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

by Patricia Finney

  ‘Would that not make it easier for him to kill me?’

  Nunez took back the pipe and patted its bowl carefully.

  ‘You have let it go out,’ he said, searching for the tinderbox, and forgetting the candles at his shoulder. ‘So it would indeed make it easier to kill you, if that were his purpose, but even if he is a Spanish chimaera, logic will teach you that it was not. Better unknown footpads killing the man than a known swordmaster, and if he rescued you in order to impose on your confidence, well, why should he want you dead?’

  Simon nodded slowly. ‘I would like to learn swordplay,’ he said unexpectedly.

  ‘I pity the man.’

  ‘Worse fools than I have learned fighting.’

  Your own brother William told me this: fighting is like singing: it is natural to men but may be transformed by training: most can learn it, some have a genius for it, and some are blind and deaf to it and so must content themselves.’

  Simon sniffed and made a move to go to his bed. Nunez stopped him by reaching for another packet.

  ‘Speaking of Cousin Isaac…’ This packet of papers had a little spatter of blood and a lancet lying by it. ‘I have decoded most of it, but there are parts in your own private cipher.’

  ‘May Isaac be mentioned to Sir Francis?’

  ‘I leave that to your judgment, Simon.’

  IX

  Becket got his forty shillings Scholar fee of Simon from which he paid five shillings to the Italian swordmaster Rocco Bonnetti for the use of a comer of his swordschool hall at Blackfriars. The Boys of the Chapel had used it for their plays but were embroiled in a dispute with the landlord who had let it in the interim to Rocco. It was once the refectory to the monastery and still smelled a little in hot weather of cabbage soup. Rocco Bonnetti and Jerome, his boy of the moment, slept in the wine-fragrant rooms of the convent butler hard by.

  This made Rocco and Becket both near neighbours to Tom and I and our band of angels, for in the old stone lace of the monastery cloister are many little holes and shelters and cubbyholes that once were writing carrels. Stranger creatures than I live there. Once in a corner under a loose stone I found some pretty things, a piece of parchment written in Latin which was jewelled along its edge with a P that breaks into snakes and dogs and devils and sometimes invades my dreams. There was also a little plate of gold with a fish on it, rimmed with enamel and garnets that I cherish to pay for my burial, and because the angels love it too.

  Once there was a monk in his black robes came in and sat down and began to write while I half-slept, though the little cell was lightless. One of Tom’s angels rose up and debated with him. I was afraid but Tom my skullfellow was not. At length the monk smiled in surprise at the angel and the angel took him by the hand and they flew through the roof where the painted gold stars and moon are covered by fungus. In the morning there was an old man dead of cold and hunger by the cloister and we buried him in the garden among the shanties, since the parish would have nothing to do with a pauper.

  I saw them, Becket and Ames, at the daggerplay with wooden weapons in the little cloister courtyard. It is full of garbage and a sick old walnut tree, a tiny weed-smothered pond, a cat and her kittens, near full grown, hencoops and a neatly tended raised bed full of winter-sleeping herbs that Simple Neddy grows to sell to housewives.

  ‘Why here?’ protested Simon Ames as he tripped on an old boot. ‘We can scarcely move for all this.’

  ‘For a demonstration and so that Rocco sees not the tricks I will show you. Do you think that a footpad will come upon you in a good open place, cleared of rubbish? Or that he will abide by the laws of a sword-school?’

  Tom and I peeped out of our door and then scurried across the covered path to hide behind the stone fretwork and peep through a cross to see the lesson. Tom’s usual angel sat on a pillar where a saint had been once, but none save Tom and I could see her.

  Now David Becket is so big a man it seems near a miracle how fast and lightly he can move if he wants. He skips like a doe in spring and by the time the blow arrives he has shifted away. It is true what Dr Nunez said, and Becket was near to genius at swordplay: once I knew something of Defence, though dancing was more the Courtier’s mark, and it was wonderful how unhandy Simon Ames was and how patient was Becket.

