Arlott drank his beer and kept his mouth shut.
Becket’s fist came down on the table top. ‘Nothing,’ he said, very softly. ‘No guns, not brass, not iron. Nothing.’
Arlott took another pull of beer.
‘What do you think of all your hard work ending at the bottom of the sea or in Elfland? Because that must surely be what’s going on. Surely to God no man would be stupid enough to sell to Spain guns that will be used against England?’
Arlott coughed, stared at the floor. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t rightly know. There’s a special order. They’re more decorated, very pretty, specially modelled dolphins and all, but we don’t put our mark on them, only the date. Go off special to Plymouth, usually the Flemish ships take them. We get a big fancy piece of paper for them and that gets sent up to London with the rest of the guns.’
‘What is written on the paper?’
‘Don’t rightly know, sir. I can reckon out my name and numbers of course, but I can’t make out all that fancy clerk-writing. Or sometimes Portuguese carracks take them and the certificates say Bristol on them, I can make that out.’
Becket sighed and rubbed his face.
‘Mind I never said any of this. You put me on a witness stand, Mr Becket, and I’ll be struck dumb with terror.’
‘Nothing could be further from my intention, Mr Arlott. Only you could, of course, be selling off the guns yourself for gold.’
Arlott finished his beer, took breath to speak, and stopped. He nodded. ‘Fair enough. Come and look.’
In the corner of the vast store yard full of iron blooms, charcoal, pine trees, and clay, stood a neat wooden shed. At the back, under coils of rope and slabs of wax was a locked trunk and inside it lay the ornately and beautifully written bankers’ drafts. Mostly they drew on funds in the Medici bank, some on the Fuggers. Some were signed by Don Juan de Acuna Vela, Captain-General of the Spanish Ordnance. All of them were made out to Elizabeth’s faithful friend, the Lord Treasurer Burghley.
Becket squatted by the trunk and stared into space, gazing at last at the cold hard evidence of more extraordinary complacency than even he had expected. Then he caught sight of the date.
‘Good God, he’s still selling them?’
‘Ay, sir. I spoke to Sir Robert Cecil, his son, who says his reverend father is certain sure we shall have peace. Reckons Parma’s only trying to frighten the Queen into concessions for the peace commissioners at Dunkirk.’
Becket blinked slowly at Arlott and couldn’t think what to say, so Arlott filled the silence.
‘Sir Robert’s a decent man, sir, for all his body’s so twisted, treats you right if you follow. He said to me that if there’s any guns I’m not perfectly sure of, any I’ve a bad feeling about on account of damp or bubbles or so on, I’m to put those in the special order.’
Becket nodded. ‘What do you put in the books about these guns?’
‘Some went to Bristol, some to Southampton…’
‘All right.’ Becket gathered up the bankers’ drafts. ‘I’ll deliver these to my Lord Treasurer personally, I think.’
‘I can’t stop you, I suppose, sir, not with the Queen’s Warrant.’ Arlott’s voice was distant, he was staring at a cat sleeping on a pile of wax blocks. He could stop Becket, of course he could, he had his men in earshot. ‘Wouldn’t be legal, would it?’
‘No, Mr Arlott, it wouldn’t. You can say you tried to stop me if you like.’
Becket folded the wad of papers and put them in the inside pocket of his doublet. ‘When is the next special shipment?’
‘We’ve a big special order for demi-cannon and culverins, should be ready by the end of the month, if the weather holds.’
‘I think the weather might be bad, Mr Arlott. I think the shipment might be delayed.’
‘Never can tell with weather, sir.’
‘Quite. Shocking damp it’s been, hasn’t it?’
‘Ay, sir.’
Sighing and shaking his head, Becket rode east from the mouth of hell where the great guns cooled slowly in their pits, waiting to have the filling heads sawn off and the bores smoothed and their sides polished and their touch holes drilled, ready to be shipped to Spain.
