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

by Patricia Finney

  Becket raised his brows. ‘What was said?’

  Simon spread his hands. ‘That alas we do not know.’

  Becket tutted, finished his ale and went to draw some more from the cask in the buttery.

  ‘I have been overpressed with business, these last few days,’ Simon called. ‘It has been concerning one called Francis Throgmorton whom we have in the Tower now.’

  Becket appeared in the doorway, swaying. ‘Was he put to the question?’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘Did he speak?’

  ‘No.’

  Becket snorted and drank without the ceremony of mulling. Simon sipped again.

  ‘We took him, but I fear we miscarried upon it. There was one hiding in his house that we never found, who later slipped away and no doubt took with him whatsoever Throgmorton would not have had us read.’

  ‘I know.’ Simon rushed on, unwilling that Becket should misunderstand what he was about.

  ‘Walsingham was certain that this was a Guisan plot and that therefore we should look to the French embassy as the source of it. Behind all of them is the King of Spain to be sure, because he hath the money to pay for all, but prime movers we thought were all in France. Yet it seems from what papers we found that little Mr Throgmorton has been running messages not merely between Guise and the Queen of Scots, but also unto the ambassador of Spain, Mendoza, that we had thought could not dare to be so directly tangled. In other words, they have been less cunning than we thought them and so have fooled us. This was not a Guisan conspiracy. We were casting for the scent in the wrong coverts entirely.’

  ‘And the…’ – Becket waved his hand at large in the air – ‘…the end and purpose of these foul foreign plottings?’

  Simon pressed his fingers flat to his mouth, shut his eyes a moment and thought for the third time that he must visit a barber the next day. ‘Sticks and straws show where the wind blows. I see a footprint in mud, and like Electra, I know its owner although it is but a mark in the mud to anyone else. But where Electra saw Orestes, I see a host armed against us, the King of Spain massing his armies against us. Yet there is so little to prove it with.’

  ‘If Alva invades in behalf of the Scottish Queen, surely all Her Majesty need do is lop the woman shorter by a head,’ said Becket, with the throat-slitting gesture of the streets. ‘Lord knows why she has not done it long since.’

  ‘Ay well, there is proof that you know nothing of policy, David,’ said Simon. ‘Think upon it. The Scottish Queen stands between Philip of Spain and the throne of England, which she inherits by right of descent before he does by his marriage to Queen Mary. We had hoped he would be less inclined to invade when it was in her behalf rather than his own. It seems we were wrong. And this lopping business is not so simple nor so easily done, there must be due cause. The Queen is very loath to kill another anointed Queen. I would say she has a horror of it. Davison has often said that whoever brings her to do it finally will destroy his career in her service, for she will shrink from him ever after. And then there is another point.’

  ‘Which is?’ prompted Becket, coming to sit beside Simon again as he seemed to grind to a halt in mid-flow glaring at yet another foolish elephant carved above the fireplace.

  ‘Why, that our Sovereign Lady will find it hard to kill Queen Mary if she has been first killed herself.’

  Becket winced.

  ‘There is an army planned to come from the Netherlands, that we know,’ Simon went on, ‘but all has seemed premature since they cannot come across yet, nor for at least a year. They have nothing ready, no boats, no fleet, no supplies, though the Prince of Orange is in desperate case once again.’

  ‘He has the worst luck of any soldier I know…’ said Becket taking breath no doubt to begin some tedious tale.

  ‘An army cannot be whipped up like a syllabub hot from the cow, nor a fleet neither. But all of England and our unity hangs upon a single slender thread and if it be… .’ Simon made a pinching movement with his fingers and then shrugged.

  ‘Why not do the snipping when the army is ready?’ Becket asked, at last distracted from his drink.

  ‘So we thought. But reflect upon it a little; if the Spaniard is at the gate and the Queen is killed, that will rather inflame the English than dismay them, there will be no squabbling until the foreigner has gone.’ Becket pupped with his lips. ‘True. Even the bloody Earl of Leicester could lead us.’

