‘Up,’ she said. ‘How is he?’
‘He says Your Majesty will never countenance a one-legged man as her general.’
‘What stuff. For all his victory, he is still a vain, arrogant man. Does he think I value the prettiness of his legs above his life?’
Becket smiled. ‘He certainly does, I think.’
‘Go and fetch the barber-surgeon.’
Becket bowed and walked out. The Queen took up the long fingers, flaccid now, and gripped them.
Ralegh’s eyes were open, bright with fever, resting on her. ‘Your Majesty, Parma is broken for the time being.’
She smiled and gripped his hand, which answered her feebly. ‘I have it on good authority that Drake is now recovered of his fever and gathering up all the ships he can in Southampton. He will retake Gravesend for us with Justin of Nassau. Your victory has given us the autumn and the winter to rest and recharge ourselves.’
Ralegh lifted her hand and kissed it. ‘Elizabeth,’ he whispered, ‘marry me.’
‘What?’
‘If you marry me, I’ll have the surgeon take my leg. It’s all I ask. You need not make me your King unless you desire it, only make me your husband.’
‘This is no time for courtierly, romantical nonsense, Water. I am far too old for you and you should find yourself some sweet-faced girl to give you babies.’
‘Your Majesty has had men mutilated for saying such things.’
‘That was then. Now it is I, Elizabeth, who speak. For me to marry you, Water, would be ridiculous. I am an old woman and barren; you are a young man who has never hesitated to bed any girl that took your fancy and was foolish enough to listen to your charming words. The thing will never do.’
‘Then let’s take it for policy. If I am your husband, my authority over all your soldiers is assured. Walsingham will be unable to challenge it, nor will young Essex try anything. As your husband, if anything should happen to you, I will be able to finish the fight.’
‘You might betray me to Spain or you might decide to take the kingship yourself,’ snapped Elizabeth.
‘But Elizabeth, I could do that in any case. And as your husband, not your king, but your husband, I supplant Philip’s claim to the throne.’
‘And if I die?’
‘I shall be Regent until I can find and marry Arabella Stuart. Our issue shall rule.’
‘You may die of the amputation.’
‘Yes. And I had rather die your wedded man than your liegeman, Elizabeth. It’s true I have bedded many foolish maidens, but not a one of them failed to bore me to distraction as soon as we were done, for a vainer pack of empty-headed jilts I have never found than among your own waiting women.’
Elizabeth snorted with amusement.
‘But you … you Elizabeth … Yes, I professed undying love for you like everyone else for flattery and advancement, of course I did. Except then it became true.’
Elizabeth sighed and stared into space. ‘You spoke once of the different laws of the land of war.’
‘I did. One of them being, carpe diem.’
‘If you have your leg cut off…’
He lifted his head, moving uneasily under the blankets, gripping her hand so her fingertips went white. ‘No, Elizabeth, I know your ways. Your promises are as empty as your women’s heads. You marry me first. Then I have my leg cut off.’
At court, this honesty would have been met by thrown slippers and roars of profanity. Now Elizabeth lowered her gaze and coloured.
David Becket was waiting at the door of the lean-to with the surgeon. When they were called in it was to send for a churchman and witness the most extraordinary proceedings as Elizabeth Tudor, spinster of the parish of Whitehall, was wedded to Walter Ralegh, bachelor of the same.
And then the surgeon rolled up his sleeves and produced his straps and saw, and Elizabeth sat by her new husband while the surgeon sawed and the blood flowed.
* * *
Again I woke before Becket, to find sunlight shining into the storeroom and my hip aching from sleeping on the flagstones.
About me hung the silent hams and sides of beef, rose the towers of pickle barrels. It all smelled very pungent but not unpleasant.
Rebecca would have sailed by now with her new helper, Anthony Fant, sailed and gone. And I was left here in Flanders, a land where I did not speak the language, with Becket whom I had ridden but whose prophecies were utterly strange to me. Nor, if I am truthful, did I much care which hairy ghost tribe ruled the cold muddy island that was his home. Let their gods contend against each other, for in that cold morning, all I could think of was that my son was still a slave and I could do nothing for him.
