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

by Patricia Finney

  Ever since the night of St Bartholomew the Beast of Rome has spoken to him in French, the Duke of Guise has been the base enemy of Godliness. And yet, the storm of St Bartholomew fell upon him from a clear sky, when he was looking the wrong way, and so he runs again through the maze of plot and counter-plot, harried and hounded by the mob, lost and alone and a dagger in his back from an unexpected direction….

  The dagger shifts, probing his privy member, agony upon agony, the Paris mob howls about him, they are kicking him, stabbing his private parts, the howling rises to a shriek….

  And suddenly all was peaceful. His throat was sore, there was a dull throbbing below, but nothing to what had gone before. Ursula and Frances on either side of him as if he truly was a woman in childbed and they his gossips, Dr Nunez covering a bowl and candles shining in darkness.

  ‘It has passed,’ he whispered.

  ‘Si,’ said Dr Nunez, while Frances covertly wiped tears from her eyes. ‘At last.’

  ‘Thank God.’ Walsingham lay like a baby while they lifted him and changed his linen and his soaked shirt and gave him another nightcap to replace the one he had shredded with his teeth. Always from an unexpected direction, always, that was the Devil’s cunning…. He caught Frances’ hand and saw his nails had left bird tracks across it, patted it in apology, but he had an urgent order.

  ‘What time is it, what date?’

  ‘About seven of the evening, the 4th of November.’

  ‘Jesus, so late? Is Throgmorton still there? The Mouse, is he still in his hole?’

  ‘I believe so, sir,’ said Frances, her eyes darkening suddenly.

  ‘Send for Norton, Ellerton, Ames. We must take him tonight, before dawn. Have them come to me at once.’

  XX

  Now the most apposite and physical time for arresting of a traitor is about the time of moonset, at the ebb of the tide, three hours before dawn when every man’s blood flows thickly in its channels and his mind is clogged with melancholic humours and dreams. Alas, this melancholy infects the arresting officers as well, especially when they must stand about Westminster Steps waiting for a boat, with the rain soaking their bats and cloaks and the east wind chopping up the surface of the river like beaten eggwhite, tearing invisible holes in their clothes to writhe about inside with a chill finger.

  The same tide that had carried them upriver to Westminster to get the warrant would take them back again. There was James Ramme and Henry Mall, Thomas Kinsley and William Henderson, being led by Mr Thomas Norton that the Papists call Rackmaster Norton, and Simon Ames also standing unregarded at the back of the group. Henderson, Mall and Kinsley were henchmen of Mr Secretary’s own, large stolid men of a particular type that also makes a good dispatch rider, the kind that will stand steady if charged by the Wild Hunt and all the gods of Rome and Greece, a very English kind of Spartan.

  Mr Norton stamped his feet on the thick wooden landing, and blew at his fingers, whose fingernails were as his always are, deep in the mourning of a fanatic gardener who cannot leave his precious damask roses to a clownish workman, but must dung them himself. He had stepped out of the uncertain pool of yellow lamplight, the better to see into the murk for the boat, while Henderson, Kinsley and Mall huddled up their cloaks over their ears and shared a flask of aqua vitae. Simon stood, sunk in misery, his own cloak tight about him, his nose a bright sore red with an endless drip of phlegm upon it and a fleabite under his doublet and cuirass which he could not scratch. Mall was disputing that a black cat was unlucky, having been blessed by one on his way to Tyrrel’s game.

  The figure of cats was a good one for such as they, he was thinking, for they had quietly watched a particular mousehole for six months while their particular Mouse trotted furtively to and fro and now, it seemed, was the time for a pounce and a little play before the hangman got his fee and the rotting heads upon London Bridge a new friend to converse with.

  ‘Aha,’ said Mr Norton, screwing his eyes into little wrinkles against the rain. ‘Thank the Lord. At last.’

