“Not even Walsingham?”
“Certainly not Walsingham. For the sake of his health, if no other reason. If he learnt of this, he might sicken again.”
“And so might you, Sir Philip; this is overmuch excitement for you.”
“Then find out the truth of it, Becket. Go to Rheims and seek out the priest Father Parsons sends and learn whatever he knows. Will you do that for me? Will you learn the truth of this?”
Becket groaned inwardly.
“Well, I . . .”
“Come,” coaxed Sidney, with the smile that had charmed so many Princes, “you found out the Queen’s assassin, you saved her life, and saved mine and my father-in-law’s credit also.”
“Most of that was done by Simon Ames.”
“But without your courage it could not have been done at all. She would have been dead and we would all be prisoners of Spain by now.”
“But I . . .”
“I can do nothing.” Sidney said. “You are healed of your wound. You can act for me in this. Say that you will?”
“But how can I discover this priest?”
“Go to the English Seminary at Rheims.”
“They will not trust me.”
“See here.” Sidney was pawing amongst the bits and pieces on the table by his bed. “Take the seal-moulds and the cypher. We will make you a letter of recommendation from Parma, that you are to help whoever Father Parsons sends in his search, that you are a Catholic Englishman working for Parma against the Queen.”
“Christ Almighty,” said Becket, appalled at the thought. “If I am caught in England, they will hang, draw and quarter me. At least.”
“Never fear, Becket.” said Sidney. “I will write a letter to my father-in-law explaining what you are doing. There will be no danger to you there.”
“Hmm.” Becket was very unhappy. “I want a letter from you in your own cypher to carry with me, in case of accidents.”
“Very well. What name will you use? Ralph Strangways might be good – an old Catholic family and they will not know what became of him. We could draft the letter now.”
“I have not said I would do it.”
“But you will.” This was Sidney at his most dangerous, his most charming. “This is a noble adventure, David; no other man could hope to do it.
“Never pour out your Court-honey for me, Sir Philip; it is wasted,” Becket growled.
Sidney paused, as if recoiling after a cavalry charge and considering how he would change his attack to get through.
“Then I put it to you like this. Think of the Book of the Unicorn as it were a long-buried siege weapon, a store of gunpowder, a petard directly under the Queen’s throne. Or no, rather the rumour of one. We do not know if it be there or not, only we have heard that it might be. I such a thing were so, would you not bend every effort to find it out?
“Ay, but a man may be blown up by his own petard, let alone someone else’s.”
“Would that stop you in the face of real gunpowder? I think not. Come, let us be done with arguing, let us draft the letter and encipher it and I will make an attempt at Parma’s signature and use the seal-moulds. It will be a work of art.
Becket sighed. “Oh, very well,” he said grudgingly. “On condition that then you will put all this aside and calm yourself.”
Sidney immediately put down the papers and settled himself on his pillows.
“There,” he said, “I am calm. I will put it from my mind on the instant the letter is sealed. Now give me your word you will hunt down the truth of this matter?
Unwillingly, grimly certain it would lead to his death, Becket gave his word.
L
THE SURGEONS BLAMED IT on the musket-ball still lodged somewhere in Sidney’s thigh muscles, but Becket blamed it on the weight to Sir Philip’s mind of suspecting the Queen’s chastity, the destruction of his belief in England as a blessed land next-door to Heaven, ruled by an earthly Virgin Queen. If there had been proof to come to the Vatican that I, the Blessed Virgin Mary, was no such thing, but a well-known legionary’s drab, there might have been a similar upset among the faithful. Although no doubt most would have refused to believe it and the Inquisition would have dealt with those who found and published such blasphemy. Behold the weakness of heretics: they set such store by truth and so little by faith. For truth is a hard and cruel thing, and faith, not always opposed to it, beautiful and comfortable for those who can keep hold of it. For what am I but a thing of faith, many centuries of devotion, founded on a far more ancient love? Do you think that a peasant girl from Nazareth is all that I am? I too sit upon a usurped throne.
