[David Becket and Simon Ames 01] - Firedrake's Eye

by Patricia Finney

  Throgmorton nodded eagerly. ‘I have made no secret of the fact that I hold to the ancient and true religion of our fathers. I pay my fines.’

  ‘Truly, I am sorry for it.’

  ‘Why? When all is ended it makes less than a fragment of a fragment of infinity, the length of our life on this earth.’ Throgmorton spoke softly, as if more to convince himself. ‘No matter whether we live thirty years in all or thrice thirty. If I am to be worthy of eternity in the presence of Our Lord, if silence is such a fearful thing, perhaps a little fire is necessary here on earth, that it be not my fate for all eternity.’ Simon shook his head. ‘I fear you are a brave man, Mr Throgmorton. ’ Throgmorton said nothing, but licked his lips and swallowed.

  ‘Mr Ames,’ he said after a moment, ‘will you tell me one thing?’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘What date is it today?’

  ‘The fifth of November. Why?’

  ‘I wondered. I had lost count of dates with being so busy. ’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘Business.’

  Deliberately Simon said nothing, only he folded up his report and put it in a canvas bag to be carried to Mr Secretary. Then he sighed. The door clashed and creaked open and Kinsley came in carrying a large leather jack full of steaming ale, put it carefully on Simon’s desk and shouldered past Mall once more.

  Simon poured into the horn beaker hanging from the desk and let the hot clove-laden ale trickle down past the bramble thicket in his gullet, carving a path through the cold moist humours invading his lungs from his brain where they were made. Throgmorton watched, licking his lips, which had cracked already with the dryness of fear. After a moment’s hesitation, Simon left some ale in the jack, came round his desk and offered it to Throgmorton with a furtive look at Mall.

  ‘Come, I’ll hold it for you.’

  Watching the man’s Adam’s Apple bob up and down gratefully and smelling the distinctive reek of fear rising from him with the smoke of his breath, Simon was touched with pity for him. This was no innocent, he knew well, but Francis Throgmorton was scarcely a major player in the game that included the Duke of Guise, the Queen of Scots and, no doubt, Philip II of Spain. But now he must suffer for all of them since it was clearer than spring water to Simon that he knew a great deal. The greater his courage, the worse his suffering, as is often the way.

  Kinsley entered again, the door opened ceremoniously for him by Mall, and gave Simon a piece of paper which he squinted to read.

  ‘Is Mr Norton coming?’ Throgmorton asked in a voice thinned by the breaking of his determination not to ask.

  ‘No, he must make report of your papers to Sir Francis Walsingham. Most were unbumed.’ Throgmorton stared at his feet. ‘He will have no time to speak to you this day, I fear.’

  Throgmorton tensed, head lowered, like a dog not knowing whether to expect a pat or a beating. Simon stamped his feet to get the blood flowing again, and motioned for Throgmorton to rise. He clinked slowly and stiffly to his feet, Simon made way for him before, and so they formed themselves into a shuffling unmusicial procession down the narrow stairs and through the musty magnificent corridors of the Queen’s Lodgings and Coldharbour. Once in the daylight by Tower Green the clanging and hissing and bellows-pumping of the Queen’s Mint between the walls sharpened on the ears, an eternal infernal noise that bounces about the stone of the Tower all day from sunrise to sunset.

  Throgmorton wanted to ask another question, that was clear, but dared not, would not. Simon said nothing, only nodding to one of the Clerks of the Ordnance who was hurrying by to the armouries in the White Tower. This man Throgmorton was no idealistic would-be martyr, he reminded himself, who had studied in a seminary whose walls were painted with scenes of ugly martyrdom the better to accustom the would- be priests and missioners to their likely end. This was a messenger, a co-ordinator, working in a matter that Throgmorton, like the others, prayed devoutly would change the kingdom. In the way of such changes, some would rise and some would fall: Burghley and Walsingham could hope for the favour of the hangman’s axe, Leicester, Hatton, Ralegh and all the Queen’s favourites would do well to die in battle. Simon and his family might end by being burned as Jews, but Throgmorton would find the chance of power and riches of his own. He might dress his treason up in Romish vestments, but at base he had the same tincture in his blood of any other fashionable struggler at the Court.

