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

by Patricia Finney

  And here at last is a man who comes striding quickly through the streets, a plain wool suit on his back and a plain hat on his head, his hair dyed from red to brown in reversal of the whore’s usual progression, his eyes the twin of Agnes’ own grey but colder and hotter also. In by the servant’s gate and up the stairs to where Agnes sits by the window, her hands clasped upon her stomach. She sees him and her pale mask of a face melts into happiness and welcome, her arms open as she rises to greet him. But his expression stops her and humbly she kneels to her brother, ardently calling him Father and asking for his blessing. He does not correct her. So touching a reunion between my brother and sister.

  Outside, hidden in an alley, I puked in a gutter.

  XV

  Autumn 1583

  I was dancing in Fleet Street with the Lady Moon, dressed in red and white spirals, but a barbarian set upon me, beat me over the head and snatched my lady from me, which caused her to melt back into a mere barber’s pole. The barber roared at me for spoiling his sign by uprooting it, made to beat me with it but thought better of that, seeing he would do it more damage. Cursing me up hill and down dale he went back to his shop and was greeted by laughter and applause from the beards and lovelocks awaiting his shears.

  The ballad seller Edmund Dun that was the cause of my trouble carried on down Fleet Street, still singing his latest song, Tom O’Bedlam. And Tom and I picked ourselves up out of the gutter and followed him covertly, plucking turds from my worn tawny velvet rags. As I watched from under an awning, came a man to buy the ballad, and a girl giggling, and another man. Then a fourth that seemed in no way different, but to him the ballad seller gave a sheet also from the breast of his doublet. So it went on, and the song battered about my head so I was hard put to it to keep the reins and martingale tight upon Tom, and the Queen Moon flitted balefully above us and smiled a white smile.

  * * *

  ‘I know more than Apollo

  For oft when he lies sleeping

  I behold the stars at bloody wars

  And the wounded welkin weeping.

  The moon embraces her shepherd

  And the Queen of Love her warrior,

  While the first doth horn the star of mom

  And the next the heavenly farrier…’

  * * *

  And here came another boy with his penny clutched tight, well dressed in a dark blue cloth livery, seamed with velvet and his linen blackworked with swans, his face pale and anxious and his hat pulled down on his forehead. He too got a sheet more than a ballad for his penny and ran 0ff in haste.

  Would we follow the ballad seller or the boy? Tom was still held fast by the ballad and would not heed my urging, so perforce it was the ballad seller that became our quarry. He sauntered on and bought a pie from a cookshop and beer in another place, and at last he came to Hanging Sword Court that still has a rusty sword hung up like an inn. Once it was a swordmaster’s school, now it is a joiner’s yard and rings with hammering and banging. They were bringing a two-wheeled cart in at the gates, with much shouting and toing and froing. The ballad seller stood by the gate and watched with the pie stretching out the pocks on his dark cheeks. A man detached from the throng of workmen and the two nodded to each other. Then the man turned and so I saw his face clearly for the first time in nine years, and although it was changed by a scanty reddish beard and by the years, and by the stain of Bedlam across my memory, yet still I knew him. It was like a crack of thundering light from the grey sky: this was Adam my brother, this was Lucifer, this was Cain that put me in Bedlam, this was my brother that I stole apples for, that I fought for a box of sugared plums, this was my brother that put me in Bedlam Hospital and gave the kind warders there leave to flog the madness from my mind and the flesh from my bones and the poetry from my heart. That they failed was none of his doing. Adam who once followed me about like a puppy, who hated the shame of my madness, that I taught to spit, who put me in Bedlam to rot whence I sent him the poem I became. I had not known for certain before that it had reached him.

  What could I do? Down swooped the Queen Moon and ripped open my head, and out burst Tom like Athena in all his wildness and a great fit of angels fell upon me, a cartwheeling hurlyburly. Deep within I knew that capering and shouting about Lucifer at the gate of Hanging Sword Court was not the best plan, but Tom would have it otherwise. At least I could take enough grip upon my bolting brain that when ghost-faced Adam raised his arm and pointed at me and called some men watching to catch me, 1 fled down an alleyway and ran for the warren of Whitefriars where they lost me.

