Gloriana's Torch

by Patricia Finney

  They walked back over the bridge, with Philip trying not to gawp like the farmer he really was at all the wonderful fabrics displayed in the clear glass windows, the devore and stamped velvets, the silks, the brocades from the Far East that Eleanor would sigh over and he could never hope to buy her. They stopped for beer at a small boozing ken with the usual red lattices and nothing whatever interesting or unusual about it except that the beer was magnificent and there was a flight of polished stairs leading to a carved and locked door. Everywhere previously Becket had described the man he was looking for and everywhere he got fearful looks and promises of obedience. Except in this last place, called the Seven Stars, where a short round man with a round happy face and an extremely rich brocade doublet greeted Becket like an old friend and embraced him.

  ‘Now Mr Pickering, may I present my brother, Mr Philip Becket of Becket House, Middleton. Brother, this is Mr Lawrence Pickering … whom some call the King of London.’

  ‘Not in my hearing, Mr Becket,’ said Pickering with an admonishing smile. ‘Mr Secretary Walsingham don’t like it.’

  ‘My apologies, Mr Pickering. I was only relaying the common opinion.’

  Despite the way his sharp London voice was at odds with his silk doublet, Philip made a small bow, which Pickering matched.

  ‘More trouble wiv priests, Mr Becket?’ Mr Pickering was also wearing some remarkably large jewelled rings on his fingers.

  ‘Not priests, but certainly some manner of Papist.’ Pickering tutted. Becket told the story of the killing again and Pickering was entirely unshocked though somewhat annoyed that it had happened, as he put it, ‘on his manor’. They discussed the method of dispatch in the manner of carpenters disputing the merits of an adze.

  ‘It’s a good way, but it takes confidence,’ Pickering said consideringly. ‘Me, I prefer a kidney jab with a poniard because they can’t see you coming and the pain stops ’em squealing.’

  Philip stared from him to his brother who was nodding wisely. ‘Must have been waiting behind the door for him, caught his hair and…’ He made a stabbing motion with his fist. ‘You could do it with a short, thin knife though, one you could put on your wrist, for example. Only takes a couple of inches in the eye. Which of Van Groenig’s eyes was stabbed, brother, can you remember?’

  ‘Um … his right,’ said Philip, trying to hide the sourness in the back of his throat at the thought of it.

  ‘No help there then. Right-handed,’ said Pickering, rubbing his lower lip with his thumb. ‘Well, Mr Becket, I’ll put the word out for the sake of His Honour the Secretary and yourself, of course. Do you think it might be serious?’

  ‘Perhaps, Mr Pickering, perhaps. At the very least, I’d like to know where a man who kills like that came from, how he got here, where he’s been staying. He might pay for passage with pistoles, by the way.’

  Pickering nodded. ‘And the usual arrangement for your brother?’

  ‘I would take that very kindly, Mr Pickering, very kindly indeed.’

  ‘Consider it done, Mr Becket. Can I tempt you with a very fine apricot water?’

  ‘No, thank you, I must go back to Seething Lane again. Another time.’

  And with great mutual courtesy, they left, while Philip wondered which parts of the conversation had eluded him.

  ‘Arrangement?’ he asked tentatively.

  Becket was deep in thought. ‘Hmm? Oh, it means none of his filches or drabs will bother you or tip you any lays while you are in London. Or if they do, you’ll have your money back the next morning and the taker of it in the Thames.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I told you. That was the King of London, the leader of the London thieves.’

  ‘Ah. Um … how do you … er…?’

  ‘Used to work for him. Now I work for much worse men. Pickering at least is an honest thief and whoremaster and becoming very rich. His brother-in-law’s the London hangman. If all goes well, his grandson could be a lord.’

  Philip nodded, not at all sure what to think.

  They ate in the small crowded hall at Seething Lane, paying for their meal with inordinately long prayers before and after, as Becket complained. A plump, complacent-looking man in a well-cut black suit came bustling up to Becket and began berating him for leaving him to deal with Van Groenig’s corpse like that. Becket just stared down at the man as if at a worm, waited pointedly until he had finished complaining, and then introduced him to Philip as Anthony Munday.