I had hardly seen him while I was upside-down. The gods and spirits of the forest had been my family, and my sister had loved him and brought him to manhood, given him beer when his newly carved snake still throbbed and bled on his right arm and his hand shook so he could hardly drink. She was the mother of his heart, true, but I had given him suck and he had been a fat little boy of three, running in mischief from puddle to tree to wall to find more ways of terrifying me when the Queen Moon had swooped down into my head and caused me to kill my husband when he beat me again for straying in his dreams. Upside-down, I could think of my son in the terrible hands of the hairy ghosts and not tremble, for the spirit world was realer to me than this one. Now I had turned right-side up again, without warning, turned by beer and aqua vitae. All I could think was that the chains would hurt his chubby little neck terribly. He was a grown man and I had seen him as a man, but still he was the child of my heart and my heart wept blood for him.
To help with that, I drank up half of Becket’s aqua vitae and went to cut him some ham. As dawn came, the innkeeper came with his brother, carrying clubs, to open the door to the storeroom and let us out. Our bill had at least been paid, although the innkeeper wanted us to recompense him for the ham we had taken for breakfast until Becket threatened to see the magistrates to lay charges of false imprisonment and robbery.
We stumbled wearily out into the street and Becket insisted on going straight to the quay where the Salamander of London had been moored. She was gone of course. Slipped out on the morning tide.
We looked at the money we had – a few shillings and a couple of crowns. Not enough to last more than a couple of days.
Becket sat nursing a jug of ale in a boozing ken, blinking into space, while I hummed to myself a song of accusation against the Lady Leopard, whose shadow sat with its back to me in a corner, lashing her tail. I still had a headache and my face was swollen up from Becket’s ill-treatment of me, nor could I chew the hard bread they brought to go with the ale since my jaw-hinges were sore as well. I sucked down ale instead and it made me dizzy.
Finally Becket slapped his hand flat on the table and said, ‘We’ll go to Dunkirk.’
I nodded owlishly at him.
‘It’s where the peace commissioners are based and we can ask Robert Cecil to send a message to the Queen that her plan went awry before it was properly started. Perhaps we could find work as their guards or messengers or some such. Are you with me, Merula?’
Again I could have told him no. I could have told him to take himself to Dunkirk by all means and then gone and hired on as a hand on one of the ships sailing to Africa for to buy slaves. I could have done it, for there would have been at least one sailing from that port in a month’s time. But I was unwilling and afraid, unhappy to be alone in a land where most would think me an escaped slave, and in any case I did not speak the language. To be with Becket at least gave me countenance and some protection against those who would sell me to a whorehouse. How had I become so cowardly? In the cold world that you find when the god dismounts and abandons you, to be cowardly is only sensible.
Besides I wanted to be with Becket. My heart took light from his touch, even when all we did was sleep, his dreams of prophecy carried me where I had once travelled by myself, carried only by my own intention. The Queen Moon must have lau
ghed at what a sad, sensible creature I had become, how I had fallen from being upside-down just when I needed it most.
So I said to Becket, ‘Certainly I am with you. Do you think they will hire me?’
‘Why not?’ he said, grinning. ‘If only to humour me.’
We played cards that night, just the two of us together, for thousands of ducats and Becket wound up owing me ten thousand ducats for which I accepted a part-payment in kind. In the morning we hired horses and headed south and west along the line of the coast, which Becket said would bring us to Dunkirk.
BOOK II
Señor Josef Pasquale
Lisbon, Early Spring 1588
The Church of the Blessed Virgin was cool and dim; only a few candles were lit and none of the side chapels showing the Virgin’s life could be seen, because the shadows were so black. In summer, through the high windows, you could see the day blazing from the iridescent lapis lazuli of the sky, but the sun could not shine directly into the church, except through the rainbow filter of the great window behind the altar. The Virgin in her elaborate chapel beside the High Altar was dressed in her usual clothes, the green silks of Ordinary Time, not the heavy gold or red brocades of festivals. His own mother had embroidered that green gown with the Glorious Mysteries of the rosary. Herself, with her own hands, in thanks for his birth. The candlelight glinted occasionally on the Virgin’s plump pink cheeks, and on her baby Son’s upraised fingers.
