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

by Patricia Finney

  ‘What is it that Sir Francis must hear with such urgency?’ asked Hunnicutt coaxingly.

  ‘It is for his ears first, I fear.’

  ‘But sir…’

  ‘If you must know, Mr Hunnicutt, I have found out the date when Philip II will make his attempt upon Her Blessed Majesty’s life. Now if you do not regard that as sufficient cause for haste, sir, I know not why you serve Sir Francis…’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ murmured Hunnicutt. ‘How dreadful a thing…’

  For all his brave badge, the waterman was having trouble with the tide in the centre of the river. They were not much above the bear- baiting when Hunnicutt nodded and the boat spun suddenly about on itself.

  Simon lurched, caught the side. Hunnicutt fell hard against him, stabbing with the long knife he affected at his belt, the boatman backed water and Simon tumbled, mouth open with complete astonishment, into the black water and sank like a stone from sight. Two large bubbles came up and Hunnicutt relaxed.

  ‘Back to Old Swan Steps,’ he said.

  XLVIII

  In my distraction I had a purpose, and Tom also, which was to find little Ralph. I knew the places where bodies may be left, or where they fetch up, and with the Queen Moon to support me stepped blithely from gutter to gutter and roof to roof while men sometimes caught sight of me and cried out that I was a hookman or a prigger of linen.

  At last I stopped to piss, which even the mad must do, and wondered at the number of pigs and dogs all gathered about a white bundle. By means of a balcony and an awning and an open window I returned to terra firma, hoping it was no more than another beggar gone to the cold, but this time it was not. Is it the Earth itself that breathes out evil, or does evil come from some black fountain within ourselves, or is there a more terrible thing, evil all encompassing like the night sky with only here and there the little lights of good in it? When I gained the ground and saw what lay there, all about me were angels mixed with devils and barking dogs and pigs that I drove away with stones and sticks and rage, Tom howling like a wolf.

  He was dead right enough, poor boy, that could never have asked mercy save with his eyes, dead a while and his flesh gone to wax, a bruise along his back where he had lain, unbleeding where the dogs had ripped him. I have seen death often enough, and felt him too, come creeping up behind me in the cold and snow, full of treacherous warmth and ease, a false friend as Adam was to David Becket. But never did I see so grievous a death as this. Tom howled and wept and clutched himself about his ribs where his heart would have escaped if it could, and I could see no reason in it, no purpose, no answer. Yet was it I that killed him? For I had given him a key to open the locked casket of his mind and as Becket had suspected, someone, Adam, discovering it had broken him entirely, had taken him at the neck and squeezed until he was dead, leaving his face all blue and purple. Commonly those that die of strangling like felons on the gallows that are not given enough drop by the hangman, their faces are particoloured and their tongues are black and stick out, making them fools and satyrs in their death. Not Ralph. Blue-faced Ralph in that respect was decorous.

  A woman banged open her shutters and shrieked at me to shut my howling, God curse me, and she emptied out her jordan but missed me in her anger.

  I took up his body and first I wandered about, weeping, not knowing where to go, while that sweet smell of death choked up my mind with its fumes. All about I was crowded with angels and devils that melted into one another, so which dare I trust? Appearance is no guide to the wisdom or goodness of angels. At last one rose up and beat off the others, ordered them to silence and then said that I should put down the body of Ralph and take thought.

  Shall I take him to St Bride’s and ask the priest to bury him? I could pay with the golden dish I found in the old abbey, and there could be mourners paid sixpence each and a coffin and a grave in holy ground and perhaps candles to light up his darkness.

  No, said the angel, for they can see he was killed and did not die, and you being mad will be their clear first suspect.

  At that I was troubled worse than before: did I do so indeed, in some fit? but the angel smiled and said my madness was of another sort and not to be a fool.

  But he could not lie upon the midden and his blood licked by dogs, like King Ahab, poor boy, that had lost all he had and then his life.

  But this is only the clay that held the coals of his soul, saith the angel, do you think he cares now he is in Christ’s keeping what befalls his mortal remains? Only you care, wherefore take him down to the river, and pray for him, and then put him into the stream and let the river carry him to the sea.