  Coldness slid down Philip’s back as he thought to himself, This man tortured my brother, and yet I cannot, for respectability, kill him or even hit him.

  ‘Please be so good as not to arrest my brother by mistake, Mr Munday,’ Becket said sourly and Munday flushed.

  Philip as usual had his lodgings in Gray’s Inn and so they went back there. He watched his brother as they drank malmsey by the fire. Becket was silent and morose, and drank his way steadily through what seemed to Philip to be at least a quart of malmsey without showing much effect. All attempts at conversation fell flat and Philip found himself regretting how much of a battered stranger David now was, wondering how much was left of the proud, open-hearted, quick-tempered, fighting-obsessed young man he had been.

  He thought longingly of Eleanor all evening, for she would have known how to talk to David, could have drawn him out of his blank stare at the fire. What would she have said? he wondered. How would she have gentled the wounded bear that his brother had truly become? In the end, he was so lonely for her, he extravagantly spent a penny on a piece of paper and a pen and ink and wrote her a letter, telling her all about the mapmaker and how he had tried to say something and about the young man who had killed him and Becket’s silence and thirst for booze. In the margin he drew pictures: of St Paul’s, of a beggar, of the young man, if only to fix the killer’s face in his own mind. He ended with his love to her and the children and added a postscript of how he thanked God for his good fortune in such a wife as he could write to in such terms.

  He left it with the innkeeper to send to the carrier for Bristol to be dropped off at Middleton. Philip went to his bedroom soon after, weary with country habits, leaving Becket still sitting, still drinking, still staring at the fire. They were in separate rooms despite the expense, since Philip had discovered on the way to London that his brother snored even more loudly than his wife did.

  * * *

  Becket moaned, asleep in his chair.

  * * *

  He was the Queen. Somewhere under the weirdness of the dream, he knew that he was no such thing, but in the way of dreams, he believed it. He was the Queen of England, facing death and ruin in the thirtieth summer of her reign.

  Before dawn the white-faced mud-spattered man had clattered under the Court Gate, shouting incoherently, and her women had come weeping to her, bringing him into her very chamber as she sat wrapped in the Tzar of Muscovy’s sable dressing gown.

  The rider smelled so strongly of male sweat, of fear and horses and mud and blood and gunpowder, she had nearly retched, but this was no time to demand sweet-scentedness of a man. He dropped with a thud to his knees in front of her and gasped for breath and she gripped the arms of her chair and waited for him to compose himself.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he had said, with tears in his eyes, ‘Your Majesty, the Spanish have taken Gravesend.’

  ‘Gravesend,’ she repeated.

  The Earl of Essex had sent him. While the Lord Admiral Charles Howard of Effingham and Sir Francis Drake and their ragged, empty, stinking ships had finally been forced to refit and resupply in Portsmouth and Southampton, the mouth of the Thames had fallen to the Duke of Medina Sidonia. His galleases had rowed against the wind, their heavy guns had pounded the defences at Gravesend and one had cut the expensive chain of boats with its sharp, bronze beak. The Spanish soldiers had gone ashore in rowing boats and the town had fallen within two hours. On the other side of the Thames mouth, Tilbury Fort, full of soldiers and ordnance, had watched impotently as the fig
ht rampaged and the town burned, for their bridge of boats was gone and they could not row across against the weight of ordnance in the four galleases.

  It was well done. Drake, even sick as he was, would have been proud of the raid.

  She had called her Privy Council to meet before breakfast, requiring the advice of men in the man’s world of battle.

  But in the way of men, her Council had crumpled. Some, like Burghley, had advised more negotiations with Spain, a truce. Surely, this was a feint. She had asked him to his face how much Philip of Spain was paying him and had he not earned enough from selling all her guns and powder? He had made noises in his throat, unable to answer.

