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

by Patricia Finney

  ‘An invisible island in a cold broad river,’ he murmured to himself and smiled briefly at Becket. ‘A good figure for melancholy.’

  ‘You speak as one that knows the river?’ said Becket.

  ‘No, I know it by report only,’ said Ames to Becket too hastily. ‘At least not in such a way as to desire death. No. And so it was this man Tom that restored your hope?’

  And now the ballad singer was tuning the house lute, which needed it sorely. He would have been a handsome man if he had been taller and less pockmarked, and his hair and old velvet cap cleaner and less gypsy black. I knew him for he pulled the crowds on Fleet Street having a better voice and more memory than most ballad sellers. He never minded if I begged among the listeners.

  Becket smiled at Ames again, marking the change from near honesty to dissimulation. ‘In the tale of Pandora and her box, some say that a single blessing was left after all the evils and fiends and miseries had made their escape from the box she opened, and some say there was yet a last and most insidious curse. But they call it by the one name of Hope, and I think so must I…

  One of Tom’s angels was singing and darting about the room. I could see no danger there, though there were two cutpurses drinking in a comer and some weighted dice skinning a poor coney of a farmer under the stairs. The ballad singer strummed the lute a little and began to sing the newest song, hot come from the printing press, he said, and the tale of Tom O’Bedlam.

  'From the hag and hungry goblin

  That into rags would rend ye,

  And the spirit that stands by the naked man

  In the book of moons, defend ye.

  That of your five sound senses

  You never be forsaken

  Nor wander from yourselves with Tom

  Abroad to beg your bacon.

  * * *

  Alas, the sorrow of that bastard child

  Which soweth love will make me wild,

  And if I must die so on I moan

  'Till her Moon’s face become mine own

  And sorrow has ceased for her silver feast,

  Hey diddle, sing diddle, hi diddle I drone.

  * * *

  ‘Of thirty bare years have I

  Twice twenty been enraged

  And of forty been three times fifteen

  In durance sadle caged.

  In the lordly lofts of Bedlam

  With stubble soft and dainty…’

  * * *

  No more could I bear to hold Tom upon the leash, so let it slip and Tom jumped up on the table and kicked away the treacherous chessmen with their twin faces of black and white, and shouting of Lucifer who is my kin, and all his works. In a minute Becket had caught my arms in a grip of bronze, while Simon Ames chased the rolled men about the sticky few rushes and the ballad singer smiled and nodded at my drumming up of his trade and pitched his fine bell-voice louder.

  ‘A thought I took for Maudlin

  And a cruse of cockle pottage,

  With a thing thus tall, sky bless you all!

  I befell into this dotage.

  I slept not since the Conquest,

  Till then I never waked,

  Till the roguish boy of love where I lay

  Me found and stripped me naked.’

  * * *

  I howled that I was betrayed and that they should pay me the fee for it, but none understood me and Tom was flailing at Becket who gripped and shook me and now came Goodwife Alys’s eldest son towards us with a stout veney stick in his great fist, and Becket tripped my legs from under me, lifted me up and carried me like a maiden to the back door.

  ‘…The moon’s my constant mistress

  And the lovely owl my marrow;

  The flaming drake and the night crow make

  Me music to my sorrow.

  Alas, the sorrow of that bastard child,

  Which soweth love…’

  * * *

  And then we were out in the Gatehouse yard, and up the maltman’s passage and into Water Lane and so onto Fleet Street, past the hammering in Hanging Sword Court to the conduit where Becket held me over the water trough and swore he would drown me now, until Tom stopped his kicking and shouting. Then he set me down quite gently and sat on the edge of the trough while I squatted and played at pebbles and thought Tom may have made worse what was better mended by quiet. But that was a thought too late, as it came out after.

  ‘Ah Tom, poor Tom,’ he said to me, ‘was it my fault? Did the chessplaying strain your poor brain?’

  No,’ I told him, after a while in thought. ‘In chessplaying I am closer to your world, for the reason that angels are not much interested by chess. Nor Tom neither.’

  Simon Ames was coming towards us, looking about him, and having paid the reckoning, no doubt. Becket hailed and waved at him.

