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

by Patricia Finney

  With that his men began to lay down their arms, but snatched them up again when they found that for all Becket’s shouting, most of Pickering’s soldiers had no notion of giving quarter to their hated rivals for London’s gleanings, and so within an hour all were dead or dying of their wounds, and Becket’s strategy was proven with but two men lost to him. One poor creature that jumped from an upper window to shout ‘Clubs!’ in the street was picked off with a crossbow bolt and the only one that answered his call was a sour-tempered old woman that had no use for Tilts of any kind and threw an apple at him.

  Under Becket’s baleful captainship, every scrap of paper in the house was gathered up into three chests and packed onto ponies he had brought for the purpose. First they would go to the Strand to await Pickering’s advantage and then they would go to Seething Lane for Walsingham’s perusal. As the spoils of war, aside from Tyrrel’s treasure which was now Pickering’s, all else in the house belonged to those who had taken it and by the mid-afternoon there was nothing left to take, even the panelling ripped off the walls in search of secret hiding holes had been gathered up for use somewhere else. In the middle of the ruin Tyrrel’s body lay belly up and a broad hole in his chest.

  LIII

  The dragon died soon after it had paraded thrice about the tiltyard and flashed its eyes and flapped its wings, with Adam sweating and cursing in his close confinement, and his crossbow still virgin beside him. The schoolboys of London were belabouring each other with paper roses, some containing cunningly concealed stones, and their shrieks rose above the crowd’s laughter. Poor Tom, meanwhile was shaking and rubbing his head and staunching the sticky blood running from his ear. There is no justice: here was a dreaded threat to the Queen her sacred life, which he had thwarted by his timely capering and all the thanks he got for it was a clout on the head from a mailed hand.

  Adam’s mind was a broth of confusion and wrath and incomprehension. Had not his whole enterprise been blessed by the Pope, was it not in the service of God and the Truth? Could the bastard Queen of England truly possess the witchcraft rumoured of her mother?

  Circumspectly he waited until the dragon was retired beyond the tiltyard in the stableyard, and smiled and took Sidney’s gold. All about him the while his sharp-edged world quivered and shook like air above a dish-of-coals. When all had been so clear, how could he have failed?

  He tried to push among the people from behind, to become part of the crowd, trying to sidle and move back and deeper into it, counter to the press of those who leaned forward as Sidney and Greville made their first pass.

  He stood like that unseeing and unknowing, his world in tatters, trying to understand wherein he had failed while the tilting went on and the noise rose and fell with the horses’ hooves. Tyrrel’s empire had fallen to sudden assault and Becket mounted a strong cob gelding and drove it through the almost empty streets from Old Fish Street to Knightrider Street through Carter Lane and Creed Lane to Ludgate and then down the hill and over Fleet Bridge and so onto the Strand, all empty of people to clog his way. Only when he reached Charing Cross must he slow to a walk until the men he had stationed there could meet him. They made a pack about him and shoved through the crowd until he could cross into St James’s Park and come at the stands from the side. All this he had planned, ready for the day, Balfour having taught him the value of foresight and rehearsal. During a pause in the tilting he came to Laurence Pickering and made two signs – thumbs up and then a throat-slit with his finger and Pickering smiled and nodded gravely.

  Adam knew none of this for he thought he had read the riddle, and his world steadied and stilled. Was it that God required of him the martyrdom he had sought to avoid, did He in truth require the blood of His faithful soldier to accomplish the sacred deed?

  In the face of such failure to so careful and painfully worked a plan, there could be but one answer. Adam stood stock still, his face blank, swaying a little with the press about him as they craned with their eagerness to see the thundering horses and the shining armour and the clash of weaponry, hoping for a dreadful accident and some blood to marvel at.

  If he must be a martyr, how could it be accomplished? He had on him only a long poignard dagger. How could he find the means to gain close enough to the Queen?