Señor Josef Pasqale knelt to say his customary rosary, asking for strength and determination, to steel himself against pity, to understand that the Holy Office had a vital though humble part to play in the greatness of the Catholic Church. For it was in the nature of purity that it was easily damaged; and as long as that great cesspool of corrupt doctrine festered in the north, so there was always the risk that the Spanish peninsular might be infected and likewise become gangrenous with heresy.
He thought he knew what kind of evil he was dealing with in Simon Anriques, so-called. He suspected. He only had to apply the right pressure, and he would find it out. Everything.
Holy Mother, he whispered in the darkness, keep my heart pure, let me not be seduced into pleasure at what I do, vouchsafe only that by my diligence I may preserve your purity and the purity of my Holy Mother Church. Help me to find out the heretics, wherever they may be, and destroy them. Help me to resist their sinful miasmas.
There was no answer, as usual. He rose, genuflected, crossed himself, ready to go. Was that a crystal tear under the blue glass eyes, just glimpsed as he turned away? No, only a trick of the light. He was far too sinful to be given a vision. And besides, why should the Virgin weep when he was doing her work?
He crossed himself again with Holy Water. He felt better, for he always dreaded interrogations. The pleading, the screams … It was a hard vocation. But coming to church first gave him strength, and guarded him from the sickness and greed of some others in the Holy Office, who were interested only in what rich estates they might confiscate. He treated rich and poor exactly alike.
They brought Anriques, the suspected English heretic, up from the cells, where he had had a couple of days to consider his position. He was very angry, loud and pugnacious, standing square on the tiled floor of Pasquale’s office, dishevelled, unshaven.
‘Sir, I protest!’ he said. ‘I am, as you know, a merchant in sugar and I demand to know the nature of any accusation against me—’
‘We do not find it appropriate to answer your questions,’ said Pasquale. ‘Please answer ours. Your name?’
‘Simon Anriques.’
‘Your place of birth?’
He claimed to have been born in the New World, in Cartagena, which certainly was the last place his ship had docked. His ship was registered in Antwerp, where the priest who had reported him was taken on. There were people called Anriques living there and also in Cartagena. It was possible. Of course, it depended what you meant by people.
They went through the whole rigmarole, how he was Portuguese by descent, indeed, more Portuguese than the King. How he was the son of a merchant now dead, how his uncle had helped finance his voyage, how he had traded guns and gunpowder down to the Slave Coast, loaded slaves … Yes, he had a permesso – it was on his ship. If he could go there and fetch it …
The searchers had found no such thing, but Señor Pasquale did not say so.
Señor Pasquale took careful notes, cross-questioned. The tale was solid, it was possible he told some of the truth. If there had been no other information than what Anriques said, if there had been no scrawled and booze-spattered affidavit from the ship’s chaplain, perhaps he would have got away with no more than the confiscation of his ship and deportation.
They went through it twice, Anriques getting more and more agitated, swearing over and over by Christ and every saint there was that he did not know what the Inquisition wanted with him …
Another little clue. Interesting. Was it possible? His Portuguese was very good, as was his Spanish.
The man had meandered to a halt. Pasquale looked through his notes for a long moment and then nodded at his three assistants. Two of them held Anriques carefully, while his manacles were taken off and they removed his clothes except for his shirt. He squawked at them, as men always did, denying, expostulating … Pasquale thought it overdone.
Still struggling, Anriques was strapped to the long table with the gutters and the little block to go under the small of the back, to keep the chest arched upwards. He was scrawny, not at all well-built, and gave the assistants no real trouble. Even if he had not had his own preferred method, Pasquale would not have used a rack or the strappado on Anriques for fear of killing him accidentally.
