Ames got to his feet ungracefully and the Queen took his ungallant arm, nearly knocking him over with her farthingale.
“Come,” she said sweetly and smiled. For all the brownness of her teeth, it was a smile of extraordinary magic, one of her prime weapons.
Ames went with her meekly, leaving Nunez to stand stiffly after his nephew had opened the door for the Queen. He was alone again, apart from the muliercula sitting in the corner, this time in pale-pink tissue shot with gold and edged with black velvet. She looked up and smiled at him wisely. Nunez smiled back, wondering how much she understood, if anything, and longing to ask her a number of personal questions about her women’s courses and her bodily functions. He restrained himself.
A little later the music of virginals floated through the shut double doors. Nunez sighed, took his own pulse and thought that if he was not in the Tower that night, he would have Snr Eraso bleed him to ease the strain on his heart.
A full hour passed and Ames bowed himself out alone, looking pale and his thin lips almost disappeared with compression.
“Well, Shimon?” Nunez whispered in Portuguese. “Are we under arrest?”
Ames blinked at him. “No,” he said abstractedly.
“She is not going to fine you or rescind Dunstan’s patent for the Groceries?”
“She may do those things and worse whenever she pleases,” said Ames, “but not immediately, I think.”
“Well then? Will you return to her service?”
“Not directly. She has convinced me, but I have also convinced her and we are to proceed by my advice.”
“To do what?”
“To rescue Becket.”
“But Davison . . .”
“I have a warrant for him.”
“But?” asked Nunez warily, recognising his expression.
“I must find out his secret first.”
He was hurrying to the door, putting on his hat and lapping his cloak around him. Nunez followed.
They took horse at the Court gate, Ames wincing as he sat down in the saddle.
“The Almighty send the thaw comes soon,” Nunez said sympathetically.
“Hm?” Ames said vaguely. “Ah yes. The Thames.” He smiled. “I wonder if I would have the courage to take a boat under the bridge again?”
They walked the horses, since the ground was frozen and slippery. As they passed Charing Cross, Nunez asked in Portuguese, “How will you proceed, Shimon?”
Ames sighed and bit some chapping off his lips. “I am not at all sure, to tell you the truth, Uncle,” he said. “First we must break Becket out of the Tower.”
“Break him out?” asked Nunez in horror. “But it is impossible.”
“I mean, we must talk to Walsingham, which will be difficult if he is ill. But I cannot possibly attend him in the Tower: there are too many people who know me, not to mention James Ramme himself. He must be moved somewhere else.”
“If he could be released to my care . . .”
“I tried that. It is the obvious answer. Unfortunately the Queen will not countenance it. She says he must be kept imprisoned until she knows what he has forgotten.” Ames sighed again. “It seems I am fated always to be an inquisitor.”
“His loss of memory is genuine,” Nunez said. “I will swear to it. Nothing can be got from him by further torture.”
“Of course not. Even the Queen understands it. I hope that once we have transferred him to a different place, if I can come to him, he will remember me and that will open the floodgates. Then it depends on whether he is willing to trust me with his secret or not.”
“He did not remember me.”
Ames shrugged. “If that fails, then we must try something else.”
XXXII
WHILE MARY SERVED THE Queen as night-soil woman, she knew the Court as a wood-louse sees a garden. The Court by itself feeds and clothes and houses much of Westminster City, for it is like a great beast curled by the river that takes in beer in rivers and beef in mountains and pays out streams of silver, gold, embezzled poultry and kitchen scraps, misappropriated linen, paper and ink, dishonestly gotten candle-ends, firewood and stolen soap and a vast variety of different forms of political interest.
The Queen never lives at Whitehall for longer than a couple of months together, after which the whole swarm of them, courtiers and servants alike, set off up the road to Nonsuch or Greenwich like ants on the march. Then a new swarm descends to sweep out rushes and burn mats (or resell them at a premium to strivers in the City of London) and scrub floors and stairwells with lye and whitewash the walls again.
