A Dead Man in Deptford

by Anthony Burgess

  W H A'I' happened in London could not but have its reverberations in the scholarly fastnesses of Cambridge. In October there was the matter of a trial in secret at Fotheringay whereby Mary Queen of Scots received her death sentence, though the passing of this was not made known to the people till December. Cambridge mimicked London with the clanging of its church bells and the lighting of fires round which the students danced. Fire is for warmth, Kit told himself as, chilled by writing in his freezing chamber, he stood by a fire on the banks of the frozen Cam. Let us cling to the elemental and not think. For to think was to be shamed at the knowledge that it could be no true trial, since the Queen of Scots was not subject to the foreign power that was England, and that her condemnation was supported by but a doubtful parliamentary act and a certain forgery. News had come through that the death warrant had not been signed, the Queen of England had become squeamish in the face of the prospect of her vilification by her peers of Europe. Assassination? There might well be an assassination.

  Snow lay heavy over Europe that winter. Snow encased Cambridge and kept Kit, to his small regret, bound in. He gathered wood and sat by his chamber fire and, on the day of the feast of the birth of the child he could no longer see as his Saviour, he was busy at his play. In January the thaw came briefly and passed. On an icy road Nick Faunt's horse slithered and recovered and slithered again as he returned to London from northern business, pausing awhile at Cambridge. He came to Kit's chamber burring with the chill, bowing to the fire like a son of Zoroaster.

  - You have been out of things. Skeres told me of your heaving and spewing. You are become the good student again, I note your ragged black. But this that you are writing is not student stuff. I recall your Techelles and Bajazeth. Now you have kings of Argier and Fez and Morocco. In your fancy you travel wide. Yet you hug yourself to yourself.

  - Are you come with orders from Walsingham? I am done with it all.

  - You will never be done, as you know. Hoops of steel and the like. But you talk of Walsingham, and you would pity the man if you saw him. You know of Sidney's death at Zutphen?

  - We had sermons till we were sick with them. Thy need is greater than mine. The Protestant Knight.

  - And Walsingham's son in law. He has to see to the creditors he has left behind. That will delay the state funeral, he says. It would be unjust and shameful to bring out the black plumes while poor creditors scream for payment. Sir Francis is a great man for justice.

  - Aye, a great man. Has he found means of killing a queen in the full odour of justice?

  - There has to be a new plot afoot. It was thought you might wish to be part of it. Something to do with the French ambassador putting gunpowder under Queen Elizabeth's bed. Forgeries, of course. That will put him under house arrest and stop his crying to his king for pleas for Scotch Mary's release. And there must be rumours of Mary's escape and Spaniards flooding into Kent and Sussex, then marching to set London afire. You could help spread the rumours.

  - I will have nothing to do with it. You may tell Sir Francis I am returned to the state you see, a poor scholar that works for his master's hood and is bound to his books.

  - Sir Francis will weep bitterly. And Poley still in the Tower will weep yet more.

  - There it is. Poley was by way of being my tutor and keeper. And Poley is done and so I am done.

  - And yet, Faunt said, taking up a sheet from Kit's table, you dislike not the great world of power.

  And all this of riding in triumph through Persepolis. You are on fire with the great world.

  - Reduced to a poet's perspective. Enlarged through his fancy.

  - Shall we eat at the Angel? We can ride the ice without the motion of a leg muscle.

  - Mr Secretary will pay and bind me to him again?

  - Ah no, this is money from another source. A man must have many sources.

