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

by Patricia Finney

  ‘London Bridge on the ebb,’ moaned Becket as Simon strapped his soaked handkerchief to Becket’s leg with his belt and pulled tight. ‘Jesus God.’

  ‘I’ll thank you not to blaspheme in my boat, sir,’ said the waterman.

  XVIII

  It was a few days later that Becket lay on clean linen in a pale golden oak-panelled room, the sweet smell of clean rushes upon the floor and a clean shirt on his back, borrowed from Dr Nunez who was nearly as broad. His nightcap had been blackworked by Leonora to match the edging of the shirt and he sipped excellent spiced sack from a silver goblet. Simon was sitting nervously on the edge of a stool by the bed, picking at the crewel work on the curtains.

  ‘Have you found the bastard who set the ambush?’ Becket asked. Simon frowned. ‘No. The dispatch bag the message came in was unsealed and it had lain several days in Mr Hunnicutt’s office, he tells me. There were several dozen could have come at it by their business and another fifty that could have done so with a little guile.

  ‘Seek out your enemies.’

  Simon shrugged and did not answer, being intent upon demolishing a worked bird. Becket leaned back on the high pillows with his eyes half-hooded and his broad face thoughtful.

  ‘The men at the Bear Garden – who were they? Spaniards?’

  Simon shook his head. ‘One Flemish, one German. But you said one was trained in a Spanish tercio…’

  ‘By his drill at loading his arquebus and the way he held it. But there are plenty who have served on every side.’

  ‘Neither of them have connections with the French embassy.’

  ‘I said the Spanish…’

  ‘Nor the Spanish.’

  ‘So all your enquiring has gone nowhere.’

  Simon lifted his hands, palms up and let them drop. ‘How do your wounds feel?’ he asked timidly.

  ‘Excellently well. I think I shall leave tomorrow.’

  ‘Uncle Hector said he thought a full week in bed and then…’ Becket laughed at him. ‘Christ’s blood, Ames,’ he said, ‘I have marched ten miles within three days of worse wounds than these – a couple of broken ribs and a pigsticker in my leg, no more – and without benefit of a surgeon too.’

  ‘But why leave so soon? My uncle surely told you that you are welcome to stay for as long as you wish, he is mighty pleased with you for saving of my skin and my aunt also…’

  ‘Ah your most beautiful graceful exquisite aunt. I am in love with your aunt, Simon, she brings me possets and caudles and five covers of meat thrice a day and indeed I would be up and out today, only she will let me have the tasting of her French biscuits if I can stay one more night, the blessed woman.’

  Ames frowned anxiously. He had brought Becket up from Petty Wales, past the Tower to Poor Jewry, bleeding copiously into the cushions of the horse litter and his breath sounding as if it passed over broken glass each way. He preferred not to think of their passage under the bridge, with the waterman whooping and shouting as he spun his little boat from one roaring rip of white water to another, the slimy stone piers with their fretwork wooden fences looming on either side like sea monsters. Simon had never suffered any kind of wound though he spent his childhood racketing from one illness to another, consoled only by a copy of Euclid. He was nervous of Becket’s bravado, being accustomed to staying in bed when told to do so. But then he recalled seeing Becket stripped for Senor Eraso’s work of strapping and sewing and heard his uncle growl that this one had more in his past than soldiering alone. Simon was also capable of reading signs in scars, and he had never before seen a gentleman with the marks of a lash on his back. But Becket had been unconscious, seemingly dead to the world, except for the time when he growled and struck out at Senor Eraso.

  Becket was speaking. ‘Eh?’ said Simon.

  ‘I asked if Tom behaved himself?’

  Ames nodded. ‘He ate all the leftovers in the kitchen and then slipped out the door when we were busy with you. I have seen nothing of him since.’

  ‘So long as he fought no devils here.’

  ‘No, he spoke kindly of the angel standing guard at the doorpost and then muttered some nonsense about Lucifer and a dragon before he went. Uncle Hector was sorry for that, he had a medicine he wanted to try on him, with a tincture of monkshood aconite in it. Why are you in such a hurry to leave if my Aunt Leonora’s cooking agrees with you? She will be enchanted to cook for a man who likes to eat, she has enraged the cook already with her fussing about in the kitchen and she…’

  ‘Are you wearing the cuirass we found for you?’

