Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

  Still, Becket could find a sort of satisfaction in it. At least Father Hart had remained free. At least he had not betrayed the man; the ghosts of Haarlem were still with him, but so far they had no company. God or Tom O’Bedlam or something had hidden his memory and he had been saved from himself. He did not fool himself into thinking he could have remained true without such a miracle, which thought sickened him and shamed him, and he shied away from that too.

  As for Simon Ames . . . It took the sun of remembrance behind a pall of blackest cloud to think of him. Becket had mourned for him like a brother, thinking him dead of lung-fever in 1583. It had hurt him more than he could express, when Dr Nunez told him that Simon would be buried privately in accordance with the Jewish rite, not to be able to pay his respects, nor say goodbye. He had toasted Simon every time he got drunk thereafter. And now it seemed the little turd had been tucked away as snug as a bedbug in plaster somewhere out of London, laughing at him no doubt for being such a sentimental booby. And why, for God’s sake? Why had he gone through such an elaborate charade of dishonesty? Was he involved in some secret game of Walsingham’s and did not trust Becket?

  The thought was not to be borne. Becket burned with fury at Ames, could hardly bear to look at him or speak to him and now found it a burden that he must even share a bed with him in the Eightpenny Ward. That night it was hours before he could sleep in the snoring darkness of the ward, with Simon curled trustingly like a cat beside him. Every deep breath the inquisitor took was a continuous unconscious insult.

  Once, as a younger, more hasty, more innocent man, Becket might have challenged Ames on it, perhaps struck him and eased his heart, and gained much by Ames’s explanation. But knowing Ames for Walsingham’s agent against him, alas, he was more subtle. He played the part of himself as he had been before he saw Father Hart, and thought to his satisfaction that he had coney-catched the little inquisitor. Meanwhile, he meditated on revenge.

  And also, of course, on escape.

  LIV

  LETTER TO DR HECTOR NUNEZ, Anriques at the Fleet, 30th January 1587:

  My dear uncle [wrote Ames in a Hebrew cipher], I am concerned at the behaviour of our friend. After the notable victory of his recalling Zutphen, we have had little further progress, although he seems to sit easier with himself. He has been spending much time upon movement and strengthening his hands in particular, and has prised up a cobblestone from the courtyard to carry about with him and move from hand to hand to improve his grip. He has also taken one of the little beggarmaids under his wing, which is charitable of him, although I think the child is helping to procure him a woman, his lack of which much concerns him. To this end he has had his doublet repaired and his nether-hose darned by one of the recusant women here, although he spent the day complaining that he looked like an Irishman with his legs bare.

  My immediate cause for concern is this: Today he approached me with a slate upon which he had marked out the Pythagoras theorem, for entertainment, so he claimed, although never have I met a man less entertained by the Arts Mathematical. There being a clear and obvious mistake in the calculation, I corrected it for him and explained his misunderstanding with care and in detail, but in retrospect I might have done better to have left it faulty. After all, a ladder might make a hypotenuse as well as anything else.

  In case our friend is indeed plotting an escape, I must herewith insist that he be brought forth from the Fleet at once and taken into secure ward privately, preferably at your own house, until we have a better understanding of exactly how much he has recalled.

  I am, sir, your affectionate and respectful nephew.

  The letter was passed to the turnkey along with two others that Ames had drafted for a short-sighted gentleman, to be carried out of the prison by one of the servants. It would take a day to reach Nunez and another day to be acted upon. Ames began to pray quietly that Becket would make no move until the Wednesday, the eve of Candlemas, if that was what he was up to.

  As happened often, that same day a man that Newton believed to be holding out on him was put in the pillory in the corner of the courtyard. They were kept awake half that night by his begging and cursing, until Newton went staggering out with his club. Three parts dead with cold and beating the next morning, the man paid over the money he had hidden and was beaten again and put in the Hole to show, as Newton put it, the benefits of honesty.

  Becket was tense that morning. Simon stayed close by him as much as he could, and even played the utterly dull game of dice with him. Eventually Becket muttered something about finding a more entertaining opponent and wandered away.