  Then what was it turned you lunatic so suddenly? Was it the rising of the moon or a planet, or something more near?’

  Why should he notice a mere ballad singer? There is always music or singing about; every barber’s shop rings with jumbled voices trying to ape the latest court madrigal, every street has its own ballad seller and sometimes several who compete like cats. Wet any Englishman with beer and he turns first to singing and then to fighting. Besides, it is a well-known fact that madness is calmed by music. I tried to tell Becket the true reason, but the Queen Moon stopped the words in my throat.

  ‘Something more near,’ I muttered through clenched teeth and then an angel put his hand on my mouth and Tom was king again.

  X

  Summer 1583

  There are roads in England of infinite variety, many now new planted with wicked hedges depriving the commoners of their commons, most unmended since the nearest monastery was dissolved or since the Queen went that way upon progress, foul bogs in winter and dust baths in summer. Yet in summer upon a Roman road a pedlar of embroidery silks and ribbons and suchlike women’s gear may step lightly enough and whistle to his pack mare in a cheery drone. The Romans were ever stone spiders and no monk’s way has lasted better than their pavements. Here were no yawning great potholes to lose a cart and horse in, only some digging of the best parts and an old fort by old Sir William Fant for the building of his manor house. Beyond the poppies the haymaking was at full tilt, the mowers upon the far side of the great open field scything through the grass at a fair rhythm, like the wind made visible.

  Past the fields and up a hill where one of the village copses lay, this one but a few years since cutting, and Peter Snagge the pedlar must pass by the thick growth of withies from their ancient bases, the wicker deer fences sound and unbroken and the new wood green and bushy in the sun, well flowered with butterflies. Here also were wild strawberries and brambles, and Peterkin slowed his pace. Then there was a movement that was not an animal. He caught up his stick, narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Sir,’ came the call, weakly from the thickest part of the bushes this side of the fences. ‘I pray you, help me…I am…caught…

  Peterkin circled cautiously closer to the bushes and then grinned, put away his weapon. There was a poor fellow caught in every man’s nightmare, held by a deer trap about his left leg and his hose caught round his ankles. A basket of ballads a little way off and the penny pipe in his belt pouch spoke his trade of balladmonger.

  ‘God curse it, to be taken like this…. I think my leg is broken.’

  Striving to be grave-faced, Peterkin pushed gingerly through bramble vines.

  ‘Why I know you, Goodman Dun, were you not at the Bear’s Head two nights gone? I am sorry to see you in such a state.’

  ‘Can you get it off me?’

  ‘Oh no doubt, if you can be still enough. There is a way of the thing, all it needs is a stave in the spring…. You can go back to London and tell them a new way of catching coneys. Your leg might not be broken indeed, though it feel that way, and even if it is, so you live, well it’s no harm to your profession, you can still sing, and I have a fine salve in my pack to cure all manner of hurts, essence
of St John’s wort and meadowsweet principally, compounded to a particular fineness by my wife and from her own family receipt the which came down to her by her mother…’

  Peterkin was feeling about with his staff for the spring lever, averting his eyes politely from the poor man’s bare arse and holding his breath against laughter. Being well-known for his stories of peddling and his pillicock, he rejoiced at a true tale unlooked-for.

  ‘If you have not fought it like a beast, be sure it will mend like new again with the use of my salve…. Ah now, here we have it and so…’

  The knife took him under the jaw, cut his windpipe and neck vein in one slash. The ballad singer toppled the pedlar’s astonished body sideways to be away from the blood, wiped a few spots of it off his jerkin and stabbed the knife in the earth. Carefully he took his leather-collared leg from the wedged jaws of the trap and pulled up his hose. Then he went to find the pedlar’s mare.

  Sir William Fant had set his fine new house facing south-west so that the setting sun would flash on his broad windows and colour its fair sandstone frontage and knitted chimneys with a nightly pouring of gold. Behind lowered the old fortress on its hill, quarried down to stumps, a haunt of cattle and children playing at English and French. Above Sir William’ s great golden oak door was the carving of a strange creature, snake-nosed, snake-tailed and large to compare with the Crusader knight leading it home. Somewhere in the old castle yard its bones were reverently buried, and if the carver got his pattern from a bestiary book, well, the monk which drew that had never seen an elephant neither, and so both were well-enough pleased with it.

