I smiled and nodded and drank. My Lady Leopard seemed to be asleep, curled up by the fire. Or perhaps that was the blurred tabby cat I liked so well. With the booze winding its tendrils around the gates of my mind, they were becoming hard to open.
‘What was it happened to Simon Ames, then? How did the Inquisition take him alive?’
I paused and then I told him the tale, as I have told you, and made it as well as I could and he listened, only cursing at the end.
‘Rebecca says you are a soothsayer,’ he said. ‘So can you tell me, how could I have known in my dreams that the Inquisition had him in their dungeons before your ship so much as landed.’
‘In our dreams we can walk in the dreamtime,’ I told him. ‘And sometimes from the dreamtime we can look into the past and sometimes into the future. And sometimes we can see the gods, or angels as you call them here.’
‘Does that mean my dreams will come true?’
‘It might.’
He blinked at me. ‘What if all my dreams showed a terrible future that was good for me, wherein I was a man of rank and command?’
I felt a prickle on my neck, where the Lady Leopard’s whiskers caught me. Be careful, she said.
‘There may be another path,’ I told him, ‘but it may mean your death. Or it may all be a phantasy made by the hurt to your head you got last year.’
‘How can I find out which?’
I leaned towards him and put my hand on his wrist, where the scarring was. He flinched slightly, but I held him – to be sure, he was only afraid because I looked so different from any of his ghost-women.
‘Mr Becket,’ I said to him, ‘you cannot. All you can do is what seems good to you.’
He grunted, ducked his head, drank some more.
‘You are a swordmaster,’ I said to him.
He shrugged and his mouth twisted sadly. ‘I was.’
‘Well, sir, will you teach me the right use of this?’ I showed him the short sword I had been given. ‘And also to fire guns? And where the powder comes from?’
‘Women can’t learn swordplay. They’re too weak.’
‘Some women are, I am not. I am stronger than you now, Mr Becket, I think.’
He spat, laughed grimly. ‘No.’
‘I am. And I need to learn to fight with your weapons. I know the use of a spear already, and a club, but a sword or a gun … not yet. So teach me.’
He put up his right arm with the bent elbow on the table and smiled lazily, his eyes half-shut. ‘Prove your strength. Hold me to a draw. I’ll bet you a sword lesson that you can’t.’
I did not know the game of arm-wrestling but he explained it and I bent my arm and leaned my hand against his.
Of course, I won. First I held him to a draw and then as I felt where the weakness in his grip was, I twisted and so beat him.
And he sighed and refilled his tankard. ‘Are all the other African women as mighty as you?’
‘Some,’ I told him. ‘Some are much weaker, some are fat as the hippopotamus and giggle all day. Now pay your bet.’
By the time the cook came back we were both in our shirtsleeves and he had me holding a bolt of wood from the pile by the fire and making the shapes in the air that they set store by. The cook was angry for we had broken some dishes and the scullions stood to stare at such a sight. Becket had been reluctant enough to start with but now he was paying attention and instructing me properly and I had liked the lesson, although the tabby cat had gone away from the fire in a great hissing.
As we were driven from the kitchen with the fury of the cook behind us, Becket clapped me on the back and threw me my doublet. ‘By God, Merula, if the black women are like you, what are the men like?’
‘Mighty warriors,’ I said. ‘Taller than me and stronger, but not so clever, alas. And also not immune to gunfire.’
‘Well, thank Christ for it, or you would be foraying to England to make slaves of us.’
I smiled, but did not say what I thought, which was, Why would we want hairy ghosts for slaves when they are so savage and primitive that they must be told of the dreamtime?