  ‘Why no, I…’

  Becket rolled his eyess. ‘You said you would be guided by me. If you cannot track them home to their lair, whoever has made an attempt twice will make it thrice. Shall it be third time lucky for them?’

  ‘It chafes me. And it weighs…’

  ‘Of course it chafes you and weighs a lot. It is made of metal, what else would it do? You will take a while to accustom to it, all men do, but think on it: if there had only been buff leather and doublet between me and the arquebus ball on Sunday, where would I be now? Arguing with Tom as an angel at best. And that arquebus ball was glancing at an angle and it knocked me down, bent mine own cuirass beyond help of an armourer and still brake my ribs. Wear two or three shirts beneath it, or even a padded jacket, but wear it. Besides, there is no lightness and simple pleasure like the taking off of a cuirass at last.’

  Simon nodded. He understood what Becket was about. ‘You are fixed on going, then?’

  ‘I am.’

  When he had taken his leave of Becket, Simon conscientiously went into the room that had once been his and put the cuirass on under his doublet, struggling and sweating with the straps, until a page came by and he beckoned the boy to help him. He already had two certain amulets from his Aunt Leonora’s cook to protect him from murder, but like Becket he saw the force in putting his faith in forged metal. But beyond the discomfort, wearing such a thing beneath his everyday clothes made him feel cold and bewildered. Aside from executions and a little cockfighting, most of his knowledge of killing and violence was secondhand, belonging to reports from the Mundus Papyri where it could be properly docketed and filed. Now suddenly he seemed to have stepped over some hidden boundary and into the outlands of a world where swords made meaty red holes in flesh and arquebuses poked from windows. It was like knowing of lions from bestiaries and then seeing the real creature in the Beast House by the Tower.

  XIX

  Sir Francis was running through the night of Paris, gasping and sweating, pounding through the red mud of small crooked alleys, the howl of the mob behind and before him, trapped in a maze of buildings and sheds, tripping on corpses. Men with torches crowd through a tiny arch, catch sight of him, shouts and roars of triumph, the drumming of feet behind and he turns a corner to find a dead end. Beside him is another alley, leading away from the trap, but fear has turned him into a mere human animal, his reason lost in brute terror. He scrabbles at the wall, beating it with fists, then whimpers and screams like a woman as the Duke of Guise, his linen spotless, his fleshy clever face impassive, leaps forward to stab him in the back, the kidneys, the belly, and the mob howls around him.

  ‘I am certain he will void it soon,’ said the Duke of Guise, sprouting a beard and a long physician’s robe of dark red brocade, his accent changing from French to Portuguese. Dr Nunez rumbled in his beard. ‘These spasms, the fever, the delirium…. All are signs that his body is working to right its humours!’

  ‘He is on fire.’ Ursula’s voice above him.

  ‘Naturally. The element of heat must accompany the dryness that forms the stone.’

  ‘Then should we not cool him down?’

  ‘We are working towards the crisis and it would be unwise…’

  Ursula’s plain straightforward face, frowning with worry under her starched white cap, her white falling band under her chin, her pale skin mellowed by the mob of candles behind her. And here was Frances too, rising towards h
im from a river of crewelwork curtains, eyes like brown velvet, face like cream silk, lips an embroidery of pink, she should not be here, he had been negligent, she should be in England….

  Paris had seemed safe enough to him as Ambassador in the August of 1573. Some of the Catholics there spat on him in the street because he was English and because he was a Protestant. He pitied them because they were French and as Catholics, doomed to hell. Certainly there had been rumours that something was afoot, but at their last audience, the Duke of Guise, the true power at the French Court, had been so pleasant, so kindly, almost jocular. The talk had run upon weddings, Queen Elizabeth’s and of course the wedding on the 18th August, between young Henry of Navarre and Marguerite de Valois. Walsingham had been quite sure the Duke could not know that the Huguenot Admiral Coligny was raising troops to take north to the Netherlands for fighting of the Spaniards.

  It had begun slowly. Admiral Coligny was shot by an unknown assassin two days after the wedding, only saved from death because he bent to tie his patten. The King sent him men to guard his sickbed, expressing horror at the outrage.

  Still Walsingham had had no inkling of the approaching storm. His wife Ursula was in Paris with them and their seven-year-old daughter Frances. The boy Philip Sidney was visiting them on his way to Italy, a long gangling ungainly lad, hideously spotted, who somehow managed to make all men believe he was graceful and beautiful through simple charm alone.