  My father held to the Catholic faith in his heart, I think, but dissembled it outwardly, and went to church in the village to avoid fines. My mother was a fair trembling earnest creature held steady by a steely spit of religion and the fires of hell forever roasting at her conscience.

  Nothing could be good that was not perfect, nor would she hold compromise with any Devil’s thing. 1 never saw anyone work so in prayer, she laboured at it like a man digging a ditch, so she might almost have been a Puritan but for the rosary denting her plump palm. Adam she bore in pain and difficulty, and Agnes nearly killed her: I stood, a newly breeched boy of seven on the stairs, hearing her shriek and curse God while Agnes fought her way into the world. I was beaten for lying when I asked why she had spoken so wickedly of God.

  When I went to Gray’s Inn and then to my cousin at Court, there was still a grateful blurring and a mist over religion and besides, I was never fanatical and found it no hardship to go to church since I must. For that she cast me from her, in her last days, weeping salt over my apostasy. Adam cleaved to my mother; Agnes’ faith I know not, for she went to learn huswifery with my mother’s sister, Catherine Nisbet, and by then I was already losing sight of myself in the many-coloured Court.

  My angels and the Queen Moon have taught us many strange things about God since the deathcart brought me out of Bedlam with Becket cursing upon the driver’s seat like a broad thunder-browed Charon. Now I will go to any church that lets me in, but alas the churchwardens like me not and drive me out like the dogs and hens, and so am I bereft of God’s Word entirely. God Himself, however, has not deserted me, nor never will, only stone churches and their stone priests and their strange stone words.

  But the Court… Her Majesty has built it into a reflection of herself, a brilliantly coloured, never-still maze, cast around and about and set by the ear by this whim and that, this faction and that, but somehow keeping a steady purpose and a steady beat about the bejewelled small woman at the heart of it, Queen Elizabeth.

  I served her before strangeness overcame me, like hundreds of other young men, and I was none so bad at dancing and my new tawny velvet suit matched well with my chestnut hair. Twice she smiled upon me and gave me her hand to kiss and cast the glamour of her beauty on me. But it was not that which sent me mad, for all the sonnets I wrote protesting that it was, only the falsity of the Court itself. It was lie built upon lie but powdered and prinked to seem like a greater truth, artfully conceived by the Queen to entertain restless men. It seemed all to be a dream, with its lurid clash of silks and velvets and jewels and ruffs all in ceaseless motion through the stench of shit and piss, until it was so bad the Queen went upon her progress while her palaces were cleaned. It was a dream full of Arcadian poetry, but with no firm ground underfoot, as if the floors were made of marchpane and sugar plate and wet comfits, and so I lost my footing and fell through. In truth I know not what I did when I first fell in a fit of angels, ran stark naked through a banquet or some such no doubt.

  Being in England at the time, Adam came post-haste to London and aS weeks passed and still I raved, still bothered by angels, his fine drawn spotty face thinned to a blade with anger and horror of my strangeness. Five doctors pronounced my fit of angels unbreakable by music and only fit to be chained, so he was transformed into Cain, into Lucifer. To be sure, it was not that he would inherit of our father in my stead if I were lunatic, indeed I was lunatic and it was throu
gh no agency of his. But a little truth might have salved the hurt I think, a little truth and rest. Instead he had me chained and born squawking like a trussed hen to a little narrow stone cell. There he gave the Bethlem hospital warder silver and rights upon me to try whether he could beat the madness from me and if not to hold me safe until he should come again. Then, keeping my secret, telling none of my old friends how I fared, Adam took ship again for France. He never came again to Bethlem gate, only sent money twice a year.

  I know not why any think that madness can be flogged out of a man: it was when I lay in pain and hunger upon straw and ordure in Bedlam that my angels truly befriended me and Tom brake forth and the Queen Moon took me into her care. All else had deserted me and left my soul to fall in coloured glass pieces like an old church window when a Reformer puts a stone through it.