  Walsingham had predictably counselled the immediate murder of every Papist that could be found. The Earl of Leicester … He had been red in the face with rage and importance, he had begged, no, demanded to be sent out with the London trained bands and every man they could scrape up to fight Parma before he got to London.

  Sir Walter Ralegh had held his silence until every other man had said his say at least thrice. She had appointed him to the Privy Council pro tempora when the disaster began, against the alarm of Burghley. He, at least, did not disappoint her. When at last she called for his opinion, he had waited with dignity until the secondary arguments and spitting fits had died away amongst the learned and noble counsellors.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he said, softly and evenly, the only man among them not shouting, ‘I advise your instant departure. Be very sure that Parma is bringing his best troops over as we speak, with every ship that will float. They will be on the road to London the day after tomorrow at the latest. London is unwalled and unmunitioned. It is not defensible. The trained bands are youths and striplings and not as well-armed as the least of Parma’s cooks. No matter how brilliantly led,’ with a bow to Leicester that could have been a compliment or the least tilting of an insult, ‘they cannot stand against a properly led tercio. They will be trampled underfoot, or more likely they will break and run—’

  ‘How dare you, sir!’ roared Leicester. ‘How dare you call the men of London cowards?’

  ‘My advice to you, Most Gracious Majesty,’ Ralegh continued unruffled, ‘is to leave London now, waste no lives nor treasure defending it.’

  She held up her hand for silence, knowing that he was right and yet his advice could not be followed. For reasons of politics, of expedience, the young men of London must spend their lives. While her heart clenched against her breastbone at the terrible waste of it, her stomach which she had said only weeks before was that of a King, knew and understood the necessity.

  ‘My lord Earl of Leicester,’ she said gently to her old friend, ‘my lord, will you face Parma for me?’

  Spontaneity was rare in the formal world of the Court. Leicester stood and planted his fists on the table. Underneath the silt of fat and pomposity, the young man she had loved stood proud. He smiled directly at her. She thought he might make some sort of speech about how he had longed all his life to serve her on the field of battle.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and came round the table and knelt before her. ‘Whatever can be done, I will do. And gladly.’ For the first time in years, he spoke without bombast.

  He knew as well, then. He understood.

  ‘Give me your sword.’

  He drew it and Burghley sucked in his breath disapprovingly: a naked blade in the presence of the sovereign was utterly forbidden, on pain of a traitor’s death. Babbington had died for much less. But she had ordered Leicester to draw. She was making, as it were, a point.

  She took the ornate weapon from him and held it, feeling the weight. Alas, she was too old now to learn the Art of Defence, even if David Becket had been available to teach her. Then, careful of her fingers on the oiled blade, she held it up cruciform in front of them all, brought it down and kissed the blade before giving it back to Leicester. He kissed the hand she held out to him, stood and strode from the room, holding his sword still unsheathed.

  All her court understood the arts dramatical.

  I killed my cousin, Mary Queen of Scots and now I am sending my best friend to his death, she thought, desolate.

  She waved her hand to dismiss the councillors and they filed out, all except for Walsingham. He came up to her, full of fire and brimstone. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said urgently, ‘The Papists must be rounded up and—’

  ‘The Papists will spend the first week in shocked prayers after which they will rush to fight the filthy foreigners.’

  ‘Those that are not fighting for them.’

  Her patience snapped. She stood. ‘Mr Secretary,’ she shouted, weary to the core of his suspicious mind, ‘I took your advice last year to execute my cousin the Queen of Scots, the which foolishness has now led to this invasion and may yet lead to our destruction. This is not armageddon, wherein Christ shall come to our reinforcement, leading the charge against Parma with mailed angels in serried rank behind him.’ Walsingham flinched at her sarcasm. Yes, he had in fact genuinely thought that. ‘This, Mr Secretary, is war between Princes, this is the English against the world and if you think above a hundred of my Catholic subjects shall deign to fight on Parma’s behalf, you know your own people very little. Now, go send out your intelligencers to find me information of Parma and his strength and his movements, and later we may discuss at leisure wherefore we had no knowledge of this plot? What happened to Mr Anriques and his wife? Why did Howard have no powder and shot after the second day? And find me Mr David Becket if he is anywhere in London. Go!’

