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

by Patricia Finney

  Agnes watched Catherine Nisbet’s breath make curls dragonlike in the air and let her complaints run about unresisted: she wondered at how calm she herself was, how she had known at once on waking where she lay and why, and yet it had brought no stab of terror to her heart. Was this how God had helped the martyrs of Rome? She had dreamt of Edward, Mary and Elizabeth waving farewell to her as she left them in the summer, and in her dream Catherine was there also in her new petticoat.

  When she left she had hoped to be back in time for Edward’s breeching, but Dorcas their nurse had seen him out of his child’s skirts and into his man’s hose, with a proud (and blunt) little sword to complete the picture of a gentleman. Edward himself had written to her about it, very carefully, with only one small blot, signing himself her most dutiful and loving son. The girls had put their marks to the paper also and Mr Carbury the tutor had penned an elegant and incomprehensible report of their doings, their achievements and the great day when Edward was breeched. She had shown it to Adam, longing to be able to present her children to him for his blessing, but he had only glanced at the letters and asked if they were being brought up in the True Faith as their mother would have wished. She had asked him hesitantly if it would be possible for him to come and give Edward his First Holy Communion, but he had told her severely that his work would not admit of it.

  ‘Oh, they have taken our rosaries,’ wept Mrs Nisbet. ‘How shall we pray?’

  Agnes blinked at her stupidly, to find she had finished her toilet, dressed, pinned her hair, put on her cap, all while she was thinking of her children. She made a wry smile at Mrs Nisbet’s distress.

  ‘There are worse things they could have taken,’ she said and then softened her severity. ‘We can pray on our fingers as they used to do under Diocletian.

  Becket in his boozing ken, meanwhile, awoke when a scrawny child tried to wipe the table around his arms, and lifted his head like a bear. His hands had gone numb and tingling, his back and arse ached and his head pounded from bad wine and beer. He rose like a man long dead of old age, while the child dodged and backed against the wall. Ignoring her reedy cries about the reckoning he pulled himself out the door. There was too much sunlight for all it was only dawn and so misty, he screwed up his eyes and wavered to the conduit, where he broke the ice and dunked his head and gasped as if he was wounded. Then he sat down upon a stone lion’s mane and moaned gently to himself.

  He had had worse awakenings. Slowly his mind waded like a lost traveller in 'a swamp back to the end and origin of his drunkenness and found there Simon Ames and a sudden turning of Anthony Fant’s kitchen in ghostly wise to a small Dutch farmhouse where he had lain bleeding and gasping on the well-scrubbed floor of the locked pantry.

  ‘Christ,’ he said and dug his fingers at his eyeballs, trying not to puke at the memory and what happened after. But the drink had not scoured it out of him and nor could his distemper afterwards, for in Simon’s English tones he had heard that clever old Spanish soldier Julian Romero asking gently and remorselessly what message exactly he was to carry into Haarlem.

  He lifted his head and looked about for an inn that might be open, but when he felt his purse he found that the reason why it had not been cut was that it was empty. The coldness of the water made his nose throb when he drank it, and then he set himself on his two legs and began to walk down Fleet Street to Eliza Fumey’s linen shop which was the nearest plage he knew where he might find paper, pens and ink. He gave no sign of noticing the slender clever-faced man with a wheelbarrow of fruit who paced him exactly upon the other side of the street. I saw him as I also saw Agnes upon the other side of the city, shifting her knees on the cold stone and trying to turn her wandering mind back to the five Sorrowful Mysteries of Our Lady while the coiners of the Mint stamped and struck at their precious metals and the Clerks of the Records and the Ordnance came hurrying in streams through the Lion Gate and the Watergate, and the river mist made of the stone Tower a cunning ship sailing on the air.

  XXXIV

  A stone dropped in the fair diamond puddle wherein I was considering of these things, and broke it to shards. Tom would have lashed out angrily at this spoiling of his play, but I prevented him and glanced up at the one who had done it, with the misty sunlight turned to pillars and rainbows in my eyes.

  A boy stood there, scratching languidly at his cods, with a fine red silk slashed and watered doublet of a size to fit a fullgrown man which drowned out his poor thin shoulders and arms.