  Thus raving of past sadness, Tom lay in a gutter in the Temple, while Ramme sat in an upper room in St Paul’s Wharf and watched a house. Once under his eyes a kitchen girl bought a ballad. Once a boy came running a message and dabbled juice from an apple tart upon the black swans on his linen. The pity of it was that Simon was too good a Conner of ciphers to be there, or he might have recognised the boy. Perhaps not. Ramme did not: for all his upcurled beard and ringlets, he was not a noticer of pageboys.

  At last Simple Neddy that is my near neighbour in Blackfriars found Tom capering and white with exhaustion by Temple Bar again. Being simple he had no fear of madness, so he took me by the hand and spoke kindly and haltingly to me in his thick muddy voice, and bought me a pie, and so gentled the angels from me. And yet I could not sleep as he begged me and could not drink the infusion he made of herbs to calm me. Had I truly seen Adam, or was he too a particle of my soul, broken out into the world and seen by no one else? The world is so uncertain, so apt to change.

  I broke away from Simple Neddy’s creaseless hands and crept back towards Hanging Sword Court, well hidden by the crowds. The gates were open, a concourse of people crowding round to see a sight. In the midst of them walked a tall slim man with a long face a little like an amiable sheep’s, his hair a wispy pale brown, the perfection of his green doublet and hose and the knife-sharpness of the lace on his ruff shouting of the Court. Beside him trotted Simon Ames with a bundle of papers under his arm and his new gown not fitting across his shoulders, despite the splendour of its marten facings. I crept closer, hidden by a sawhorse. ‘So you think he is pricing low?’ asked the parfit knight.

  ‘Yes, Sir Philip, very low,’ said Simon. ‘Mr Broom’s labour costs are at the going rate, but all his materials are good cheap, to say the least.’

  ‘Jesu, if this is cheap, God keep me from an expensive place. And two shillings in the pound is the best your cousin can do?’

  ‘He was not easy to persuade at that level, sir.’

  ‘Only my father in law’s credit saved me, no doubt.’

  ‘Sir Francis Walsingham’s credit is always good.’ Simon’s face was smooth.

  Sir Philip Sidney shouted with laughter. ‘Which shows how little anyone knows. Do you know what he lost on the Duke d’Alençon business? No.’

  ‘Surely Her Majesty will recompense him…’

  ‘Surely she will,’ said Sidney, now turned to gravity. ‘It would be a very shocking thing if she did not. I expect she will let him kiss her hand at least. Mr Ralegh is plucking all the plums this year.’

  Simon coughed and looked uncomfortable. Sidney strode ahead of him to where Richard Broom waited with his family in their best clothes, and his workmen behind him, and behind that the looming skeleton of the dragon, as if it were rotting in reverse, from death to life. At the Last Trump we shall all look like that. It was still and unhammered for the first time that day.

  They moved around it while Mr Broom explained how a slender strong man would be employed to hide within the body of the dragon and rise up at the right time within its neck to play his part of ferocious beast and submissive servant.

  ‘Hot work,’ said Sir Philip, narrowing his eyes at the articulation of the neck, unheaded and half-completed. ‘Have you found a man willing?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Broom. ‘A distant cousin. Very reliable.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘I can fetch him if your honour…

  ‘Yes, if you would, Mr Broom. I must be sure that he can do what he is required to.’

  Hidden behind a stack of timber, I watched as a child was sent running to find him. Meanwhile Sir Philip caused consternation by asking if the creature would have wings and if it did, would they pass through Temple Bar gate?

  ‘Only I should be sorry to ride a beast that must come apart in mid-procession,’ he said with a smile, running his finger in the socket where the wings would go. Broom spanned his fingers across the skeleton parts of the wings lying nearby, then scratched his head and asked the width of Temple Bar gate.

  ‘Lord, I know not.’ Sir Philip laughed. ‘Only Her Majesty’s new coach scraped its hubs on it a week ago and was stuck fast for a while and she was very foully annoyed by it, having been persuaded to a coach by Hatton in the first place, and being made sick by the bouncing in the second. Next time she goes to the Guildhall she swears she will go by river as any sane person would, and leave new-fangled Frenchified contraptions to the poxy French, by God.’ His voice swooped into a mirror of Her Majesty’s tones and out again, which was wasted on all but myself for none of the crowd had heard her curse, and knew only the voice she kept for crowds and speeches. Mr Broom’s cousin came diffidently from the workshop.