But none of this could the misfortunate poor young man consider, being entranced by that chimera, truth. Not even in delirium could he take comfort from my mantle, believing me either a she-Devil or a dream of his old idol, the Queen of England. Nor could he any longer take refuge in the Arcadian garden of his mind, since that, too, he believed, was founded on a lie.
Sidney’s wife, Frances Walsingham, arrived from England and took over the care of him from Mlle Gruithuissen’s servants, although she was pregnant again. She served her lord as a good wife should, well-trained by her mother, gentle and quiet and dosing him with feverfew and comfrey and willow-bark for the headaches and sweats and fevers that were plaguing him, against the advice of the surgeons and physicians. She even shame-facedly brought out a supposed saint’s knuckle in a silver-chased bottle, which her old wet-nurse had recommended as a sure bone-knitter, but Sidney refused to have it near him since it was superstitious papistical trash and probably a pig’s knuckle anyway. Though it would have helped him could he have had faith in it.
Becket fed the copies of Parma’s letter and their translations of it into the fire, although he kept their forged letter of recommendation from Parma, and made enquiries about the man who had named himself Smith, but could not find him. With Lady Sidney now attending Sir Philip, he was free to practise sword-play again with some of the other convalescing soldiers, and drink with them in the boozing kens. He did not feel more than a couple of twinges of guilt for abandoning Sidney, since Fulke Greville and his other noble friends were now with him most of the time and half their talk was in Latin and the other half in what sounded like English but was too abstruse and allusive for Becket to understand. And yet he could not leave for France without knowing how Sir Philip was faring.
And so it was several days after the incident of the letter before he called on Sidney’s sick-room again, to find it full of the scent of incense and herbs and Sidney more cadaverous than ever.
“Oh, Christ,” he said, snuffing at the stink of mouse under the sandalwood and frankincense. He came and sat by the bed, and found that Sidney seemed to be sleeping, though shaking with chill under a mound of coverlets. His colour had looked better from a distance, but that was an ugly rash boiling up from under his shirt. Close to him the smell was unmistakable.
Dumb with regret, Becket sat down by Sidney’s bed and touched his hand.
“I wish you had had the damned thing off, like I told you,” he muttered eventually. “Stupid bloody vanity.”
“Vanitas vanitatem, omnes vanitatem est,” whispered Sidney and heaved his eyes open. “In principio erat mortem et in saecula saeculorum . . .”
“Leave off your schoolmastering, Sir Philip,” Becket said. “Daily beatings in my youth never got any Latin into my skull, and where they failed you will certainly not succeed.”
Sidney focussed his eyes on Becket and smiled vaguely.
“Then the fault lies with your teacher, not you,” he said. “Latin is by far an easier language than Dutch, and you needed no beating to acquire that.”
Becket grinned. “Alas for it, but there are precious few whores that speak Latin, unless there be a few in the Vatican City.”
A faint frown wrinkled Sidney’s forehead. “I was garbling my Latin in any case,” he said. “Half dreaming. Have you made any progress in . . . in the Queen’s Great Matter?”
<
br /> He had very much hoped that Sidney would have forgotten the whole thing, but was not surprised to find he was wrong.
“No sign of Smith. As you said, I will have to travel to Rheims to discover anything about him,” he said unwillingly. “Never fear, it is all in hand, you must bend your mind to getting well.”
Sidney shook his head infinitesimally. “Everyone must die, Becket.”
Becket shut his eyes, although he had expected nothing else, given the smell. “You were mending last I saw.”
“The surgeons say the poisons from the bullet . . . They say, given a strong body I might have fought them off, but . . . not strong enough. Too weak.”
Becket patted his hand, which was bluish and cold. “Never blame yourself.”
“And . . . and I have not put you in my will. How could I forget . . .”
“For God’s sake, Sir Philip, I expected nothing.”
“At least your fees . . .”
“To hell with my fees. I saw the way you were spending on the troops; I never expected them.”