  Out of the darkness and wet creaked the boat, gleaming sinister black on brown water, the wet of its sides catching only here and there the dribbles of light from the lanterns. At least it was large enough for all of them as well as the two halberdiers sitting in sodden miserable silence at the back.

  The two boatmen brought the boat gently up beside the steps, rainwater creating a novel geography of rivers on their waxed canvas cloaks, and a Mare Novum in the bottom of the boat. Simon was last aboard, fearing the water and hesitating until he had to jump ridiculously like a goat and almost caught his new sword in the seat cushions.

  ‘One of you must bail, sirs,’ said one boatman in general. ‘Because of the rain.’

  It was Mall in the end who picked up the can and began scooping out water, while the halberdiers sat silent as if they had been graven in soggy felt. Simon sniffed and coughed at intervals.

  The river was a rushing hissing living thing, the wind piling up the ebbing water in dangerous eddies and vortices. The one good thing about the whole business in Simon’s opinion was that there was no question of shooting the bridge. He had no comprehension of the apprentices and Court bloods who shoot the bridge for fun, paying double for the privilege. At least their boatman was as expert as any other waterman, able to traverse the river at night as safely as possible. He was senior in the watermen’s company, after long apprenticeship and mastery of the river, crowned by his induction, according to rumour, by heathenish rite involving some Papistical relic of Noah’s Ark. He kept away from the banks where unauthorised invisible craft might be tied up in the murk, and aimed his prow with its pagan eye from one current to another to ease his labour. They could have been at sea for all they knew, apart from the occasional inkling of a great man’s river steps or gatehouse where a lamp was burning. Even despite his cold, Simon caught the flat sulphurous taste in the air of the kilns in Scotland Yard, but beyond that nothing for a while.

  Would his cold turn to lungfever? he wondered. There was no feeling in his fingers or toes, the tips of his ears burned despite his velvet cap rammed down on his head as far as it would go. He had fleabites round his ankles in the depths of his boots from helping Becket return to his lodgings. The fleas had welcomed them back with far greater enthusiasm than the landlady who had been on the point of reletting the room at double the price. The great brute of a rat that Becket seemed to keep like a dog had squeaked and skittered around the floor in delight at his homecoming. Becket had caught him up and stroked him, presenting him with one of Leonora Nunez’s biscuits, before setting him on his shoulder where the rat poked his nose in Becket’s ear.

  It might be lungfever. Within he felt as if the four humours of his body had all turned themselves to green bile and phlegm and the two had mixed together in the back of his throat to make a baleful new acid humour, unknown to Hippocrates or Galen.

  Ancient trees were creaking together in the wind; they were passing Temple Gardens. Another solitary boat on the river, crossing north to south, returning a pale poxed face above a striped mantle back to the stews on Upper Ground, then lost in the darkness and the clopping water. And then they were past Baynard’s Castle and at their destination, at Paul’s Wharf, where the stationers bring ashore their stocks of foreign paper and ink and new type and rollers, and the ships take out printed books.

  They scrambled up the slippery steps and found, for a wonder, that the men from the Tower were already waiting for them a little up the wharf, out of sight of the Mouse’s hole, at the opening of Thames Street. They were a mountain range of five men, forested with halberds, fruited with lanterns. Now Norton met their leader and spoke quickly in a low vdice, and Simon knew he was warning them that zeal for the Queen’s cause should not blind them to the fact that live men and undestroyed papers are more use than a few mere corpses. When he finished and started up the path, all their clip-clopping pattens squelched and sucked in the straw and manure, sometimes scraping on raw cobble itself where t
he carriers of paper had worn a hole at a wonted place.

  The house of their quarry was silent, a mousehold almost dead and seemingly empty, the door barred and bolted, the lower windows shuttered like sleeping eyes. James Ramme stopped suddenly, peered into the darkness.

  ‘Lift that lantern…. No.’

  ‘Did you see something?’ asked Mr Norton quietly.