I know that this was the beginning of my destruction. It began in beer and aqua vitae and the closing of the doors in my mind, the turning of myself right-side up, as if I were a man of their kind. I had come in search of my son and also in search of the secret of gunpowder to take them both home. Here was where my path began to twist. I can see it now, of course, but I half-saw it then too for I could see the Lady Leopard when I lay down by Rebecca to sleep and she had her back to me, her tail lashing. But I saw no harm in learning swordplay from a man wise in the way of teaching it. And I saw no harm in making a friend of Becket, who was so unhappy except when he was teaching me to fight. Nor did I mind how he watched me when I slashed with the bolt of wood, for I had been manless for a long time and was also lonely. Why was the Lady Leopard in a temper with me, I wondered a little, but I had no wish to go into the dreamtime to ask her, which was so hard and painful. One night in sorrow I tried to sing to the Queen Moon as she lay in her couch of clouds, but Rebecca told me to hush and the night was silent. So I drank some more of the aqua vitae in the cup by Rebecca’s bed and fell asleep to dream no dreams.
Walk across the days like a flamingo with me, dipping your beak upside-down into the hours for details. Here is a memory of myself and Becket learning swordskills in the Nunez courtyard: we had progressed to using heavy blunt metal swords and I laughed as I wielded mine, for I could feel there was a god whose business I was learning, a new god was taking an interest in me. Lady Leopard was angry. Her back and lashing tail were all I could see. So here I came, making my blows count and here came Becket, fighting back, his sword tied to his hand so he would not drop it. He was slow and careful not to hurt me when he struck me, wonderfully light on his feet for so big a man. And he turned and suddenly caught my arm under his, holding tightly and so I dropped my sword and was caught.
‘Now what?’ he said breathlessly, showing his teeth.
I stood, wondering, for without my Lady Leopard to give me savagery, I truly did not know. Also, I didn’t want to use savagery on Becket, I liked him for all his scowling and bad temper. And when you fight a man, you know him, you learn his body as you might if you danced with him, and so he becomes known to you. This is so even with men you must kill; much more so with a man who is teaching you to fight.
‘Well? By now I have broken your arm and stabbed you. What will you do?’
I brought my knee up, caught only his thigh for he was quick to dodge, and he had his own blunted blade in the pit of my stomach.
‘You’re dead, Merula.’
‘What should I do?’ He was very close, only the sword was between us, and his grey eyes danced with mischief. I still have my man’s part as well as my woman’s cave, the part where delight lives, that the Arabs, in their fear, like to cut away.
‘Think about it. How many hands have I? Only one. I’m no better off than you are, for although I’ve trapped your sword arm, I’m close enough for you to strike…’
I brought my fist up, hit his jaw gently.
‘Ay, so, and if you have a buckler in your left hand, all the better. Again.’
And we practised it, he trapping my arm, and myself striking him gently, left-handed and each time he was closer until the last time he changed his stance and bore me back againt the wall of the jakes with the blunt blade of his sword pinning me there. If it had been anyone else, one of the sailors who tried to dance the man and woman dance with me, I would have known what to do and Lady Leopard herself would have come to help me, but here and now, with the hairy ghost man pinning me there less with his strength than his cloud-coloured eyes … I was confused. I felt helpless, as if I was only the girl I was when I was first married to my husband, and knew nothing of being upside-down, only carrying water, growing crops and raising children.
‘Now,’ he was breathing hard, ‘now you may fight like a man, Merula, but anyone can lose a fi
ght and if you do … it will go harder with you for it, do you understand?’
I did understand what he was saying. He wanted to take me himself, but he hid this from himself in his warning. I knew the ways of men – do you think all of the nearby tribes were frightened enough of the gods and ghosts in the forests? There had been men who had come to find me and break into my cave in the early days, after all.
Suddenly, I thought, well, what of it if I let him into my cave? I am not sworn to virginity, after all. I have borne a manchild, and if I have been manless for a long time, it was more for the reason that they were afraid of my upside-down state. And also of the heads and manpieces of those who had come to find me in the forest, which I displayed on the trees near their villages.
So I reached and took his wrist, where the scarring was and moved the blade aside so there was no longer anything between us. ‘Do you think I am a girl?’ I asked him, not knowing the word for virgin. ‘Do you think I have never known a man? I have a son, and no god lay with me to make him. What do you want?’
