Now that had an effect. Becket was white as a sheet, gripping his hands together so she would not see how they shook.
‘He said he had intelligence that he wanted to give you, but when he found we knew not where you were, he left a packet here with me privily, and went back to his ship. As far as I know he got away again.’
She took a packet out of the pocket of her petticoat and gave it to him.
‘Ah,’ Becket was blinking at the thing in his hand as if it contained a viper.
She was very much hoping he would open it while she was there so she could find out what was in it and scratch the itch of curiosity which had been worse than a bed-bug’s bite since the summer. Alas, he put it on the table for later.
She sighed. ‘Are you one of Walsingham’s pursuivants?’ she asked.
‘At least you don’t ask me if I am a traitor, as Fant paints me.’
She sniffed. ‘Lord above, what a foolish thing to ask. Whatever you truly are, you will surely answer no. Are you a pursuivant?’
David bowed with mock ceremony. ‘In a manner of speaking, very reluctantly, yes.’
‘Why? Philip said you were a swordmaster, a soldier of fortune.’
‘No longer, I think. I’m getting old for that game.’
Not true, despite the silver in his hair. He was only in his thirties. There was something else.
‘No doubt I’ll resign from Walsingham’s service once the Spaniard is whipped back to his kennel. Now I have the rents on the Whitefriars properties, I shall be a rich man. Whatever shall I do with myself?’
‘Marry at last?’ She grinned naughtily at him. ‘Instead of burning.’
‘Have mercy, sister.’ Becket said, ‘Don’t match-make for me yet.’
‘Me? Match-make? Never!’
He half-smiled at her, blinking at the mysterious packet again. It was time to let him look at it. She stood, he stood, staring at her as if his heart was too heavy to speak. He bowed, she curtsied, left pen and ink upon the chest next to the candle and rustled from the room.
* * *
Becket was better trained in dealing with mysterious letters than he had been. After several more cups of ale to fortify himself, he smelled it, examined the waxed silk it was sewn into, looked closely at the borders of the wax seal, which had an impression on it he vaguely recalled, checked the seams for evenness of stitching. Then he put on his riding gloves and used the tip of his poniard to slit it open.
A single blank sheet of paper fell out, accompanied by the faint scent of Seville oranges. His mouth was dry. His hands shook when he took the paper and held it near the heat of the candle flame, watched as the writing came clear and brown. He was poised to note it down in case it was enciphered, but it was in clear and he copied the letters.
The handwriting was firm, a little flowery, and to the point.
Greetings
Parma has a three-part plan against England. First, there is the Armada. Second, his army in Flanders, which is to be carried over when the Armada have taken control of the Narrow Seas. So much is known to all. But the third part makes or mars all. It is the lynchpin of the whole enterprise. I could not find it out, for a fear that Parma suspects me. I only know that they name it their Miracle of Beauty.
Your old friend from Arnheim.
Smith
Not his friend. By no means his friend. He vaguely remembered Henry Lammett, his Protestant father’s Catholic friend, from the time when he was a little boy, still in skirts, still under the care of his nurse. Henry Lammett had protected them in the frightening days of Bloody Queen Mary and then gone overseas with his father’s quiet help in 1560. There had been a son, a boy somewhat older than him. It made sense, although he hadn’t recognised the man at all when he met him at Arnheim in 1586.
Becket sighed and sat back, weariness and despair washing over him like a flood tide.
No more. He could do no more in the Queen’s service. He was utterly exhausted, as much by warfare within as by the world without. He had no idea how he would bring to the Queen those bankers’ drafts that proved Burghley’s stupid treason. What would Walsingham do with the information? Would he pass it on to Her Majesty? Becket suspected not. Walsingham believed as an article of faith that the less women were told, the less trouble they caused. The fact that this had been proven wrong, certainly with regard to the Queen, over and over, troubled the man not at all. And further, he would not wish to waste such a prime weapon of blackmail against his old enemy in the Council. On no account could Becket go to Walsingham.
