[David Becket and Simon Ames 01] - Firedrake's Eye

by Patricia Finney

Becket had woken before him and moved him back onto the bed, which was a better resting place than the floor, though narrower and lumpier. The noise that had woken him was Becket coming up the stairs; he blinked his bruised eyes away from the window-shutter where winter sunlight was squeezing through knot holes and cracks, and wondered blearily at the small round leather buckler armed with a nine-inch point at its centre and a large dent, that hung in state upon the wall.

  Becket opened the door and came in more quietly than seemed possible for a man of his size. Simon sat up recklessly and had to clutch his head like a man with the first onset of the plague. Becket ducked under the beams and brought over a chipped earthenware bowl full of wine and water with an egg in it and a few meagre shavings of cinnamon and nutmeg floating on the top.

  ‘I do dot…’

  ‘An infallible cure for that sour beer at the Gatehouse, sir,’ said Becket, full of sympathy, and then a cunning stroke, ‘I pawned my old breastplate to get it.’

  Simon swallowed greenly and of pure politeness took the bowl and drank half. Becket’s lodging at that time was at the top of Mrs Carfax’s house in Fetter Lane, crammed up under the rafters with the pigeons whose squabs Becket stole on occasion to make a pie. There was in it a battered chest, a bed, the buckler, a rushlight holder with an inch of tallow dip in its jaws and a dish-of-coals for frying eggs and collops sitting by the fireplace, empty, its handle bent and the fireplace empty as well. There were nails hammered into the walls where other things had hung and marks in the foot-deep rushes where once had stood a table and a stool. It would have taken a braver woman than Mrs Carfax to sweep out the rushes and find the floorboards, but at least the roof only leaked in one place, under which Becket set the now empty bowl. His dirty shirt and hose had been kicked under the bed.

  ‘Shall I open the shutter, Mr Ames?’ Becket asked.

  Ames nodded bravely. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘About eight of the clock. The sun is coming up.’

  ‘Oh Lord,’ moaned Ames, defending his eyes from the watery light, ‘Oh. Let me see. I cannot attend on Mr Phelippes today, not in this state. Ah…Mr…um…Becket, I already owe you great gratitude – will you do me a further favour?’

  ‘Name it, sir.’ said Becket, full of eagerness.

  ‘Will you hire me a horse and then go a message for me to the Court?’

  ‘I would Mr Ames, but… I have not the money for it.’ Ames raised his eyebrows. The pawning of the breastplate had been necessary anyway, for the rescue of Becket’s sword on the argument that a swordmaster without a sword on his hip inspired no confidence. Also Becket was aware that he would have no black bruise griping his back had he been wearing it the night before. But that had left enough for the wine and egg and no more.

  ‘Are we still near Fleet Street?’ Becket nodded. Ames swallowed at the thought of motion, ‘Then if you will take me to a pawnbroker’s I think we may make shift.’

  Assuming he meant to pawn the impressive court gown he wore, Becket helped Ames up off the bed and made an attempt at dusting alley mud, onion skins and dried blood from it.

  ‘There are two pawnbrokers in Fleet Street,’ Becket said confidingly. ‘One is a good Christian man, a Mr Barnet, that charges two pennies in the shilling and the other is a foreigner that says he is no Spaniard, and I have heard he charges as much as a sixpence in the shilling and more and so…’

  Ames half-smiled, winced.

  ‘Will you take me to the foreigner, Mr Becket?’

  Tom of Bedlam saw the two of them that morning, and marked them despite our continuing argument with the devil that lives in the waterbutt by Sergeant’s Inn. To Tom’s Moon-struck sight, the angel that guards Becket and the angel that guards Ames were deep in converse, while the two themselves walked leisurely but in silence along Fleet Street to Fleet Bridge where the foreigner had set him up to lend money at usury.

  They walked in by the little barred window under the sign of three brass balls and waited while a trollop redeemed her cooking pot. Becket was angry at his friendly advice being ignored and also at losing his commission for bringing Mr Barnet a new customer, so he stood back with his arms folded, not prepared to advise.

  The old man in his skullcap and good clean robe turned from his strongbox and blinked through the bars at Simon Ames’ carnival face.

  ‘Umhm?’