  First Ames played the footpad’s part, coming at Becket from behind or before and being put aside gently, one way or another. Then Becket took the part of the footpad to test if Ames had learnt his lesson. Once and once only Simon managed to land the blow as he had been taught, which was the one time he should not have let it land and Becket, who is only flesh and blood, sat down on a hencoop and cradled his cods tenderly while he caught his breath and uncrossed his eyes.

  Very good,’ he whispered. ‘Argghhum. Do it that way and you may keep your purse next time.’

  Lord,’ said Ames, quite upset, ‘I am sorry. I slipped. I never can seem to time things right, or else my arms and legs do a different thing from the ordering of my brain. I see it perfectly in my head yet do all except what is needed. It was the same in archery.’

  ‘Archery?’

  ‘My father tried to teach it to me when I was young. He said as the Almighty had made me small and puny, blessed be He, I must kill from a distance, but alas my sight is too bad for anything but a near shot.’

  ‘Christ preserve me from ever being within a mile of your archery practice.’

  ‘I gave it up after I shot a man by the windmill in Finsbury Field. It was an expensive lawsuit and my father brake my bow.’

  ‘Never say he did.’

  ‘Oh he did and he told me…. It was far from funny at the time, be sure of that. I nearly died of shame.’

  ‘The man. Did he live?’

  ‘In the end, yes. Uncle Hector attended him. He recovered and did not need his arm amputated.’

  Becket nodded, pulled himself to his feet and walked with only a slight limp to the rail where I was hiding.

  ‘Now then Tom,’ he said. ‘Have you learnt anything?’

  I stood up. ‘This is the Clever One,’ I told him, ‘not Tom.’ Indeed David knows my right name of old, but has kindly forgot it as I have, to keep it safe from devils.

  ‘Well then, did you learn anything from your spying?’

  ‘I was not spying neither,’ said I. ‘I have no need for it. Only I thought you would prefer not to be disturbed.’

  Ames was hovering behind him with that eyebrows lifted, expectant look men have when they are waiting to be introduced. I made a Court bow, which raised his eyebrows a notch higher, and told him who and what I was, viz., Tom the zany, Tom of Bedlam, who talks with angels.

  And now his face was turned to a polite mask, and Tom could see behind it all the questions, so he smiled in answer and nodded at the angel on the pillar.

  ‘How do you know him?’ Simon asked, while Tom stood on the rail, the better to converse with his angel.

  Becket smiled and scratched behind his ear. ‘Once we failed to study law together at Gray’s Inn…’

  ‘No, no,’ shouted Tom, waving his arms. ‘That was before, I was never there then.’

  ‘True enough. He was no less sane than any of us then, unless drink and women and overmuch philosophising at two in the morning were signs of lunacy. ’

  ‘Nor was the Courtier,’ added Tom.

  ‘And it may be the Court did send him mad, or maybe the seeds of it were already sown in him. I recall his poetry was always strange.’

  Tom was singing and so I could not say what I wanted, which was that now I was myself a poem like unto the one I sent my brother to show I was not dead of the plague in Bedlam where he put me.

  ‘Later I broke him out of Bedlam Hospital for old times’ sake and later still he saved my life.’

  ‘How?’ asked Ames, fascinated.

  Becket shrugged, cracking the louse he had caught absent-mindedly between his thumb and forefinger. I smiled at him, recalling his face beyond the bars when he paid his penny
with the other sightseers to see me caper, how it was impassive, with neither dreadful pity nor ugly merriment nor even unease upon it, to save my feelings.

  ‘I essayed to kill myself and he prevented me,’ he said, making of it a joke, ‘and then tempted me to it again by haranguing me about his angels. ’

  ‘Why not?’ shouted Tom again, for all I tried to stop him. ‘The angels did it, all I do is what the angels tell me, and Gabriel saw the fiend on your shoulder sucking your blood.’

  Simon Ames stepped back a pace, paling. Becket stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  ‘I hoped you would meet him, first because he is an old friend and has more sanity in him than you would suppose now, and second because he is in a way an illustration to my argument. You say that men are in fact not much better than beasts…’

  ‘No indeed, sir, I do not.’ said Simon. ‘I have expressed myself very ill if you think that. It is that there is a kind of phlegmatic rage in men, very much worse than that of beasts which is choleric, for it may twist and warp all that is best in them, yea, even their Faith in the Almighty, and turn to evil all that they would do for good…’

  Becket blinked at him as anyone would. He blew through his teeth. ‘And where have you seen such men?’