  For all of the tilting, which she greatly liked, loving to see handsome well set-up young men show themselves off, the Queen remained in her gallery the better to see the bouts of arms. Adam’s eyes lighted on the crane with its cherub-basket and knew that his God was still with him. He shifted back the way he had come, treading on toes and drawing curses, but most were too busy laying bets and gasping as the blows rained down in bright shields to pay him any mind.

  The cherub had been wrapped in blankets and patted on the head for a clever boy that had remembered every word. Adam walked by his bench and spoke to the Yeoman by the crane’s side.

  ‘I am come to make the crane fast.’

  ‘Eh?’ said the Yeoman, preoccupied at the sight of his month’s wages dodging and swinging on the raked sand. ‘What was that?’

  ‘I must tie the crane back, else it might sway and damage the Queen’s bower. ’

  ‘Oh. Ah. Very well.’

  Adam ducked inside the crane’s body and began climbing its internal ladder. The Queen’s gallery was built onto the Great Close Tennis Court and the crane had been brought up upon its left hand side by the Park Lodgings. As Adam was climbing, Becket chanced to look that way in mid-critique of Fulke Greville’s Spanish style and froze to see his old friend and enemy so close to the Queen. In a moment he was up and running across the frontage, drawing howls from the spectators, vaulted a fence, dodged two Yeoman convinced that they had found the assassin and began pursuing Adam up the crane’s ladder. Adam looked down once, climbed faster.

  ‘Beware!’ roared Becket, ‘Ware assassin!’

  The Earl of Leicester’s broad red face appeared peering between his silk flowers, caught sight of Adam and turned to shout an order. Behind him a tall dark man with a black beard, in red and tawny silks, moved up smoothly to the Queen, his hand tightening on his sword hilt, his body between Adam and his mistress. If the Queen heard or saw the ruckus she gave not a single sign of it, though some of her ladies bobbed and swayed. She moved to the other end of the gallery in stately fashion as if it were part of her plan, to wave graciously at the people and smile upon a triumphant Sir Philip, who had finally bested Greville and was smiling up at her with his hair plastered to his head with sweat. While her gentleman blocked her from Adam, a knife-throw would be a useless gesture. He was almost blind with rage and despair to be so close and fail again.

  Becket grabbed at his foot, Adam kicked viciously backwards, put his knife between his teeth, grasped a rung of the ladder with his hands and dropped down with his free foot onto Becket’s fingers one rung below. Becket gasped, let go, almost fell, dodged Adam’s boot again, and the crane bucked and swung. Becket scrambled out the throwing knife behind his head and threw, but it was an awkward target and he missed because a Yeoman that had climbed up after him chose that moment to grab his boots and cry out that he had caught the villain.

  To be martyred and yet fail to kill the Queen, that was intolerable: Adam climbed to the very tip of the crane which creaked ominously under his overburden, heard Becket roaring at the loyal Yeoman, and then before David’s furious eyes saw the escape route of the basket and its rope.

  Adam leaned out over the crowd, caught the rope, made it fast, slid down hand over hand to the little basket. He clung there for a few seconds, measuring a ten foot drop into an upturned blossom of faces, before dropping into its midst. A broad woman broke his fall, but he rolled from her tangle of bumroll and skirts and crawled into the forest of legs.

  Becket meanwhile had kicked the Yeoman from the ladder, slid down and plunged into the crowd in pursuit of Adam. Another Yeoman blocked his path, was felled with a blow to the belly, and his fellow accidentally hit a courtier rather than David who had ramm
ed through a knot of excited women fluttering with ribbons and posies. One of their husbands tried to knock Becket out with a wooden rattle and caught a Yeoman instead when he ducked, and within seconds there was a heaving fighting throng upon the left side of the gallery whose interest in the tilting had given place to the usual English lust for battle.

  Knowing my man, I waited for Becket upon the rim of the confusion still finger-drilling my ears in search of the buzzing from my head. I heard him first.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ he roared, ‘God damn him to the Devil, may he rot, that whoreson bastard…’

  He was shoving aside a game little Court-tailor who was swinging wild punches unnoticed at Becket’s chest, and came stamping out of the fight, pounding his fist in his palm, beside himself with rage. He caught sight of me cowering, grabbed the torn front of my doublet and lifted me up again.

