Becket was morose and at the steps turned at once to the red lattices of a poor boozing ken at the comer of Water Lane. While dragons of danger leapt out of the foggy air about my dreams, the thing itself was growing in Hanging Sword Court, of wood and metal formed to a beast from the old stories of King Arthur. Perhaps the Queen Moon rides upon such a dragon on the days when she fares forth to battle; it would seem a fitting mount for her.
Simon Ames came into the yard a little breathless with hurrying and made his apologies to Sir Philip who was already there.
Sir Philip waved a hand nonchalantly. ‘My father in law told me what you are about. Now here are some horses of the Queen’s own stables – hush, Titan, steady, when did a harness ever bite you, eh? – and better-experienced wiser horses are there none in the Kingdom.’ He slapped the broad brown neck beside him familiarly while Simon sidled back and away from its vast yellow teeth. He had no quarrel with the general run of horses, though often they had a quarrel with him, but the vast creatures that pulled the Queen’s progress wagons and triumphal floats seemed unnatural to him somehow. But they were well-used to crowds and noise and cheering and Latin speeches and the smell of fireworks.
Dragons with carved and gilded heads they had not encountered before, however, although there had been giants for their parents at Kenilworth. Yet they were peaceable enough and allowed their grooms to lead them up to Master Broom’s masterwork to be introduced. None did worse than sidle and snort. Then they were hitched to the traces, which they liked not because the leather was new, and all eight made essay to try if they could pull the weight of the dragon, which they could.
Adam was there, observing, wearing a workman’s suit of clothes and his hands scrubbed clean. At a nod from Sidney, he slid within the scaled barrel body of the dragon and lifted up the head and blew the horn mounted within, and flashed the mirror eyes and even lit some slowmatch for the beast’s breath.
Then must all come to a halt before they could rehearse, for the wings had been altered to fit past Temple Bar and now one broke its internal rigging and flapped brokenly to the sawdust. Mr Broom climbed up to see the cause of it and found a place where the rope chafed a pulley and so must the pulley be replaced and all about was that bustle and smell of panic that men make in the days before a great procession, when all know that nothing can be ready in time. They were still painting the tail and the gilders had not come for the reason that the leaves of beaten gold for the gilding that they needed were not come either. And then Juno took a dislike to Minerva and so all the horses must be unhitched and moved about to separate them and rehitched.
To all of which, Sir Philip stood at his ease in his second-best suit of armour. He was wearing it to see if his appointed seat could be reached while it was on or if the weight was too great. And also because he was intent on defeating Fulke Greville squarely and was wearing his armour to accustom himself to its weight of eighty pounds.
Simon had gone upon an urgent errand and came hurrying back to say he had found a goldsmith on Ludgate Hill who could supply beaten gold the next day and Sir Philip clapped him on the narrow shoulder and bade him sit down before he fell, and have some sack, and not to be concerned for all was well forward of Sir Philip’s expectation, being long experienced in these matters.
‘I trust your attending on me does not prevent you from working about Sir Francis’ business. He hath told me that it is a matter of great moment. Mr Phelippes is making another search of the city for Throgmorton’s friends this very night.’
‘And for our man?’ said Simon. ‘At least we have his name and his looks. ’ He was in fact near frantic to be dealing with foolishness such as tilting dragons at this time. ‘With God’s help we will find him.’
‘Still London is a mighty antheap. I had heard there was a woman in it, a fair lady.’
‘Ay sir, very close to her time to have her babe so we dare not press her. Nor Throgmorton who may die of it.’
‘Hm. What of the Accession Day Tilts, will the madman make his trial then, think you?’
‘I have been over the plans with Sir Francis and Mr Ralegh and of all the times when Her Majesty is in danger for the reason she is abroad among crowds, there is least danger then. She goes not upon the ground at all, but sees all the sport from her gallery and the only ones about her are her own folk, with the crowds well back. My lord of Leicester will see to it that her bower is well searched and her food and drink twice tested.