  Three days after the shooting, Coligny decided he would still not leave Paris. It was the feast of St Bartholomew, the 23rd August. Coligny died that day.

  There had been gunshots and sounds of disturbance near the Louvre in the afternoon and although the King sent a nobleman to reassure Monsieur l’Ambassadeur d’Angleterre, no one had felt inclined to venture out of the little house in the suburbs of Paris.

  As night fell hot air made a damp blanket upon the city to muffle the sounds of gunfire. There was a low universal murmur, speckled with the bright kettle sound of blades here and there, as if a Beast were clashing iron teeth. A wounded English merchant fell through the door and gasped the truth of what was happening: Catherine de Medici had called on the people of Paris to rise and destroy all the Protestants, and the rabidly Catholic mob was now destroying every Huguenot, every heretic they could find.

  Time passed, a steady stream came to the door, some wounded and bleeding, most pale and shaking, their eyes blind with the killings they had seen. Some of the men wept with the horror of it, but not the women. There were few women, however: they could not run so fast as men and were easier, more attractive prey. There were tales of babes spitted on spears, children raped. Some of the fugitives were English, many only French Huguenots trusting that the one Protestant power in Paris could save them from the madness.

  To Francis Walsingham it seemed as if the time of the Apocalypse was upon them, come like a thief in the night, when all would be slaughtered that bore no mark of the Roman beast upon their souls. At any time he half-expected to hear the terrible brazen clamour of an angel’s trumpet above the roofs of Paris.

  Ursula Walsingham broke open her storehouses and buttery to give bread and meat and drink to the fugitives, raided her stillroom for medicines and bandages. Walsingham himself stood upon the stairs, speaking more coldly than he meant, ordering all Catholics among the servants to leave at once, lest they be swallowed up in the wrath of their fellows. He did not see fit to mention that one of them might perhaps open a door that should be locked. The majordomo, M. Ricard, took leave of M. l’Ambassadeur on bended knee, swearing he would that same night, no matter what the risk, light candles to the Blessed Virgin for the safe deliverance of his master. Sir Francis nodded gravely, tactfully.

  In Walsingham’s own mind, this was the night when he saw clearly what he was, an instrument in God’s hand, given Grace to hold cleanly to the truth. As the Beast of Paris rent and tore its own flesh, the English embassy was like a beacon of light in darkness, a place of prayer as men read aloud from Exodus of the saving of the children of Israel and from the Passion of Christ, in those behalf they hoped and hoped not to face their own deaths.

  The windows were boarded, the doors barred, but all knew it was not a place to withstand siege. A torch in the roof, a battering log at the door…. In the hall where everyone was gathered fear grew and flourished into a thing to fear in itself, another creature stealing air and space from those hiding within. As the sounds of killing became louder and closer and there was a trembling upon an edge of hysteria, the beardless boy, Sidney, began to discourse upon notable sieges.

  At first, Walsingham was annoyed by his laughing playful chatter – how they should divert the Seine and make a moat for the house, how they should make wings of the tapestries (which most appropriately told the tale of the sack of Troy) and fly back to England, how they would tether a cock to crow upon the roof and remind the Parisians of the treachery of St Peter. He had the children making a choir to practise their cock-crows; he began a riddle contest, and as the night tilted deeper on its way to morning, he found a lute and had them singing, first Italian songs fresh from court and then as the shouting outside and the sounds of flames became more distinct, Psalms that all of them knew.

  There came a bold crashing on the door, a beating with a stick. Mr Hunnicutt had been one of the last to come in, dishevelled and bruised on his round face. He went to answer the knock. There was the sound of men’s voices shouting through the porter’s hole.

  After a moment, the fog of words cleared and Sir Francis knew that they were demanding Monsieur Walseenam. Hunnicutt pretended not to understand although he spoke French very well.

  Sidney was listening too, his face serious at last.

  ‘Hide sir,’ he said directly to Walsingham. ‘Quickly.’

  So hard to swallow in so dry a throat.

  ‘If my presence is requested at Court, perhaps I may moderate…’

  ‘Would the King send for you with a mob? These want your head, sir, and they must not have it or we are all lost.’