  ‘1 thought…. No. A cat perhaps, or a dog. Too small for a man.’

  They waited in the silence while four men climbed over a wall in the alley at the back and picked their way among hencoops. A hen woke, squawked, fluttered and then gave its deathrattle, its neck wrung for the Queen’s sake, all in a few heartbeats of time.

  At last Norton nodded to Henderson, who was hefting a woodman’s axe, and the blade sank into the wood of the door with a great thudding crunch. Four more blows and Norton put his boot through the hole, lifted the bar inside and opened what was left of the door.

  A servingman stood facing them in his shirt, wide-eyed, sheet-faced, clutching at his cods in the belief he was still dreaming.

  ‘Master!’ shrieked the man in a burst of spittle. ‘Master, the Queen’s m…

  Mall’s fist swung and the man tumbled over backwards, holding his mouth, still trying to shout. Kinsley blackjacked him thoughtfully. Norton was already up the stairs, two at a time, sword drawn, followed by Henderson and Ramme with his Italian rapier. Simon looked at the narrow stairs and heard the incoherent shouting and tinpot clashing of a desperate rearguard fight. He beckoned Mall and Kinsley from going up the stairs and choking them even worse with bodies and considered the very fine ceiling, symmetrically sprinkled with Tudor Roses and carved devices and all painted over in blue and rose and red and gold. The hangings upon the wall were but painted cloths of Brutus’s founding of London before the Romans came, which could be bought upon Cheap Market and cost little, but the ceiling was newly gilded.

  There had still been no squeal of outraged womanhood as the kitchen girl went home to her chandler father every sunset. It boded well to Simon, that they had the right place, if confirmation were needed. No woman bom can keep her mouth shut, as is a well-known fact, and known to traitors as well as faithful subjects of the Queen.

  Simon blinked at a very faint, light scraping above the ceiling by the door, while the noise of fighting upon the stairs grew more desperate. Norton was having a hard job of it, being hampered by the close walls and also by the enthusiasm of James Ramme behind him, trying to poke with his rapier over Norton’s shoulder, and almost slicing his ear.

  Quietly, Simon put himself in the shadows and nodded at Mall and Henderson to do likewise. The men in the backyard were watching the windows at the back for escapers, neglecting those at the front which were too high for a jump. Inside a carven red rose began rocking and twisting in its bed. A square of ceiling lifted, was set aside. Simon stood still, blood beating in his throat. A jerkin and cloak wrapping a sword and a dagger on a silver-embossed belt dropped to the straw.

  Then came a pair of legs in good green and white paned trunk hose, wriggling their padding through the hole, followed by a somewhat over- peascodded belly of a fashionable green velvet doublet. The quarry swung and dropped quietly to the floor, regained his feet and reached for the door.

  Simon’s sword found a resting place among the piccardils of the man’s collar. His hand twitched with tension and blood sprang from behind the man’s ear.

  ‘Good morning Mr Throgmorton,’ Simon said quietly. ‘I arrest you in the name of the Queen and upon Her most Royal Seal and Warrant, for the crime of high treason.’

  XXI

  In blackness and the smell of mice, the boy shivered and chewed his sleeve to keep silent while boots and pattens clopped about the house, searching methodically. He could hardly breathe he was so tight-packed into the space for hiding books, on his side, his knees wedged against his chest, his arms over his face and more mysterious terrifying papers hidden under his shirt.

  ‘Ames,’ came a loud confident voice. ‘What are you staring at?’

  ‘The linen press,’ came a different, thinner voice. ‘Its floor does not agree, can you see?’

  ‘Too small for a man I think. Rap the boards.’

  The banging came to one side of his head and passed through like a dagger. The boy froze, held his breath.

  ‘It sounds solid.’

  ‘I’ll lever a board to make sure. By your leave…’

  There was a heavy thud, a sound of crunching, creaking.