  ‘God damn you, Tom!’ he bellowed, making my ears buzz even more. ‘Why did you not tell me? Where the devil was he? How did he mean to do it?’

  ‘He was in the dragon,’ I wailed, ‘the dragon Sidney rode. I tried to tell you, David, I truly did but you would not listen and devils rode on my tongue for the confusing of me, it was the dragon, he was hiding inside with a crossbow only I saw and I danced a little dance to entertain the horses and make them shy and so he could not take aim, I have done my best, God knows, 1 have done all I could when I am so beset with angels and sorrow and…’

  ‘Do you mean the dragon that Simon Ames was helping to build, the one Walsingham will pay for?’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ I shrieked. ‘What other dragon is there? Dragons do not burst from the clouds, you know, they must be built, they must grow from the egg of their idea and plan into the full blossoming of their beauty and strength…’

  ‘He had a crossbow inside?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘to shoot her with.’

  ‘Show me.’

  It took a little oiling of palms and argument with an anxious Yeoman but we gained behind the stable blocks where the dragon was waiting for his return journey. Becket opened the trapdoor and looked and I heard his long string of oaths when he saw how close we had been to disaster. He grunted a couple of times then came out.

  ‘This was built for a man narrower than I am now. Do you rise up inside and unhitch that weapon. Carefully, mind.’

  I did as he said and brought it out to him. He trapped the string with his thumb and took out the bolt, then released the tension.

  ‘Only a bird-bolt but from a narrow distance when the dragon reared up high…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said. ‘And the bolt is dipped in poison to be sure, it need only scratch her skin, he carried the poison with the gold.’

  ‘What gold?’

  ‘The gold that paid for it.’

  ‘He must have been in league with whatever carpenter built this dragon?’

  I nodded frantically, making windmills of my arms.

  ‘Think you he may return there, asking aid?’

  I nodded again. Becket took my arm, tried to rearrange the front of my doublet, drew me a little aside.

  ‘Tom’

  ‘This is the Clever One.’

  ‘Ralph then,’ he said, looking straight at me. ‘Will you bring Adam to me?’

  Did my heart freeze then or was it frozen before and in that moment began to melt?

  ‘If you go to him and offer him shelter, wait for him where they made the dragon…’

  ‘Hanging Sword Court,’ I told him wisely.

  ‘Say you so? Jesu. Well then, wait for him by the back gate and when he comes, say all is discovered and you will give him shelter in the Blackfriars liberty where none will find him. Then bring him to me in the cloisters.’

  ‘Why not tell the Queen what…’

  ‘Ralph my friend, think. Imprimis, how may such as I accomplish that? I am no courtier. It would take me weeks and much gold to reach her. And item, say that I do so, that I fling myself in her path on my knees and gabble out the plot. Whose is the dragon, who rode it?’

  ‘Why Sir Philip Sidney…’

  ‘And whose son in law…’

  ‘I know this,’ I said impatiently, ‘Walsingham. But will she not trust him…’

  ‘Either she will trust him and not believe me or else she will believe me and never again trust him. The only man who could have gone between us was Simon Ames and he is sick to death in the City. We dare not let Adam alone, he is a proud man and I think brave enough: he will of a surety try again and they say third time is the charm We know where he will be and so I say…

  ‘But to betray my brother…

  Becket said nothing to that. He put his hands out, palms to the sky, shrugged and let them fall. I would have spoken to mine angel if 1 could, but he had flown away again and I could not hear his voice nor the voice of the Queen Moon. With the use of my demon-threatened name, Becket had worked a magic on me I think. I could take advice of none but myself.

  I shook my head and hid my eyes and tried to still the buzzing in my ears. Becket’s heavy hand fell on my shoulder again.