  ‘But cut her off now, with no outside threat to hold us together… Would you follow the Earl of Leicester? What of the Scottish boy-king, James? What of his mother? Which would the Council choose? There is no heir of Her Majesty’s body nor ever will be now. The realm would burst asunder. And then comes Philip of Spain with his army when it is ready in a year or two when we are bloody and wearied with fighting and London a smoking ruin, and so he makes peace between us all.’

  Becket looked about him. ‘It seems impossible that…’

  ‘David, you have seen the Netherlands that were so rich. Learned you nothing there of how delicate a thing is the rule of justice in a realm, how easily unseated?’

  ‘Ay, ’ said Becket, heavily, glaring down into his tankard as if hunting for Spaniards in the lees. ‘But…’

  ‘But? The Almighty will protect you? The Almighty, being English (blessed be He) will not permit such a thing to come to pass?’ Simon was sneering at him. ‘Tell it to the Portuguese or the Dutch, yea, tell it even to the Bohemians. It is not so hard a thing to kill a Prince. The way to do it is to send a single man that cares not if he live or die, but that he gain a martyr’s crown. Which I think they have done. But to catch such a one is like hunting a particular fish among the cod on the Newfoundland banks.’

  ‘But you are a… a little closer now,’ Becket said at last, ‘are you not?’

  ‘Oh we are.’ Simon spoke wearily. ‘Your finding of the ballad singer was a fine trick. How was it done?’ He asked the question delicately, nervous of Becket’s mood and jumped with fright when Becket cracked out a laugh.

  ‘Why, I went and spoke to the King,’ Becket explained. ‘And he received me and gave me audience and in return for a little service, he found out who had been hiring of Spanish-trained arquebusiers and footpads such as Bonecrack Smith. It were no great labour.’

  ‘The King? Do you mean the King of thieves?’

  ‘Who else would know such things?’

  ‘I had heard of him, but not believed…’

  ‘Oh come now, Simon, where there is gold and power and no law there will come first anarchy and then at last a King.’

  ‘And what was the little service he asked for his help?’

  ‘He desires an audience with your master. ’

  ‘With Sir Francis?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You never spoke to me of it before.’

  ‘He wished me not to do so until you had cause to be…grateful.’ Simon looked long and hard at David. ‘Hm,’ he said at last. ‘He has certainly rendered me a favour. You may tell him that I shall speak to my master of it, if I may know his name.’

  ‘Laurence Pickering.’

  Simon nodded, then sighed, picked up his cooled tankard and drained it. Becket elbowed him in the ribs again, nearly knocking him from the bench.

  ‘Why so melancholy, Simon? Is this not in… in the way of a victory for you?’ He had slurred the words, swayed a little as he spoke, too jovial. ‘It saddens me when a friend will not tell me the truth.’

  Ttje Almighty help him, he had not meant to put it so baldly, the words had tumbled out of his mouth like naughty boys out of school. Becket froze, glaring at him.

  ‘Do you give me the lie, sir?’ he demanded.

  ‘No, no, not exactly.’ Simon strove to placate, ‘I am truly grateful for your work in this, but…

  ‘But?’ Becket’s face had darkened with blood under the skin.

  Simon swallowed hard. ‘But… I wish that you had told me of your own free will that you know both Anthony Fant and Adam Stran
gways.’ Becket said nothing.

  ‘I am as you know, of Sir Francis Walsingham’s household,’ Simon struggled on. ‘He is a most worshipful man, but…suspicious else he could not do what he does. We all of us become as suspicious as he, we must for there are indeed workers in strange corners, men to suspect. Treachery flowers easily among men who grasp after power and gold

  ‘Are you saying I am a traitor?’

  ‘No sir. It is only that… I have given you many chances to tell me that you know the master of this house and that you know the man I seek, and you have not done so and… it saddens me. You were at Gray’s Inn with them after all.’

  Oh how reedily his voice trailed off. This was not what he had planned at all.

  ‘Will you…will you tell me anything about them that you know?’

  ‘Should there not be a clerk here to note down what I say? And perhaps Mr Rackmaster Norton with his toy to teach me honesty?’ Ames met his eye, passed a hand across his face again. ‘You have not been arrested. You need say nothing to me if it please you not. I ask as a friend.’

