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

by Patricia Finney

  ‘Do not spit,’ he scolded me. ‘This is recommended of an excellent apothecary that said it has qualities to soothe distracted minds which yours is, God knows.’

  I smiled at him and drank it, meek as a maiden.

  ‘Is it true that Gabriel was the one beat you? The tale was all up and down Fleet Street when I came.’

  Now he was taking his pattens off and setting them by the coals of the fire to dry the mud on them. He had brought a whole faggot of fine dry wood.

  ‘Was it Gabriel indeed then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? What had you done to offend him?’

  ‘I hit him.’

  ‘Well, that would have offended him. I am surprised you are still living. For what reason did you hit him?’

  ‘He took my boy Ralph from me, my poor boy Ralph that had no tongue.’

  ‘What? Ralph? What are you talking about?’

  With many tears I told him the tale after which Becket sat back on his bolt of wood and raised his eyes to the Heavens.

  ‘Jesu. And no doubt you want my assistance in finding him, eh?’

  ‘If you are not so very overpressed with business, David,’ I said humbly. He sighed and patted my hand.

  ‘Come now,’ he said. ‘1 know where Gabriel may be found if you will bestir yourself Tom. Up you get. Are you wounded any place else? No, ay then, up and on your feet, it was only a beating.’

  We went to a boozing ken in Little Bailey where I had not been before, up beyond Ludgate Hill. There seemed a strange press of boys about it and Becket shouldered his way into the common room with me in his ruffled wake, batting cheeky boys from his purse with his new hat.

  We sat down in a booth and called the potboy. Becket spoke quietly to him and his spot-specked face which was at first all pulled and bunched in a sneer, froze over like a plaster saint on a tomb. We sat quietly waiting and Becket took a bale of dice from his purse and began throwing them idly, counting under his breath. One was a highman and one a lowman as it came out, and a naughty imp sitting on each when they came to rest. I was about to warn him against the sin of cheating at dice when the potboy came back.

  ‘He says he will not come.’

  Becket raised his brows, scratched his black beard that was new trimmed and elegant. ‘Oh? Am I so fearful to him then?’

  ‘He says he never knew Tom was a friend of yours and says he will not be blamed.’

  Becket considered. ‘As I understand the battle,’ he said without a trace of a smile, ‘it was Tom struck him first. Gabriel may have my safeconduct if he wants.’

  ‘He says if it concerns the boy with no tongue, then he’s gone to a bawdy-house on the South Bank and we have him not.’

  I put my head in my hands to squeeze back the tears.

  ‘Poor Ralph.’ I said, ‘I told him…’

  ‘Hush, ’ said Becket impatiently. ‘At least we know the boy truly exists in this world, of which I had my doubts. Wild geese I will chase willingly for the fine eating of them, your phantasms, no.’

  The potboy was still at Becket’s elbow.

  ‘We truly have him not, sir,’ he said. ‘You know we would deny the King’s man nothing he wanted.’

  ‘Hmf,’ said Becket. ‘Name me the place and I’ll give good report of you to Mr Pickering.’

  The potboy looked embarrassed and rubbed his hands behind his back. ‘Well, there is only one, sir. Of the kind.’

  ‘And? I am not educated in these matters.’

  The potboy waited. Becket sighed and produced a couple of pennies and then a groat. The potboy flickered them away with his fingers. ‘The Falcon’s Chick, hard by Paris Garden Stairs,’ he said.

  We came into the city by Ludgate and were passing by the curved walls of the Wardrobe on St Andrew’s Hill when Becket stopped and clicked his fingers. He struck off into an alley that leads to Blackfriars and strode through the cloisters and into the old Refectory where Rocco Bonnetti holds his swordschool.

  Bonnetti is small, nimble, swarthy and a lover of boys, being Italian and corrupt. The Ancient Masters of Defence hate him devoutly, in particular John Silver who longs to beat his brains to a pudding in fair fight. Bonnetti steadfastly refuses to fight with Mr Silver since he maintains that he is a gentleman and Mr Silver a commoner and it would be beneath his dignity. Silver bums with fury at the insult but can gain no satisfaction. Now Becket had fought his prizes under the laws of the Ancient Masters of Defence and has gained from Scholar to Free Scholar and thence to the dizzy heights of Provost which permits him to instruct men in the old arts of broadsword and backsword and sword-and-buckler fighting. Indeed, he is a feared opponent on Smithfield. But he has made study of the Spanish and the Italian styles and so will have converse with Rocco, the better to cozen him, he told me.