  But the fish will eat him, I said, weeping again.

  So will the worms eat him if he is buried: have you never heard the Bible, nor the prayers of a funeral, that of dust ye came and to dust ye return.

  But what of the Day of Resurrection, if he is not buried in sacred ground….

  The angel sighed kindly at me. Think you that God whose Word made this world and all the firmament of stars and all things unto infinity shall be troubled or bound by the nature of the place where he rests? Funerals are for the comfort of the living, not the dead, so now give him an easy gentle funeral and find an end to it. A churchman would term this rank heresy but angels need have no fear of Archbishops and it sounded wise enough to me.

  So I went down to the river, where it welled cold and black with a little fire spangled on it here and there, the lights from men’s windows become jewels upon the hem of God’s night. When it came to pray, I could think of no words, and so climbed down the steps and put him softly into the water.

  At once the current took him and turned him and covered him, sliding him towards the Bridge and onwards. For a moment I was dismayed at the thought of the bridge whose rushing and gushing might break him further, but the angel had the right of it after all.

  And yet a devil whispered that it would be easy enough to step from the boatlanding and die in the water likewise, and I crouched for a time thinking of it, but then it seemed to me a coward’s flight. When Death comes for me finally I should be ready to meet him, but would not go out to find him, nor bully him to take me. Which was an argument I used to Becket when I fished him dripping and drunken from the river, that self-murder is the basest kind of cowardly dishonour. I was a gentleman once, and heir to lands and some wealth and good kin, as indeed was Becket also though not heir to any lands being a younger son. No, I said to Tom, I will not go with Ralph. Yet I could find no ease for the pain in those thoughts, so took a nail and scratched my arms with it, to let out the pain and the fumes in my blood.

  Still I could not move from the boatlanding, but stared down at the pattern and feathering of the water about its weed-garlanded posts, gazing deeper and deeper through the folds and melting in the water, and heard the cries of men and devils ringing through the snow-flecked night.

  There Becket found me in the morning and he demanded to know if I had seen Simon Ames who had disappeared. His uncle had missed him at his house and as everyone in the God-cursed city seemed to do when they had lost someone, sent for him at Pickering’s through Mrs Fumey and Christ knew he had enough to concern himself with at present without hunting high and low for a fool of a clerk without enough sense would keep a beetle alive….

  I had no words for him, no speech.

  ‘Well, if it is true that your angels tell you the truth, ask them to find Simon for me.’ Becket said with his face thrust up to mine and his breath foul from a morning tongue well-furred by a night of tobacco-drinking and beer and argument. ‘No? Hah! No use in them, is there then?’

  My brother’s fingers about Ralph’s throat had choked mine off also, although I at least could breathe. I hurried after Becket in the hope Adam’s grip should relent, and I followed him down to the next boatlanding to ask of the boatmen what they might have seen or heard in the night.

  XLIX

  In all of England is no stranger nor finer sight than London Bridge, the glory
of the City, with its serried fleet of piers against the onrush of the Thames. The best drapers’ shops in the land are on it, arching across it, enclosing those who care not that they get their cloth good cheap, but only that it be fine. There may be bought silks of Cathay and cottons of India, velvets and damasks of buttercup and viridian and violet and crimson and strange fancy colours like Dead Spaniard that was begun as a putty shade. There may you also find lawn that will pass in its entirety through a wedding ring and tissue of cloth of gold, cloth of silver and delicate leathers made to a buttery softness by the tanner’s art. And all the colours and the textures are heaped up and arrayed by the great drapers in mountains of white samite and deep valleys of cramoisie and forest green so it be pleasing to the eyes of the folk that pass up and down and hither and yon beneath the Drawbridge Gate and the Stone Gate with its traitors’ heads upon it and their attending ravens. The people choke Gracechurch and New Fish Street and Long Southwark as they bend their paths to the bridge, and slow at the old Drawbridge to gaze east upon the lower side at the sturdy Hansa cogs and the graceful ships of Venice and the brave and beautiful English ships.