  It was my brother again, curse his cold eyes. He stood slouching, his hat in his hands, waiting to be noticed.

  Sidney beamed upon him. ‘You are Goodman…’

  ‘Stone, sir,’ said Adam. ‘At your service sir.’

  By great effort I quieted my troop of excited angels and crept a little closer to listen. It is hard for a gentleman to act the part of a workman, but Adam was doing his best. I bit my sleeve to stop myself laughing for never was a prouder boy than Adam. But here he was making jerky ugly bows to all Sir Philip’s party, the perfect picture of shy awkwardness.

  ‘Mr Ames, will you give me…. Now then, where is a lantern, the light is bad.’

  Simon took a lantern from one of the workmen and held it up.

  ‘Goodman Stone,’ said Sidney kindly, ‘I have no wish to embarrass you, so I beg you will tell me the truth. Can you read?’

  Adam’s mouth dropped open, shut again. He swallowed and by chance did the exact right thing, which was to look wildly at Richard Broom, who nodded.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘1 mean, more than your name and the Our Father. Can you undertake to read anything I show you?’

  ‘If it is not in foreign,’ said Adam, finding his tongue again.

  Sidney laughed. ‘Fair enough. There will be no foreign in it. Then you will not mind performing a small test for me, Goodman. Will you try and read this for me?’

  It was some sheet advising upon the dangers of tobacco which Simon had happened to have in his penner. Adam took it, frowned and read it in a judicious drone.

  ‘Excellent. I am heartily relieved at it, for I must ask you to learn the script I write for this dragon. When I have spoken to your master of the things the dragon can do, we will cast up an account of its actions upon the tilting day and in the procession and so work together. Will you do that for me?’

  Adam ducked his head and muttered that he would, to find himself clapped on the back by Sir Philip and invited to come and inspect the dragon.

  There were decisions to be made: should the head be gilded? Yes, said Sir Philip. Should the tail move? If it could, said Sir Philip. Who would buy the horses? Sir Philip would ask my lord of Leicester’s advice, and try whether some experienced horses of Her Majesty’s own could be used. Otherwise provision would have to be made for the accustoming of the animals to the noise and cheering of crowds, and further, had their trappings been made? Then he must consult his saddle-mak
ers and soon. It should be samite for the dragon’s wings, of red, that they billow when they move. As Master of the Ordnance, he could certainly undertake to have slowmatch brought up from the Tower to make the dragon’s smoke, indeed most of the powder in the Tower was a better bet for smoke than fire, having been stored in the damp and peculated upon by the Ordnance clerks. Would Mr Ames see to it? Simon made another note on his papers.

  And now, laughed Sir Philip, all he needed to do was beat Fulke Greville soundly at the Tilt itself and everything would be well. Greville had taken lessons from an Italian swordmaster, so as to know something of the Spanish style of fighting for his part as Philip of Spain.

  ‘I hear you have your own swordmaster, Mr Ames,’ he said to Simon, who blushed. ‘What is his name? Basket, was it? Mr Hunnicutt was telling me of it.’

  ‘Becket,’ said Simon, easily in Adam’s hearing although he gave no sign, ‘David Becket.’

  ‘What style does he espouse? Spanish? Italian? Or is he one of those rugged Ancient Masters that love only the English style and will hear of no other.’

  Simon sighed for he had been asked the question at least fifteen times before by men struggling to hide their smiles. At least Sir Philip’s interest was kindly.

  ‘He said he learned in the Low Countries that the only good style was the one that killed your man and he cares not what they call it. He says that the Spanish is over stiff and formal and he makes no reckoning of their geometry, that the English is good for sport and tilting but is too kindly for killing business and the Italian is good, but throws too much upon the running passado and putting all upon one thrust.’

  ‘I must meet this paragon. At least he would not have me studying of diagrams and numbers as poor Fulke has been doing…. Will you bid him attend on me after the Tilts, for I will have no time to see him before?’