  He had stepped forward, catching Walsingham’s arm in a familiar fashion he had never used before, always in awe of him as most people are. In the rest of the hall there were men coming wearily to their feet, knives and swords being loosened again in their scabbards. A pale-faced girl with tom skirts picked up a dagger. An over-painted English merchant’s wife, well-known as a crushing bore, hid three hollow-eyed children among her skirts.

  ‘If they have me not, they might attack to find me,’ Walsingham hissed at Sidney.

  ‘You are the Queen’s man. If they take you from here there is neither authority nor representation in this place. They will destroy us all.’

  ‘I must not hide, I cannot. It is not fit

  ‘Listen to them, the leaders are noble, they know this is against all honour, but they are afraid of the mob. They have only promised to look for you, not find you. Mr Hunnicutt, tell them that three of their number may enter to speak with us. 1 pray you sir, trust me in this, I know it in my heart.’

  How did he know? Yet his face so shone with certainty, Walsingham was persuaded against his own arguments, and so he hurried into another room, into a closet cunningly disguised by panelling, a jakes. There was Her Majesty’s ambassador to the Court of France, crouched on the lid of the close stool with the stink of the night’s fear rising up all about him. Our Father, he began in his heart, which art in Heaven, let my bowels not give way, hallowed be Thy Name, let the boy be right, Thy Kingdom come, let them not find me in such a place, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven, but let me not die if it is Thy Will, please God, but if I must die then let it be bravely, only let me not die….

  Beyond the door three French gentlemen came into the hall and asked, with bows, for Monsieur l’Ambassadeur Walseenam. Sidney, speaking excellent French, stepped forward and asked them if Messieurs had found him as the English had been searching for him all night and were now waiting for him and praying that he had not been killed in mista
ke by the wicked robbers in the streets. For indeed Her Majesty of England would be exceedingly angry if he had, even if it were an accident, ambassadors being protected and saved by all civilized rules of chivalry and diplomacy. She was a woman, but women were impulsive: she might even declare war.

  Messieurs listened and heard the underlying threat that the boy managed to weave into his honeyed words. They thought upon it and saw that while their followers might take and ransack the house, they themselves were surrounded by men who might be pleased to do a little killing on their own account. At the end they would most likely be dead in a mere muddle of blades and furniture, no better than a tavern brawl, with no one to see any bravery they showed.

  And so they bowed again and expressed their sorrow and regrets and their devout hopes that Monsieur Walseenam had indeed survived the unfortunate excitement among the people. The front door banged and was barred behind them, there was a shouted conference and then a muttering as the mob moved away to find easier quarry.

  That was when Walsingham vowed that every sinew, every bone, every humour of his body would he bend to the utter defeat and overthrow of the Beast of Rome, as a thanksgiving for his unworthy deliverance.

  When Mr Sidney came to find him, Walsingham shook his hand and was able to say drily, lI pray you Mr Sidney, another time find me a sweeter hiding hole.’

  Sidney laughed and then withdrew tactfully as Ursula came running to her husband, her square face chalk white, her hands shaking as she threw* herself into his arms. It was unlike her, but so it was unlike Sir Francis to cling onto her in return, as if he was drowning again in a sea of fear, as if the sea he had dammed with a dike of pride had broached it and come roaring and foaming in, and she was his only rock.

  Yes, I know what followed, for the Queen Moon had a hand in it. God made the flesh as well as the soul, and if Walsingham took his own wife like a trull upon the floor, all in a clogging smother of petticoats and rushes and a wild flood of joy that he was still alive so to do, what of it? But he has always been harsher on his own weaknesses than God will ever be, and even in his fever of the stone, he winced at the memory of how he celebrated his deliverance out of the lion’s paw. At least he laid no blame upon the daughter who was bom nine months after that night. She was always a light of his life, a symbol of his deliverance, a good gentle child. She died when she was seven and the loss has clutched at his heart ever since, for Walsingham believes God took her from him as a reminder to be about the business of fighting Popery, that it was his fault she died. But in truth he does not know this of himself and believes he no longer mourns her, indeed, he believes he is glad that she has gone to God untouched and in her innocency, with a carved white dove of virginity laid upon her short grave. He lies to himself, and God knows he lies. And so the many tears he will not shed turn themselves to dry stones and wend their way down through his body and out the wrong exit, making a riddle Dr Nunez cannot read.