father Hart gave him an odd sideways look. “Do you think Christ no more than a man?”
Becket had stumbled carelessly into honesty and now tried to recover himself.
“Of course not. Only it seems to me hard to give a maiden to a husband that cannot caress her and then blame her when she turns to stronger meat.”
“Do you think Christ cannot caress us?”
Becket shrugged, embarrassed. There was a silence. Father Hart found his tobacco pouch and began filling his pipe.
“I am sorry to see that the evil that was done to you has made you so cynical against God,” he said. “Surely you were in His Hand when your memory hid itself away?”
Becket shrugged again and started filing his own pipe to have something to do with his hands.
“That’s not how it seemed at the time,” he muttered.
Father Hart accepted this by dipping his chin and sucking on his pipe-stem to light it from the watch-light they had between them on the table.
“What was it turned you back to the True Religion, Mr Strangways?”
“Various deaths.”
“Why? Were they edifying?”
Becket laughed a short sharp bark. “No.”
“What then?”
Becket made a complex business out of lighting his pipe and would not answer.
“If you wish, I could hear your confession and give you absolution,” said Father Hart tentatively.
“So simply, Father?”
“Forgiveness is simple, Mr Strangways. You know the story of the lost sheep and the shepherd who searched all night for it?”
Becket nodded.
“I come from the north, where we keep sheep out on the moors. They are extraordinarily stupid creatures, forever getting lost, particularly in winter. The shepherds go out in the blizzards to find them, poking in snow-drifts, looking under bushes. Generally, though, they find them because the sheep cry to them.”
Becket laughed. “Is that what you mean? That I should baa for help?”
Father Hart smiled. “Only metaphorically. We are not sheep but men, and our Shepherd has no need of a crook to probe the drifts of this world for our souls, unless perhaps we extend the likeness and take that to mean the pastoral work of the True Church. But God is no thief. The Protestants say, or at least the Calvinists say, that all are either sheep or goats, elect or damned, now and forever. We say that things are more complex and yet simpler. God gives us free will that we may better grow to be like Him who has the freest will of all, and so paradoxically limits His own omnipotence; we need not turn to Him unless we choose to. We might be comfortable in our snow-drift, though the cold kill us in the end. He will not rescue us unwilling. But if we hear His footsteps and call to Him, He will come.”
Father Hart was leaning forward, seeming anxious to say something that was not in his words.
“It may seem very strange how He treats us, Mr Strangways. I cannot deny that sometimes His works are mysterious to me beyond my poor understanding. But He sees us struggle, He knows our hearts and the truth therein, we may turn to Him and call and He will come. We may afterwards turn away and sin once more, we may deny Him, and yet, if we turn again and call again, He will assuredly come again. Christ bade us forgive our enemies seventy times seven times, and God will outforgive us every time.”
Becket’s face flickered as if this talk was painful to him. To Ames, listening through a haze of weariness, it seemed very comfortable, although he did not understand the priest’s urgency.
“We should,” said the priest slowly, as if picking over the words in a market stall, “we should also forgive each other, and ourselves.”
“Hah,” said Becket. “You want me to forgive Davison, no doubt.”
“Yes. Our Saviour hung from nails and forgave.”
“He also asked God why He had been abandoned.”
Pipe smoke was filling the room. “Do you ask tha
t?” said Father Hart shrewdly.
Becket shrugged and would not answer. He got up, paced to the little window and looked out into the courtyard below.
“When we have her book, what shall we do with the witch? Kill her?” This change of subject seemed like a deliberate blow in the face of the priest, a rejection of his delicate pursuit.
“No,” said the priest evenly. “She might still repent.”
Becket nodded. The room was darkening with the onset of dusk, and the priest was lighting a couple of rush-dips from the watch-light candle. Becket brought one over and stood beside Ames with it, lighting his face from below and turning himself into a gargoyle. Hot fat dripped onto one of Ames’ hands and his wrist jerked uselessly against the bedpost.
“Ralph,” said Father Hart. Becket was deep in thought, staring down at Ames. “Ralph Strangways,” said the priest more loudly.
“Hm?” Becket looked over his shoulder.
“Do you want to question him now?”
Becket shook his head slowly. “Let us finish our business with the witch,” he said. “When we have the book we will have some time to make him talk. Not now.”
“Well, then, for God’s sake, let him up to piss,” said the priest. “That’s my bed he is lying on.”
Becket nodded, fished the pot out from under the bed and untied Ames’s feet and his left hand so he could swing himself round to a sitting position. He kept a dagger at Ames’s neck all the while, though Ames was shaking too hard with fear and cramp to do more than what he was ordered. When he put his free hand up to his face to try and make the gag more comfortable, Becket growled and cuffed him.
Docilely he lay down, to be fastened to the bed’s four corners again, every muscle shrieking in protest. Despite his blinding headache from hunger and thirst and cramps in his jaw muscles, Ames had suddenly understood one reason for Becket’s lack of urgency to hear what he had to say. The priest knew him as Ralph Strangways. Ames knew him as David Becket. In the half-world of fear and betrayal where they were all living, that was enough to keep a man’s mouth wadded with shirting. Becket was playing some complicated double game with the Catholic priest which he had no reason to think that Ames would support. Ergo, Ames must remain speechless until it suited Becket to release him.
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