  Simon stayed where he was, in a dream-world of his own made of number and calculation, revolving around his perennial itch of curiosity about the earth’s crystal sphere. His eyes fell on the little beggarmaid playing by herself. She had a cup-and-ball toy – a wooden cup on a stick with a ball attached to it by string – but instead of twitching the ball up and trying to catch it in the cup, she was twirling it idly round and round in her loose fingers, so that the ball circled the cup on its string.

  Something focussed into a point in Simon Ames’s mind then, something shocking and wonderful which made him stop breathing for fully fifteen seconds as the brilliant light of his idea cascaded through him. Why have spheres at all? he asked himself. Surely all that was needful to keep the earth circling about the sun was that the earth move and that there be some kind of string to hold it in the sun’s allegiance?

  Unaware that he was moving at all, Simon crossed the courtyard to the child and bent to her.

  “May I . . .” he asked breathlessly, “may I buy your toy from you, maiden?”

  He held out the first coin that came to his fingers which was a groat.

  Thomasina looked up at him curiously, clearly thinking he was mad, a grown man wanting a toy. If Simon had been less enchanted by his idea, he might even have recognised her then, but he did not.

  She curtseyed and gave him the cup and ball. “Here,” she said, taking the money. “I am tired of it, you have it.”

  He took the toy and began spinning it in his hand likewise. Yes, it was possible, clearly possible. The ball tugged outwards from the cup, but the string held it in place, and the shape it traced out as it went around was a circle.

  Simon laughed. What could the earth’s string be made of? It must needs be very strong to hold the weight of the earth, and resistant to heat. Perhaps it was love that made the string? And the moon likewise might go about the earth on its own string. Not crystal spheres then but some kind of crystal or silken thread . . .

  A terrific commotion in the courtyard woke him from his reverie. By squinting he could make out that Cyclops and Becket were at the heart of it. Cyclops was roaring that Becket had been holding out on him, he had not paid his protection, he was a papistical bastard that lied in his teeth about Zutphen. Becket roared back that Cyclops was a drunk, the get of his grandfather on his whore of a mother, and no soldier neither, but had lost his eye to a woman he had tried to rob.

  Cyclops threw a punch at Becket, who dodged it, ran behind a table and upended the lot in the path of the pursuing Cyclops. The trader wailed and protested, Becket hit him; the tailor that had mended Becket’s doublet, who had a stall next door, instantly attacked Becket; and one of his customers attacked the tailor.

  The courtyard boiled into battle and confusion; stalls flying everywhere, merchandise trampled on the ground and ruined. The ruff-making women swept up all their delicate linens and threads and gathered anxiously together under their awning, with the children peeking from behind their skirts. The little beggarmaid in colourful rags who had attached herself to Becket’s affinity squatted near to the ruff-makers and watched critically.

  Now the chaos was resolving itself into groups of wildly shouting and punching men. The inner gate slammed open and Newton drove through the melee with his full complement of twenty large henchmen, all wielding cudgels and veney sticks, turning everything to chaos once more.
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  At the height of the mayhem Simon saw the wall of the prison which loomed over an alley-way suddenly sprout two short straight branches, behind its barrier of spikes and glass. All his gut turned to ice as he screwed up his eyes to make it out. Between the ladder poles appeared the face of a man, topped with a hat, peering cautiously at the broil in the yard. To Simon’s left the broad figure of Becket crawled from under a broken awning. He sidled towards the place just below where the man was hefting a roll of rope that was certainly a rope-ladder.

  Horror made Simon shout aloud. Nobody heard him. He moved to try and stop Becket, but somebody kicked his legs from under him and he rolled, the same somebody kicked his ribs and it was a while before Simon could get himself to his feet. In a dream he saw Becket grip the rope-ladder, start to climb and then fall for the weakness of his hands. Twice more it happened, and on the third time Becket roared with frustration and kicked the wall, then stopped and stared wildly at nothing. Suddenly his back arched and he toppled like a tree, rolled unknowing and unseeing away from the wall, his feet drumming the cobbles and his face turned into a gargoyle.