  We walked in by the whitewashed walls to find Bonnetti blazing in black and violet velvet and shouting at a plump courtier that his passado was as limp as his prick. Becket and I made our bows to him and sat upon the bench against the wall until the lesson was over, and the courtier gone hobbling away.

  ‘Signor Becket,’ cried Rocco with much flourishing of his feathered hat, ‘I am happy to see you, it is a long time you have not been here. Is your scholar deserted you, ah, what sadness but I think he was come se dice, not well ept for it, eh?’

  Becket smiled and escorted him to a private comer where they spoke a while and I made sport with the veney sticks, throwing them up and catching them. Jerome, Bonetti’s own boy, ushered in the next pupil, a better set-up man with a grave face, and they both stood watching me throw and caper. At one point Bonnetti put his hand to his sword and Becket grinned nastily and prodded his chest with a finger, and indignation and cowardice made sport with each other on the foreigner’s face, until he seemed to sag a little and nodded.

  They returned and Bonnetti spoke rapidly to Jerome in Italian causing the new scholar to protest in the same language that he wanted the master not the boy, but was mollified by the offer of an extra free lesson. And so the three of us won from Blackfriar’s maze and into St Andrew’s Hill and so down to Puddle Wharf to find a boat, leaving behind us the clash of polearms.

  Now I have found that there are a great many worlds, temporal and spiritual, all jostling upon each other within the great compass of God’s creation. Perhaps my trouble is that the walls betwixt the temporal and the spiritual worlds are for me the thinnest gossamer and for the sane, of hardest rock. Each man’s brain is of itself a world and beyond spun from many men’s brains and composed of many, lies the Mundus Papyri. There is a false sugar plate world of the Court and there is a dirty ugly world of streets and dungholes and beggars. As it were, in Copernicus’ metaphor, a moon to this last world is the world of those who love men not women, boys not maids. I knew the Falcon Inn at Southwark, being a most respectable place, full of clean pleasant whores newly brought up from the country who are ever kind and ready with their purses. The Bishop of Winchester owns the freehold and collects the rent (most strictly) which is the reason they call whores the Bishop of Winchester’s geese. However, what I had not known was that the boy-lovers’ world was here in conjunction with mine own that love girls, for the Falcon hath a chick that she likes not well to acknowledge and that I had never heard tell of until the potboy told us in Little Bailey. In that quiet house are fresh-faced country boys new come up from Kent and Suffolk and Essex to seek their fortunes in London, where they are harvested by such as Gabriel and shown that their fortune lies in a far different place from where they thought to seek it. To be fair, for many it requires some weeks of cold and hunger before they can be brought to it, but hunger is a hard-faced dominie and most will learn at last.

  Bonnetti walked up to the unmarked door and rapped a brisk double note. His face being inspected by the doorkeeper and some explanation made of ourselves, we were admitted, Becket muttering all the while about shoving a clout of cloth up his arse to keep it clean in such a place.

  Once within we sat upon pa
dded benches in a pale panelled room with a good roaring fire and a clean smell of polish and herbs from the rushes. A sad-faced middle-aged man entered in stays and a farthingale, most delicately pale lavender velvet was his gown and his linen wrought with blackwork narcissi. He had that circular line about a prim mouth that often at Court marked one who was rumoured to love men. In stately fashion, as if he were the mistress of a well-found inn, he kissed all of us upon the mouth, which was a surprise to me, to find beard stubble prickle about a soft dry pair of lips. Becket wiped his mouth covertly.

  ‘My friends,’ said Bonnetti ‘have a small favour to ask of you, a special request, Signor Hardy.’

  The woman-man put long fingers against his chin and turned courteously to us to listen. The false front upon his petticoat was embroidered with a fair tale of Ganymede.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I am at your service, gentlemen.’