Sidney reached for the little silver bell on the table and could not manage it.
“Ring for Frances,” he said, and Becket did.
She came, soft-footed, and stood respectfully with her hands clasped. She had the ivory skin and black hair of a Spanish lady and rings under her eyes.
“Frances, will you fetch my black Court doublet from the chest, the second-best, and cut off all the buttons, give them to Mr Becket,” Sidney ordered.
“You cannot give me your –“ Becket protested.
“I am reliably informed I will not need buttons in the grave,” said Sidney.
“Well, but to be buried in . . .”
“That’s why I told her to fetch my second-best suit,” said Sidney with a ghostly smile, and Becket had to smile in return.
Frances Sidney had gone and Becket sat next to the dying man and wished Sidney were more like the Earl of Leicester or even the cold and correct Greville, so his heart would feel less squeezed by his loss. But Sidney could no more help making friends of the men he met than he could stop breathing, and Becket had been chastely seduced with the rest.
“Are you afraid of death, David?” Sidney asked.
Becket had to struggle to answer evenly. “Yes,” he said, which he would have admitted to no man else. “Of course.”
“You give no sign of it.”
Becket shrugged. “I suppose, like most, I am more afraid of being known for a coward.”
“We play-act courage,” said Sidney.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Becket told him. “Besides, I have seen cowards die as ugly deaths as heroes.” Sidney had shut his eyes.
“It is judgement that . . . terrifies me,” he muttered. “Justice.”
Becket coughed awkwardly. There was nothing he could say for comfort, being afraid of judgement himself. At last Sidney’s mind wandered back to the thing that fretted him worst.
“I have been . . . thinking about the Queen.”
Becket sighed. “Damn the whole business. You were mending until we read Parma’s letter.”
Sidney seemed not to hear him. “When you find . . . the book . . . burn it. No matter what is in it.”
“Had I not better give it to Walsingham or Leicester?”
“No. Nor to the Queen, for she will put you in the Tower for expediency. Burn it, say nothing.”
“If you say so. But I thought you wanted the truth?”
“Whatever it is, I will know it sooner than you,” said Sidney. “And other than that . . . think on it. If such a Book . . . of the Unicorn fell into Spanish hands, or even . . . Walsingham’s hands . . . Think what a curb-bit that would be in the Queen’s mouth, how she could be . . . controlled by it?”
Convinced he would never find the book, Becket shrugged. “If you say so.”
Sidney was breathing short and fast and seemed very tired and anxious. His fever was rising again, and he moved uneasily against the pillows. “You will do it, David?”
“I gave you my word. Consider it burnt already. Now lie still and rest.”
“I cannot.” For the first time misery crept into Sidney’s whisper. “I itch. I stink. I burn. How can I rest?”
“Is there laudanum? Can I give you some?”
“In the bottle, there.”
Clumsily Becket did his best with the bottle and spoon and Sidney calmed a little. “It gives me dreams. I hate to dream,” he whispered. “I dream all the time of unicorns and she-Devils.”
“God damn it.”
Frances Sidney was standing there again, arrived like a fleshy ghost, holding a small heavy leather bag.
“Here are the buttons, sir,” she said. “The smaller ones are gold and the larger ones jet with amethysts and rubies set in them.”
“It is too much,” Becket protested.
“You will need funds,” Sidney said. “Take them.”
Becket took the lumpy bag and put it inside his shirt.
“He needs to sleep,” said Lady Sidney. “Have you finished your business with him, sir?”
The laudanum had pulled Sidney back into its velvet pit; he was only half-awake. Becket bent down and kissed his forehead, which burned his lips. He was ashamed to weep in front of a lady and unable to talk without uncorking his throat, and so he only patted Sidney’s hand again and left the place.
That night he got roaring drunk so he could cry on the comfortable breasts of his Dutch girls. The following morning, his head beating like a gong, he headed south for Rheims and the English Seminary there.