  ‘Gabriel,’ said I, for I knew him well. He is a wild rogue, born on the road to the daughter of one of King Henry’s spoiled nuns, and reared entirely in mischief and thievery, and bidding fair to be the King of London in Laurence’s place, when that one dies or is hanged.

  ‘Which is it?’ he demanded suspiciously, with his long narrow fingers at his knife. ‘Tom or the Clever One?’

  ‘The Clever One,’ I said peacably, ‘for the moment. Why do you trouble me?’

  For answer he caught my hand and pulled me behind him from the alley and into Fleet Street, through Temple Bar and along the muddy disgrace of the Strand where the rich men’s houses stand. Those same rich men are too mean to pave their road over because they take the river when they must traverse east to west. Then he dived down another little alley hard by Holywell Street.

  A naked boy was squatting there, his back against icy stone and the skin staring on him like a plucked chicken, his eyes wide open and seeing nothing, and his bruised arms clamped tight upon his bruised knees.

  An elder boy in oversized velvet rags lolled against the stone, paring his nails with a comically large knife. He stood up straight and sheathed the knife when he saw Gabriel, swallowing nervousness. Gabriel made his name by killing an upright-man that beat a friend of his, and he has wounded those who follow him if they fail to obey or show him respect.

  ‘No change,’ said the other boy with a poor ducking bow. ‘Sits as still as a stone, save for shivering.’

  Gabriel looked at me and then nodded at the naked boy.

  ‘What do you make of him, Tom?’

  I sat down on my haunches next to him and waggled my fingers close to his eyes, touched his hands which were cold and clammy. He might have been dead but for the shivering and blinking. Another boy came running up the alley, holding a shirt and blanket with twigs from the hedgerow still stuck in them, thrust them into Gabriel’s arms and ran off again.

  ‘I brought you to him to know if he is mad.’ Gabriel said, ‘Is he? He looks as if his sense has gone flown away, and speaks nothing.’

  ‘Come boy,’ I said, ‘stand up and we will dress you.’

  To my surprise he stood, put his arms up like a small child or a nobleman accustomed to being attended at his dressing. There were old bruises and scratches of a birch-beating on his backside. I dropped the shirt over him, where it hung about and flapped, and wrapped the blanket on top. This was different gear to the fine shirt with the mute swans upon it and his blue livery suit that someone had despoiled him of in the night.

  ‘What is your name?’ I asked, ‘I am called Tom of Bedlam, which is not my right name, but you may call me by it.’ He nodded his fair head and smiled a little shyly and I knew then his sense was not so far gone that it could not come back in at the windows of his head. He knew me from the time I had followed him in his errand to Agnes Fant’s house, and warned him of Lucifer.

  ‘Give us your name,’ Gabriel said harshly. ‘Who are you?’

  The boy turned to me, making ‘Ung ung’ noises like a dummerer that would have you think he is speechless, the better to beg, but when he opened his mouth wide and pointed, we saw he was indeed a true dummerer, for his tongue was a quarter its proper length.

  ‘God’s guts,’ said Gabriel, catching his chin and peering in. ‘Was it cut?’

  The boy had shut his eyes, shame staining his pale cheeks crimson. I shook my head. ‘No, I think not. I saw a printer once that had his tongue cut for slander, and it was all gnarled into
scars from the searing iron, though he could speak a little with it. The boy was bom so, I think.’

  Gabriel’s eyes narrowed and he surveyed the boy up and down like a farmer considering of a milch cow.

  ‘Too fat and well-kempt,’ he said, ‘but with a few spearwort plasters and a little less lard…’ He grinned. ‘If he is abram as well, so much the better.’

  ‘I am no physician,’ I said gravely, now understanding his embroidered mute swans for a sign and a signal, ‘but 1 think he has had some great shock which overwrought him. Do you know who it was robbed him of his clothes?’

  ‘None of mine,’ said Gabriel, ‘though it was a hard night. I will ask of the palliards, but I doubt we can find the duds. Why, were they good?’

  ‘Ay, worth a few pounds I would say.’

  ‘Do you know him then?’

