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

by Patricia Finney

  There was the sound of a knife being drawn by the man, a little flash of metal and eyeballs and then the dull thud of Becket’s knee in his victim’s groin. Ralph started forward, but I held him back. Becket had never to my knowledge descended so low as to become a footpad.

  He waited for the man to cease whimpering on the frozen mud and then leaned close. This time the knife was in Becket’s hand.

  ‘Who sent you?’

  The man only moaned and retched.

  ‘Speak or I’ll make cutwork of your ear.’

  ‘No need.’ I called in the dark, ‘I know him, David.’

  ‘Is that Tom?’ he called, cautiously.

  ‘No, the Clever One.’

  Becket sighed. ‘And what do your angels tell me this time. That this faggot is a dragon with a deadly eye or some such garbage.’

  ‘My angels say nothing of him, only I have seen him with Simon Ames.’ I said nothing of how, since the Clever One had heard of tact. ‘His name is James Ramme.’

  ‘Is this true?’ asked Becket of his prey.

  ‘Yes, God damn you, I am sent to give you a message.’

  ‘Oh indeed? And wherefore then did you skulk about in corners and play act a fruitseller if you were but a messenger? I would have greeted you more kindly had you spoken to me direct and given it me like an honest man.’

  Ramme, who had hoped to find Ames’s strange friend conversing with Spaniards or attending Mass, rose creaking to his feet and tried sorrowfully to brush the mud off his grosgrain and little round velvet cloak. Becket had backed off somewhat, his dagger still in his hand.

  ‘Speak your message,’ he said.

  ‘His Honour, Mr Secretary Walsingham will receive your liege the King of London at his house in Seething Lane, the morrow evening.’ Becket’s eyelashes dropped half across his eyes at Ramme’s satirical tone and he smiled gently.

  ‘Well, I have a message for Ames, but I think I will not use so flighty an Hermes. Who knows what strange fate may overtake it?’

  Ramme was sullen and said nothing, still trying to repair the damage to his fine Court suit and making worse what would have been better amended by drying and a stiff brush.

  ‘James Ramme?’ asked Becket, ‘Hm, I recall Mr Ames speaking of you, sir, that you are somewhat of a swordsman. Are you also a gentleman? Ramme lifted his chin at the insult. ‘I am sir.’

  ‘Indeed then, Mr Ramme,’ said Becket jovially, sheathing his dagger, ‘I fear I owe you a blow.’

  ‘You do sir. I must demand satisfaction of you.’

  ‘Well, well, let us not duel upon it, to be sure, as I would not wish to cause Mr Ames grief by killing you nor myself grief by hanging for it. Perhaps we may compose our quarrel in fair exchange? You have taken a blow from me, now I will stand and take a blow from you and then call it quits, eh?’

  ‘Done,’ said Ramme through his teeth. All would have been well if he had but struck back at Becket with his fist, but no, he was foolish and also dishonourable. He drew his long rapier and charged at Becket, who blinked, side-stepped and tripped Ramme as he went past. Dagger and sword appeared in Becket’s left and right hand, and as Ramme recovered himself and returned to the attack, he made a double beat, trapped the thin Italian blade at the crossing of his own two, twisted and broke Ramme’s weapon in half with a flick of his wrist. Ramme stared in dismay at the ruin of his expensive cutlery after the previous ruin of his silken clouts, and further at Becket showing his teeth and tossing his sword and dagger so they passed each other in the air, and back again.

  ‘Tut tut,’ said Becket softly. ‘Mr Ramme, I fear you are no gentleman and no swordsman neither.’

  Ramme was backing away, his half-sword held up before him pathetically. I saw the gleam in the dimness as Becket glanced at me and away again, and who knows but if we had not been there as witnesses, Ramme may have ended his days there and then for his petty treachery. Perhaps not. It would have depended upon Becket’s mood and the level of his choleric humour and so forth.

  Becket spat at Ramme’s feet, sheathed his blades.

  ‘Run beg your mother to wipe your arse for you, Ramme, and come and call me out when you are fullgrown. And give Mr Ames my duty, but if he send any other message by you, it will never reach me. Good night to you, Tom.’