To hairy ghosts, to be black is to be devilish, not human. To me, he was a hairy ghost, not human. But we were close and I am a woman and he is a man.
He dropped his sword, lifted his wrist where I had hold of it and kissed the back of my hand, very courtly, as men commonly do to women among the hairy ghosts. I let go and stroked the furriness of his beard, as I wished to know if it was rough or smooth. Rough.
He shook his head, smiled downwards as if at a secret joke. ‘Ah Merula,’ he said. Then he let me go, and I bent to pick up the swords we had dropped. ‘Why do you wear men’s clothes?’ he asked me suddenly.
‘In this land it is too cold to go bare with only a leather skirt. Men’s clothes are uncomfortable,’ I said. ‘But I have never worn women’s stays all my life and they make my breath come short and how can I be my mistress’s guard if my legs are wrapped around with petticoats.’
‘It looks … strange,’ he said. ‘One minute one thing, the next something else.’
‘Make no mistake,’ I told him. ‘I am a woman and no man.’
‘Fights like a man, dresses like a man, drinks like a man, is as strong as a man…’ He was smiling, teasing me. But there was an edge.
I felt tired of his teasing and his doubts, so I swung on him and caught him under his codpiece, where he lived, and he yelped as they always do. Then I took his hand and put it under my own crotch.
‘What do you feel there?’
‘Nothing?’
I had him and he was still, his face going red as the hairy ghosts do, most revealing of their feelings.
‘More than nothing,’ I told him. ‘Less than something.’ I moved his hand up to put it on my breast, under my doublet. ‘Now?’
‘Yes,’ he growled, starting to breathe fast again. ‘Yes, very much something.’
And he grinned suddenly, for all I had his balls in my hand and could have twisted, he grinned and cupped his own hand to squeeze my breast quite gently.
I was answered, so I smiled and let him go and stepped back. He blew breath out of his lips like a horse and rearranged himself and we went back into the house while he looked at me sideways when he thought I would not see, looked and looked away, as if he was considering something new.
I was a little happier. The battlements of their clothes make the hairy ghosts very easy to confuse, and I wished him to know what I was. Being savage, the hairy ghosts like to keep things very simple: they want a woman to do only what all women do and a man to do only what men do. But we are not so simple, and when they have no spaces in their he- and she-boxes for such as me, then they make their lives confusing. I will be seen for what I am and I wished Becket to see it.
And he did. I think he did.
At least one part of my quest was successful. I learned from him the secret of gunpowder. It is a simple thing, something that was first made as a medicine, no doubt for constipation by which the hairy ghosts are plagued. Then somebody cooked it and nearly died of the explosion. Of saltpetre seven parts, of sulphur two parts and of charcoal one part. Mix it together fine ground and you have the sand-like serpentine powder. Wet the powder, make it into cakes, dry it and (very carefully) grind it small and you have the better milled powder. For this our Kings have been selling our young men. Becket told it to me, and showed me the few barrels that were loaded on the Salamander of London, the ship that was Rebecca’s passport into the Armada. He showed me the use and loading of handguns: an arquebus, a caliver and a dag. He took me to Newington Butts, south of the river where they have targets for archers to shoot at and an earthbanked place for shooting. It took a great deal of argument by Becket and a bribe to the man who owned the shooting range, but I learned the business of cleaning and loading and priming, became less afraid of the glowing match next to my eye and the kick-back of the gun as it fired no longer made me cry out and drop the weapon, though my shoulder was aching and bruised.
I could have gone then. I could have taken my knowledge, stolen money and found a ship, come back to my own country and gone to my King. I could have said to him: give me the brown lumps that grow in dungheaps, give me sulphur from the south, give me charcoal and some men to work and I will give you the magic powder to feed your guns so you will not need to feed young men to the Arabs or the hairy ghosts. I could have done that, yes. Many things would have changed. Perhaps that is why my Lady Leopard turned her back on me. But I was not so interested in gunpowder as I was in my son. Or as I was in aqua vitae. Or as I was in Becket.
