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

by Patricia Finney

  Unobtrusively Simon brought up her chair to be by the fire and Becket found the stool and placed it before her. Catherine was busily setting about the plates to scrape them off and pile them up, before she retired to the bed and drew the curtains. Simon looked about him for a place to sit and found the clothes chest. The door was already shut, but the Judas hole was open and he glared at Ramme’s eye appearing Cyclops-like behind it, gesturing him one-handed to depart. The cover shut with a snap and Simon pictured him with his ear pressed tight to the wood.

  Becket seemed in a strange mood. On the one hand his face kept breaking into a boy’s grin, on the other he hung his head with contrition. It was a foolish thing to see a grown man look so coyly on a woman. Agnes smiled steadily on him and seemed always on the point of laughter which never came, so that Simon felt a slow sting in his chest, as if her smile were an injury to him, instead of an assistance.

  ‘It grieves me to see you here,’ Becket said at last which caused Agnes to look away, ‘as it was I that brought you here, you know. I must confess it to you now. I never…

  ‘But how did you know?’

  ‘If I had known indeed, I would not…. Well, I might have thought first of what I did. I was hunting some men who had paid to have me killed, myself and Mr Ames both, and when I found one of his creatures and got the story of him, it was your house he led us to. ’

  Agnes looked down and shifted her swollen feet in the rushes.

  ‘No doubt this is one of your ploys, Mr Inquisitor Ames?’ she said to Simon. ‘A cunning variation, I think.’

  ‘No, Agnes,’ Becket said before Simon could answer, ‘I came here of mine own free will. At least hear me out. In the first place I wished to ask your pardon for having brought Mr Secretary Walsingham’s men upon your household.’

  ‘It is granted.’

  ‘And in the second place…Adam is your brother, flesh of your flesh, and nothing more natural than that you should want to protect him. I am come here to… to tell you a tale, only so you may know what manner of man you are protecting. Once my tale is told then will I press you neither way, not to protect nor to reveal, since that must be a matter for your own conscience. Only you must know why he paid to have me killed. And as God is my witness, this is not a thing I do lightly nor wantonly, I have thought upon it and consulted my…friend upon it, and am decided it is for the best.’

  ‘Does it concern the fall of Haarlem?’

  ‘Then Anthony told you of it?’

  ‘Not until this week. I have read his account of it. I had known he was married before in Holland and that his wife died, but not the circumstances.’

  Becket shut his eyes and fell silent again. ‘I had not known,’ he said heavily. ‘So he and Use…Well. Well.’

  He was quiet for so long that Simon grew uneasy. At last Agnes reached out clumsily and touched the hand that rested on his knee.

  ‘You were one of those that ran the supply sleds into Haarlem. Will you tell me of it?’

  Becket smiled briefly. ‘Why it was like flying through black milk, the town was like a place in a nurse’s tale, all battlemented with fog. It was winter…Holland is a strange place in winter. No flies, no ague marshes, all turned from green grass and brown mud and grey water into white steel, all that was soft alchemised to rock. They move their heavy gear in winter, not summer, if they may, and the children bolt about the ice like waterbeetles on their ice skates.’

  ‘Those are the Dutch pattens with blades upon them? I saw some last winter and Edward clamoured to have a pair.’

  ‘Edward?’

  ‘My son.’

  Becket laughed. ‘Did he so? Then you must buy him some, they are the best sport for a boy I ever saw. The children in Holland are all bred to them and at the festivals they run races and…’

  ‘Adam was there also?’

  ‘Oh ay, he was there. I think it was he made a pretty figure of the enterprise, now how did it go? Yes, he said that the plan for bringing the sleds past the Spaniards might be a parable of religion. That each of us, our souls, were like such sleds weighed down with worldly goods and near-blind in the fog of the world, and if each followed faithfully the one before we would surely find the City of God. Which was a pleasant fancy, but then Cut-the-Rope said that for the figure to be complete each sled must have bright lanterns of the Word of God to light their way. And anything other than dark-lanterns were madness for our enterprise and Adam liked the simile less then and so left it.’