  There was another movement and the courtyard was of a sudden empty of any but James Ramme, breathing hard and shakily, and a sleeping pig, whereas Ralph and I hurried back to the boozing ken and then onwards to Blackfriars. In the bone-aching cold of the night, I felt a little warmed that still my angels took care of me and mine, although it caused me great disquiet that I could no longer see the Queen Moon as she rode her swirling horse closer and closer to London.

  XXXIX

  Since the night before her Coronation when she lay there of ancient usage, the Queen has never lodged in the Tower and her unused buildings there rot and moulder unheeded. Which can be no surprise to any man who knows the nature of her memories thereof, the place where her mother died and she herself was cooped up by her sister. Yet even had she never felt its chill as a prisoner, Her Majesty would have more sense than to sleep there, for by day it is noisy and clangorous with coining in the Royal Mint, and clerks swarm about it and the armoury is there and also a steady rumble of carts to and from the Mint, and by night it is no place for the unangelled.

  Agnes Fant could sleep there, with a pile of pillows at her side to take the weight of her belly, a little musty-smelling though they were, as well as sleeps any woman in her ninth month which indeed is never too well, for the effort of moving and the many times she must up and resort to the chamber pot under the bed.

  Catherine Nisbet, however, could not sleep at all, she thought, no matter how many Ave Marias and Paternosters she muttered to herself. She lay blinking in despair at the worn moth-eaten tester above them, her niece tormenting her with deep and even breathing of sound sleep beside her. And the bell paced slowly through the night, giving the hours she lay awake, picking witlessly at her sin and her weakness.

  In her silly youth, when girls will tease themselves with heroical pictures of martyrdom for Christ, she had never imagined such cold and bleakness and such tedium as she found in the Tower. Could she have spoken to a priest of it, she might have felt better, she thought, but that was impossible though there were priests within a few yards, behind more stone walls. They may as well have been in the New World for all the use they were to her. All that kept her from weeping aloud was her hope that her covert speech with Mr Kinsley might bear fruit.

  The day following she sat at her needlework by the deep window, no girls to instruct, no cook to supervise, no steward to consult, no purchas-ing to be done, no accounts to bring to Agnes for casting, no legal men weaving smooth unimpeachable word webs for her mistress to unpick, no gossips to exchange the news, nothing. She stitched and stared and stared and stitched. Agnes rested on the one good chair, her own work making a white mound of black-embroidered linen for a child’s nightrail on her stomach, and her feet on an old worn footstool with the Dudley arms upon it. Neither could work well for their fingers were cold and stiff despite the fire, for the Tower is too chilly and damp in its stone soul to be easily warmed by mere wood and flame.

  When at last the bell tolled noon, Agnes heaved herself up and knelt stiffly upon the stool to say her Angelus, meek before God. Catherine found her knees too painful to kneel, and so stood. Before they had finished the door was unlocked and Simon Ames entered, with Kinsley behind him bearing a tray of food, mutton and a baked pheasant, farced with chestnut and berries, and good manchet bread, and wine in a pewter jug, and a sallet of a few winter herbs. Kinsley’s face was stolid, but he stole a glance at Catherine and nodded almost imperceptibly.

  When Ames saw they were praying, he motioned Kinsley to stop and stood waiting until they had finished. Then he came forward and offered Agnes his arm to arise once more and conducted her to her seat and brought up a little table and set the meal down upon it wit
h as good a courtesy as if he had been her steward. Mrs Nisbet longed to speak privily to Kinsley but dared not, only she noted that he had carried the tray ostentatiously to their clothes chest and set it down there. Did she hear something drop to the floor?

  Kinsley continued in stately fashion to the door, called to have it opened and walked through where he stood just visible through the Judas hole and nodded at her again. With her hand clenched at the place inside her stays where her little gold cross should have been, Catherine went to move the tray and sit down on the box. When she peeped down, there was a blessed little black leather bottle lying in the dust.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I have dropped my needle.’ Her knees were not so stiff she could not bend down and feel about and hide the little bottle with her body until she had got it safely under her skirts and into the pocket in her petticoat.

  Standing up she made a great play of her aching back and for good measure clapped a hand to her head.

  ‘Madam, alas, I have a megrim.’

  ‘Perhaps some meat would settle it?’