  They walked around the side of St Peter ad Vincula and once more within the stone walls, down more steps to the basement, full of the smell of rising Thames water. They paused at the doorway of Little Ease, Throgmorton eyeing the heavy door with its Judas hole, his teeth chattering. Simon was sure the air was colder within than without. Mall unbolted and opened the little door, showing the short tunnel with its carpet of mould and a few wisps of stinking straw. It was a kennel would have been disdained by a street hound, though further into the blackness, beyond the reach of Mall’s lantern, it opened out into the tiny cell four foot six inches at its largest, by four foot by three foot high. Absurdly, Throgmorton, who was five feet eight inches tall, relaxed a little, underestimating as do they all why Little Ease is so named. The clanging came formlessly from the Mint, multiplied and distorted by quirks of stone.

  Simon gestured for him to crawl in and untangled his leg irons for him as he did. Mall pushed a bucket for his necessities after him, one that Kinsley had cunningly holed with a stiletto at the side. As if on an impulse of kindliness in that bitter place, Simon picked up an old blanket and thrust it in after Throgmorton who muttered some words of thanks from his hands and knees. If you would break into a man’s soul, first you must humble him, but also you must give him an opening of seeming mercy, an illusion of escape. Also, in general, fleas and lice prefer blankets to cold floor. Mall slammed the door, locked and bolted it loudly.

  Simon coughed and dabbed at his nose with his third sodden handkerchief. Mall went ahead with the lantern and put it out when they returned to daylight.

  ‘Mr Norton is in the Wakefield Tower and wishes to see you sir,’ he said. ‘It seems someone was missed in the search.’

  XXIV

  The boy had woken under the bed, his mouth like parchment with thirst. The papers still crackled against his skin and the cat had moved to the warmest spot by his stomach. She mewed indignantly when he rolled over and crawled cautiously: although sunlight was still falling through the broken shutters, he cared nothing for that, he must find food and water and be rid of the terrible papers.

  He went to the window and peered out, avoiding the trapdoor hole in the floor. A man was walking about in the courtyard. He opened the casement, climbed onto the roof and half-slid, half-crawled down the slope and up the next one. No one saw him go, nor did anyone remark on his dusty face and hair and suit, for boys will be boys and attract dirt to themselves. He had the sense to walk once he reached the ground: he knew it was important to walk when carrying papers, he had had that principle beaten into him. And he knew the house he must go to, which in his fear he named to himself as the House where the Men Speak Strangely. It was in Southwark and he crossed the Thames by the bridge. He dared not think of the place truly as the Spanish Embassy. Even he knew what that must mean and why Senor Mendoza welcomed him.

  About the time that the servingman opened the kitchen door to find the white-faced English boy outside, a second pack of searchers saw the place whence he had been reborn and the fresh piss in the chamber pot and the place where he had slept. Simon Ames arrived an hour later as the sun set and inspected the place with his face set still in cold fury.

  ‘A small man, a woman or a boy,’ he said to James Ramme, who nodded.

  ‘No doubt of it but it was a fine hiding place,’ Ramme said, excusing both of them, then fell silent at the ugliness of Simon’s eyes.

  ‘Next time we will have every floorboard up,’ was all Simon said as he stalked out.

  Once in the square, he stood for a moment at a loss, ignoring the singing in the
midst of the crowd that had gathered to watch the sport. Over by the red lattices of the alehouse on the other side he saw a broad familiar shape at ease on a bench, a wooden trencher laden with stew and bread on one knee, a jack full of beer in his fist and a long clay pipe in his mouth. Becket waved him over, and cross-eyed with tiredness and hungry as he was, he walked over and sat down.