  The death warrant was signed on February 1. Queen Elizabeth feigned reluctance, it was but a matter of the need of the nation with the Spaniards already landed in Wales and the capital guarded of necessity by armed levies. As for Mr Secretary, sick in his chamber, the grief thereof, she said, will go near to kill him outright. And one week later the Queen of Scots, given but a day's warning, was beheaded in a late sunrise of winter, and her little dogs trotted out from under her skirts to lap her blood. So all were happy, with the London mob lighting a great fire outside the French Embassy and knocking on the door to beg wood for it. The fires and dancing and bells and songs would have gone on like an endless carnival had not the imposed Ash Wednesday, though it was truly a Thursday, of Sir Philip Sidney's funeral shut the toothed mouth of rejoicing. Many of the fellows and students of Cambridge rode down, some even walked, that they might witness the obsequies. Kit stayed where he was. Tom Lewgar came back bubbling with a piece of poetastry he had writ:

  - A good torchecul or arsewipe, Kit said. Bad rhymes, foul metre. You dishonour one that was a poet before he was a soldier.

  - Can you do better, eh, can you do better? Little Lewgar frothed and danced in his little rage.

  - Better does not come into it. Is a lion better than a flea? But here we have a flea that is lame and blemished and cannot jump. Go back to your study of ballockless Origen and leave verse to them that have ears and counting fingers.

  - I know of your atheism too.

  - I descry no pertinence there. Next and elects, though. That could be accounted worse than atheism. Go away.

  IT was a few weeks before the beginning of the long vacation that Tom 'Walsingham came, unaccompanied by Ingram Frizer. Kit found him in his room, reading sheets of the play that was coming to its close. Barnabas Ridley, still Kit's chamberfellow, sat at the same table conning lecture notes. Ridley was one of an ancient breed that could not internalise the words he read: he was mumbling about the heresy of Sabellius. Tom, not mumbling, said:

  - Good bloody stuff here.

  And I like this of the sun-bright troop of heavenly virgins on horsemen's lances to be hoisted up. So this is why we have not seen you. Immured with heavenly poesy or some such thing.

  - Barnabas, Kit said kindly, is it not time for your amorous visit?

  - Oh, I have done with her. I decided it was not meet and fitting.

  - We can go out into the sun, Tom said. Leave your friend to his holy studies.

  - But Sabellius was not holy, he was a heresiarch.

  - Very well, Kit said. So they went out and walked.

  - A long time, Tom said, kicking a dead cat out of his path. From summer to summer, near. I would have come earlier but there were things to be done. My Machiavellian cousin had employment for me in one place and another.

  - I should have thought there was no employment left after Sir Francis Machiavel had killed a queen.

  - Oh, there is rage in France about that killing, and the Spanish are whetting their knives and caulking their bumboats. There have been things to do and still are. That is why you must ride back to London with me.

  - Must must must?

  - You are still in the Service, so they tell me.

  - But this is the sole cause of your visit?

  - There are sunderings and there are reconciliations. But was there a sundering? I cannot recall our shaking hands on a parting with it is better so dear friend.

  - We shared something though at a distance one from the other. A Walsingham, so I took it, had to be there. What we might have shared is a shame and a revulsion at what can be done with a man's body.

  - Ah ah. Strowed with dissevered somethings of something. Streets, yes. But it was green grass, brown really with the drought, that drank blood and was the better for it. Well, you know that had to be done. And we, in our several ways, worked for it.

  - You can smile? Yes, that I cannot argues my innocence.

  - Innocent, you innocent? You were never so innocent. In Rheims, remember? You knew all about tearing men's bodies and making; blood flow where no hangman would have looked for it.

  - Trickle, not flow. There
remains the great mystery.

  - Jesus, we are now on to mysteries. He thrust aside with some force a sycamore twig that would have pierced his eye. They walked on into sun that leaves did not allay.

  - I mean the body and the soul, whatever the soul is. Oh, I know what the soul is. Plato's butterfly. Love and so on. Mingling of entities.

  - Here is a true butterfly on my hand, Tom said. Cream and vermilion or some such colour. Away to whatever butterflies do. And he puffed breath at it. Yet it flapped off in its own good time.

  - Yet, Kit said, and he picked up a fallen branch and switched his leg with it, we are ensnared in a manner. You talk of reconciliation. How do we reconcile the throbbing of the nerves with that essence that some call - Oh, no matter, never mind.