‘No, we think he must mean to come as a petitioner to her, not caring whether he live or die and so kill her from close by. ’
‘Therefore they have been annoying petitioners at Court by searching them.’ Sir Philip nodded. ‘Good. And how is your swordplay progressing? Will you try a passado or two with me?’
Simon flushed. ‘Sir, I am a most inept pupil and no credit to my swordmaster, besides which I have not had time since we took Mr Throgmorton and have not…’
Here came Master Broom to say the dragon could begin now, and so all scurried about for to rehearse the speeches and the movements.
Dragons of danger indeed, alas, for here was the cunning of it. The Kingly clerk Philip II in his fair study all lined with tapestry and lit with gold, he had seen that there could be no loss to him in the enterprise. If the attempt by Adam succeeded, why so his worst enemy was dead. And if it failed, it would still ruin her foremost and wisest adviser, his worst adversary across the tiltyard of the Mundus Papyri. Sir Philip Sidney was Sir Francis’ son-in-law: all his house and party would be suspected. And Walsingham had no lack of enemies to make the suggestion that he took gold from Spain, for all that many who might make the hint, themselves took gold in fistfuls from San Lorenzo.
Poor Neddy could not find Becket at all that evening, for David had gone straight from the boozing ken to Laurence Pickering’s house upon the Strand and was locked in council with him over his own plans for the Accession Day.
XLIV
In the Tower, behind black walls, Catherine Nisbet fought her demons which she could scarcely name. For all their stink she went to the jakes as often as she dared and drank from the black leather bottle Kinsley had refilled in exchange for a ring of hers. Agnes seemed not to notice anything: she was staring into the fire, sometimes stabbing her needle in her work, sometimes idle. When it came to suppertime she ate nothing and drank but a little mild beer.
Encouraged by drink, Catherine once began a speech upon firmness in adversity and the martyrs of old and was chilled to her sore bones by the paleness and stillness of Mrs Fant’s glare and the cold words she spoke, that she would consider and make up her own mind. She threw Catherine into a misery of weeping, who could remember hardly anything of what she had heard of Becket’s tale. She climbed muttering to herself into the bed and drew the curtains and made an attempt to pray, but all the while her black bottle sang to her and at last, unlike Odysseus, she unstoppered her ears and went to it.
And yet to be just to the lady, she would not have done so had she known what Agnes knew. All day she had felt griping in her belly, aching in her back and although well-experienced in childbirth, she had hidden from herself her own knowledge of what such gripes portended, being gripped in an indecision near to stone.
Perhaps some of her distress lay in what she guessed but had not heard of the child Anna, the Dutchwoman’s daughter. Thinking of it made her heart quake within her: any woman must look to lose babes, for when a soul is new come to the world its grip is uncertain and a puff of wind may dislodge it. Agnes thanked God she had lost only one that died a little after his birth, long enough to be baptised. It is only to be expected that babes and old people die; yet the death of children is scarcely less common and so much more grievious, for then has liking and loving grown and the children made some growth to their full adulthood. Small Catherine her youngest had taken the smallpox in the year before, and died of it, and the tears filled her eyes to think of it, though it was becoming an old wound. Agnes had paced out the nights by her bed
praying, as do all in such a case, that she herself could take her little girl’s suffering upon her and die if need be, and not her bonny babe that laughed and loved her new rose-coloured petticoat. And yet, although the child died, it had been God’s commandment that she should, a thing beyond her mother’s help. But to have her daughter suffer and die so ill a death as by starving and it to be by the agency of man, that was a far worse horror.
She winced for Becket that he had spent so much courage in resisting torment, only to have his secret cozened from him. To Adam it must have seemed that he did aright, to save his friend and regain the city from the Reformers. She too liked not the thought of japes upon the walls with Mass things and vestments. A pity that it had to be also to the benefit of Spain. Her brother was a great man to her, so painted on her mind by Gathering Nisbet that brought her up after our mother died. As for my tale, she barely knew it, being so little when I went to London to study law and then on to the Court and then madness in the lordly lofts of Bedlam hospital, a secret, unmentioned shame to all about her, like a disease in the privy member.