  Simon could not see well enough without his spectacles to make out Becket’s helper. The man at the wall’s brow paused, puzzled, seemed to shake his head, then swiftly and decisively rolled up the rope-ladder again, disappeared from the top of the wall, and the ladder poles too vanished.

  As suddenly as it had started, the fight petered out, leaving Becket wrestling and struggling with thin air on the cobblestones. Two of Newton’s servants laid hands on Becket and were thrown off by a convulsion, another had grabbed hold of Cyclops.

  Newton was enraged, roaring and stamping and telling Cyclops that he was expected to maintain order, not start riots.

  Propelled by a terror that Becket would lose the last shreds of his reason, Simon ran to him and held his shoulders as his face finally slackened into unconsciousness.

  It was a mistake. Two of Newton’s bully boys twisted his arms behind him and wrenched him away, while another began slapping Becket’s face to wake him up.

  “Sir, sir,” Simon protested, “he has the falling sickness, he must not be wakened . . .”

  “He’s lying,” yelled Cyclops. “Him and that bastard plotted this riot together.”

  Newton snapped his fingers and his henchmen brought Simon to him.

  “I must protest at this ill-treatment, sir,” said Simon with as much dignity as he could, given courage by his relief that Becket’s escape plan had failed. “Mr B . . . Strangways is a sick man and you should –”

  “Shut your mouth,” snarled Newton. “Right. You and your bum-boy can spend the night out, understand?”

  “This is an outrage!” Simon shouted back, astonished at the fury filling his meagre chest. “He has the falling sickness, he cannot possible survive –”

  Somebody had tossed half a bucket of water over Becket’s head and he was slowly coming back to wakefulness, spluttering and coughing and looking as bewildered as a child woken in the night.

  “He will catch a lung-fever. This is base injustice and beyond your office. I shall take you to the Star Chamber for your tyranny, sir, be sure of it . . .”

  Newton held up his fist with a cudgel in it. “You’ll catch more than a lung-fever in the Hole,” he hissed. “If you don’t shut your fucking mouth, Jew, I’ll flog you to the bone.”

  Becket was staring at the two of them, blinking and shaking his head.

  “Quiet Simon,” he said softly. “The pillory is better than the Hole or a flogging.”

  Simon gaped at this judicious peacemaking from Becket. Newton grinned wolfishly.

  They were hauled over to the pillory and stocks, Newton stamping about and roaring orders, Cyclops strutting after him making obscene gestures at the pinioned Becket, who was putty-coloured and still unsteady on his feet. Simon was wishing fervently he had minded his own business. They forced Becket’s head and hands into the pillory, on the grounds that he was still the more dangerous of the two as well as the taller, slammed down the upper half. Becket was recovering fast, he swore at them as they bolted it shut, straining his shoulders against it and kicking the post. Simon did not dare resist any more when he was made to sit down on the cobbles and they closed and bolted the stocks on his ankles. He felt sick. Everyone in the courtyard was watching the show, some of them laughing at Becket. Becket started to curse them as well as Newton, which was a mistake: some of the bolder ones picked up bits of mud and vegetable peelings, the timid copied them, and for a few minutes there was a rain of missiles. Simon put his arms over his head to protect it while Becket shouted at the crowd who had listened so reverently to his tales of Zutphen a few days before. Newton laughed as well as threw a couple of stones on his own account.

  At last the gaoler and his turnkeys went back to their gatehouse to celebrate and Cyclops moved among the crowd. They stopped throwing stones and dispersed quickly then, going to help the ruff-making women with the injured and then to retrieve what they could of their usual business from the wreckage around them.

  “Oh, David,” said Simon miserably, “what have you done now?”

  Becket turned his head cautiously in its hole to look at Simon, smiled sweetly at him.

  “Never fear, Ames,” he said. “I have not run mad yet.”