  ‘No, but he has been errand-running about here before. Did you not mark him at all?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ lied Gabriel, ‘I wanted to know if you done so. He could be worth some mint. Will you keep him until I come for him then?’

  I hesitated. What if Tom should return and do him some injury? But then, left as he was, he would starve or freeze and if he had food in his belly, he could always run from Tom if he must.

  ‘He must be clothed better than this,’ I said, ‘which I cannot do. And nor can he beg yet.’

  Gabriel reached in his codpiece and pulled out a couple of shillings. ‘There,’ he said, ‘let him not die and see if you can learn what he was and where he came from. And if you will be counselled by me, feed him nothing until he is thin enough to earn his pannam at the begging law, and beat him well so he pays you mind, if you will be wise.’

  Gabriel slipped away with his henchmen, dissolving among the morning crowds upon the street. I turned to the boy and smiled at his fright. ‘Ah, but I am Tom,’ I said, ‘and notorious for my unwisdom. Come.’

  XXXV

  Great men’s barges sail upon the Thames like swans amongst the lesser breeds of ducks. In the one sits Burghley, lapped in sable and black brocade, in the other stands my lord of Leicester, tigerish in tawny and black velvet, a half-cloak over his shoulder and his gloves alight with topaz, rubies and amber. Half his mind is preoccupied with the cost of silk flowers, since Her Majesty hath taken a fancy to appear as Proserpine upon her Accession Day and now expects that the bower will be decked with blossom of spring, whereas the flowers that would have graced it have been eaten by mice and must now be replaced within a week and at no cost to the Court.

  Walsingham, living hard by the Tower in Seething Lane, need only walk with his attendants around to the Lion Gate and so enter, but nothing may begin without the Privy Councillors.

  Meantime, in the Wakefield Tower, Simon Ames sat behind a small desk, dabbing cautiously at his sore nose. Kinsley brought in Anthony Fant with a flourishing rattle of the door, and Simon saw with a little jolt of surprise that the man had only one arm. He was tall, running to flesh, with a round red face and thinning black hair, in a fine-woven well-tailored suit of murrey wool, the left sleeve pinned back neatly. He stood and stared down at Simon, ignoring the stool that Kinsley pointed to, before he said in a deep voice, ‘I assume you will explain the meaning of this, sir.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Fant, I will.’ Simon gestured again at the stool, which Fant ignored, his whole body a study in dignity of a gentleman. ‘You will be brought before the Privy Council to answer unto them for your harbouring of a traitor.’ Kinsley blinked at such openness with a prisoner. ‘What kind of traitor?’ Fant demanded. ‘Some damned priest?’

  ‘No sir. Your brother in law who has…’

  ‘That bastard? I had hoped he was dead.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why do you want him?’

  Simon took a deep breath. ‘Mr Fant, I will be clear with you. I believe he has come into England to murder the Queen. Your wife harboured him in-your house on Old Change.’

  ‘Christ Almighty,’ said Fant, sitting down on the stool at last.

  ‘Will you help me find him, Mr Fant?’ Simon asked quietly. ‘I understand from your wife that you are no Catholic. And this is no mere matter of Jesuits and printing presses, this concerns the kingdom and the Queen’s life. I beg you will help me.’

  ‘In my house. Adam Strangways. God damn it, I cannot believe Agnes would…. Her brother, of course. Hard for her to refuse, butjesu… When he… . Jesu… I must speak to her.’

  ‘Speak to her?’

  ‘Yes, by God, I want to speak to my wife.’ Fant was reddening and swelling before Simon’s eyes. Ames remembered what Becket had failed to tell him, watching coldly to see if Fant’s anger was an act or no. If it was the man knew how to flush to order.

  They made a procession along the wall-walk, climbed the stair and found Agnes Fant and Catherine Nisbet breaking their fast with bread and cheese and small beer. When Agnes rose and made her curtsey to her lord, Anthony Fant stood straight and stony. There was a vein beating in his neck under his ruff, Simon noticed, and his one fist was clenched.