  Finally, blinking with shock, Walsingham had the sense to bow and depart. She was left alone as she so rarely was, staring at the golden carved oak walls. At last she could allow the tears to spring into her eyes. She let them fall for the first and last time, unheeded. She would never allow such a womanish luxury again until the last Spaniard on her ground was dead.

  Or, of course, until she was dead.

  * * *

  Christ have mercy, he had tears in his eyes and the smell of rosewater in his nostrils. Becket had been sleeping slouched in front of the fire in the common room, and the curfew was over the coals, his neck was cricked and his back ached. What the devil was wrong with him? He had had no more attacks of the falling sickness but why were these dreams plaguing him? They had more sense in them than most dreams, they hung shining in his memory, parts of them made his heart beat like a drum. The Queen. He had dreamt that he was the Queen. Wasn’t such a dream halfway to treason? Or madness?

  He stood up, stretched and cracked his shoulder muscles, used the chamberpot, found his flask and finished what was in it, wished there was more because it was by no means enough to make him sleep. If he had not been in so respectable place as an Inn of Court, he might perhaps have found a drab to help him catch some sleep in her softness.

  As it was, he stumbled heavily up the stairs to the bedroom Philip had taken for him, shucked his clothes and climbed in amongst the curtains and sheets while the bed-strapping creaked in protest. The dream was waiting, lying behind his eyelids, ready to pounce the minute he let go …

  * * *

  Again he was the Queen, sitting sidesaddle on her horse as they came to the brow of Hampstead Hill. Sidesaddle! Never, by God, had he sat sidesaddle, he was no feeble woman and … Briefly he struggled with the dream, but it was too powerful.

  The Queen reined in and paused, snuffed the air like a dog. Then she turned and spurred past the pond to the look-out point where the brazier on its pillar still smouldered, to gaze down unblinking into her City of London.

  Not hers. Now it belonged to the Duke of Parma and to Spain.

  A kind of growl came from it, very faint, borne on the winds that had carried Parma and his army across from Flanders. In the west smudged pillows of black smoke, in the east likewise. The wind carried the smell with it.

  She took a deep breath and held it, let it out shakily. Beside her moved the Captain of her Guard, immaculate in red velvet and a buff coat, sitting his horse like a c
entaur, his lean face intent. By God, he was a good-looking man, was Ralegh.

  The chief city of her realm groaned like a struck animal. She couldn’t see it, wondered if she imagined that she could hear the fighting in its streets. Tears threatened again. She lifted her chin and ordered them back, watery troops she had no use for. There was a flash in the middle of the tumble of houses and then, after a strange suspended heartbeat, a low cracking boom that made her horse sidle and snort.

  ‘What was that?’

  Ralegh smiled. ‘Mr Becket blowing London Bridge, I believe. Let us pray that Parma was on it at the time.’

  ‘Amen.’

  Another flash, a sequence of booms like a giant playing drums. Smoke rose from the middle of the houses.

  ‘Quite a firework display.’

  ‘Something of the sort. I hope Mr Becket has used up all the powder in the Tower.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To frighten the Spaniards, to make them cautious, to deny them its use. Mr Becket had some excellent plans. I think Parma will take longer to possess himself of London than he expects.’

  ‘Such destruction. Such waste of life.’ Before she had finished saying them, she regretted the words, heavy though they lay on her heart.

  Ralegh turned to her, his eyes blazing. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘may I speak my mind?’

  And they could have been on a summer hunting expedition so fair was the weather: the trees whispered in the little coppice, although the Heath itself was bare from overgrazing.

  She tilted her head in permission.

  ‘Your Majesty has been a most wise, tender and merciful Prince in our happy realm of peace. But now we have crossed over the border into the land of war, as they have in Ireland, where the laws are different. Wisdom is still needed, but not tenderness and not mercy.’

  ‘What happened to you in Ireland when you were young, Water?’