* * *
The nightmare woke him weeping from his sleep, the smell of burning, of blood and death, the terrible desolation of death. He had been at Middleton again, the village where he was born … Something was terribly wrong there. He had had the dream so often now that he could remember many details, though his mind still shrank from recalling what was in the ruined parlour. He abandoned all hope of more sleep, tired though he was, got up, drank aqua vitae, dressed and clattered down the stairs to the common room where a lad was trotting around with wooden trenchers laden with hot new bread and cheese and big jacks of mild ale.
He rode on, stunned with weariness and depression until he came to the market town where he was to change horses and reined in suddenly, struck to the heart by its familiarity.
He asked the name of the place of the ostler who brought his remount and was quite dumb with shock to find he was, in very truth, only ten miles from where he was born, for the first time in years.
He had mounted, ridden down the street to the market cross where he stopped and tried to think, at war with himself. His horse quietly sidled towards a yew tree it thought might be tasty. That woke him from his reverie; he pulled the horse away from the poisonous leaves, tethered it by an alehouse, so he could go in and consider.
He had been beaten up, thrown out and disinherited by his father in 1572 or 1573, now he couldn’t truthfully tell you which. A long time ago, fifteen, sixteen years. As the younger son he hadn’t stood to inherit much anyway, some property from his mother’s family, he thought. But it rankled that his father had denied him to be his son. The years had passed and he had sent no letter, nor received none, partly because of the sheer press of living and partly because of pride.
To visit Becket House would not take him much out of his way, nor delay him by much. He had the bankers’ orders proving Burghley’s treason crackling in his doublet front and perhaps he should not hurry to take them to London. It might be better to consider how to bring them to the Queen. Becket was not a courtier, had not even met Elizabeth Tudor, the woman whose service had brought him so close to death, had taken so much from him.
On the other hand … What did he want with old man Becket? What if his father refused to see him, turned him out again? What if…?
As often happened, Becket’s hands began to tingle and buzz and he rubbed them carefully as Dr Nunez advised, circling motions, not forgetting the knotted scar tissue around his wrists.
What to do? He sat there for an hour, nursing his quart of ale, until the alewife glowered at him every time she passed. At last he took out a new penny, held it up and flipped it. Let Lady Luck decide for him. Heads I go home, tails I carry on, he said solemnly to himself and watched himself from far away as he snapped the penny out of the air and slapped it on his wrist. Heads.
Like a sleepwalker he mounted and turned the nag’s head south and west instead of eastwards, while twin voices argued for and against over and over in his head. That was about eleven o’clock. He rode slowly, slower and slower, as if wading through a swamp of reluctance. The horse felt his ill-humour and clopped sullenly along the lanes.
A little past one in the afternoon, he trotted down the muddy lane and into the village green where somebody had built a new shed next to the church and taken out the ancient saint-carved Papist lychgate to replace it with a respectable plain one. As if memory was an animal and could bite, he recalled his hysterical giggling when he and Anthony Fant had found the carving of a woman’s quim in one corner of the gate. His big brother Philip had been so shocked when brought to see it, he had gone red as a raspberry.
He smiled at the memory, then frowned. To think of Anthony Fant was like prodding an old scar, it still hurt him that the man was now one of his bitterest enemies. And how often had t
hey sworn to be blood brothers over the hilts of their boys’ blunt practice swords? He looked around himself, blinking.
It seemed he was a ghost. Nobody knew him. Of course, they wondered what a gentleman in London clothes was doing in their village and while he watered the horse at the duckpond, he looked around himself, lonelier than he had been in his life. There were people he didn’t know at all in a village he had skirmished through thousands of times, playing war with Fant and his brother and the Strangways brothers, battling their enemies, led by Henry Smith, the blacksmith’s boy.
Some grubby children were hiding behind the oak to get a sight of him and he tipped his hat gravely to them. Well, in a minute he would remount and ride away and that would be the end of it …
‘Good afternoon, sir. May I be of assistance?’
It was Philip Becket, his brother, heir to the lord of the manor, run for by one of the children and no doubt sent by his father, after a sprint to fetch his swordbelt and a stately walk down from the house to catch his breath. He must have been out inspecting drainage ditches by the mud on his lamentable old boots.