Now one of the chiefest problems for my lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, is always the matter of lodging – less serious at Whitehall than elsewhere for the size of it since, after all, it is the largest palace in Christendom, and the fact that the greater courtiers like Leicester, Hatton or Burghley, and now Raleigh also, live in their palaces on the Strand with their mobs of servingmen and not at Court. However, in order to attend upon the Queen and perhaps snap up a parcel of lands or an office going begging, it is needful for the lesser fry to live as close to the palace as possible.
Therefore, south of the Whitehall orchard and the tennis courts is a scurry of ancient and mainly damp buildings, let at exorbitant rents to the hordes of young men who attend upon the Queen. Living exempt from direct female interference, the young gentlemen of Queen Elizabeth’s affinity put their nether-stocks to dry on strings over their fires, cook collops of mutton on skillets, in summer hang their crocks of butter on long strings through their windows directly into the Thames, and would on occasion rent out window-space for fishing. The stairwells and alleys stink of piss because young men who average a gallon of beer apiece per day and spend long periods standing about in antechambers can see no point in dirtying a pot.
These young men, as young men do, spend much of their time in idolatrous worship of their own pillicocks and a good segment of that in the plotting of lies regarding women – lying to them first, and with them in due course if it could possibly be achieved, and certainly lying about them afterwards if not before. The Queen was a wise woman indeed. She absolutely forbade, on pain of instant dismissal from Court in disgrace, any of her maids of honour to venture anywhere south of the orchard into the forbidden dens of young men.
But chastity is a hard thing for a girl-child who knows she has five years at most to snare her a husband, for there is no honourable life open to her save that. And her veins throb with the sap of youth and her mind is all afire with flowery platitudes and punning sonnets and the young men parade past her, tall and broad and arrogant and set her heart to trembling most deliciously. Nor do they pray to me for strength in temptation, for they have not been taught about the Queen of Heaven at all.
XXXIII
MR ROBERT CAREY, GENTLEMAN of the Privy Chamber, came bounding up the stairs to the room he was currently sharing with his friend John Gage, tossing up his racquet and catching it and whistling because he had just won five much-needed pounds off Drury at the tennis-play. He stopped as he ducked through the door. He was not as pleased as he might have been to find a woman sitting on the other bed and his manservant Michael nowhere to be seen. On the other hand, it was not the first time.
She was tightly wrapped in the striped cloak of a strumpet, with a hood and a velvet mask that hid her face. He thought he recognised the cloak.
“Now then, Kate,” he said to her kindly. “Gage will be along soon, he was losing last I saw. Will you have some wine?”
He turned his back on her, slung his racquet under his bed where it could fend for itself amid a turmoil of shoes, boots, weapons, balls, books, packs of cards, an unturned lute and some empty plates. He took off his doublet, stripped his shirt off over his head and began to dry himself with it in a way that would have greatly grieved his mother who sewed it for him.
“If you look in the pitcher by the fire, there should be something left and if there is not –”
“Robin,”
said the woman and he spun round, looking comically frightened.
“Christ, have mercy,” he gasped. “What the hell are you doing here, Bethany?”
She was crying silently into the hood of her whore’s cloak. He gaped at her for a moment, made to offer her the shirt to dry her eyes with, thought better of it, realised he was half-naked alone with one of the Queen’s ferociously protected maids of honour – worse still, one of the Queen’s own bedfellows – and began delving desperately in the chest standing next to him.
“Bethany, you . . . what is it? I can’t . . . I . . .” He finally found a clean shirt, hauled it over his head, fumbled his doublet back on.
She had taken on the dampened mask and groped for her handkerchief. She blew her nose noisily on it while he managed to stop gabbling and found half a cup of wine left in the pitcher. It went into a nearly clean goblet and he gave it to her, mainly to have something to do. Then he sat down on the narrow bed opposite and stared.