  Agnes nodded. ‘But did you not care that he is a Roman Catholic?’ Becket shrugged. ‘He was English, he had fought the Spaniards better than many of Gilbert’s hot-worded minions. And it was not so deeply a matter of the Reformed against the Pope then, it was more the Dutch in arms for their ancient liberties against the oppression of Spain and their tenth penny tax. Or so the Dutch said. There were Catholics in plenty among the Germans; Roland Yorke was Catholic also.’

  ‘Who was Cut-the-Rope? Did I know him?’

  ‘No. There were the three of us, friends of old from Gray’s Inn, Fant, your brother, myself – Ralph had gone to the Court by then. Cut-the-Rope Johnstone was a Scots Borderer, with his brother Black Will, and they were there because they had more foul bills waiting for them in Carlisle than need serve to hang them and there was famine in Scotland. We were five to a sled, nine hundred in all, with scouts and forerunners and rearguard.’

  ‘And the siege?’

  ‘Where would be the profit in speaking of it, Agnes? It was a weary sorry time. We fought and starved our best and in the end it all came to naught. The Spaniards spoke discourteously of the Dutch, saying they were fat peasants jumped up to be burghers, but they were valiant men and women all. Even the women fought which was something I never thought to see.’

  Agnes stayed quiet and watched as Becket gathered himself internally. ‘Well, it was I that brought all their labour to nothing, you know that I think. Myself and your brother, Adam. With him… if we had opened our eyes, we might have seen it coming: he was angry so much of the time we were besieged: he could not abide to see what the Iconoclasts had done to the churches, nor the way we piled broken saints and carvings as bulwarks to strengthen the walls against cannonfire. When we made a few little japes with vestments and Mass things upon the walls to annoy the Spaniards, he was not to be entertained for he called it blasphemy. The Johnstones and he had a great bitter argument about it that lasted the better part of a day and he brooded for a week after. Then we made another night attack for food and he never came back with us.

  We thought him dead, we mourned him, said prayers for him, and forgot him, as we had others of our friends that died.

  ‘Then the weather warmed and the ice thinned and melted and still the Prince had not been able to relieve us. The Spanish ships took control of the Haarlemmermeer and the rations were halved and halved again. Men began to drop and die from simple hunger, not requiring a wound or sickness to bear them off, and the children…. Jesu, I will not tell you of the children, Agnes, it would make you weep to hear it.

  ‘And then Balfour asked me to go a message to the Prince of Orange to tell him that if no relief came we would yield to the Spaniards and hope for a little mercy. That was in summer. I had learnt some Dutch, you see, enough to pass.

  ‘And so I went out upon a raid and hid behind a wagon and took a red Hapsburg sash and a Spanish-cut jerkin from a man I killed, and when morning came, before they mustered, I slipped away southwards.’

  Agnes had clasped her hands. She admires him, thought Simon inwardly, and felt the ugly sting in his chest deepen to a bum.

  ‘No doubt it was half in hope of feeding I went,’ Becket said, unwilling to be admired. ‘Haarlem was become a city of the dead, all populated with skeletons like an old image of the Dance of Death, save for those that swelled up in a kind of hunger-sickness and looked well-enough fed until they died suddenly of it. I was tired of dreaming of food – God knows, I dreamt of every meal I ever had, so even stockfish made m
y mouth flood. I dreamed of comfits of Seville oranges and dates glistening with gold and pounded pearls and I dreamed of hot puddings and good plain white meats of cheese and eggs and butter and bread, which all were swallowed by birds in Spanish ruffs before my eyes. To dream of food and to awaken with your belly clinging tight to your backbone, I am no saint to rejoice therein. It was the thought of food that pushed me on, I tell you now, lest you think me some hero, but the Spaniards had few enough rations themselves and no livestock left I could steal. The country round about Haarlem was eaten bare.

  ‘I talked my way past the Spanish and Walloon pickets and when I was out beyond the siegeworks, the mud and the stinking trenches, I found the road south and swung along it boldly. Balfour had told me that to skulk and hide is to attract attention and it was good advice. It took me two days to escape from the ravaged lands, like walking from famine into plenty, from Tartarus to Arcadia. For the Netherlands is a very Arcadia: where the marshes have been drained and farmed, they are green and fair and the cattle…. Agnes, you would not believe the cattle, for they are twice the size of any English beast and give twice the milk, as much as a gallon and a half per day. Yes, in very truth they do, I have seen it with mine own eyes.

