Mistress Becket was a short, plump, busy person with a round face and a round belly on her where another niece or nephew for David lay hiding in ambush. There were two more of them upstairs with their nurse, no doubt having their hair combed and their faces scrubbed sore and clean collars put on by main force. Becket crushed the strange chill he felt at seeing her, as if she were a ghost he recognised, a shadow from his nightmare. He shook himself like a horse.
The children came trooping downstairs to do their courtesy to their uncle, a fair little girl named Elizabeth as most girls tended to be and a stout, serious, black-haired boy, just into breeches, who bent his knee and told Becket that his name was David as well.
Knowing his place, Becket tipped them each a shilling and promised sword lessons to the boy when he was old enough.
Two lads and a hot-looking village girl laid a table in the parlour and as they sat down, Becket found himself being cross-examined by Eleanor Becket as to whether he had married and if he meant to and when he might do it. He complimented her on her brood and she told him the first of her babies was born too soon and was buried in the grave of Becket’s mother who would surely look after it until Judgement came.
‘I’m sorry for that…’ Becket said awkwardly as a break came in his sister-in-law’s flow of words because she wanted to chew and swallow, and the duck was slightly tough.
‘Oh stuff,’ said Eleanor briskly. ‘It was my own fault for I rode to hounds the day before the pains started. And God gave us Lizzy and then David and now whatever this one is.’
Once again Becket found his eyeballs prickling treacherously. No doubt it was something in the country air, though it was astonishing to him that they had named their eldest son after him and it touched him more than he would ever have thought possible.
‘To be sure, I say it is the only thing I dislike about being with child, not being able to ride.’
‘You should see her,’ said Philip. ‘Terrifies and completely outrides me, will take any fence and seems to think her neck is made of steel.’
‘Phooey.’ Eleanor grinned at her lord. ‘You should try a sidesaddle some time, it is almost impossible to fall out of. Stuff, brother,’ she added, when Becket tried to stumble out something about the honour of their naming their son after him, ‘we were hoping he would find himself an uncle grown rich at the wars and snaffle a pretty legacy.’ And she grinned at him and wrinkled her nose so cynically, Becket started envying his elder brother even more than he had before.
He said this and found that it pleased her so she laughed and told him it was lucky he had wanted to visit his reverend father’s grave, for she had been in her wet larder, looking like a female scarecrow in her oldest and most unbecoming English gown when the boy came running up from the village to tell her who he was, and it was very uncivil of him not to send a man ahead to warn them of his arrival so she would not be in the middle of the very messiest and smelliest meat-pickle when he came. Since she was wearing a perfectly respectable cramoisie velvet gown and a french hood over her cap, with not the faintest taint of vinegar, he assumed there had been something of a flurry, which was quite flattering. Looking at her roundness and happiness, he found it marvellous, like a buttercup growing in a snowfield.
‘David!’
‘Eh?’ Philip had asked him something and he hadn’t heard. ‘I cry you pardon, Philip, I was lost in admiration of your wife.’ At least it was true, though perhaps overgallant.
Philip only smiled while Eleanor blushed satisfactorily. ‘I am very sure there are thousands of women in London far prettier than me,’ she said complacently.
‘True,’ said Becket, to be rewarded by a frown. ‘But only from a distance. Once you get close enough to scrape off the paint…’ He shook his head and sighed. ‘Such a lot of disappointments.’ Eleanor giggled like a girl.
Philip pushed away the last of his candied carrots and went to the sideboard for his locked tobacco box, bought in Bristol and proudly displayed along with some good plate. Becket filled his pipe gratefully and Eleanor bustled away to supervise the servingmen at clearing and the kitchen boys at washing and then to go and say goodnight to her favourite gelding in the stables.
Wreathed in clouds of very vile tobacco smoke, Philip asked his question again. ‘What do you think to the Spanish, David? Having fought them?’
‘The Spanish,’ Becket said, not knowing where to begin.
‘When I go to muster, when the Spanish come, what should I bring?’