  ‘I have…hrm… I know a gentleman who wishes to buy a boy you have in your keeping, to be his page.’ Gravely Mr Hardy nodded his face on the long stem of his hand. The painting of his face was well-done I thought, if a little harsh. Becket shifted about on the bench, unable to look straight at a man in woman’s dress. ‘A boy very fair of face, blue eyes, golden hair…’ Mr Hardy smiled understandingly. ‘…and dumb. He has but a quarter of his proper tongue and cannot speak. ’

  Mr Hardy’s smile fell off his face and he sat up, dismay in every rustle of his skirt.

  ‘Now,’ said Becket, ‘I know you have such a boy here and I tell you none other will do since my gentleman has taken such a liking to him…’

  ‘But sir, sir,’ said Mr Hardy in agony, ‘alas and alack, he is gone. He had run from his master and is now returned unto him by the agency of another man. I truly regret…’

  ‘And can you tell me his master’s name?’

  Mr Hardy was shocked. ‘No, indeed sir, it would be improper. Besides I know it not, I have always dealt with this gentleman through the agency of someone else. The one who came to collect the page was new to me, but he bore a letter of introduction and the gold.’

  ‘Will you perhaps tell me his appearance?’

  Mr Hardy was unhappy, but Becket placed a crown of silver upon the table and he picked the coin up and turned it about his fingers.

  ‘Sir, he was tall and slender, with red-rooted hair badly dyed to brown, a fine pale visage and poorly habited for his speech. Other than that…’

  I felt as if he had punched me under the ribs, gasped and paled.

  ‘…ay, perhaps a little the look of your…ah…your henchman sir,’ finished Mr Hardy.

  There is a family resemblance between us to be sure, but what did Adam want with Little Ralph? Why? And then I thought and thought again and all my thoughts running and jumping about my poor skull and turning whirligigs and playing football and I clutched my head and groaned. Becket saw the symptoms and rose, bustling me and Bonnetti from the room whilst Mr Hardy fluttered behind us as we went through the passage, asking if he could do us any other service and would we like to see the boys, many very sweet-natured pages he had there, and well-trained from country-ways, and had supplied many at Court with them also, and so on. Becket grunted at him discourteously and let the door bang behind.

  Rocco said that since he had done his part he would go down and see how the bulls were faring. Becket took a grip on my arm, hustled me down to Paris Garden Stairs and hawked and spat mightily into the Thames. Then he washed his face and hands carefully in the brown murky water and made me do likewise and each time I began to lament, he shook me or slapped me lightly to make me desist until I began to be angry with him.

  The boatman that bore us back to Blackfriars Steps again saw that we were morose and made haste to recommend a place where we might recoup our bull-baiting losses by putting any money we had left upon a certain cock named Achilles at the Westminster cockpit (whither he would take us himself if we liked) which was certain sure to win, because the other cock had been fed poisoned com in the morning by his nephew.

  Which blatant piece of coneycatching Becket treated with smiles and agreement, but said that alas all the money he had left in the world was the price of the fare over the water.

  At the Blackfriars Steps we clambered out and David tossed him the money. Then he led me to the cloister where we could be quiet but for Simple Neddy, and there he sat me down upon the wall.

  ‘What was this boy?’ he asked. ‘Tell me the whole of it.’

  I stared at him and laughed that he did not know. Becket reached out to shake me, and then held his hands back.

  ‘Have you seen Strangways?’ he demanded. ‘That was the man that took your boy from the Chick, was it not? Do you know where he is? Or what he is doing? You are so much changed, I find it hard to recall he is your brother, God have mercy on you. Have you helped him?’

  I laughed harder at the thought. ‘And return to Bedlam for my pains?’ I said at last, when I could. ‘I saw him when he was with my sister.’

  ‘That is now in the Tower for harbouring of him?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How do you know so much, Tom?’