  ‘No, this is solid. Come, Kinsley has taken down some panelling and found another place, why should he have more than one. There are Mass things and Agnus Deis in it…’

  ‘I am with you Mr Ramme.’

  It went on for hours, broken by shouts occasionally when they found a thing that pleased them, and once when a cat scratched the man who found her hiding place on top of a bed tester.

  The boy’s stomach was growling horribly loud by the time the crashing about ceased and still he lay there, not knowing what to do. Wait until nightfall, Mr Throgmorton had said, stay there until then and if I can I will send someone to save you. If I cannot, you must save yourself and take the papers to the house you know. He had spoken so loudly and clearly and said it many times as he packed the boy into the space and locked the floor of the linen press in place.

  At last it was nature that drove him out, a pressing necessity to piss. As he had been told at least three times while Corday fought desperatelyupon the stairs using a table as a shield, he pushed the solid block diagonally into the wall where there was a space for it. The floor of the linen press slid aside but one of the planks had been broken and it no longer went easily. He pushed and shoved, using his feet, gasping and sobbing with fear and effort until a sort of rage broke in him and the floor gave halfway.

  Moments later he was out, dizzy with thirst and hunger and found a house smashed into mystery around him. He could not stand, but crawled slowly and painfully to the bed where the cat had hidden and found the chamber pot. After that he had no strength to do anything more and the room was bright with day and he was afraid of light now but more afraid of movement. Like any animal he looked for a hiding place and so pushed himself under the bed and curled up to cry himself to sleep. The cat joined him.

  About the time that the boy had first begun to stir, Simon Ames sat in the dispatch room at Walsingham’s house carefully holding papers up to the light and squinting at the crabbed handwriting with a plate of bread and cheese and capers forgotten by his elbow.

  A woman’s voice began, ‘Mr Hunnicutt, I think they…oh, Mr Ames, I did not know you were here. I thought you would be attending on the Privy Councillors.’ She smiled and bent to pick up the food he had knocked onto the floor. ‘Are you quite well, you look tired?’

  Hunnicutt tutted softly. ‘So would you be, Lady Sidney, he has been up all night and will not get to his bed until late tonight.’

  ‘My father uses you very ill, I fear. May I bring you a posset or some aqua vitae?’

  ‘No. Thank you.’ Even to himself, his voice sounded distant and cold. Frances Sidney sat down a little awkwardly upon a bag of dispatches and patted the dog that had roused itself out of the passageway to investigate the spillage.

  ‘Know you what they are about, my lord Burghley and Sir Christopher and the rest?’

  ‘Questioning the traitor Mr Ames caught this morning.’

  Frances’ eyes widened. ‘Was it very dangerous? Did the Papist fight? Who was it?’

  Simon smiled a little. ‘We called him the Mouse.’

  Her face changed, her hands flew up to her mouth. ‘Oh no. Poor Mouse, so they caught him at last.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was still wearing stays, he noticed, but they were loosened out to the limit of the laces. In his light-headed state he thought what strange unstable creatures women were.

  Never mind their moods and humours which bent to the bidding of the Moon, but even their bodies could never b
e at rest, certainly if they were married and sometimes even if they were not. One moment slim as a bedpost, the next moment thickening and ballooning until they disappeared for some months and then reappeared, slim and corsetted again, with the babe either dead or gone to a wet nurse. Sometimes they never reappeared. Only, the Queen herself remained always the same, but to compensate her gowns expanded and changed as wildly as any woman’s belly.

  Frances was moving again, uncomfortably, and now she tried to heave herself up. Hunnicutt gave her his arm to lean on because Simon was too thick-witted to think of it.

  ‘Poor Mouse,’ she said again. ‘Will they torture him, do you think?’

  She had tilted a little towards him, so he could see the swell of her breasts. Her skin had a gleam in it, as Aunt Leonora always said: if you would know whether a woman is with child, look at her skin first. Though with Frances there was no doubt.