  ‘No, no, I think I must lie down.’

  Agnes watched quizzically as she went to their bed and lay down and drew the curtains.

  Simon Ames raised his brows. ‘Would you like another woman to attend upon you, madam?’ he asked. ‘I could arrange it if you wish. Another of your own household, perhaps.’

  ‘No,’ said Agnes, with an edge of annoyance in her voice. Then she smiled a little. ‘I never know whether to rejoice in your kindness or fear it, sir.’ Ames inclined his head and sat upon the footstool by the fire while she said her Grace. He folded himself up neatly, with his gown tight about him, and his new velvet cap pulled down out of its shape to half-cover his chapped ears. As ever his nose was issuing phlegm, which made Agnes long to wipe it like a child’s, and his eyes were red and circled with shadow. By the evidence of her hand-mirror, she thought he looked more the prisoner than did she, but perhaps that was womanly vanity.

  She tore off some pheasant breast with her little knife, nibbled on the bread, drank sparingly of the wine which she mixed with the good well-water in the earthenware jug. Then she stopped.

  ‘Come Mr Ames, I like not to eat alone. If Mrs Nisbet cannot bear me company, do you share with me for the babe takes up so much of my belly I cannot eat above a quarter of this.’

  Simon hesitated, then drew up his chair to the small table and used his penknife to take some of the pheasant which was a little tough.

  ‘Have you spoken to Father Hepburn about me?’ she asked after a while. ‘I wish very much to make my confession before my hour comes.’

  Simon shook his head and gulped inelegantly at some meat.

  ‘Father Hepburn is willing enough, it is my master Norton that likes not the idea.’

  ‘Ah,’ she patted her lips with the napkin. ‘There is a man strong for the new religion.’

  ‘He is a Puritan, true.’

  ‘Poor Mr Rackmaster. How strange to be so certain sure of the purity of a thing only fifty years old, built upon the word of Luther the spoiled monk, and a madman…’

  Simon raised his brows in question, his mouth being full again. Deep in cipherwork he often forgot to eat, and had found a better stomach to his food than he expected.

  ‘Calvin, I mean, the Switzer that has outlogicked Aquinas,’ explained Agnes.

  ‘Is God then, not logical?’ Simon was surprised to hear this.

  ‘God created logic, but he is not nor cannot be bound by it, being infinite.’ Simon nodded. ‘Calvin says that there can be no free will nor redemption by our own acts because God knew in the beginning, with his first speaking of the Word, which among us will be saved and which damned, and therefore is all laid out, with only His foreordained Grace to save us.’

  ‘It is logical.’ allowed Simon doubtfully.

  ‘But not sensible. Here are we two: say that you are among God’s Elect and I am damned, as Mr Norton believes, what a counsel of despair is this! For you need do nothing and try nothing to remain of the Elect and I can do nothing nor attempt nothing to become fit for Heaven. All is coldly separated now and forever: a melancholic prospect and a faith leading to melancholy and madness.’

  Simon observed, ‘I have seen madness and melancholy among Catholics too madam.’

  As indeed have I, but Agnes had been too young to remember our mother in the year before she died, when all about her were devils trying to steal her soul. So Agnes smiled and leaned forward as far as she could, her pale eyes shining.

  ‘Ah, but there is always hope for me. No matter how black my sin, I need only turn my face back to God, confess my crime and gain absolution from the priest, and God His Grace and my soul’s hunger for him will catch hands and so swing me blithely up to Heaven. To love so gentle a God is not hard, Mr Ames, nor is it strange that He who made the world can turn bread and wine like these here into His Body and Blood. None of it is strange, none without hope, there is hope shining through all the world like the course of the Sun.’

  She was smiling as she spoke, and perhaps the babe within her caught the infection of her joy, for there was movement in the velvet of her gown as the child kicked. Simon looked aside.

  ‘I do not ask you to turn from the Almighty.’ Simon said, ‘I would ask that of no one. Only turn aside from the Pope which is not the Almighty but a man that has too much power and too little holiness.’

  ‘But God appointed him, he descends from St Peter. You speak of such a little step…’ Agnes smiled. ‘But then one step leads to another, and so again on to damnation.’