LI
THOMASINA CLIMBED THE WORN stairs to the Eightpenny Ward clutching a horn-cup full of aqua vitae. After spending days wondering how she was going to talk to the man the Queen thought might have the Book of the Unicorn, she had been running past when the Queen’s little Jew who called himself Simon Anriques had stopped her and sent her upstairs with a drink for Becket/Strangways and instructions to find out what he was doing.
She peered cautiously between the beds. Mr Anriques had warned her that if he was rolling around or foaming at the mouth, she was to come straight down and tell him, which had quite frightened her. She had known a counterfeit crank once who used to pretend he had the falling sickness and she was supposed to be his daughter, but she had never seen the real thing. At least he was not doing any of that. He was lying on his back with his head resting on his folded arms, legs crossed at the ankles, staring at the ceiling as if he were reading from it.
“Sir?” she said.
“Hm?” He looked all round for her and then spotted that she was short and came to the usual conclusion. Lord above, did no one ever actually use their eyes?
“Yes, sweeting, what is it?” His voice had the special timbre of patronage that grown men often use to children.
“Mr Anriques sent me with some booze, sir.”
A shadow crossed his face but he sat up and swung his legs to the floor.
“That was kind of him.”
She brought it to him and stood looking at him. Now what do I do? she wondered. Do I tell him the Queen sent me and has he got the book? Not hardly, I don’t think. So she smiled and sat on the bed opposite, swinging her legs. He drank and watched her with the caution of the childless. She had spent enough time as a counterfeit child to stare back at him with all the guilelessness of a girl of six. He was the first to look away.
“Mr Anriques said if you was in a fit to tell him,” she said artlessly. “Are you?”
He darkened. “No,” he said shortly. An adult would have known he was not inclined to talk and would either have gone away or waited in silence. But children are less subtle and are permitted to make social gaffes.
“Is it true you have no memory, sir?”
“Who told you that?”
“All the gaol knows it, sir.”
Becket nodded. “It’s true.”
“What happened? Did a Devil fly away with it?”
Becket’s mouth curve
d sourly. “In a manner of speaking.”
“What was the Devil?”
“It was in human form, by the name of Davison.”
And there’s the truth, thought Thomasina, who was grateful she had had no dealings with him. “How did he do it?”
“He hit me on the head.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes.”
This was going nowhere. “Can I get you any service, sir?” she asked. “Only, I can run messages if you want, or get you things.”
His eyes narrowed. “What kind of things.”
Thomasina was pleased with herself. She shrugged and twiddled a bit of velvet that had come adrift from her bedraggled kirtle.
“Booze, tobacco.” She smiled slyly. “Girls.”
Becket snorted. “What do you charge?”
“Only a penny for a message.”
“Can you get me paper and pens without letting Mr Anriques know?”
“Oh yes, sir. When do you want them?”
“Now. As soon as you can.”
She nodded, picked up the empty cup. “What shall I tell Mr Anriques?”
“That I am asleep.”
An adult would be advised by his tone of voice not to ask any more. A child, however . . .
“He says he’s your friend. Is he?”
Becket was staring up at the ceiling again. “I doubt it,” he said, bleak as a winter gibbet.
Hmm, she thought, he has not lost his cunning. She trotted downstairs, told Anriques that Mr Strangways was asleep, and whisked into the crowd. It was the work of a minute to collect a scrap of paper thrown away by one of the screevers working in the courtyard, and a little more complex to acquire a penner from a trestle-table by the gate. With both things hidden inside her bodice, she waited her moment to go up to the Eightpenny Ward.
At last Anriques obeyed the bell for dinner. She hid behind a rain-butt and then made a dash up the stairs.
She found Becket-Strangways still staring at the ceiling the way she had left him. He sat up when she came, took the writing tools and gave her two pennies. She sat on one of the other beds, swinging her legs again. Becket wrote for a while, with difficulty, as if his hands still had not their proper feeling. Every so often he chewed the end of the pen and then had to spit bits of unstripped feather onto the floor.
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