  Many times the next day Simon asked himself why he did not notice that Becket had finally remembered his real name. It had been a thing he was looking for, one of the keys to Becket’s memory – he had been waiting and hoping for Becket to call him by his rightful name so that he could explain, so that Becket would begin to trust him and they could begin probing together for the memories that Becket had lost to Ramme’s cosh.

  But he did not notice, did not catch the importance of it. He was too horrified at himself for his defiance, horrified to be made so helpless, to be sitting on hard stone cobbles which were already bruising his meagre hams, to be facing a night in the open in winter, when the last time he had done such a thing he very nearly died of lung-fever. He was also enraged at Becket for his cunning, his near escape and the disaster to Simon’s family that would have followed it. But there was nothing he could do without revealing his game to Becket. At least the attempt had been foiled.

  And so he sat as he must, staring at his pinned legs, angry and self-pitying and frightened and also, surprisingly, obscurely shamed. To be publicly punished like a child, like a peasant. He had not suffered such a thing since he was at school and hardly ever then, since he had been painfully obedient and happily diligent. He had done much of his brothers’ work for them, grateful to them for their loud and quick-fisted protection in the wildwood of the school. They had all gone bounding out into the world ahead of him, elder and younger alike, all except him being large, and bold and restless, and were scattered across Europe. One was commanding a fort in Ireland, one was living in Portugal in the shadow of the Inquisition, hiding his religion and daring death every time he sent a despatch through divers routes to Nunez, telling of the King of Spain’s ships. One was fighting in the Netherlands. He had missed them, especially after his quarrel with his father in 1581 over the futility of backing the Portuguese pretender. Their estrangement had been made worse by Simon’s turning out to be completely right that the venture would founder expensively and squalidly. He had been lonely in his work for Sir Francis Walsingham, suffered the ugliness of the strong against the weak in a way he had never known before.

  Into that loneliness Becket had come, first bailing him out of a beating as his brothers had done before, then drinking with him, arguing with him, protecting him again. Neither of them was a boy-lover, but there are other kinds of love than Eros. For all the way Becket had soured to him later, Ames had thought of him as a new brother. It had pained him greatly that for the security of Walsingham’s game with Honeycutt, he had been forced to lie so grievously to Becket as to lead his friend to think him dead. He had felt it as a dishonour to him, an injury to one who had done him none. He had
almost been grateful for the fact that the Queen demanded his help in whatever dark business Becket had entangled himself in. He had rushed thoughtlessly to help Becket when Becket had been betrayed by his own body and left helpless, as he had once or twice astonished everyone by doing long ago for his real brothers at school. But there had been no gratitude, nor even recognition, in Becket’s eyes; only a kind of grim humour. It worried him.

  The bell rang for supper and the courtyard emptied as the evening came down. Becket shifted his feet and sighed, tried to ease his shoulders which must be aching already from their being held in such a hunched-over position. It was astonishing to think they had only been there for an hour or two. Already Ames was chilled and sore. He put his hands in his armpits to warm them for a while, but found that uncomfortable as well, since he had no support to his back. There was too little play round his ankles for him to bend his knees much and so, if he wanted to hunch up to conserve warmth, he had to stretch his hamstrings and Achilles’ tendons until they ached. But if he lay back on his elbows, they ached and so did his shoulders and he got colder. He was starting to shiver. Also he had a pressing need to piss. He shifted as much as he could onto one buttock, fumbled with cold fingers, and aimed as far away as he could. To his frustration some of its trickles back towards him because other men’s backsides had worn a dip in the cobbles where he sat. He swore in Portuguese.

  “Good God, man, what happened to your cock?” came a rasping demand from beside him.

  Ames flushed like a girl. “It is . . . I am a Jew, as you know,” he stammered, fumbling again. “We . . . er . . . we are circumcised.”

  Becket was staring in frank horror. “Is that what it means?”

  “Er . . . yes.”

  “But how could you bear to let them do it?”

  “Since I was eight days old when it was done, I do not remember having much choice in the matter.”

  “Jesus Christ.”