  ‘Bom dia, Senhor Gomes. ’ said Ames, and continued in a babble of language that made the hairs on the back of Becket’s neck prickle until he realised that whatever kind of filthy foreign it was, Spanish, at least, it was not. He took his hand off his swordhilt and tried to look calm as the pawnbroker unlocked his gates and ushered them within, and gave Simon an embrace as if he were a long lost kinsman. Ames neither looked nor sounded foreign, but it was a sad blow to Becket to think that he might have helped some manner of Spaniard. Still, he decided to reserve judgment until he knew for certain. There were always dark alleys and a quick knife in the ribs.

  By the time they were out of the shop with five shillings in Simon’s new purse and his gown still on his back, Becket was disposed to be friendly for a little while longer.

  As they passed over the bridge and up Ludgate Hill he said, ‘You speak excellent fine English for a foreigner, sir.’

  Simon smiled nervously, winced again. Delicately feeling his swollen mouth with the flat of his fingers where it had been trodden on, he said, ‘I was bom in this country, sir, though my family are Marranos, which is a type of Portuguese that have taken refuge here by the Queen’s kindly grace.’

  ‘Oh.’ said Becket, lightening a little. ‘Then you are no follower of King Philip?’

  ‘If I were, I should hardly speak Spanish where I could be heard.’

  ‘That was not Spanish, Mr Ames.’

  ‘Habla vuestra merced castelane?’

  Comprendo solo. And have no wish to speak it, by your leave, sir.’ Becket spat as if to take the taste of the words from his tongue.

  Ames has little pale brown eyes that seem weak and squinting, and yet still colder than Thames water.

  ‘It was Portuguese. Will you still go unto Whitehall for me, Mr Becket, though I have no English blood.’

  Becket’s long lashes shaded his eyes and he smiled. ‘I have taken orders even from Spaniards, Mr Ames, when I must. And I have no other business this day.’

  Then here are two groats and a message for you to carry to Mr Phel- ippes in the Secretary’s office.’

  For a man of common birth this might have been the end of the matter, but Becket was gently bom and carried a sword of right.

  He gave back one of the groats. ‘You know as I do that the fare to Westminster is tuppence there and tuppence back.’

  ‘The other was towards the redemption of your breastplate,’ said Ames quickly. ‘But I had not finished telling you of my family. First you may know that a year ago the King’s Majesty of Spain burned my mother’s two brothers at the stake for that they were Jews. And second, I would like to beg the favour of your company at dinner this afternoon at mine Uncle Hector Nunez’s house in Poor Jewry. Ask the Watch at Aldgate and they will direct you. Perhaps we shall finish our argument.’

  Becket was none of those fools who think Jews bear horns on their heads for the killing of our Saviour, and further he knew that Dr Nunez was physician to my lord the Earl of Leicester, which explained the gown and the gold of his nephew. Hopes no longer entirely dashed, he made his bow, accepted the invitation and headed down to the river.

  VII

  Now I will not give in detail this argument and that argument over the well-laden dinner table of Dr Nunez: this lambasting of Hermes Trismegistus by Simon Ames, that defence of the Seven Angel Governors of the Planets by David Becket. The candlesticks and nutshells went journeys about the empty chargers and trenchers on the table to demonstrate the truth of Aristotle, with Becket as his advocate. And then Simon made a counterblasting rearrangement of them to show the gospel of Copernicus according to Thomas Digges wh
ich rejoiced his heart as Catullus or Horace might rejoice another man. Both were ignorant and well-read enough to have loud and fixed opinions, oiled by wine.

  When the heat of the argument rose too high, Dr Nunez and his wife Leonora discoursed on the humours and the origins of the French pox and the strange fact that dairymaids rarely suffer from the smallpox and whether this means that, being as it were protected by the sign of Taurus, which is that of earth, their humours are more soundly rooted and less subject to overheating. And after Simon Ames had described his notable fight with the footpads for the third time, Becket said, ‘I wish you had not fought in a way, Mr Ames.’

  ‘Why sir? Will you have my honour lost with my purse,’ Simon asked jokingly.

  ‘No, indeed not. Only I would say you are not a man used to daggerfighting.’

  Here Dr Nunez barked with laughter and his wife smiled.