  - There goes the schoolman. You think too much. Is it not enough to enlace bare bodies and do what was done, and no guilt. Life, as we see, is papilian. Is that the word? Frizer picked it up somewhere, a great picker up. You must come back and brave Frizer. When you have done what has to be done. And we can pass a night at an inn on the way. Where? At Bishop's Stortford? I think that a bishop's stort must be a great fleshly weapon, but that is my fancy only. Or at Harlow that is nearly your name.

  - My rhymesake. Well, we will ride.

  Riding, he tried out to the fields, the wind, and his companion:

  Brave words, and some of their lilt and superbity were in his voice on Seething Lane when he stood before Walsingham and said he would not go. Mr Secretary looked very weary.

  - You are committed. I have your name somewhere on a document. But it is not inky blots that matter. It is words like country and danger and loyalty and the truths that lie within those words. So sir, we will not have this frowardness and you will do your duty as you did it before, not that it was much of a duty.

  - It got men hanged and disembowelled and the head of a lawful queen lopped off.

  - Lawful? You say she was lawful? She that would have flung this realm into a riot and lopped off heads uncountable of true protestant believers?

  - I will not be party to more shedding of blood.

  - You will be what I say, sir. And you may look to your standing at the university, whichever it is, for there is more to the conferring of degrees than passing in your attendances and your disputations.

  - You mean you could block my mastership?

  - Block, block, aye, a good word block. You shall be blocked and be bleak and black in your future if you do not what I say.

  - So I am threatened.

  - We are all threatened, damn you. The Spanish threaten us.

  - I have heard this before about the Spaniards in Kent and Sussex. It was a cause of laughter in Canterbury and all a great lie.

  - Do not you talk to me of lies. They will be coming in their great ships and the thumbscrews of their inquisitors ready if the war party has not its way.

  - What is this war party?

  - Sit, sit (for Kit still stood), you know nothing, a boy at his books. I am a tired man, see, and age etches deep and I am not in myself well. And there is much to carry and little thanks. And poor Poley dare not leave the Tower yet so I am not rich in good men. It was Poley who said you might do it.

  - Do what?

  - As I say, there is the war party. There is also the peace party. This will make peace with the Duke of Parma in the Low Countries.. The Queen is for this, for she hateth war. But the war party would have Drake, you know of Drake, no you do not, why should you, have him I say raiding the Spanish coast and so instigating war. I am for war.

  - For blood. That I understand.

  - You understand nothing, puppy. Have the Spanish come and so make an end to it. Drown Antichrist in English waters, let it come and be damned to them all. Then that will be the end of the Catholic menace. Then we may breathe easy a while and gird our loins for the other enemy.

  - Which is, who is?

  - Ignorant of all but the staleness and dust of libraries. I know you, fool. The Brownists, the republicans, the purifiers as they call themselves. They will be purified, I can tell you, fool. They will be as a puff of the wind that blows from their bowels to their lousy text-chopping chaps.

  - Disembowelled, of course. And their manhood scissored off.

  - Enough, you make me more weary than I am. My dear son in law, despite his damnable debts, he was the best of men. He was of the war party and there was a great flow of letters from Flushing.

  - Where?

  - Flushing that the Dutch call Vlissingen for some good reason they hold to their fleshy bosoms. Because Sir Philip, rest his broken bones, was governor there, it is a town of ours, and his younger brother Sir Robert is not half the man, nay not a quarter.

  - Quartering is also in your mind.

  - I will not have this insolence, do you hear me, I will not have a half-bearded chit jibing when there is a full-grown beard to be singed. Well, you are to take ship at Deptford and proceed to Flushing and no argument.

  - There what to do?