  I was right to fear its piers on Ralph’s behalf, although they saved Simon Ames’ life. Being knocked into the water and sinking down, he learned what an uneaseful death is drowning. He had felt not Mr Hunnicutt’s knife, though he had seen it, because it had been turned aside by the cuirass he was wearing again. That same cuirass nearly killed him as he sank down into the black river. Raw terror possessed him, he was swallowing huge rocks of water, but then his fingers found his dagger and drew it and slit open the front of his doublet. He cut a side strap of his back-and-breast and by reason of his thinness was able to shrug the thing off over his head and kick hard for the surface with his lungs on fire.

  Bobbing on the current and gasping among the stars in his head he was turned and twirled by the ebb current until he heard the louder roaring of the Bridge and rolled about the white waters, pounded against the barnacled stone and protective wooden beams until his skin was scraped raw and his shirt was tattered. He glimpsed and grabbed and clung onto a ring bolted to the stone of a pier. There he clung gasping and coughing and puking. Above him there were calls and a dirty pair of hands reached down to him and pulled him up out of the foam. Voices above him talked and he felt a pulling on his hands as his rings were taken and his slim chain of office that had somehow survived his entanglement with cuirass, and his boots and when he feebly protested and tried to fight them, a boot thudded into his side and he whirled down into darkness again. When he came back into the lesser darkness of the cold night, shivering and still coughing he said: ‘I serve…the Queen, find me Becket…. Dr Nunez in Poor Jewry…. Gold for one who helps…Simon Ames…’

  A bigger shadow kicked him in the mouth and Simon held his broken lip and mewed with despair.

  The talk was hard to understand that went on about him, being mainly in thieves’ cant, but he heard Becket’s name and Pickering’s and then the larger one that did the kicking said, ‘I’ll cut Tyrrel the bene whids, keep him clinked…’

  He lay trying to recapture his lost senses, his wet shirt clinging about his sore shoulders and the cold stone striking up from below and the freezing air striking down from above. He dare not move for fear of kicking.

  In a long frozen while the large ragged creature came leaping back to the world beneath the piers and a knife shiny in his hand,

  ‘Tyrrel says, kill him, there’s lour for his… .’

  He had a heartbeat’s time for his benumbed mind to understand the words, to teeter between despairing acceptance and red rage and to find his heart leaping in him and somewhere strength coming into his legs so he could roll and climb to his feet and dodge along the pier side beneath the bridge’s arch, where there was a narrow ledge and the brown and white foam roaring below. His feet were bare and the stone cold hurt them, he slid along with his back to the stone, hunched over as the arch rose and bent, his toes gripping desperately at the slimy ledge, his mind battered and numbed by the bellowing of the prisoned river.

  Tyrrel’s man was too broad and tall to dare the ledge, and leaned inwards, stabbing wildly with his knife. Anger flared in Simon again, unbidden his fist came forward and struck back, trapping and hurting the man’s hand against the wall so his fingers opened and the knife rang into the water. Terrible curses and shouts for a pole to knock him off echoed distorted under the arch.

  ‘I cannot remain here,’ he thought quite clearly, the world somehow slowing about him as his anger became transmuted from the red to the white, how dare they make attempt to kill him, how dare they threaten the Queen’s life that sheltered his people from Spain, by the Almighty there shall be a reckoning…. Above him his now dark-accustomed eyes could make out the blacker shadows of the bracing beams between the arches. London Bridge was old and needed shoring up and oak timbers helped brace the tight arches to support the weight of all the finery above.

  He reached up, clamped his hands around the beam, scrabbled a toe into a hole between the stones and heaved himself up and onto the broad beam on which he lay lengthwise catching his breath. And then he crawled long it over the teeming bellowing water and swung down again onto the fellow ledge upon the other side, rocking and terrifying himself, but clinging on by his toes and fingers. He was in horror of slipping back into the waters: he dare not rest, but inched sideways to gain the better footing of the pier. Once there he blinked about, cowering as the full force of the wind struck him.