  ‘I have never studied the art,’ said Simon, a little cross. ‘But surely it means only to stab first and not be stabbed.’

  ‘Cleanly put,’ agreed Becket, ‘but still there is an art in it. You are exceedingly fortunate to be alive and unwounded. It is my belief that a man foolish enough to fight without knowing how it is done deserves the beating he invariably gets, though not perhaps to lose his life. In which case justice was done to you.’

  Ames’s nose was throbbing, his jaw aching at the hinges, his eyes ached, the wine had stung his lips, his body was covered with bruises, and his left arm hurt where Dr Nunez had let him eight ounces of blood to guard against infection. He frowned. ‘Why? Should I give my purse to any man who asks for it, meekly, without a struggle?’

  ‘It might have been less painful.’

  ‘Why not to the first beggar I meet on the street?’

  ‘Only if he have a knife in his hand and a dark alley to use it in. The alternative to such dishonour, as you put it, is learning to fight.’

  ‘And you can teach my nephew to fight, Mr Becket? Is that what this is preface to?’ Dr Nunez was smiling in his black beard, his voice lightly tinged with the Portuguese and vastly amused.

  ‘Ay it is, sir,’ said Becket, thrusting out his jaw and looking like a bulldog in the ring. ‘I am a Provost of Arms, licensed to teach the use of arms, and I am the best sword-and-buckler man in London, properly proved at my prize last year at the Belle Sauvage Inn on Ludgate. Further, I have fought the Spaniards in the Netherlands and know more of fighting than all of the drunken brawlers and Italian catamites in London put together.’

  Dr Nunez eyed Becket quizzically. ‘And what would you teach my nephew? Sword-and-buckler play?’

  Becket coughed. ‘Er…no. Nor would I expect him to take his prizes or graduate from Scholar to Free Scholar. But I can at least teach him the proper use of a dagger and the avoiding of blows…’

  ‘Why not sword-and-buckler play?’ asked Simon, bristling, ‘I am stronger than I look.’

  ‘But sword-and-buckler is suited to a man of a choleric or sanguine complection,’ said Dr Nunez smoothly, ‘and you, as you know, incline more to the phlegmatic.’

  ‘He has endless colds,’ confided Leonora Nunez while Simon flushed and finished his wine. ‘It is the dampness of England, will always have such an effect. Since we came I have never been warm once. I too am phlegmatic of nature.’

  ‘In addition, he ignores my advice.’ Dr Nunez was smiling still and wagging his finger at Simon whose ears had gone red. ‘The least a courtier must pay me is a gold crown each time that I should attend on him for his piles, costiveness, attacks of the stone, et cetera. Mine own brother’s child, who pays nothing for my words, heeds not a single one of them. When I tell him to drink tobacco for the calming of his brain and to lessen his making of phlegm, he pays no attention.’

  ‘Tobacco?’ asked Becket.

  ‘Henbane of Peru. Strickly speaking, one drinks the smoke. ’

  ‘So I have heard, but I have never tried it.’

  ‘Why you should. Come with me to my study and we shall share a pipe. It is a most valuable herb, lenitive, soothing, reduces phlegm as I have said, and it is sovereign against pains in the head or stomach. Some say it should be taken in the morning only, fasting, but to my mind it is best taken on a full stomach and in the evening so as to procure an easeful night. The savages of the New World are said to…’

  VIII

  Leonora Nunez would not hear of her nephew’s saviour traversing London after sunset when she had beds in plenty in her house, the Almighty be thanked. When Becket had gone, still coughing and his head spinning, to the fair clean linen and broidered curtains of his bed, Dr Nunez went into his study and sat down in his chair, lacing his fingers across the straining brocade over his belly. Without being asked, Simon Ames shut the door, and took out of his penner the small leather packet that had been rescued from Bonecrack Smith. He laid it down among the account books, empty piss bottles, clyster thread, papers and lancets on Dr Nunez’s desk.

  ‘It is not sealed,’ he said, in Portuguese, and wandered across the rushmat to examine the rows of sealed bottles in one of the book-cases. Dr Nunez opened the packet with the ends of his fingers and the tip of a lancet, as if anatomising an organ, and spread the papers before him. He grunted several times as he read.

  ‘Have you broken the code?’ he asked.