And now this. He had no stomach for any of it, none at all. He could not so much as glimpse a man dressed plainly in black and white without flinching; every pleasant memory of Christmas was scarred across, slashed to ribbons by unbidden recall of his sojourn in the Tower.
The Christmas of 1587 he had spent in bed, struck down by a melancholy so deep that Lady Walsingham had called Dr Nunez in to physic him and a surgeon to bleed him. If only he could be bled dry of memory. Sometimes memory, which had been so frail and elusive in the Tower, became like Hercules and rose up and gripped his throat and hands so he stared and could not breathe and folk would look at him strangely. He was constantly terrified of the falling sickness, and yet he also longed for it to take him while he was on horseback so he could fall, crack his head open and make a guiltless end of it all. He was not so old, in what some called the prime of life, but he felt as worn as an old man. It was taking him all his time to bring himself to rise from his bed in the mornings and saddle his horse and ride wherever he happened to be sent by peremptory notes from Walsingham or Phelippes, his clerk, or Phelippes’ son. Often the only thing that got him through the day was the promise of booze and oblivion at the end of it.
He scrubbed his tired eyes with the palm of his hand, felt for his flask and drank a couple of gulps. Not much effect, so he finished it. As he slowly, painfully, unbuttoned to go to bed, he thought that perhaps he could give Dr Nunez in London this unwanted information from Piers Lammett, his unwanted contact at Parma’s court. Nunez could decide what to do about it, refer it to Simon Ames – or Anriques as he now was – who should be back from his slaving voyage. Ames would know what to do with such a dangerous sliver of information and how important it might be. Nunez understood these things as well, was experienced and wise in the ways of espionage, as was his nephew Simon Ames/Anriques. Not him. The Queen had had the best of him. He was a broken down ex-swordmaster with weak hands, no more. Christ have mercy. No more.
Merula
South America, Autumn 1587 (Portugal, Spring 1588)
Now I will dance across the days as a storyteller must do. We sailed over sea that changed from grey to green to blue, day after day, while they repaired the damage from the storm. My mistress spoke to me in the red-purple words of the Portuguese, in the blue-green words of the English, speaking to me as if I were a child so I could learn it easily. She was called Rebecca Anriques, she was wife to my master and she spoke sadly of their children, whom she had left in the far north with their nurse and her father’s family. She stood between me and death many times, for she argued with the priest who was my enemy – no doubt because I had called the god and he had not been able to – and she spoke vehemently to her husband when Anriques said that for the sake of peace with the priest and the crew, he would sell me ashore in New Spain.
We came to a harbour in a place that was hot and steamy, full of trees, with a raw little fort and slave pens newly built. Everyone spoke the crimson-indigo tongue. There the poor slaves were unlocked from the hold and marched down the gangplank, staggering, scrawny, even the noble young men gone down to skin and bone and greyness. My master watched them and frowned. He said to the ship’s captain, ‘Why are so few left?’ And the captain grunted and told him that on every voyage they lost at least a third of the blacks, sometimes half and this was not so very bad.
They call us blacks, Negroes, as if we were nothing but our skin.
Mr Anriques nodded, s
till frowning, said nothing more.
A little later, he had Michael put the iron jewellery on my arms and legs again. Michael scowled and did it as slowly as possible. Mr Anriques was hidden inside a cold, haughty disdain. Michael gave my hand a squeeze, as if he was saying he was sorry.
Then Mr Anriques bade me follow him down the rope ladder into the ship’s boat, and we were rowed in silence to the quayside. It was true that his wife was recovered of her flux and now I only helped her to put on her tight breast-cage in the morning, which the savage hairy ghosts have their women wear to imprison them and make them short of breath. She was asleep. I think he had given her poppy juice so she could not argue with him.
There was heaviness deep in my bowels. I must stay with them, I must be with the hairy ghosts, not doing whatever their captives do in New Spain. This was the wrong path for me and for Anriques and for my son – he was not in New Spain, I was sure of it. I had felt his spirit when I went god-hunting on the masthead and it was in a different direction, northerly, for all there are no such things as directions in the dreamtime.