Becket puffed on his pipe and coughed. There sat his brother, never fired a gun in anger, never so much as fought since he was a boy, and he was smiling in pleased anticipation of more excitement than a simple hunt for deer or hares or foxes. He was launching into a long account of who was coming and who would stay and what their weapons would be and the difficulty of getting calivers, not that most of the men round about would have the least idea how to use them or even which end to point with, but what of longbows – after all, David knew John Denton had always been a fine shot and so was Henry Smith and …
Becket listened and wondered what to say. He tried to imagine his brother and his tenants facing the tight-lipped discipline of a tercio, but he simply could not because it made his blood run cold.
‘David?’ Philip’s voice was uncertain. ‘What is it?’
Becket took a long shaky breath and prepared himself to lie heroically. ‘The tercios of Spain are very great fighters,’ he said, ‘but they can be shot and killed like any men … Only it’s better to do it from behind a ditch when they are not expecting you. And better still not to let them land.’
Philip laughed. ‘What will you be doing if they land?’
Sudden dream-memory of the Queen putting a gold chain round his neck. ‘Brother, I shall be a great Captain with my own company as I was in Flanders for a while, and I’ll come and fortify Becket House and make it the biggest grave of Spaniards since the harbour at Cadiz.’
I’ll be dead, he thought to himself, dead trying to defend London with the decayed and separated serpentine powder at the Tower and old guns too rotten to be fired. God knows, if I ever come sword to sword with a Spaniard, he’ll cut me down like a butter man at a banquet.
Eleanor came bustling back, smelling slightly of horses, waving a leather bottle and spoon. She dosed them both firmly with a vile green liquid that was certain sure to protect them from scurvy and keep their teeth in their heads. Philip said this was woman’s foolishness, since he had never suffered from scurvy. Eleanor retorted that that was clearly thanks to her physic and there was no sense taking chances. It sounded like an argument they had every year, as comfortable as an old shirt. Then she sat down by the fire with her embroidery hoop.
Philip immediately launched proudly into some nonsensical proposals for fortifying Becket House without damaging the orchard on which he had clearly spent a great deal of time and thought. Becket watched him and wished he knew as little about war as his brother.
‘Oh yes, brother, a fine plan,’ he agreed and Eleanor looked at him sternly while her needle flashed. He looked away, unwilling to be found out.
‘And what was it brought you here at last?’ she asked him. Relieved, he told her of his work for Mr Secretary Walsingham and the mystery of the missing ordnance. Something in her face changed, somehow, went from enlightenment to caution and then back to a proper womanly admiration. It was so swift, he decided he had imagined the change.
‘… but surely we make the finest guns in all Europe,’ Philip said. ‘The Reverend Poyning said so in his last sermon.’
‘No, the Germans make those,’ said Becket pedantically, shocking his brother again. ‘We make more of them. Not the finest in Europe, but the most. Many times more than France or Spain. So there should be no shortage of guns and yet…’
‘Yet?’
‘Yet where are they? The Queen’s ships still want more, the merchantmen want more, there aren’t enough to defend London, let alone powder and shot enough for them
. Where have they all gone?’
‘Do you know?’
‘I suspect the Spaniards have a good number of our guns and the arms merchants at the Hague have the rest.’
‘Surely not,’ said Philip confidently. ‘Who could possibly be stupid enough to sell weapons of war to the Spaniards?’
It was on the tip of Becket’s tongue to say ‘My Lord Treasurer Burghley’, to watch him stare and protest and gasp, to pierce the quotidian armour of confidence in his betters that his brother wore. Instead, he made jokes, passed on court gossip, told carefully edited tales of his exploits in the Netherlands, some of which had happened to other men.
At last Eleanor took a candle and said she would see to it that David’s bed had been properly warmed and left him alone with his brother.
‘Father spoke of you before he died.’ Philip sucked thoughtfully on the long pipestem and then blew smoke rings, a skill he was clearly very proud of.
Becket inhaled deep into his lungs and coughed. ‘If he cursed me with his dying breath, I had rather not know,’ he said, only half a grim joke.
Philip shook his head, smiling in puzzlement. ‘Did you know him so little?’ he asked. ‘Who are his very spit and image? Father and you both have … had … terrible tempers, always at odds, but for God’s sake, he always loved you best.’