But…the Indulgence. She no longer doubted its veracity, yet it did not name him Father. And yet he had permitted her to kiss his hand, he had let her think he was ordained, he had let her make Confession to him…. So complete a lie. It turned her world upside down. Her cheeks burned with shame when she thought of confessing to him. To mountebank the sacred station of a priest…. If he had lied in that, what else had he lied in? Could it be true that he was come to kill the Queen? If he was, should she not tell whatever she knew to the little powerful clerk, Ames?
Here were questions to which neither God nor the saints gave her an answer, but must she hammer one out for herself, and now in overplus to it, Pelion upon Ossa, came the strident demands of her new babe to be born.
At length she could make fantasies of wind in her bowels no longer, for she was pacing about the darkened stone room and leaning up against the wall when the pains came and then pacing again, like the caged lion in the menagerie by the moat, only with even greater urgency, as if the babe was far away and thither she must walk to find him.
She called and then swept open the bedcurtains and found a new betrayal, for Catherine Nisbet lay upon her back snoring, and would not waken though she shook her and slapped her. When a new gripe had gone, Agnes hurried to the door and banged upon it and shouted for the Yeoman Warder set to guard her. When he came, wiping pork grease from his mouth, and she told him her state, he was so affrighted at the thought that he left the door unlocked while he ran to find Simon Ames. Which at least made her smile: for all her pacing she could have gone nowhere and Mrs Nisbet was dead drunk upon her bed.
Simon had but a little while since climbed from his boat and come up to Coldharbour Tower to find some food and break his fast, with his ears echoing with Sir Philip Sidney’s rousing speeches and the creaking of dragon’s wings and the stink of gunpowder from the slowmatch still itching his teeth. When Henderson came running in white-faced and stammering of a woman in labour, he could only sit and sag for a while, that he had not the strength to deal with this also.
But then he pulled himself back from musing and sent the man on to fetch the midwife, and hurried to Agnes Fant’s captivity, fumbling a lump of cheese for sustenance into his penner as he went, and trying in haste to recall what little his uncle had told him of women’s travails, which was small enough as no physician likes to meddle with a woman’s work.
At the door he paused to see it open, then knocked timidly, entered, and found Mrs Fant kneeling by the trundle bed with her gown all darkened and dirtied with her waters.
‘Where is your woman?’ he demanded indignantly, and when Agnes gestured speechlessly at the bed, tried himself to waken Mrs Nisbet and failed.
God cursed Eve that tempted Adam, and bade her bring forth her children in sorrow, and Simon said after to any who would listen that he knew no reason why women ever bore more than one babe unless they were forced. And yet to Agnes it was no worse than any other of her travails and better by far than her first, and between her pains she could tell him what he must do to comfort her, as to rub her back and wipe away her sweat and undo all knots in the room, including those upon Catherine Nisbet’s stays, to make the babe come free more easily, and build up the fire to keep it warm once it had been born.
When the midwife came she brought the birthing chair upon her back in a stained cloth, being a little scrawny woman with small hands marked with another birth she had attended that morning. Her face was wrinkled and brown like a walnut, her black and grey hair in wisps under her cap, her apron bloodstained.
‘They never come but in sixes and sevens,’ she said as she unlaced her bodice sleeves and took them off and rolled her shift sleeves out of the way. ‘Begone with you now.’ And Simon went gladly, his stomach roiling for Agnes that was always so cool and white and knowing her own mind, was now sweat-soaked and grunting like a sow in a farrow.
There was a whore I came upon at birthing once, and held her hand in the darkness by the cloisters, a poor little thing, not long from the countryside, and she wept and screamed and groaned all night long and at the end of it there was a little blue baby like Simple Neddy’s treasure. It breathed long enough so I could christen her with puddle water, and then died. They say these go straight to heaven, being new washed from their original sin, but it seems strange there must be so much Hell before. A Divine would say it is woman’s lot to expiate the sin of Eve, but men may sin and sin again like Adam and yet go unpunished as Mrs Fumey is wont to remark. And I have never understood wherefore the gift of Knowledge of Good and Evil should be so ill a thing, for without it are we but brute beasts indeed.