  ‘And if I say nothing? What then? The Tower? I see you have sufficient power to roust the Recorder of London out of his bed. No doubt you could find a warrant about you somewhere and have me into Little Ease before morning, eh?’

  A cold thought entered Simon’s mind, that it was odd to see so big a man struggle so fiercely with fear, though he hid it well.

  Suddenly there was a smell of violence in the air, that if Becket thought himself about to be taken, he would not go quietly, that he would rather gamble all, beat Simon down with a poker and run. In seconds he had gone from friendliness to the brink of fury.

  How can I reassure him, Ames wondered, when I am not certain myself of his trueness? If I prevaricate I am surely dead.

  In the kitchen passageway there was a sudden banging as the searchers began to remove panelling. Becket jumped a little but never took his eyes from Ames. Here I was talking to a friend, Ames thought to himself sadly, that I was only a little doubtful of, and now he is become like a beast of the forest that I must calm.

  Becket had shifted a little on the bench, freeing his sword. His hand had dropped to his dagger.

  ‘I am not a Spaniard,’ Simon said in a rush, hearing foreignness in them as the words came without a plan. ‘It was Spaniards put you to the question before, no?’ Ask no questions, warned a voice within him, and he answered himself. ‘Ay, it was.’ Simon’s mouth was dry, felt sticky inside with fear. ‘All I have is my dagger. If you think me so false and forgetful a friend as to arrest you, then do what you plan. I will not fight back.’ Somehow he managed a smile, though his lips stuck to his teeth. ‘I know well it would be a waste of time and sweat.’

  ‘I may go?’

  ‘David, I know so little of you, I wish…. If I must lay my life on it that you are no traitor, then I will. But if you trust me not, then go at once. I doubt you will be missed.’

  Becket stood up, looming massively over Simon’s hunched thin shoulders. Very slowly and carefully, he moved to the carrier’s door, picking delicately and silently over the flags. As he opened the door, he said, ‘I believe you, Simon.’

  And then he was through and into the little kitchen garden and past the jakes and out the privy gate, leaving Ames to take a long slow breath. I have never been so close to death, Ames thought to himself, with a kind of cold wonder, and then his shoulders sagged and he coughed and weariness fell on him like a cloak of mail. He longed for sleep but wondered despairingly where he could be safe. For Adam Strangways was still at large, though with luck he was in hiding and unable to act without his ballad singer go-between. Yet he might have set on pursuers earlier who still hunted Simon.

  Ames found he no longer cared. He waited until the horse litter came for Mrs Fant. Then speaking habitual words he did not hear himself say, he walked out of Anthony Fant’s townhouse and down Old Change to Knightrider Street, where he found that the Crusader Inn would open its door to him, although it was long past curfew.

  Perhaps his luck had turned. The landlady greeted him with a kiss and the sheets were clean linen. She put a warming pan in for him while he undressed and when she had taken it out again and bidden him God bless, he climbed into a nest of warmth in his shirt and netherhose. He said his prayers unworthily, paying out mere words like beads on a string. With the bed curtains tight shut, he could believe in his safety as a kind of lesser fiction, and sleep like the dead.

  XXXIII

  Within every head upon each pillow lies a world, with its cities of thought and its forests of dreaming. Deserts and mountains have we all of us within our skulls, with only the cities to bring light and learning to the savage country. My cities are all broken and destroyed like the stone forests of old Rome, but even in those whose minds are as populous as the plain of Flanders, come the night and sleep, the Queen Moon mounts her white horse and rides jingling her bell bridle over the forests and heaths, and beggars and creatures of rags and patches come dancing from their hiding places. London at night swarms with dreams so I am hard put to it to pick my way safely between the shadows of the true world and those of the truer one beyond where I dwell daily and all men visit nightly. Now here is Walsingham twitching in his bed while the rabble of Paris hunt him through the maze of his own mind and there is Simon Ames at table with the Spanish pyre of his uncles blazing before him, too fearful a thing to recall in the morning, as are all his dreams. Becket had found himself a greasy little boozing ken to drown out his own fears, safe in the liberties of Whitefriars, and snored like a pig with his head on his hands, dreamless.