  ‘I met a little girl on the road who was driving two great fat cows and she cried out upon how I was a poor man that was sick to death, and she milked one of her kine there on the road and gave me half her loaf of bread as well. ’

  ‘Was she frightened?’ asked Agnes, frowning.

  ‘No, I was afeared of her. After Haarlem it seemed unnatural to see a child with pink cheeks and plump arms and a loud voice and no swollen belly. And why should she be afraid of me? I was a shambling poor creature that she could have outrun with ease, or set her giant cows on me if she wanted. But she was kind and gentle to me and would take none of the store of gold I had for the journey, and she gave me Godspeed.’

  ‘But you came to Sassenheim in the end?’

  ‘Oh yes, I came to the Prince. I saw his troops and thought them raw but that they might be sufficient, given how weak the Spaniards were themselves, if we sallied out of Haarlem to help them. 1 showed his Grace by mine own person how desperate was our case. He was kind to me also and had his doctors examine me and gave me meat but alas it was too tough for my poor teeth which were loosened by the scurvy, and I lost an eyetooth in a piece of pork. ’

  Becket showed the empty place, Agnes tutted, then he sighed and ducked his head, as if bracing himself against a heavy weight he must lift.

  ‘If I had been wise I would have stayed in Sassenheim where I was safe. But I could not, so Prince William told me his answer to Balfour. I loaded up a packhorse with food and thought if I were brazen enough I might slip through and gain the meer’s shore and swim across by night, perhaps…. Well, it was foolishness, I was a half-witted zany to believe it. Perhaps feeding made me less cunning or I had used up all my store of luck for that month. Or perhaps Balfour was right when he hinted that he did not trust those about the Prince. I know not, only I told the pickets that the food was for the Capitano del Campo, and the packhorse had the Prince of Orange’s brand on him, and Christ forgive me, I never saw it.’

  ‘They caught you?’

  ‘Ay, and I was still too weak to fight them. I wounded only one and they would have killed me, which was my desire, only the Capitano Romero saw us and ordered them to stop.’

  And there were Becket’s great square hands gripped tight upon each other.

  ‘They put you to the question?’ Agnes had her hand to her mouth. ‘They made a few attempts but none so bad I…’

  ‘They hung him up from a gibbet by his wrists with weights on his feet,’ said Simon calmly. ‘When that failed, they flogged him.’

  ‘How the devil do you know what they did?’ snarled Becket.

  ‘I read the signs on your body when Senor Eraso was strapping your ribs. After you had saved my life. And this is material to your tale, that Mrs Fant should know…’

  ‘Whose tale is it, Ames, mine or yours?’

  ‘Yours, of course, Mr Becket.’ Simon thought: and nor will he be pitied.

  ‘I could have done it, Agnes, I would have held out for the few days before Count Batenburg was appointed to come, I was counting them for all the time passed so slowly, it was not that I was weak, in truth it was not…’

  ‘David, I would never think you weak.’

  ‘But they tricked me. And I was too much of a fool to see it, too innocent…’

  ‘And weary.’ said Simon to himself, but neither heard him.

  ‘After the second day they cut me down again, in the evening, I think. They said they would try fire next. They locked me in a storeroom, and late that night one came to the little window that I…knew. The chain was long enough so I could…get close enough to hear him. He whispered to me for an hour, he said he could not save me, but if I gave him whatever message I was bringing to Balfour, he would see that it reached him.’ Becket swallowed. ‘And I told him.’

  And here was silence, only the fire speaking to itself quietly, Agnes’s hands folded on her stomach, Becket uncomfortable on his stool, shifting, looking up at her.

  ‘He was Adam,’ she said calmly.

  Becket nodded.

  ‘And after?’ she asked, ‘Why did the Spaniards not kill you when they had what they wanted?’