  ‘Listen Ralph, I will not try to persuade you. But I will take a boat now downriver to Blackfriars and there I will wait until the morrow morning. If you come bringing him, sing the ballad you made, the Tom O’Bedlam song to warn me.’

  ‘I will not have him shot in the back.’

  Becket sighed. ‘So I am not taken unawares,’ he said. He left me then, taking a wide circle about Westminster and buying an overpriced pie from a big-breasted girl on the way before he came round to Westminster Stairs by the hall. There were a few boatmen there, who had drawn short straws, to keep guard on their fellows’ boats during the tilting, and for double the fee he found one that would take him whither he would go. As the waterman pointed out, he would get no fare coming back, since all the City was in Westminster now.

  LIV

  My brother was ever a sagacious boy and became a man who thought many times. He milled about with the other crowds, attaching himself now to one group, now to another, until he had scouted about enough to know that there was no hue and cry for him yet. And then when the fireworks began and the sky filled with golden flowers and starbursts and all the air was tinged with gunpowder, still he contented himself and ohhed and ahhed. He took up a boy on his shoulders to give him a better view at the request of the boy’s mother, a sturdy boy not much younger than mine own little lad had been. He smiled and exclaimed and when the last rockets had shot off the last praises of the Queen and the human shortlived stars had given place to God’s own pavilion, only then did he drift with all the other happy Londoners to the river and argue over boats. He shared one that was going to Temple Steps with a rabble of young lawyers, all well-mellowed with sack and each proposing a further pleasaunce to the evening and a great moot taking place about him as to where they should go.

  He bade them farewell and joined some other folk walking up Water Lane, expounding on the meaning of the procession and how the Queen might take its sermon. When he paused at the rear of Hanging Sword Court where the privy door was shut for the night, he looked about him with great care.

  And I unfolded from a corner and said, quite low, ‘Brother?’

  Had he seen me I doubt if he would have recognised me, so changed was I from the elder brother he had known. And from the raving creature he had ridden post to London to visit. It was my voice stopped him in mid-stride.

  ‘Is that you Ralph?’

  To hear his voice so cautious, it might have made me weep, but it did not. Becket’s magic with my name had worked its charm.

  ‘Ay, it is,’ I said, coming a little closer. ‘Enter not in there.’

  ‘I thought you…’

  ‘Dead? So I had hoped. You see, I liked not the lodgings you found for me, so I feigned death and left them and all this time you have been paying silver for nothing.’

  I saw his teeth as he smiled. ‘You are recovered then?’

  ‘Quite.’ I lied. ‘It was only a matter of
a little rest and feeding and to be in a place where men spoke the truth. I am well-enough now, though poor. ‘

  ‘Why should I not go in there?’

  ‘Have you business with Mr Secretary Walsingham?’

  ‘N…no.’

  ‘His men are there, awaiting someone. I think it well not to meet with such gentlemen but if you have business with them I shall call them…’

  ‘Er…no, keep your voice down. I have no wish to see them.’

  His mind was working, his heart was beating too fast, he thought he had had a narrow escape, he had been on the point of scaling the wall. And all my reproaches and questions and sorrows were boiling to my lips but the new-awakened man in me that was Ralph held a dam behind my lips and struck away the devil who sits on my tongue. I would have asked my brother why he gave the jailers leave to beat me, and why he lodged with Agnes when he came on a treasonous mission, and why he betrayed Becket and why…. But I only asked, ‘Did you become a priest then?’

  Let him lie to me, I thought, and I will strike him down myself. He looked at the ground, stepped over a pig’s turd, and walked on up Water Lane to Fleet Street.

  ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No, I applied to the Jesuits and even began their training, but…they would not take me. They liked not my vehemence, I suppose, for I never understood it… . And I would not take a lesser place.’

  He was worried, walking hunched over.

  ‘Where will you go?’ I asked.

  ‘I know a Mr Tyrrel…’ he began and stopped when I shook my head.

  ‘He is dead,’ I told him. ‘Murdered in a brawl this very day. I know it by the man who killed him for he was greatly hated.’