  Simon shook his head, as if he had not meant to speak so brutally, as if the words had been unknown to him before he heard his mouth speaking them. Becket plowed on, less sure himself of what he wanted to say.

  ‘What I wished to show you was a man that has been treated by…others as they would scorn to treat a beast, brought as low as Saul when he walked on all fours and ate grass in his madness…’

  Never,’ said Tom, ‘I never did. I do not like grass.’ Becket was thinking of my sorry state when he brought me out of Bedlam Hospital in a cart full of plague corpses, and myself free of plague but near enough to a corpse, with sorrow and hunger rotting my insides and shackle galls my arms and legs, – yet catch him in his soberer mood and he can talk to you as sanely as any man of the Court, which he once was.’

  ‘That says little enough.’

  ‘As any man then. And even the lunatic frenzy which he calls Tom, even he has a strange sense in him. I have questioned him and there are personalities among his angels and devils which he talks to, and none sorts so ill with what others have spoken about angels and devils. Perhaps his brainsickness has stripped a film from his eyes which we have and know not. Perhaps in very truth he sees angels and speaks with them, and for that we call him mad and lock him up.’

  ‘On the lordly lofts of Bedlam

  With stubble soft and dainty

  Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips, ding dong

  And wholesome hunger plenty,’

  * * *

  sang Tom, dancing on the carved railing, words from that last poem I made.

  ‘Surely you cannot mean that the mad may teach the sane of the world of spirits?’ said Ames.

  ‘Perhaps he sees in the glass more clearly than we do.’

  ‘Pfft.’ said Simon. ‘You will have the Archbishop’s men on our heels with talk like that.’

  ‘Lord, I am no damned Puritan to preach a sermon on it, only curious. Have you never dreamed you were awake and not realised the truth until you woke?’

  ‘I never dream.’ said Ames sadly, which caused Tom to look sidelong at him. In Tom’s sight, of a sudden, it seemed that there was a man held in a block of ice which showed through the flesh only at his eyes, and yet in its centre beat his heart and struggled to make heat to warm him and melt the ice also. And the ice itself was in the nature of a desperate defence, that sundered him from himself, as if he were at Civil War and could not bear to acknowledge his division, but rather lost himself in a glacier of untruth. And yet, as men who have traversed the Alps attest, in all glaciers there are lumps of rock and mud and whole trees, as the land beneath is murdered by their weight.

  Tom wrapped his arms about himself, clasping his sharp elbows, and shivered.

  ‘Hm.’ said Becket, watching Ames with his eyes narrowed down to long-lashed slits. ‘Would you deny that men have souls?’

  ‘No, never!’ Simon’s voice was sharp. ‘Only that they are not so simply known as through the ravings of a… .’

  1 caught at Becket’s sleeve. ‘If you are my friend, David Becket,’ I said, ‘buy me food and drink with the money in your purse.’

  At that he laughed, although it was not meant as a jest, and turned to Simon and said, ‘You see? This madness is not so simple as all that neither, Ames. Where will they still have you, Tom? The Silver Fish?’

  ‘No.’ I said. ‘Tom fought a devil in there that was climbing in the cooking pot and upset it all over the fire and so they beat me and threw me out the door and Goodwife Lily said if I came back she would let my devils out herself with her butcher’s knife. Even though it was a very evil flux devil, full of poison, green and purple like a bramble jelly…’

  ‘So the Gatehouse is the only place?’

  I nodded. ‘Goodwife Alys likes me to put a good word on her brewing.’

  ‘My God, are you the one to blame for her beer?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I told him with dignity, coming down off the cloister wall. ‘When I have blessed it, both the beer and the ale are much better.’ Which I had not done for a while, but no matter – the worst booze in the world is better than Thames river water.