When the tears stopped he gathered his wits and said, “In God’s name, what’s amiss, sweeting? Where did you get Kate’s cloak?”
Bethany hiccupped. “I borrowed it from her for a crown.”
“How did you . . .”
“I waited for her at the stairs when I saw her walking over the ice and talked to her and she gave it to me.”
“But . . . but why?”
Bethany swallowed hard and looked up at him. “Mr Davison thinks I am your mistress.”
Carey put his hand over his eyes and leaned his elbow on the chest.
“But . . . but it’s not true,” he croaked desperately.
“He did not believe me.”
“Has he told the Queen yet?”
She sniffed again. “He says he will not if I will be his informer about the Queen.”
Carey’s face reappeared from behind his hand, dawning with hope. “Well then, do it. For God’s sake, Bethany, tell him whatever he wants to hear. As long as you can be useful to him, he’ll be silent to keep you at Court and then you can marry the next man that offers for you. Why did you have to come here to tell me that? You could have –“
“Robin, I must see John Gage.”
“Why?”
“I am . . .” She choked on it. “I am . . .”
Carey was suddenly looking ten years older. “Oh, Bethany, you are not with child? Are you?”
She nodded.
Carey stared for a moment, took breath to speak, thought better of it, stood up, sat down again. Then he stood up decisively and began sorting through a box of ruffs. He reached up to unhook a cramoisie velvet suit from a nail in the wall, changed his mind and took a black velvet doublet and trunk-hose slashed with red taffeta. He laid them on the bed.
“Whose is it?” he asked. She made no answer. “Gage’s?”
“I th . . . think so.”
“You think so/” For the first time his voice was tinged with disgust.
“I . . . I never intended it . . . I do not know . . . Do you remember the masquing at the Queen’s Birthday in September?”
Carey did not answer that as he had played the part of a Venturesome Knight, wearing borrowed armour, and had done quite well in that the Queen had applauded his dance and laughed at his speech, he did indeed remember it. Gage had been a centaur.
“Do you remember the banquet after?”
“Er . . . yes.” September had been mild and golden and they had taken the risk of using the Whitehall canvas banqueting hall, tricked out with tinsel streamers and icicles of cast sugar. There had been a particularly ferocious flower-water for the ladies, and his own lady-love had been well-seasoned by it, he remembered fondly. But she was married. He was extremely careful to deal only with married women at Court because he was not a romantical madman like Gage, and intended to make sure he married a wealthy widow who could please herself. In any case, the rage of horned husbands was a minor risk compared to the deadliness of the Queen’s jealousy.
“That was when I . . . I drank too much,” Bethany explained dolefully.
Carey nodded, hoping she would not go on. “But you were with Gage, were you not?” he asked.
“I do not rightly remember,” she said in mourning for her lost memory. “I think so.”
“Well then, it’s simple. Marry Gage at once.”
“The Queen will be so angry.”
“Not a quarter so angry as she will be when you come to bed of a babe with no father.”
For a moment she thought about it and then looked up at him tremulously. “Do you think he will?”
“He must,” said Carey positively. “Is that why you came here?”
She nodded.
“Does Mr Davison know of your . . . er . . . condition?”
She shook her head.
“Come then, it’s mendable.” Carey heaved a private and very selfish sigh of relief. “Marry at once and the thing is solved.”
There was the sound of someone climbing the stairs below. “I’ll warn him you are here.”
Glad of the excuse, Carey grabbed his change of clothes and scurried out the door.
Bethany sat, looking at the counterpane and plucking at the worn crewel embroidered on it, wondering how it was possible to have such a yawning space within the narrow compass of her bodice, and far away, at the end of it, a drum. She heard the sound of their voices, the hurrying of John Gage’s feet up the stairs.