Becket turned, bowed, opened his mouth to speak and found his voice stopped in his throat. What in the name of God could he say?
‘Sir?’ said Philip, nervous as ever, not understanding his silence, of course, hand dropping awkwardly to the sword he had probably never used in anger, slightly short-sighted eyes crinkling in puzzlement. ‘I think I should know you, sir, but I fear I—’
‘Brother.’ It came out hoarsely, unexpected.
We are often better known by our voices than our bodies. Philip’s jaw dropped, he stared, blinked, stared again.
‘Christ Almighty God, is it David?’
Becket nodded and then found himself suddenly wrapped in his brother’s arms.
‘David! Is it? Is it truly? By God, by God…’ Philip pulled back from him, held him by the shoulders, stared hard at his eyes, up and down his body and the tears were brimming in his eyes, so that more answered in Becket’s eyes and he had to cough. His brother embraced him again, swearing quite shockingly for him, banged his back over and over again.
It seemed that the village, which had looked empty, suddenly erupted with people. He was shaken and pummelled and his head uncovered and stared at by the blacksmith who had let them play with bent nails behind his forge and the carpenter and the orchardman and Goody Brownlow who said she supposed he must be David for the way he looked like his old dad in his youth, may he rest in peace …
And that was how he learned that the man who had broken his nose was dead. It was too much. He didn’t know what to do after that, having had some half-thought-out hope of a prodigal son’s welcome, maybe not as extravagant as a fatted calf but perhaps a pig …
And they had all faded far away, the shouting friendly crowd, like the waves of the sea, far, far away, while he thought how he could have come back at any time. He could have hired a horse while he was swordmastering Sir Philip Sidney and comparatively respectable, or even the first time he came back from the Netherlands with plunder in his pocket, he could have come back at any time and been welcomed …
He was wiping his face and stammering and wondering where the rain was coming from when Philip suddenly took his arm and led him away from the shouting throng and through the lychgate into the churchyard. It wasn’t until they were there that the rain began again, so he knew to mop his eyes and blow his nose.
* * *
The grave was old enough to have a headstone, though of course the marble was newly cut and still looked like the inside of a sugarloaf, shining with rain. Nearby the headstone of his mother’s grave was more weathered.
‘When did he die?’ He heard his voice from a distance, as deep and rough as one of the bears on the South Bank.
‘A little after the Christmas before last.’ Philip had calmed down as well and was leaning against a yew tree with his thumbs in his belt, smiling foolishly at Becket. ‘We sent to London for you but no one could tell us where you were.’
Becket ducked his head, shut his eyes. Under his dank, greasy cloak, his hands tried to turn themselves into fists, but still lacked their old strength. He spoke only when he was sure his voice could be steady.
‘I was … um…’ He had to lie. He could hardly explain to his brother that he had been in the Tower, slowly recovering from torture and half-mad, now could he? Philip was no longer the thin, nervous, elderly, young man he had once been. Now he was a thin, nervous, elderly, middle-aged man. Philip had never given their father five minutes of worry and their father had despised him roundly for it. Philip might well faint on the spot at the news that his disgraced and disinherited younger brother had ever been prisoner in the Tower, no matter how mistakenly. ‘I was in Flanders.’ The lie came smoothly, since he had used it before. ‘Recovering from wounds I got at … er … Zutphen.’
His brother flushed and nodded. ‘I had heard tell that you were with Sir Philip Sidney himself.’
‘Yes.’ Becket sighed. ‘I was his swordmaster. I was with him when he was wounded and I saw him just before his death.’
‘A glorious death,’ said Philip fervently, his pale eyes brightening, bony hand clutching the hilt of a gentleman’s sword that was certainly too ornate and probably too heavy for him. Well, his father’s sword would be, of course. It was more David Becket’s weight. Before torture had ruined his grip, of course.
‘Not really,’ Becket said, not expecting to be heard. The ballad-mongers had done their work too well. ‘His wound sickened and rotted because he would not have his leg cut off after an arquebus ball broke the bone.’
‘I meant, the fight at Zutphen.’