* * *
Becket spent the day before we sailed closeted close with Dr Nunez and came out with his eyes sadder than ever and his face full of doubt. I had served behind Rebecca at table while she spoke in Portuguese to her aunt and then in English to her ship’s Captain that they would sail first to the Netherlands to construct a false past for themselves that the Spaniards would believe.
Afterwards Becket came to me and laid his hand on my shoulder, as if I were a man. ‘Let’s go and get drunk before we sail, Merula,’ he rumbled.
I was cold and afraid and weary of locking my mouth against Rebecca, who still seemed, not to notice. She disapproved of it when I went to learn swordplay with Becket, as if I were a maiden she must guard. So when I had helped her to take off her gown and kirtle and her wrapping stays and all the underpinnings that made her womanly in the hairy ghosts eyes, I asked if I could have some hours by myself. Grudgingly she said yes.
We went to a small boozing ken, just outside the City walls, Becket and I, on a road called High Holborn, where the tall, shelved houses of the Sergeants’ Inn topple over the street. There we played at cards with other men known to Becket, and I made some money from the shilling Becket lent me, for even with the dreamtime closed to me, I could still make out the godspaces and fears of the other players.
When I had taken their money and they had gone off angrily, threatening to tell Mr Recorder Fleetwood of the heathen witch Becket had had them lose to, Becket looked seriously at me. ‘You could buy your freedom with that money, if you wish, Merula.’
Now I knew why he had done it and I was touched to my heart. As always, his hands were clasped on the table in front of him and now they began their uneasy wrestling.
‘In this venture, the likelihood is that we will be taken by the Inquisition,’ he said heavily. ‘I trust I’ll be able to do them some damage first, but that’s the truth. In the end, they’ll know us and take us. I make no hopes of finding out the Queen’s riddle of the Miracle of Beauty.’
I nodded, hearing his distress. He had told me something of what had happened to him the winter before last and although his body had mainly recovered, his spirit clearly had not. In another time or life I would have gone to the dreamtime for him to find out where his spirit was hiding and perhaps even fetch it back to him again. But such witchery would have frightened him to his primitive soul. So I could do nothing for him except listen when he talked. Now he swallowed firewater, swallowed ag
ain, licked his lips and continued.
‘When they take us, if there is better or worse in the hands of the Inquisition, they will treat you worst, Merula. Rebecca is small and weak and they will be afraid of killing her with their ill-treatment, although … well, there is plenty they can try even so. But you … you are strong and brave and they will use you against her.’
‘What about you, Becket?’ I said to him. ‘What will they do to you?’
His right hand gripped his left and the two contended like men who hated each other. ‘No doubt what they have done before and with luck it will kill me this time. I have plenty of information to give them which will do them no good, so I might not fare so badly … but you and Rebecca…’ He drank again, finished and beckoned the boy over for another refill.
‘I think you are too gloomy.’ I said to him, touching his thumb with my forefinger. ‘I see no reason why they should catch us, why they should put us to the question. Among so many ships and so many people, sailing over the sea, why should they notice us?’
‘Because of Rebecca,’ said Becket sadly. ‘She will be asking of her husband and of the riddle and being a woman they will want to know why. She will be the undoing of us.’
‘So?’
‘Take the money you won. Go to your mistress. Say that you will not go upon this voyage with her and here is the money that Simon paid to buy you, and will she manumit you so that you are not forced upon the journey, which might kill you. She is a just woman, for all her obstinate foolishness.’
I nodded at him. ‘And you? Why will you go?’
‘The Queen asked me to.’
‘Only that?’
‘She’ll reward me if I return.’
‘What good will that do you if you are dead?’
‘I feel I must, then, Merula. I don’t want to, but I must.’
‘Why?’ I pressed him. He growled at me, his eyebrows nearly meeting. ‘Tell me, when you dream of the evil future, where are you in your dreams?’
‘I am a great Captain, leading men to victory as the Spaniards march across England.’
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