  The Royal Mint, which girdles the Tower between the inner and outer wall, begins its work well before sunrise in winter, with a hideous hissing and bellows-pumping of the furnace and then the round bright rhythmic clanging of die upon metal. Picture after picture of the Queen spills from their unmusical work, pennies, groats, shillings, half crowns, crowns. Is it the magic of the Queen’s face that lends them their worth, or the silver in the higher ones?

  Within the Salt Tower, the clanging brought cannon into Anthony Fant’s dreams. He woke with sweat freezing to him, and stone walls around him, the agony of an arm smashed by an arquebus ball running through him like fire and jerking him ten years into the past. Christ have mercy, was it all to do again? and he reached with his right hand to feel for his wounded left and found nothing there. He had been through such awakenings before and so swam back into the waking world where amputated arms do not miraculously regrow in a night. With his own eyes, after all, he had seen the stinking black swollen horror that was once his hand and arm tossed into a bucket and heard the red-hot iron steaming and sizzling in his blood. He often wondered at the clarity of his memory: he could remember how he had bucked and fought against straps and wrapping arms, how the taste of the leather in his mouth had gone through his head and become imprinted there with bile, how he had still possessed a particle of sense buried deep in the animal which wondered why he did not faint, and yet he had no memory of the pain, only of what he did while it was there. The pain that came and went in the ghost of his lost arm was a different thing; his memory of losing it had been mercifully censored by a mysterious God who had not let him faint at the time.

  Which same merciful God had now caused him to be put in the Tower, discreetly and courteously escorted from his lodgings at the point of going to his bed by a well-dressed plain-faced young man and two others and brought at once upriver. He knew no reason why, except that his wife was a Catholic.

  Fant sat up and looked about him in the darkness, at a small empty round room w,ith a covering for form’s sake of elderly rushes on the floor, a bed with a thin pallet on it and nothing else. Starlight coming in at the barred window glanced off walls ominously roughened with carving. It was the musty damp smell and the hardness of his bed and sleeping in all his clothes, these had taken him back to Haarlem where his arm lay (would he have to go back there to look for it on the Day of Judgment, he
sometimes wondered).

  Something his wife had done had brought him here. No doubt she was also in the Tower, listening to the clanging. For a moment he felt anger at her foolishness and disobedience and then he sighed. Until someone came to question him he could do nothing. All was in God’s hands, in whom he trusted mainly out of unbreakable habit. Had not God delivered him out of the Spaniard’s paw for the purpose of making the New World English and not foul Spanish? Had not the very loss of his arm saved his life? He climbed out of bed, knelt on the floor and thanked God for his life so far, asked mercy for himself because he was a sinner and for his children because they were innocent and, if possible, for his wife because she was only a woman and could not help herself. Then he climbed back onto the pallet, huddled his gown up about his ears, put his hat on his face and went back to sleep.

  Agnes meanwhile had woken to find Catherine Nisbet bending over the fireplace and weeping salt tears into her skirt because she had laid the fire and now could not get the tinder to light no matter how she struck flint to steel again and again. The babe kicked cruelly at Agnes’ ribs and she must haul herself up by using the curtains because the bed was old and sagged in the middle. The cold struck at her as it had at Nisbet, but found her armoured against it by the little furnace of the child within. She rolled cautiously to put her feet in her shoes and waddled over to the fireplace, where she took the flint and steel from Catherine’s shaking hands, found the tinder to be damp, no doubt from tears, fetched another scrap out of the box and had the little stub of candle lit in a few minutes more. With the fire curling through hay into the wood, she went back to the chest where her clothes lay.

  Mrs Nisbet stumbled over to her in the dark to assist her to put on her hose since she could not reach her feet except sideways, scolding all the while that Agnes should not be cold when her time was so near, it was invariably fatal, and Walsingham was wicked and cruel to do so to a woman in her state. She would speak of it to that meagre little clerk and demand better lodging.