Yet Simon could not walk away. He paced about upon the wall walk, between flaring torches, until the midwife bawled from the barred window that she must have another woman to help, another pair of arms.
Of a certainty he could have found someone in the kitchens or the Mint households, or some noble lady, but Simon’s mind was emptied of all remembrance of women. All he could think was that he had brought Mrs Fant unto the Tower and he had permitted her woman to be supplied with spirits to weaken her and perhaps loosen her tongue, and that he owed the lady recompense. So he ran up the winding stair and entered breathlessly, saying, ‘There are none, I will do it.’
The midwife straightened her back, still keeping hold of Agnes to steady her on the stool, and cursed that there were no attendants for the poor gentlewoman, nor relatives, save one that was drunk, God curse her, and this was a thing unfit and wrong and what was he thinking of for how could the poor lady keep her modesty and she would be shamefast to think….
‘Stop your croaking, you fool.’ gasped Agnes, ‘I care not.’
And so was Simon become a man-midwife, a gossip for his own prisoner, helping her upon the stool as she writhed and worked and gasped and screamed and sweated and her face turned purple with effort.
‘Jesu,’ muttered the midwife, with her hands in Agnes’ privities. ‘This is a big babe and awkwardly lain…. Easy mistress, easy, go slowly…’
There is a scream that men and women have in common: for men they make it when they go mad in battle and rush upon their enemy to kill him, and are filled with magical strength that knocks away all obstacles, and loses itself in the blood of death. And in symmetry, women make that scream when they bring forth a babe. The stone of the Tower let not the scream Agnes made enter it, but bounced it about from wall to wall, having no place there.
The midwife caught the head and eased its shoulders about and then there was a pale slippery bloody scrap in her hands. She breathed into his lungs and breathed again with her finger clearing his throat and at last he opened his little triangular mouth and let out a great many scratching roars and so lost the blue and gained the red. Then she wrapped him in cloths from the trundle bed and gave him to Agnes.
There was a time of peacefulness before the afterbirth was bom, and in it, Agnes rested her head
upon Simon’s breast as he knelt beside her and he pushed the salty tails of hair from her eyes. And once the cord was cut and the afterbirth gone, the midwife took the slop basin and took it to the candle stand and gazed at it like a Roman soothsayer reading a liver, shaking her head and clucking. But then she smoothed her face and came back to Agnes to clean her and with Simon, help her into the bed with her babe. Catherine Nisbet they pulled out and rolled without ceremony onto the trundlebed, still snoring.
And now with dawn broken through the sky full of clouds, there was a concoction of herbs to be made, to clean Mrs Fant’s womb, and a wet nurse to be sent for and the cradle and swaddling cloths brought out from under the big bed. The midwife wrapped up the babe upon his splint to keep his limbs straight, muttering charms while she did. Agnes watched solemn-eyed and took the babe upon her breast in the crook of her arm. The midwife forbade that she should be troubled to change her stained shift and so Simon pulled up the sheets and blankets and the old counterpane to warm her and rolled up her old English gown of green velvet that was now spoiled with her waters. The midwife kicked away the sodden rushes and heaped them by the fire for burning. Simon paid her silver for the live birth, and Mall escorted her away from the Tower.
XLV
Simple Neddy sat with me that night and when I asked him again in the morning to find Becket for me, he went out and as I heard later marched up and down Fleet Street shouting his name. At last Mrs Fumey came from her linen shop and scolded him, and when he had stumbled out his reasons, she took off her apron and went herself to find David.
By which means Simple Neddy returned to me in triumph with Becket looming worriedly behind him, who sat down beside me and gave me wine with bitter-tasting herbs in it.
[David Becket and Simon Ames 01] - Firedrake's Eye Page 24