  - To get news from a man named Wychgerde, Witchguard, some such name, I cannot say but here it is writ. His first name is Jan which I take to be John. He sells butter and fish and wheat of the Baltic to the Spanish armies. He sells English cloth on the Rhine. It is to him trade, a matter of indifference, but he leans most to us being of the true faith and hates the Spanish for their cruelty. But he is close to the Duke of Parma. And what is his lousy grace of Parma at at this moment? Why, he is besieging Ostend which has an English garrison but with no large force or conviction. So what is this? Is it because he wishes to negotiate peace or is it to cover a true and bloody attack elsewhere in the Low Countries? Wychgerde will know. If it is for peace then Drake may raid and instigate war. Do you follow me? I see your eyelids droop.

  - I think I follow. So if it seems there is to be peace you will start a war. And this is the message I bring back and the Spanish will capture me riding a lonely road and be forewarned?

  - There will be no written message. Yes for war and no for the other thing.

  - A little word to set spinning a war. How do I meet this Dutch butterseller?

  - Through Baines. You will know Baines, he was at Rheims the time of your assignment.

  - I know no Baines.

  - Well, he knew you. He watched you at your carousal with foul Foscue and the others. When you see his face you will know his face. A young grave man that yet frequents taverns and walks the waterfront. He awaits English ships, he will find you. Go now to Philips or Phelips and draw passage money. You are a bold young man (here he softened) and your speaking out offers little offence. It signifies that you know your friends.

  Kit did not well understand this. He went to the room where the pocked and bespectacled one wove his villainies, nay he must not say or think that. But when he found him mole-blind and trying to grow eyes on his finger-ends he could not resist saying:

  - A holiday then from forgery.

  - Eh, eh? Who are you? They are broke. They fell and this fool or that fool, both deny it, planted a heavy hoof and they shattered. A grinding of new takes long. So he says of money for passage. You, filthy Howell, get the box and here is the key and I can finger out what is needful.

  And so the boat from London Bridge to Deptford, where the Golden Hind stood to be chipped of its timber by those that came to admire, where too the shipyards rang loud with hammering. On glass unflawed the Peppercorn took the "Thames tide and put to sea to reach the mouth of the Dutch river Schelde, and Kit felt no qualm, felt rather he might yet prove a sailor. And here at Flushing he heard hardly one word of the neighing Dutch tongue, it was all Englishmen, many soldiers, some wounded awaiting shipment, others formed up in their squadrons to march inland against the Spaniards. And on the quay indeed there was Baines, Dick Baines, with a horny hand to greet but no welcome in the face that was thin and too watchful. A bell tolled, and it was of the English church of St Nicholas. That, said Baines, is the Gevangentoren, it is their town prison, and my lodging is b
ehind, and there you may lie the night or two that is needful. See, how those Dutch boys spit at us, they are all ungrateful bastards. Come to that tavern there and wash the salt from your mouth.

  They sat and drank Dutch beer from ceramical mugs, they were chipped and fragile, not good English pewter.

  - Pewter? Baines said. Aye, you may well talk of pewter. Pewter is become my life, it is why I am here. I will get them yet, you will see.

  - Murky, like this beer. This is noisy. And Kit blinked through the near-dark at swilling and bragging soldiers. Who and what?

  - The comers. There is no money for the English that fight for Spain. They are cut off from what money they have in England, and the Spanish are slow and had payers when they pay at all. So there has to be coining, and the metal is pewter with a wash of silver over it.

  The beer was indeed murky but it had an airy quality that rose easily to the head. Kit said, after thinking: If it passes and purchases and keeps passing it will serve as true money.

  - And so royal heads may be stamped with no royal mandate? Is not this cheating and treason? Baines looked very sternly on Kit.

  - Who is doing this?

  - Gilbert that is a goldsmith and reputed a good man in metals, though he is a villain. And others here and elsewhere. Gilbert should be haled home and sent to trial but Sidney the governor is slow to issue a warrant. There is a part of his head that cannot see the crime. What passes for money, he says, must be accounted money. This is rank heresy.