  He knew that there was one place on the bridge where the drapers’ houses did not rise sheer from it, crowded together into a single block of commercial wealth on the most valuable thoroughfare in England. That was upon the old drawbridge that could once be raised to permit a tall-masted ship to pass upriver. It was sharply fenced but the melancholic could sometimes be found leaning on it and wondering at the waters – indeed, it seemed Becket had jumped from it and Tom as well, so perhaps it could be scaled the other way.

  The drawbridge was in the middle. Where was he? There was no smell of putrefying brains from the traitors’ heads on the Great Stone Gate but the wind was cutting sharp from the east and might have blown it away. Simon blinked toward the bank and tried to think: if he gained the land, Tyrrel’s men might be there, but they would not expect him to climb….

  There was a shout, a pole came swinging at him and he ducked, jumped sideways. Someone had found a waterman and made him brave by the magical application of gold or fear: there he was sculling desperately in the white waters, while a large ragged man chopped at Simon with a rusty halberd.

  Simon ducked again, dodged the backsweep of the wicked axe blade, bruising his feet on the rubble infill of the pier, fell flat as it whistled over him. Becket’s voice came to him: ‘Fighting a man with a pole or pike, strive to come in close…’ And again: ‘Arm yourself, Simon, catch up a stool or a rock if there be nothing else, arm yourself and attack, it is the only safety…’ His scrabbling fingers found a loose half-brick, slick with crawling creatures on its underside; he threw it awkwardly, at venture, heard the clatter in the boat, then came up to his knees and managed to block the wood of the pole with his forearm as it wavered (‘Not with your hand, fool, you will have your fingers broken!’), grabbed it to his chest with the axehead scraping the stones behind him, and threw his weight against it. The upright man in the boat clung, swore, let go and sat down suddenly with his legs in the air, near upsetting the boatman as well who lost his hard purchase on the current and was swept on into the Pool of London.

  Simon was left clasping the halberd. Only a month before he would have had no notion what to do with such a thing: his notions were still of the haziest, but he had at least seen the two-handed grip and he knew that the sideways strike might break armour but was slow whereas the hard jab with the point would pierce flesh and was swift. ‘It is the argument of the rapier against the broadsword,’ came Becket’s voice in his head again, ‘speed against power and each may be
right in its place, but in general, choose speed first for in speed is also power.’ Becket was much enamoured of philosophising over war especially after his second quart and Simon had listened as one might to a sailor that had seen El Dorado and the savages of the New Lands.

  But Becket was no doubt drunk in some boozing ken, and Ames was alone. The darkness freighted with wind closed on him. His exertions had warmed him but now he cooled quickly: the gusts flapping his shirt bore frosty teeth, he was soaked with stinking river water and he started to shiver, his teeth rattling in his skull. He set his back against the brick of the bridge, facing outwards, and tried to take stock.

  Firstly, it seemed that his name was known to the creatures who make their hiding place beneath the land roots of the bridge. Their anxiety to kill him in such a way as to keep his body rather than simply knocking him back into the river spoke of money to be paid for his corpse.

  Detachedly, he wondered how much, in what weight of silver had they priced his skin?

  And there were many mighty implications in what had happened, cobweb shrouds of inference to be woven, from which his mind could not refrain. Tyrrel would seemingly pay for his body, but the end and inspiration of that transaction must be Hunnicutt, whose own knife had scraped harshly on Ames’ hidden breastplate. Here then was an answer to Simon’s original riddle, the one he had spoken to Nunez about and then almost forgotten in the hurry of later events, his suspicion of a spy at the heart of Walsingham’s work. What better place to put a spy than in the dispatch room?

  Hunnicutt, not Adam Strangways, must have been the one attempting to kill him, at least at first, using footpads, mercenaries…. What madness to use Adam’s servant, the ballad seller. Was he so shortsighted, so self-important that he could not wait upon the more important mission? But men in mortal fear of the rack will often jump before they should, and it could not have been easy for Hunnicutt to find another safe conduit into the world of men who kill for money. And he had not done so badly after all, thought Simon bitterly, with the only man who knew his treason and the day of the attempt upon the Queen, freezing to death on a pier of London Bridge.