  But the ballad singer turned aside from the door below the glorious trumpeting animal and walked about to the kitchen garden and passed through its lesser gate. He wiped his hands on the front of his leather jerkin, opened his mouth and gave forth in bronze the pedlar’s chant.

  ‘Fine ribbons, laces, points and stomachers, come buy, come buy…. Best silks and needles, bobbins and pins, come buy…’

  ‘Well, that is never Peterkin,’ said a small fierce woman with her fists full of coriander and garlic. ‘What are you doing with poor old Jenny, I know he’d never part with her. Have you stolen her, eh?’

  ‘No mistress, Peterkin’s sick of a tertian fever and being his nephew I am making his rounds…’

  ‘I never knew he had a soul in the world apart from his trull in Salisbury.’

  Wishing he had known of her earlier, the balladmonger smiled. ‘Alas, my father and Peterkin were no friends.’

  ‘Hmf. Did he tell you the orders we gave him in spring?’

  ‘The mistress has need of broidery silks, that I know and…’

  ‘Laces, by God, laces for stays, the last he brought were too short…. Well come on lad, come into the kitchen and bring your packs. Sam, Samuel, move your lazy arse over here and rub down this pony; no oats, mind, and you, come with me…’

  Barging past the stableboy, the little woman banged the kitchen door almost on the ballad singer’s nose, and so past the pantry and the buttery to the roaring heat of the kitchen, where frantic preserve-making loaded the air with essence of raspberry. Two weary girls were grinding sugar loaves in great stone mortars, a babe crawled about in the sawdust picking up fragments of sugar to eat. In a comer sat a small fat dog on a cushion watching a haunch of beef being set upon the spit.

  ‘Where are the breadcrumbs and the dripping?’ shrieked the small woman, rushing over to it. ‘I have fools, idle nithings, numbskulls and vermin to attend me, no breadcrumbs, no fat, how may the meat be cooked, eh? Stark naked on a spit like St Sebastian? You child, Mary, fetch the oldest loaf and the crock marked with three crosses, three hear me? and bring them hither. Madam, here is Peterkin’s nephew in his stead… Not like that halfwit, or be spitted yourself, here, guide it by the bone.

  A woman in a loose English gown turned away from the great pots bubbling on their trivets over the fire, her face flushed red with heat and fine wisps of red hair escaping from her worn velvet hood to plaster round her forehead. She wore no stays because she was six months gone with child and still held a long spoon and a piece of marble dripped with conserve.

  ‘No, still not set, have you apple peelings put by, Goodwife Bickley?’

  ‘In the red pot by the Spanish raisins, Maud, run fetch them now and take your child out from under my feet, give it raisins if you must but have him not eat off the floor…. The pedlar, madam, with laces I trust…. You boy, not on your sleeve, ay you, blow your snot on the ground by the door like a gentleman…’

  The ballad singer clutched his cap from his head, bowed low, all the while thanking God for the lucky chance of it. Here was Mistress Fant, lady of the manor, nodding graciously to his obeisance and handing spoon and stone to a grave-faced carrot-headed child in a let-out rose velvet gown behind her.

  ‘Goodman Snagge, is your uncle not well?’

  ‘A tertian ague.’ said the ballad singer smoothly. ‘Struck down by it a week gone, poor man, and too sick to move.’

  ‘Has he seen an apothecary?’ asked Mrs Fant, her brow knitting. ‘I think I have some ague water still. Elizabeth my dear, go unto Dorcas with this key and have her fetch out a quarter pint of the ague water in the stillroom cabinet, which I must still some more. Have we fennel seeds, Goodwife?’

  ‘In the pantry by the pepper, good store, now this is fine Robin, have you not learnt the way of winding up a jack yet, if I can study to learn it with my old brain you can surely…. Give it here.’

  Clutching at his reason as well as his cap and sweating in the infernal heat, the ballad singer set his packs upon the floor and found lying at the top, thank God, a packet of long stay-laces. Next to it lay the embroidery silks, neatly wound on folded paper to save the weight of bobbins. Below lay ribbons and whalebones for stays and lace and delicate fine lawn folded about coarse linen to protect it.