At Pasquale’s nod, they inserted the smallest metal gag to keep Anriques’ mouth open and fed in the funnel of cloth. For some reason, the block of wood pressing against the spine prevented vomiting. Anriques’ eyes rolled, his chest heaved, his neck corded. One of the assistants bound his head more firmly down to the table.
‘Two jugs,’ said Pasquale, and turned to sit down with his back to the prisoner.
The trickling of water was spoiled by the sound of choking, coughing, more choking. Enough water would go down Anriques’ gullet to distend his stomach and make it press down on the block against his spine, and all the time he would be drowning slowly as the water trickled down the funnel in his throat.
Generally speaking, Pasquale rarely found it took more than four jugs to get at the truth.
When the two jugs had gone, Pasquale sent the assistants to draw more water – and it was always the best water, pure from the well, no filth in it as some liked to do – and went to stand by Anriques’ head while he coughed and gasped and strained. His tongue was bloody from the gag holding his teeth apart, bloody spittle dripping down his cheeks.
‘Please. I would prefer not to trouble you any more,’ Pasquale said, as he always did. ‘I take no pleasure from this, believe me. But I simply must have the truth.’
Of course, Anriques couldn’t answer with his mouth open and the metal gag pressing against his tongue, but he could move his head just enough to nod. His eyes bugged as he nodded. Good.
‘Now, I desire to know where you were born. And I desire to know when and where you were christened. And I desire to know your business here.’
Very carefully, in case of being bitten, which had happened once or twice before, Pasquale removed the gag.
‘I told you … I was born in Cartagena in the New World…’
Pasquale sighed. He held the man’s nose and slipped the gag back in again, before the prisoner could imperil his immortal soul any more. His assistants came back with the jugs, reinserted the cloth funnel and began pouring again, very slowly. You had to be careful because if you split a man’s belly, of course he would die, and then he couldn’t confess and be shriven of his sins. Also it took great skill to keep someone on the edge of drowning, so that they went in and out of consciousness without actually killing them. Pasquale
usually timed it by saying an Ave Maria. Any more than three Aves and the man would start to die. Once they had brought a prisoner round with great difficulty, only to find he had turned into an idiot.
There was also the problem of the way water affected people: it was possible for someone to die simply of drinking too much water, extraordinary as that might seem. You had to let them up to be sick occasionally. Which was the reason for the basins let into the table. Pasquale had designed it himself since he had no wish to trouble his cleaners with stains on his tiles, of any kind.
It seemed that this Anriques was quite weak, because he passed out completely for longer periods each time. On the fourth time they took the gag out, he began babbling in some Germanic tongue, Flemish or English as he started coming round. This was interesting and encouraging, so Pasquale nodded, and the assistants unbound all but his right hand so he could turn over and vomit his pregnant belly empty. He did immediately, helplessly, on all fours, gasping and gagging. His nose started bleeding, which was a bad sign. Unfortunately, he had lost control of himself when he passed out the last time, so with care, while he continued to spew, they cut his shirt off and sluiced him with more water. Anriques finally finished emptying his guts again, and collapsed half-conscious on his side. And that was when Pasquale finally recognised the sign, realised what they really had here. This wasn’t just an English heretic spy.
It was a Jew.
Pasquale couldn’t help himself. He stared. There had officially been no Jews in the holy and pure land of Spain since the reign of the Catholic Princes, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. A little less than a hundred years before, all Christ-killers had been ordered to convert to the true Religion or be expelled. The Holy Office had in fact been instituted in order to enforce the law that said once he had been converted to Christianity, no matter how forcibly, any Jew returning to his old ways was a heretic and could therefore be burned by the Secular Arm. It was a nicety of law that few appreciated: the Jews were never persecuted for being Jews, only expelled as filth no Christian nation could tolerate. If they wanted to stay in the country of their birth, they had only to convert to Catholicism. But then, if they started following Jewish ways again, then they could be burned. And were, sometimes in their hundreds. Apart from a few Turkish galley-slaves, there were no circumcised men in Spain.
Gloriana's Torch Page 25