  Goodwife Alys let Ames and Becket sit in a booth by the back door and in lordly fashion, I left them to call for drink and food while I followed the Goodwife into her yard sheds where her bucks bubbled to themselves under their covers. That day’s mash was into its third straining to make very small beer indeed, and her poor drudge of a daughter was bending at the fire with her eyes streaming, building it up to boil the wort with hops. I jabbered nonsense in the midst of the room and waved my arms, while she stood by with her thick arms folded and her lips pressed firm together like a mousetrap for words.

  We ate the ordinary, which was a mutton pottage with dumplings, and I kept Tom tight-reined. Becket who knows my fits sometimes better than I do called for a board and for chessmen and set him to play me, while Simon watched. After I mated, Ames took the board himself and we played three in succession and each time I beat him, though the third time 1 gave him a pawn. Becket sat back drinking steadily, playing bearmaster.

  At last Ames took his green velvet hat off and straightened the feather with his thumb.

  ‘Are you a counterfeit?’ he asked directly. ‘One of those who coneycatch by feigning lunacy?’

  Becket smiled. ‘Touched your pride, has he, with his artfulness at chess?’

  ‘1 cannot conceive that a man could be mad and play so well…’

  ‘Ah but sir,’ I said, ‘you are ignorant of madness having never suffered it. Besides, I am not mad, it is the world and men like you that are mad and blind both, being unable to see Tom’s angels.’

  ‘Who is Tom?’

  ‘That is what he calls his skullmate, as it were another man locked in his brain,’ explained Becket. ‘It is not his true name.’

  ‘Just so,’ I said and smiling patted my belly full of stew and penny loaf. ‘Some of him hides here, and some in here,’ – I rapped my pate – ‘and when the angels come he speaks to them and is instructed by the Queen Moon.’

  ‘Is Tom a devil?’ asked Simon disbelievingly. ‘Is this an occasion of possession?’

  ‘There are devils truly that possess,’ I told him. ‘I have fought with them on occasion, to save the unangeled from them, for which no thanks, but Tom is a poor mad lunatic who cannot help what he does. And when he captures this my body and makes me caper I must suffer it meekly…’

  Ames was looking questioningly at David Becket.

  ‘As to his trueness,’ Becket said judiciously, ‘I think a counterfeit Tom of Bedlam would get more by begging, and carry soap to chew, and live better than Tom does who has forgot the use of soap and lives in a little hole in the Blackfriars cloister which is empty be
cause no one will pay for such a den. As to whether a devil has a hold on him, our Saviour told us to judge a tree by its fruit. I think a devil would rather have encouraged me to murder myself, not saved me.’

  Ames nodded. ‘How did it happen?’ he asked in a quiet neutral tone of voice.

  ‘Why, 1 jumped in the Thames,’ Becket said lightly, ‘well weighted with beer and aqua vitae and breastplate full of stones, and Tom jumped in after me.’

  Tom must be heard. ‘Angels,’ he said, ‘it was angels.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘And what brought you to such a pass?’ asked Ames.

  ‘Ah.’ Becket smiled, shifting his bulk and drinking. ‘No doubt it was the fighting against Spain in the Low Countries, a thing which 1 thought would be very fine and glorious when I went and found to be far different when I got there, though I think I was none so ill a soldier. I little knew myself when I returned but now am cured I think. Perhaps I shall go back to Holland again.’

  ‘Was it angels with you also?’

  Becket laughed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘though Tom often tries to make me see his spirit friends. Only the world seemed so far distant from me that it was as if I stood upon a tiny island with water all about but could see the smoke from friendly fires on either shore, and knew I could never come there; that my doom was to stand upon an invisible island in the midst of a cold grey river. ’ He stopped and finished his drink, clearly not tasting it which was the better for him. ‘So it seemed to me in such melancholia that the true river could cure me of the river in my mind, and in some sense it did. And there was a woman who spurned me to marry another, and a friend that was no friend…. But the Spanish are a melancholy breed, they carry it on them like the plague.’

  Now Tom and I have been with Becket while he fights in his drunkenness with many enemies, bearded and fiendish and speaking Spanish, and so I knew this was not all the truth, though more of it than he usually tells.

  A ballad singer came in by the back door, his broadsheets pinned to his jerkin and spilling out of his basket. Simon Ames stared in silence at his own pierced and defeated bone soldiers and then nodded.