  ‘Too busy at first. And then your brother again, perhaps he felt some pricking of his conscience. He fed me while they dickered over Haarlem. And then, two weeks after they marched into the city, the Spanish troops mutinied for they had not been paid in over two years and were not permitted to recoup themselves by sacking the place. The burghers had made their bargain well: they had Alva give his word as a gentleman of honour upon it and not even a Spaniard will break that.

  ‘Romero was shut up in his tent while the soldiers’ council talked with the Prince of Alva and by that time I was healed enough to walk, and so I broke away. I remained in the Netherlands a few years, fighting the Spaniards and living however I could, trying to run Romero and Strangways to earth. But I lost track of Strangways and then Romero died in a fall from his horse, may he rot, and so at last I came back to England, and here I am.’

  Agnes put her cheek on her hand, her eyes were shut.

  ‘I…thank you for telling me your tale, David, for all its heaviness.’

  ‘Will you tell them where Strangways…’

  Her eyes opened, blazing with anger. ‘From you at least, Mr Becket, I expect no inquisition.’

  David shrank from her as if she had struck him. She shook her head wearily. ‘I must think on it now.’ Becket rose, went to the door.

  ‘I have done what I came to do,’ he said with a few remaining shreds of dignity. ‘God be with you, Agnes.’

  ‘And with you.’

  Simon began to hurry after him, but then minded him of an important thing.

  ‘This is the Indulgence I spoke of, Mrs Fant,’ he said, turning to her and taking it out of his penner. ‘I recall I promised you a sight of it. Did your brother not show it to you?’

  ‘No.’ She spoke abstractedly. ‘He said I was a woman and could not understand it, though I had a good tutor and I read Latin well enough…’ She frowned at the writing. ‘This cannot be right. Have you forged this, Mr Ames?’

  ‘No madam,’ said Simon, annoyed, ‘1 have no need to stoop to such tricks. This was found in a box within the second hiding hole, the one within another hidden place. In the hall. Can you not see the Pope’s seal on it?’

  ‘But it does not name him priest, it names him plain Adam Strangways. ’

  ‘Yes it does. I have never believed he is a priest.’

  Agnes pressed her lips tight together, handed the paper back to Simon. ‘It was our mother’s especial desire, even I know it that was so young when she died. It was why he went overseas in the first place. Work upon this again, Mr Ames, to be sure you can do better.’

  ‘Madam, I swear to you by… by the
Bible, this is no forgery. Can you not see the Vatican’s watermark in the paper?’

  She held it to the daylight, squinted, and gave it into his hand again. Then she turned her back on him, went to the chair and sat slowly down upon it, picked up her work and began to embroider a baby’s biggin.

  Simon sighed and followed Becket onto the stairway, and Kinsley shut the door again and locked it.

  XLIII

  In all this time, where was poor Tom lying in his privy trough of despair? I think it was Simple Neddy found him, for once I looked up and found his odd Chinaman’s eyes and thick lips hanging as it were a suspended moon above me, his smooth brow all cluttered up with concern.

  Somehow he must have brought me to Blackfriars from Temple Bar to my little leaking room there, and made a fire out of more rotten wood broken from the far end of the cloister and perhaps some secret store of his own. He put dried woundwort on my sliced cheek and scattered sweet-smelling leaves, and then because I was still unseeing and lost, he brought and put in my arms his own true treasure, which was a ragbaby wrapped in motheaten wool, its face crudely sewn and worn thin with kissing. Alas, it could not mend me and so I lay like a post that day with it in the crook of my arm, the blood drying and clotting on my cheek and my ears burning with Ralph’s last cry to me. When Simple Neddy came back and sat by me helplessly stroking my matted hair, I could muster enough sense to say,

  ‘Find Becket for me, you know him?’ He nodded with a frown slowly forming on his face. ‘Find him. He might find the boy.’

  It was a hard thing to put upon his few wits, but he nodded his grey head again and left with determination on his face, and I lapsed back into darkness.

  As it happened, Simon Ames was himself bearing David back to Whitefriars Steps, having an appointment with Sir Philip Sidney for the inspection of his dragon. Besides there was nothing more he could do at the Tower in unravelling the plot. He would come back to study his reports and papers and begrudged the time spent in Hanging Sword Yard, but saw no help for it if he would please Walsingham and his beloved daughter Frances.