  ‘This is the Clever One. Why, I have told you often enough, David, my angels show it to me and the Queen Moon instructs me, and I see through shadow walls and into shadow houses for all about us is shadow, this very wall is shadow, the whole world is the moving shadow of a thought in God’s heart and…’

  Becket rolled his eyes, clinging to his temper with the fingernails of his mind. ‘I mean truly how do you know? Not by angels, but truly…’

  ‘It is angels. In very truth it is. As I see the great dragon of danger, so I see Adam, so I see Agnes, and where Adam has become Lucifer and Cain, my sister must be the Lamb of God, for so she is named, but all I see is true, David, all of it. But I cannot see Ralph, I know not where he is, although he was a messenger between them.’

  ‘Between whom?’

  ‘Why, between the ballad seller you killed and my brother and others also. He had mute swans upon his linen as a sign he could not speak, and ran most diligently between them for love of his old master, that I also cannot see.’

  ‘He was a messenger?’

  ‘A very Hermes, but safe.’ I said, ‘For he could never tell what he saw or heard, and therein lay his value.’

  ‘But could he write?’

  ‘No, they had not taught him. Yet could he learn it well enough.’ I said proudly, ‘I was teaching him myself.’

  He was quicker than I at fathoming the wickedness of the world. I saw that he was appalled and that he understood what had become of little Ralph and that he tried to hide his knowledge, and I saw his face change and pity slip over it, and even my addled wits could at last piece together what I had done. I had indeed given Ralph the key to open the locked casket of his mind, a mind that was brimful of secrets, and if those who had left him locked ever learned of his new skill…. Why they would smash the casket in pieces rather than permit it to be opened. My brother had him in his keeping now, but it was I who had killed him.

  An angel laughed behind me. I turned to speak with him and he was a devil, one of Lucifer’s own, for horns brake out upon his brow and a tail upon his bum and he laughed at me. 1 turned back to Becket with my hands on my eyes and Becket too was growing strange, melting back and forth into my brother. Such things happen to Tom, not to me, and Tom himself stepped out of the gate into my last remaining city of thought, and we laughed and cried and clapped and danced upon the lichen-furred cloister wall.

  Becket shouted, his face twisted with concern, but Tom laughed and the devil laughed, and the Courtier and the Queen Moon laughed and my poor Clever Self screamed, and in all the racket none of what he said won through to my besieged brain, and so he left me.

  XLVI

  So Tom ruled the brute democracy of my mind which foul thing, as any gentleman will know, means rule by demos, the mob. All of you whose minds are a gentle commonwealth ruled by the Great King Reason can never gues
s at the horror of such a republic, forever swayed back and forth by the outcry of the mob, now one humour become the leader and now another, and King Reason dethroned and ever fighting to regain his proper rule. So was I and so did Philip of Spain mean to make a madman of England, with our Sovereign Lady tom from us.

  I sat among the rooftops and gazed out across the fantastic leaf-clutter of the London roofs, across three miles of crowded ground and more to the Tower where Mrs Fant lay with the babe now in a cradle by her bed. Catherine N isbet sat in a corner by the fire enduring bands of iron about her head and an acid retort in her stomach and the fires of hell in her heart for her wicked dereliction of her duty. The babe slept sweetly now, a little discoloured to yellow as new babes often are, but my sister slept ill, turning her head, moving her hands, her face flushed with fever. Anthony Fant had sent the wet nurse from Old Change that they had brought with them to London, a sturdy stupid woman related to Dorcas by name Joan.

  Being so disordered by heat, Agnes’ eyes were opened to me and to Tom’s angel, and she cried out in fear while I sought to hide myself amongst the shadowy stones of the walls. Catherine came to her then and gave her water and aqua vitae mixed to drink, trying to soothe her.

  Simon Ames entered then, being brought by Joan, who then went to the solemn-faced sleepy babe and set herself down by the fire to open her stays and feed him. Ames set his candle down by the bed, and drew up the stool. After a while, he took Agnes’ hand and cooled it in his own and she smiled upon him. And if this seems strange in an inquisitor, then can I only tell what I saw with mine uncorporeal eyes.

  ‘Mr Ames,’ she said, ‘I have a favour to ask you, as I asked it before. I long to see a priest of mine own religion.’

  Catherine Nisbet snuffled hard and retreated to the fire again, to let the tears run down her face.

  ‘Hush,’ said Simon. ‘I have sent for my uncle, a very learned physician that attends also upon my lord of Leciester. ’