  ‘Now, I must have crewel needles,’ began Mrs Fant, and ran at speed through a list to make a man’s head reel. All the packs must be opened and searched through until at last she was satisfied with her little pile of booty. Putting back his wares while Mrs Fant tested the conserve again, the ballad singer mopped his brow and remembered what he had come for.

  ‘My uncle in particular bade me give you this fine red silk, with his compliments, the best and truest dye he ever saw. He said you would know the colour, for it is like the wicked Dragon of Wales in the old tale, he said it was the colour of a prodigal son and also the colour of Rome and the priesthood.’

  For a moment he thought she had not heard, or if she heard, had not understood, but then he saw the flush drain down from her cheeks. She sat slowly upon a bench near the fire, still holding the card of silk.

  ‘Peterkin never knew that…’

  The ballad singer bowed and did not answer. A tumult had broken out beside them for the little dog who had once turned the spit in his running wheel had jumped down from his cushion and taken a sly bite out of the meat. Mrs Fant never blinked at the shrieking girls nor the shrill yelping of the dog after Goodwife Bickley’s boot connected with his flank. The bitten piece was cut out (and covertly given to the dog by someone) and the meat hefted onto its spit.

  Behind them the cauldron conversed in slow bubbles and plump Maud came puffing up at last with her hands full of dried apple peelings.

  ‘Not like that,’ said Agnes Fant sharply, awakening in time to stop her dumping the lot into the conserve. ‘Put them in a cheesecloth bag first, or we must fish them out again…. In the chest by the window, Maud, must you be told everything like a maid? Yes, I see, Goodman…Snagge. Yes.’

  The maidens at the sugar grinding were now casting longing looks at his packs. Mrs Fant saw them and smiled a little.

  ‘If you would find more trade, ask the steward for a mug of beer and bread and cheese and then open your packs again in the orchard. I shall send the maids out to you by threes. What is the price I owe you?’

  The ballad seller snatched a number from the
air.

  ‘I reckon it two shillings and fourpence,’ he said.

  ‘You reckon it wrongly, I think. What will your uncle say when he returns and finds you have cut his prices? Speak to the steward and he shall pay your reckoning. The girls may pay for themselves.’

  She was gracious to content him before the others, but he thought her mouth was moving of its own motion, saying the right words, beneath fear in her eyes, fear and hope uneasily combined.

  She nodded her head and he knew himself dismissed, made his courtesy, and threaded his way out again. Goodwife Bickley watched him balefully as he passed the table laden with fruit, daring him to touch any. One of the maids stopped her grinding to wink at him and the baby sat on a stone stuffing fistfuls of raisins into his mouth and laughing.

  Behind him and watching him in a haze of sweet fumes sat Agnes Fant, bom Strangways, my sister, that once was my little plump red-haired Agnes, a puppy at my heels with a stout heart to climb whatever tree I dared, in despite of her short legs and her petticoats. She blinked down at the red silk thread in her hand and indeed it was a fine shining red, blazing on its folded paper like a poppy on a field of snow.

  XI

  Autumn 1583

  Now must we return to the Mundus Papyri of which Simon Ames also is a native. Sir Francis Walsingham knows his quality better than I do, for that he has been clerk and secretary to his Honour’s own secretary Mr Thomas Phelippes for several years. His mind is of a sort that Sir Francis and Lord Burghley seek for, no matter what the temper of the heart, and then use as seems to them proper.

  Though he is a young man still, his hair is thinning back from his brow and what is left is of a nondescript shade like dead grass. His nose is oppressed by spectacles when he works, which he keeps in his penner and ties about his head with black ribbon. In fact he is by way of being the runt of his litter and lineage, which tends to the large and bold. An uncle, by name Francisco, is commander of the English garrison at Youghal in the misted swamps of Ireland and a fine soldier, well-feared by the wild Irish. He has fourteen brothers and sisters, being a son of the Purveyor and Merchant for Her Majesty’s Grocery, Mr Dunstan Benjamin George Ames, of Crutched Friars, gentleman. This, though he is a Marrano, is attested as well as any in the land, for the Queen gave Dunstan Ames his Grant of Arms fifteen years ago.