  ‘What is the meaning of this, madam?’ he demanded. Agnes swallowed, laced her fingers over her belly and stood still watching a cockroach scuttling along the wall. ‘At our very wedding I gave orders that your brother was not to be seen by you nor our children if he ever came into this land again, not for the reason that he is a Papist which you know I will not use as a stick to beat a man, but for another reason, good and sufficient. Did you not swear this to me?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘He comes back to England, curse his guts, and straightaway you give him shelter in my house, feed him my food, put my children in peril because he is a traitor, a foul evil man. What do you say, madam?’

  The cockroach had found a crack and slipped into it. Was this to be her punishment for envying Dorcas that her children ran to their nurse first when they were hurt, not to see any of them again? Agnes had never seen Anthony in such a rage, she had not known he could be so angry because she had always tried to please him, as a good wife should. She thought she had been a good wife to him, until the strange pedlar came in Peterkin’s place with his thunderbolt of silent paper. Her mouth was dry, her throat stopped up, he had never berated her publicly before, Catherine Nisbet was staring at him with her mouth open, indeed, he had never berated her at all. He had always been a gentle and kindly husband who would sometimes in the night put his head on her shoulder and smile in his sleep, as if he loved her.

  The silence was as heavy as an anvil, but she could not speak. She had not been entirely innocent. Adam had met a ballad singer who looked uncommonly like the one who came with the message; her steward had written to tell her of the rotted corpse in Peterkin’s clothes that the men had found when they went to take down the deer fences. There had been the strange zany, more like a bale of twigs than a man, who had screeched a warning of Walsingham’s men and Adam had left the place within an hour. And Walsingham’s men had indeed descended upon them that evening.

  She swallowed again, sickness and heartburn in her throat still rendering her dumb, and beneath her fingers she felt the sharp shifting and prodding of the new baby’s feet against its swaddling of flesh.

  ‘You kept me ignorant,’ Anthony said at last. ‘You used my house but you told me nothing.’ To protect you, Agnes wanted to say, but could not. ‘If it had been some priest, any man but Adam Strangways, I would…I would try to help you, Agnes.’ Were there tears in his eyes? No, surely not. Yes, he was trying to ram one of them back with his forefinger. It seemed as if the stuff in her throat would strangle her, and her legs felt strange and far away. Why could she not say at least that she was sorry, when she was indeed sorry? She opened her mouth again, but nothing came out.

  Anthony turned away from her, waiting while Mr Ames knocked and the man outside opened it and the procession trooped out again. Agnes stared at that door for a long time after it had been shut and bolted, until Catherine Nisbet came fluttering round her and led her to the
single chair and sat her in it, all the while complaining of Mr Fant’s hard usage to her.

  ‘Be quiet,’ she snapped at last, her voice returning when she had no more need of it. ‘He was a good lord to me and now I have hurt him sorely.’

  ‘But for the Cause…’ said Catherine with her foolish pale eyes filling up with her meaningless easy tears.

  I come to bring a sword, Christ had said, and He spoke no more than the truth. She wished she could pray for guidance but she could not.

  Upon the wall-walk, Anthony Fant glared over the shining moat, newly skinned over with ice, at the smoking roofs of London.

  ‘I believe you, sir,’ he said. ‘My wife is a truthful woman and finds it hard to lie. Had she denied anything, I would have believed her before I believed you. But in her silence hides her guilt.’ He stopped, blinked out at a wagon making its precarious way down Little Tower Hill. ‘If you will take me to Old Change I will make sure you have missed nothing that may be hidden in my house. And then I will help you in any way I can.’

  Ames chose his next words with care. ‘What was it Strangways did that makes you so hot against him sir?’

  ‘He is a traitor, you told me so yourself.’

  ‘You have only my word on it, sir. With respect, I am not usually so easily believed.’

  ‘No. Hmf. Well, if he is not dead in a ditch somewhere, seek out a man called David Becket and ask him.’

  ‘I am asking you, Mr Fant.’

  Fant turned his head to look at him, but Ames could not read his expression.

  ‘Whatever you know, I pray you will tell me, sir,’ he pleaded. ‘My lords of Burghley and Leicester are making their way here to examine you and your wife, if I may have something to show them…’

  ‘Privy Councillors waiting upon me?’

  Simon coughed. ‘Er…no, only I am assured that a woman so close to her time should not be carted about from place to place, it would not be seemly.’