Becket shook his head. Tell him that, owing to the Earl of Leicester being of the opinion that scouts were a waste of time and effort, the fight had been the nearest thing to a bloody defeat that could be painted up as a victory. Fight the combined force of balladmongers and pulpit? Hardly.
‘Yes,’ said Becket. ‘I suppose it was.’
‘And you were there?’ Philip fairly glowed with pride, as the rain spattered on his thinning hair. ‘I told Father you would do well in the end.’
What to say? He should never have come back. A stupid impulse. ‘Thank you.’
‘He forgave you before he died.’
Probably a lie, but a kindly one. Becket lifted his head and contemplated this, the rain dipping its cold beak amongst his curls, for he still held his hat to his chest in respect.
‘Truly he did,’ Philip repeated earnestly, leaning towards him. ‘I think he repented of driving you out a few weeks after he did it, only he would never say so, of course.’
‘Of course.’ What had they quarrelled over, all those years ago? Oh yes. Becket’s debts mostly. Gambling, swordschools and women had been surprisingly expensive. His twenty-year-old self had known his debts to be eminently reasonable and quite small, whereas his older wiser self was no longer so sure.
As the years had ground off his sharp edges, he had found himself siding with his father’s opinion in the matter more and more. But at the time his father’s accusations had hurt him, mainly for being true. He had become angry, sullen and insolent. His father had lost his temper and cuffed his ear like a boy. Undoubtedly he had sinned grievously in trying to punch his father. And even more undoubtedly, his father had been the better man then and certainly the better fighter.
Unconsciously, Becket put his hand to his slightly bent nose: was it before or after the old man kicked me in the cods that he broke my nose for me and threw me bodily out of the house? His memory of landing in the ditch, the world fading and then coming back in pain and blood down his face, bit him sharply with misery. He had never really believed that would be the last time he would see the old buzzard.
Becket looked down at the grave again and wished for a pipe.
‘I promised him I would speak to you if I saw you,’ said Philip. ‘I’ll tell you what he said and did, David. But shall we go in and get warm?�
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‘Ay, might as well,’ said Becket, more willing than he sounded, shaking rain out of his hair and putting his hat back on, longing for a drink.
* * *
They squelched through the village – the churchyard was only at the other end. Twice Philip stopped: once to frown at some tattered thatch and once to gently urge out of their path a large sow who was obviously in pig, calling her by name, which was Buttercup. She belonged to Goodwife Brownlow, who had a bad hip, so surreptitiously, lest one of his tenants be offended by seeing the lord herding swine, Philip shooed Buttercup into her little sty and checked to see she had water, before knocking on the cottage’s horn window and calling through that if the Goodwife let her pig roam free in the evening again, she must not be surprised if some ill-affected Papist had her bacon to his supper.
‘Is that young David with you?’ demanded Goody Brownlow, wrenching back the horn pane and peering out. ‘I was going to say, he’s looking very fine in his London suit and all. Brought any plunder back from Antwerp, eh? You still owe me for them chickens you stole.’
‘It wasn’t me, Goody,’ Becket said, although it had been.
‘Hah! Spent all your plunder on cards and loose women, no doubt. Such a wicked boy, you know, Mr Becket, sir, not a moment out of trouble since the day he was weaned…’
Philip smiled. ‘Keep Buttercup in at night, Goody.’
They walked on. ‘The pig seems to know you well enough.’
‘She should,’ said Philip ruefully. ‘I put her to bed nearly every night.’
Becket hid a grin.
Becket House shone with expansive welcome, for Philip’s wife had brought out the precious wax candles in honour of their guest and no doubt hidden away all the tallow dips and their holders. And she had gone to the length of killing a couple of chickens and a duck to honour the prodigal brother because the scent of the fowls roasting in front of the kitchen fire filled the house.
Becket made his bow to Eleanor Fant that was now Eleanor Becket. Astonishing to find that Philip had caught himself such a wife as none other than Anthony Fant’s youngest sister, who had come to the Becket household from her brother with a dowry of three villages and two London properties and a jointure worth two hundred pounds. Or so Philip had boasted on the trudge back through the village.
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