  There was silence between them, more sad than tense, as of two who speak with bars between them so that they cannot meet.

  Simon cleared his throat. ‘Speaking of the sun,’ he began awkwardly, ‘have you ever read Thomas Digges, his Perfect Description of the Celestial Orbs? No? I shall bring it to you, for it was a true wonder to me.’ He began to set out goblets and little pieces of bread to display to her the wonder of Copernicus’ universe, which so cleanly and beautifully to a mind like Simon’s, makes resolution of a vast heap of puzzles. With one simple step, a change of view, it cuts through the Gordian knot of cycles and epicycles and epi-epicycles. To Simon who had puzzled at the ugly complexity of Aristotle’s world that centred upon the earth, the cleanliness of Copernicus that turns about the Sun in his glory was thrilling to the heart.

  Agnes too saw Simon’s true intent. ‘Is this then your faith?’ she asked, when he had come to a halt. ‘A faith in the answering of number and the arts mathematical. You seem not to have that hectic certainty of salvation of Mr Norton. Indeed it is a puzzle to me that you do the work you do, for you are not poor, I think, and not besotted with cruelty neither. ’

  Simon blinked and stared at the orderly crumbs of bread before him. ‘No,’ he said, twirling the strap of his penner in his fingers. ‘By birth and nurture I am a Jew.’

  Her mouth opened wide before she noticed and shut it. Nor did she draw her skirts aside, though the impulse was clearly there before she quelled it. She flushed instead. ‘I… I had not met one before.’ Simon laughed, hand to hair. ‘As you see, we have no tails nor horns and I must assure you, I have never tasted baby.’

  For a moment she whitened and then laughed too. ‘How come you here then? Do you attend church? Is it not also blasphemy for you?’

  ‘Some might say it is. I have a dispensation from the Queen gained by my lord of Leicester, that I need attend only at Christmastide and Easter, which my rabbi says is permissible, and I must not make converts which I have no desire to do. My family are from Portugal, but all thrust out from there by the Inquisition of Spain which burned two of mine uncles. ’

  ‘Then how…’

  ‘How can I be part of another inquisition?’

  ‘Is it revenge?’

  ‘No. Less noble. It is…self-preservation, fear.’

  ‘Fear of what?’

  ‘Fear of this land being swallowed by Spain. Fear of my family�
�s last safe harbour being taken and sacked by an implacable foe. Coming into this work was a slow matter, madam, and often I lie in bed and think of that slowness as a kind of curse, like the snail’s course of leprosy. By my arts mathematical I have skill in ciphering and the breaking of other ciphers, in the piecing out of documents, the connecting of one with the other, what my master Sir Francis Walsingham is wont to name the Mundus Papyri, wherein all things have their shadows, and wherein knowledge moves slowly, sluggishly like a sick serpent, but leaving ever its tracks upon the page whereby it may be followed.’

  ‘Then why not cleave to that trade?’ Agnes asked, coldly. ‘It seems a cleaner thing than this.’

  ‘But the one led naturally to the other, for knowing the patterns and plots within the Mundus Papyri I was better able to frame what questions should be asked. And when one is obdurate, then if he is racked, so must I question him under pains, and so…’ He spread his hands, not looking at her, as if a supplicant appealing to her mercy.

  ‘And this is done not for the safety of religion, but for your own safety?’

  ‘Religion is part of it, madam, although it is not mine own faith. The Queen hath woven the two together cunningly so if one fall, falls the other also. And the Queen’s Grace is the lynchpin, the foundation stone, the golden chain whereon hangs a most heavy, a most beautiful and bejewelled realm. One single narrow chain and if it be broken then falls the jewel to the ground to be swept up by Spain, its diamonds and rubies broken out of it and the gold molten to pay for Inquisitions and priests and the destruction of the Netherlands. It is so easy to kill a man or a woman, we are all such delicate, brittle, fragile creatures.’

  Agnes was sitting back again, her hands clasped on her stomach, her eyes narrowed. ‘So for the safety of the realm, you ply your bloody trade like a soldier?’

  ‘I would make a very poor soldier.’ Simon said, ‘though if the Queen is killed by this new Guisan plot, and Spain invades, then will I take up a gun and fight as a true Englishman and a Jew.’