Carey was due to go and wait upon the Queen but now could not change in his own bedchamber. Muttering to himself about maids who had no sense and men who had less, he began the complicated process on the landing, cursing furthermore that his manservant was nowhere about to help with the fiddly business of tying the doublet points to the back of his paned hose. And he had brought his shoes but left his pattens behind in his chamber.
The door slammed and Gage reappeared, his blond hair standing on end where he had run his fingers through it.
“What the devil did you let her in there for, Carey?” he demanded.
“She was there when I arrived,” Carey answered evenly. “Should I congratulate you on your –”
“To hell with your congratulations, I can’t marry her.”
Gage tried to shoulder past him, but Carey somehow got in his way.
“Why not?”
“Because I am betrothed. My father wrote to me at Christmas; he has bought the wardship of Annabel Prockter, paid a fortune for it. She is fifteen, guaranteed a virgin, got a thousand pounds in land, shared in four ships and five hundred in jointure, the Queen has given her consent and I’m going home at Easter to marry her. It’s all arranged.”
“But Bethany is–”
“So the little bitch is with child? So? How do I know whose it is?”
“Yours.”
“Mine, yours . . .”
“Not mine.”
“Cumberland’s, who knows? I’ll not have her; she would horn me before the year was out.”
Carey stared at Gage disbelievingly. Gage refused to look at him.
“Silly cow should have kept her legs closed,” he muttered and moved to shove Carey out of his way. “You have her. Your family is used to bastards.”
Carey instantly punched him in the face. Gage fell back against the wall, grabbing at his cheek; Carey punched him again and this time hurt his hand on Gage’s teeth. Gage made to draw his sword but was hampered by the narrow landing; Carey grappled to stop him, they lurched about grunting for a few seconds, evenly matched, equally fit, until Gage missed his footing at the head of the stairs and they both slithered and crashed painfully down to the next landing.
Footsteps from above stopped them. Bethany was standing there, still wrapped in her striped cloak, her face white and frozen and now tearless, looking down at the undignified muddle of men below her.
They looked up at her and found neither could think of anything to say. Silently Bethany walked down the stairs, stepped over them and continued down the next flight to the alley running into King Street.
> Carey jumped to his feet and followed her. Gage picked himself up, holding his bleeding mouth and shouted at him, “Carey!”
Carey paused at the next landing. “What?”
“I want satisfaction from you, you bastard’s get.”
For a moment Carey’s hand tightened on his sword-hilt and he looked ready to lunge back up the stairs, but then he stopped himself.
“Better a bastard than a maker of them,” he said coldly. “Whenever you want, Gage, I am at your disposal.”
He turned and ran after Bethany.
XXXIV
SHE HAD REACHED THE street door, but instead of turning left to King Street, she turned right, heading for the water-stairs.
Carey caught up with her and touched her arm.
“I hope you were not fighting about me,” she said tonelessly. “I’m not worth it.”
Half a dozen things to say battled in Carey’s throat, so all he answered lamely was, “Not really. It is . . . well, he has the right, I did hit him.”
“A duel?”
Carey shrugged and sucked his knuckles. “Probably. Unless he calms down.”
“Will you apologise?”
“Certainly not.”
Bethany shook her head wearily. She seemed to be shutting herself away from him.
“Listen, Bethany, I never knew he was betrothed.”
“Nor did I.”
“Well, betrothals can be broken . . .”
“Why should he? She has money, youth and her virginity. Why would he want me? I would not, if I were a man.”
“Perhaps somebody else . . . ?”
“Marriage negotiations take months. I have a few weeks before I must buy longer laces and the Queen casts me out.” She shook her head, put her fingers up against her brow-ridges to stop the tears again.
Impulsively Carey caught her arm and swung her to face him.
“Bethany,” he said softly, smiling at her. “Marry me.”
She laughed a little. “You are not in love with me.”
“What has love to do with it? Besides, you’re so very beautiful, I could come to love you. And as Gage so kindly pointed out before I hit him, my family has some experience with bastards.”
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