  Simon nodded, left his examination of a docket marking one small bottle as the urine of a child, and put another piece of paper before the doctor.

  ‘Ah. Simple enough. Where did this come from?’

  Simon went quietly to the door, opened it, shut it again.

  ‘From one of the footpads.’

  Dr Nunez raised his eyebrows. There was a short silence.

  ‘There is a tale here I have not been told, I think, Simon.’

  Simon fiddled with the Cordovan leather flap of his penner, where it was worn with his fingers, paced once across the room to examine a tapestry of Joshua at the walls of Jericho, and then returned to take the child’ s piss bottle in his hands.

  Hector Nunez sighed. ‘It is a most valuable sample,’ he said. ‘Seldom have I tasted urine so sweet.’

  Simon blinked down at the bottle.

  ‘The child died, of course. They always do with the sugar sickness, though by starving they may be made parodixically to live a little longer. It is an empirical treatment and I like it not, for it has no right justification in astrology nor in balancing of humours. I hold it but a palliative, based upon superstition, which causes suffering of hunger but cannot prevent the end. And she was a gentle child and died in much pain and fever. So I pray you Simon, if you must break a thing before you answer me, break the bottle next to it, which is only your master’s piss, and of which I may harvest more whenever I will, seeing he lives yet.’

  ‘Mr Phelippes?’ asked Simon, putting the one bottle back and taking the other.

  ‘No, Sir Francis Walsingham. He has the stone, as you surely know.’

  ‘I knew he was ill.’

  ‘He has gravel in his bladder again and must pass it before he may be easy.’ Nunez smiled. ‘If you choose not to tell me of your tale, shall we drink another pipe?’

  Simon put back the piss bottle sharply, almost knocking down the two on either side, and came to sit down by his uncle.

  ‘Somewhere in Whitehall, or somewhere in Walsingham’s household is one who belongs to Spain. There is too much that goes astray, too pat, too much known in San Lorenzo that should not be…’

  ‘A recusant?’

  ‘One that goes not to Mass and takes gold in no way that I can trace, which is the reason for my letter to Cousin Isaac in Rouen. ’

  Nunez nodded, examining his fingers.

  ‘You are certain now?’

  ‘There was a dispatch sent by my action, speaking of supplies for the relief of a certain fort. I had men placed…. In short, the Spaniards were bringing up troops to the place within a week.’

  ‘Hm. And Sir Francis?’

  ‘Sick of the stone this past week as
you said. And with this matter of the Mouse and the Guisan plot…’

  ‘But surely then he is French.’

  ‘I think not. Thanks to Mr. Fagot we have the French ambassador stopped up so tight in his earth he cannot fart without we know what he ate for his dinner that day.’ Nunez grinned and began filling his pipe again.

  Simon began to pace, knocking over a small table bearing a pestle and mortar and some teeth. He bent to pick them up, carefully piling the teeth in the mortar.

  ‘And now this. They know there was no relief for the fort…

  ‘Is it still holding out?’

  Simon blinked at him, began to stir the teeth about with the pestle. ‘Why no, of course not. And it seems the Spaniards have understood why I coneycatched them.’

  Nunez took the mortar and pestle from Simon before he should begin to grind the teeth to powder, which was not in fact to be their fate, but rather to be dissolved in aqua fortis in pursuit of a little alchemy, being Nunez’s hobby. He offered Simon the pipe.

  ‘And with such a packet found upon your dead body, then any other man’s suspicions would fall upon you, that you were the conduit, discovered only by chance, and the inquest wound up quickly.’

  Simon was coughing again, but he nodded.

  Nunez half-hooded his eyes, sucked at the smoke. ‘Which being prevented by Mr Becket, thereby poses a further question, alas.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Simon, sitting down at last, to Nunez’s relief. ‘Is he as he seems a simple man of the sword there by chance, or is he a chimaera with a Spaniard heart in an English body.’

  ‘I cannot anatomise him for you, Simon, nor do I carry windows that the Queen will not use to see into men’s hearts.’

  ‘What shall I do though?’

  ‘That depends upon how much of the sanguine humour you have within you. To be utterly safe from any such betrayal, why, dismiss him now. To take a chance on the throw of dice to find out more, keep him by you and learn his nature fully. You may even learn a little knife play which is never amiss.’