Help me, Lady, help me, I muttered and hummed a song for guidance. There are places where the world splits and this was one of them: Lady, Lady of the shining face, of the shining hooves, black and white zebra woman, spotted golden leopard lady, help me find my right path …
Anriques walked ahead, towing me on a chain to my wrists. He walked quietly, no swagger. If you did not know him, you might not see him. His clothes were too rich and heavy for the heat; he sweated profusely into his shirt, which already smelled bad. I knew it did, for I had been washing the Anriques shirts and salt water rots the cloth.
In the sunlight he spoke to a few merchants, asking questions. He spoke Portuguese quickly and easily, but I understood more than he thought. He was asking where I would get a good price. Yes, he was going to sell me. Some men laughed and directed him to a bawdy-house. Now this I could not allow.
‘Mr Ames,’ I said, using his rightful name, which he hardly ever did, ‘do not sell me there.’
He squinted at me, not seeing. ‘The sailors are frightened of you, the priest says you are a witch. I’m faced with mutiny if I go to Lisbon with you. Why did you call me Ames?’
‘It is the name your Witch-Queen knows you by.’
A shudder passed over his face, he was afraid of me. Now he too believed I was a witch, although of course I could have learnt his former name from his wife while she was feverish. But once you get the name of a witch, everything you do is more evidence for it, especially to superstitious northern savages.
‘What will my mistress your wife say to you when you come back without me?’ I asked him and he frowned.
‘She is my woman, she must do as I tell her.’ Like many men of my own country, he believed that this is what she usually did. ‘And she should not have told you my right name. It’s dangerous.’
He was angry as well. Queen Moon, Lady Leopard, come to me, help me, show me my right path.
She came to me, Lady Leopard, sharp teeth, whiskers, soft, soft fur. Her fur is delicious to stroke; her mouth bites and tears. Do not think you understand a god.
Did she want me to strike Anriques, beat him down with my iron jewellery? No, it seemed not. She sat, waiting beside me, whiskers bright, eyes wide, ears perked, tail swishing. Oh she was in a good humour, which meant there might be blood. And she was strong here: they worshipped her here under another name, in another tongue, but in a very similar shape. I felt my heart moving, knew my stomach was folding away, all my arms and legs were full of golden fireflies.
Anriques led me down a narrow, bright alley, where the sunlight fell and the awnings held it back, where the shadows were black dark, white bright, like a zebra’s hide. At its end was a place full of shadows, where women waited to serve men in the game of the two-backed beast. And halfway down the alley waited two hungry men who thought Anriques might be worth a scuffle for his purse.
Only a fool steps from bright light into dark shadow and keeps walking. If Anriques had had any sense, he would have stopped for a moment to let his eyes change. But he did not because he was fretful and impatient, going against his inner wisdom in favour of what seemed to be the safe thing to do. This is one of the things the gods do to entertain themselves: they show us a safe-looking path and one that looks frightening. When we choose the safe one, they step back to reveal the crocodiles and lions hidden beside it and watch us bleed.
So my master walked straight into the ambush. One man threw a cloak over his head, caught him round the neck, the other robber patted him down for hidden purses after cutting the small leather bag on his belt.
No wonder Lady Leopard was happy: I smiled at her, she leaped into me. I crossed my wrists, stepped behind the man with the purse-cutting knife and dropped the looped chain over his head, then pulled sharply and his neck broke. I put my wrists together and brought the chain down on the other one’s head and he dropped Anriques in a slippery pile of dung, turned with a blade in his fist. My feet were chained, so I jumped up and over Anriques and kicked both legs sideways as in a dance and so caught the man in the ribs. He tumbled over, I crashed down on top of him, he scrambled away from me while I was still stunned and tangled, dropped his cloak and ran.
I could have run, also. I could have skipped into the shadows while Anriques fought with the cloak that was suffocating him. I wanted to at first, I, the person I once was before I became upside-down, yes, I did want to run. But Lady Leopard still rode me and she said, Stay with him.