Becket muttered something childish.
‘How could he show it than by trying to keep you away from boozing kens and save you from poxing yourself? Besides, I’ll not quarrel with you, brother. I’m not the same as you. I’m a man for business and our lands and tenants have prospered since I have had the running of them. I like things to be tidy and in their right places, you know. And I have been trying to find you ever since he died. I even sent to the Privy Council to see if they had word of you, for Father left you property in his will and we must transfer the deeds.’
‘Father left me property?’ If Philip had revealed that his true sire was Edward VI, Becket could not have been more staggered.
‘Of course he did. If he had not, I would have told him to do it. But there was no need.’
‘Well … but what did he leave me?’
‘Some houses that once belonged to an old monastery in London – snapped them up in forty-seven I think, what was the place? Blackfriars? No, Whitefriars. Facing a courtyard. Hanging Sword Court, I think, not far off Salisbury Place.’
Becket couldn’t help it, he had to laugh at the ludicrous coincidence.
* * *
Philip almost feared for his brother’s sanity to see him put his head in his hands and laugh and laugh. He had thought to please David with his revelation and he thought he had, but there was something about David that chilled him. Less than half of what his brother had said at the dinner table had been the truth, he thought, and what in the name of Christ had caused the wicked scarring peeping out under his shirt cuffs on both his wrists? Had he been a galley-slave at some time? Philip longed to ask, but dared not.
Later, when they had done the business and transferred the deeds, after Becket had gulped down the last of her very own best double-distilled aqua vitae from their own cider, and embraced his brother goodnight, Eleanor led him personally to the guest room above the hall, newly built since he was gone.
‘Will you stay a few days with us, brother?’ she asked.
Becket’s fingers seemed oddly clumsy as he began to undo the buttons of his doublet. Eleanor ignored the hint.
‘Will I have Philip’s man come to help you undress?’
‘No, thank you.’ Becket gave up on the buttons for the moment and went in search of booze, which he found in the jack of spiced ale by the side of the big guest bed. ‘I cry you pardon, sister, but I cannot stay. I fear I must hurry back to London. I must…’ He stopped, looked gloomy. ‘I must report my findings to Mr Secretary Walsingham.’
‘Mm.’ Eleanor made her decision. There was no help for it, if he wouldn’t stay, she’d do it now. Though she would instinctively have preferred to let him get a night’s sleep before presenting him with a mystery. He looked exhausted and careworn, poor man, not at all the dashing swordsman Philip had described to her.
She came in, tapped her candle down on the lid of the chest, poked at the fire and sat herself down beside it. Becket squinted at her unhappily, recognising permanency when he saw it.
‘Eleanor?’ he asked warily. ‘How is your brother Anthony?’
She smiled at him, liking his taking of the bull by the horns. So like the old Mr Becket. Philip, bless him, would have pottered around the subject for another hour. ‘Well enough. He finally married again last year, you know.’ Becket nodded. ‘A rich widower with five children, I’m astonished he escaped this long,’ she added. ‘Though God knows, he’s grouchy enough. Wouldn’t even buy a lovely colt off me last year for his eldest boy. His new wife’s a friend of mine and—’
‘What does he say about me, which you have carefully not told Philip and which you want me to tell you the truth of?’ Becket was clearly doing his best not to sound belligerent, which only made him more like his father.
She smiled again. ‘Why, that you have been at your old coat-changing practices. That you were in the Tower on a charge of treason the Christmas before last but that somehow you got away and convinced Walsingham you are a loyal Englishman when Anthony knows you for a Spaniard and a Papist in your black and ugly heart. That’s what he said in his letter.’
Becket sighed. ‘I’m sorry for your brother’s other enemies.’
‘It’s as if all the charity and kindness in his body was left behind in Haarlem with his arm,’ said Eleanor thoughtfully. ‘I’m to tell him at once if you turn up, by the way. Is any of it true?’
‘It’s true I was in the Tower.’ Becket spoke slowly and quite without emotion, which told Eleanor how hard this was for him. ‘It was a misunderstanding. I was working for Sidney in a matter of intelligence and got scooped up by Walsingham’s pursuivants in a raid on a Mass, knocked on the head. They mistook me for a priest and since the blow had scrambled my brains somewhat, it took a while to … to convince them otherwise. Why did you not pass on Fant’s letter to Philip?’