So I did. I untangled Anriques from the cloak, helped him up from the mud, found his hat for him.
I smiled, laughed, jingled the chains. ‘You not sell me, Simon Ames, Mr Anriques. You not break my path. I come find my son, take him home or sing his spirit quiet. Now you … You too break … here!’
The knife of the man I killed lay in the dust. I caught it, saw Anriques’ indrawn gasp of alarm, before I slammed it into the dirt.
‘Choose. Kill me or keep me with you.’ His nostrils flared, his lips were pinched. ‘One day, you is glad.’
He did not want to do as I said, a woman as well as a slave, but he was also a just man for all he dealt in human flesh. And I had not run and I had helped him when he was attacked.
Finally he nodded, picked the knife up out of the dirt and put it in his belt, led the way back to the quayside. Out of my heart leaped my Lady Leopard, swishing her tail, a robber’s soul in her teeth.
* * *
We sailed from New Spain two months later, after the great hairy ghost festival of the birth of the Suffering Jesus. This is a very good festival, full of good food and singing and sweet-smelling incense, the telling of the god-tale with fine mysterious ceremonies in the candled dark, though no sacrifices. It is touching that the wild northerners worship a baby-god, surely the least mad of the hairy ghost superstitions.
When we set sail, it is dangerous, for the ocean was still swarming with storms. I spoke to them kindly and they left us alone. Mr Anriques was in a hurry to complete his business. As we sailed north and east, Rebecca my mistress began praying to her own god. A strange god for a woman, behind letters like the Arab but also with much of the English Thundering Jehovah in him. She did not want to go to Portugal, to Lisbon, I knew that, but her husband was obstinate. There was something vital he must do there and he would do it, no matter what she said.
Herein the gods were restless again, each contending with each.
Rebecca had ghost-skin but she had dark straight hair and very dark eyes. She wore many clothes, which she was teaching me to put on for her, so many, such a complication of them, nobody could run or bend or work in them. She only wore what she called English gowns at sea, but now she must find and wear her farthingale for Spain – this meant rousting out the supplies in the hold to find the canvas bag with a great wheel of bone and cane-threaded canvas to make it like a bell. Quite wonderful.
Over the ribs and pillars of her undergarments, she put crimso
n velvet and black satin, most costly and beautiful to look at. Her husband likewise clothed himself in velvet and satin. As the last touch, as we came with the tide into the vast outer harbour of Lisbon, she took out of her casket a small plain gold cross for him and a jewelled one for her, glinting even in the small light of the cabin. Anriques stopped her when she would have passed the chain over his head.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’ she asked.
He did not answer. She put her own cross on the table next to his.
‘You wear yours, Rebecca.’
‘My husband, either we both wear a cross or neither of us.’
‘It doesn’t matter for you, it does for me.’
‘As my husband does, so shall I,’ said Rebecca with the defiant submission I have occasionally seen in Kings’ wives. Anriques sighed and put the cross over his head.
‘Take Merula with you.’
‘What? Why?’
She smiled. ‘You have always needed a bodyguard, and she will make a good attendant for you.’
He sighed. ‘Well, she can’t go dressed like that.’
They could not find women’s clothes for me. Certainly Rebecca’s could no more fit me than a child’s. And so they found a suit of men’s clothes, of doublet and hose and two shirts, which had belonged to the man whose jaw my Lady Leopard broke and who died a little after, months ago now. He was my height and my breadth, but they were terribly uncomfortable, with the cloth between my legs chafing my woman’s place and the shoulders too wide and the chest too narrow. Rebecca did some work with needle and thread and a pair of shears, and in the end they pronounced me decent, or nearly, seeing as it was a great sin for a woman to wear men’s clothes. I agreed with them – why should I make myself ugly like a man, when I am made in the holy shape of the Queen Moon? But then, what else could I do, for the hairy ghosts are terrified of skin and so mine must be covered up like theirs.
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