Eleanor smiled fondly. ‘It would distress him terribly. He worried over you when you were children, I know, and still does it. And he hates to think of hatred or evil.’
‘Then God help him if the Spaniards land.’
‘Amen,’ said Eleanor, deciding to take the bull – or perhaps the bear – by the horns herself. ‘Do you think as little of Philip’s careful plans for defence as I do?’
The expression on David’s face was so desperate as to be frightening by itself. He said nothing.
‘My own opinion is,’ she said to help him, ‘that if we try to make a defence of it with Becket House quite without walls and the village as it is, then the house will be burnt and all of us infallibly shall be killed. But of course, I am only a weak foolish woman and—’
‘Entirely correct.’ Becket’s voice was harsh, but amused. ‘It seems to me, sister, if I may speak plain, that England is like a virgin with a bosom full of gold blinking at an alley lined with footpads.’
‘So what should we do, brother? If they land? What do they do to fight the Spaniards in the Low Countries? Not romantic nonsense, but the truth?’
He drank a cup of ale and she waited for his answer.
‘It depends where they land,’ he said at last. ‘If they land in the West Country or the Isle of Wight, then the minute you get a true word of it, gather the children, everyone in the village that cannot fight, take food, blankets and horses and all your cattle and herds and go north. Take the lead off the church roof, burn your house and your fields and orchards and granaries behind you and see to it that everyone does likewise. Get into the Welsh mountains and stay there until all the Spaniards are dead or King Philip is proclaimed the rightful sovereign from the pulpit.’
She swallowed. ‘Burn the house?’
He hadn’t wanted to frighten her, th
at was clear, he hadn’t wanted to burst the bubble of faith and safety he thought she lived in, but now he had begun with the truth he could not stop. But she had nursed her brother Anthony through two fevers when he came back from the Low Countries and had learned more of war from him in his delirium than he had thought she did.
‘Burn everything you cannot carry and that cannot run. Give the bastards nothing to feed themselves with and get out of their path. Armies move slowly, you know. At the best, they cover ten miles in a day, with the scouts ranging out ten miles ahead of that. If you move promptly when you first have proper word from someone you trust, then you need never clap eyes on a tercio. Which would be best, believe me, sister.’
Sudden gut-freezing picture of her, skirts foul with blood, aiming a caliver at him …
‘And there was I thinking to form mine own Amazon cavalry regiment and charge Parma down with sword and pistol.’
‘If anything could frighten the man, I believe that would.’ Becket managed some gallantry. ‘If they land at the Thames mouth – do as I told you, but head west. If I am able at all, I shall send you word myself, but do not wait for it, go when you have the news.’
‘Are Anthony’s tales of what the Spaniards do in the Low Countries true?’
‘Yes,’ said Becket, without needing to know what the tales were. ‘Both sides do evil. I myself have played games when I bet how many burning arrows it would take to fire a butter-eater’s barn, with the man hanging upside-down from a tree beside me, stripped and crying it was his livelihood. I thought it was funny at the time. It is in the nature of war that men do evil in it. And the answer is either to kill them first or not to be there when they do it.’
He poured himself more ale and drank and she thought that he had sad grey eyes and that he had not told her the half of the evil he had seen or done.
She nodded. ‘David,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I must tell you … this summer, a strange man came visiting the house, a thin man in a soldier’s buff coat like yours. He said he was a Mr Piers Lammett, the son of an old friend of your father’s, who was a Papist and removed to the Continent with your father’s help when the Queen came to the throne. He was much afraid of pursuivants and Philip was not at all happy to be giving him house-room only I made him. He stayed the night and then was away again in the morning before sun-up. When Philip would not speak to him, he talked to me instead. He had come for to find you, crossed the sea secretly and ridden at risk of his life from Southampton to the place his father had told him was your home. He said he had met you in Arnheim under the name of Smith where he gave you word of a libel against the Queen called the Book of the Unicorn.’
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