  ‘Christ, Ames,’ said Becket, ‘you look like a ghost. Where have you been? Was it you at the notable storming of a Papist’s nest? Did he get away after all then?’

  Ames nodded. ‘Someone did. We know not when nor who it was.’

  ‘You will never catch him then. Have you eaten this day? No? Here, boy, the ordinary and a pint of best.’

  Becket in possession of money was a fine expansive sight, which confirmed Simon’s suspicion that his uncle had rewarded his saviour in gold. He took the plate of stew and had eaten half before the unfamiliar salty taste won through to his mazed mind. ‘What is this?’ he asked Becket.

  ‘Bacon, peas and carrots,’ said Becket, making eye-talk with a handsome pigeon-breasted young shopwife. ‘Why, do you not like it? Then give it here, it tastes well enough to me.’

  Simon drank beer to quell his queasiness. His head was singing and his eyes kept shutting of their own will. He thought of going down to the river again and finding a boat to take him back to Seething Lane, but he could not find the strength of will to do it. Instead he sat there and drank some tobacco smoke with Becket, and sipped his beer and watched the scurrying of the booksellers’ men as they finished the lading of a ship ready to catch the tide. Idle notions rose to the surface of his thoughts like scum.

  ‘What is the best way to find… to be sure of finding anyone hidden in a house?’ he asked Becket once.

  ‘Set fire to it,’ Becket answered, and he nodded in agreement that this was certainly the surest way.

  They walked through Ludgate just as the Watch were shutting the gates and the curfew bell rang, heading in the wrong direction towards Becket’s favourite haunts along Fleet Street, where he was once more welcome now he had paid his debts. It was plain foolishness to play dice with Becket at the Green Lion and then again at the Cock and once more at the Globe tavern in a slow progress of taverns and boozing kens. Once a woman apparently named Sweetbush Julia told him he could have her at double the price since he was so bony and some other time Becket rose up like a mountain from a bench and leaned over a boy who had almost knocked Simon spinning.

  He fell asleep twice with his head resting on sticky tables and was drunk enough to mutter assent when Becket told him that he might as well pass out on a bed as on a floor. Once in Fetter Lane, Becket whispered that Sweetbush Julia was as poxed as any Winchester goose and besides Ames had lost all his money to her, what he had on him, and so there was no money left for an inn. They propelled each other up Mrs Carfax’s stairs and this time, like a true gentleman, Becket gave Ames the narrow bed and himself took the floor. As he let go his grip on the world, Ames wished feebly for a way to kill the snorting creature nearby, and then remembered that he might not have slept so well on his clean linen at Sir Francis’ house. Here at least there was no unspeaking presence of Throgmorton and all his plots, no Christian prayers to end the day, no business unfulfilled nagging him from his chest of papers. The words of his usual prayers floated unconnected before him and the whirling of his head was….

  XXV

  All this day I was in the midst of a great fit of angels that took Tom over half of London, I think, and brought in a few shillings’ bribery for Tom to cease declaiming of dragons in one place and begin again in another. I dare not take my usual begging place by Temple Bar for the reason that it was so close to the firedrake’s spawning place, and further my song of madness was being sung by ballad sellers there which struck to my heart every time I heard it. The chorus was not mine, but every other part was, and each verse held the seeds of my trouble, being ripe with the dreams that plague me. Wherefore not, when I wrote it? And Cain it was who had taken it and abused it. Above me the sky broke open continually to show that shadow-drake of treason and anarchy taking shape in his mirror-egg of stars.

  I awoke in a field hours before sunrise, cold and stiff and wetted through with rain, though the Queen Moon had given me some covering of bracken and leaves. Four cows wearing the bear-brand of my lord of Leicester were blinking at me kindly from under an oak. 1 climbed to my feet and reeled from hunger, my belly clenched up under my breastbone and aching with it, my head pounding from it. The Queen Moon laughed at my plight from behind her veil of rainclouds and told me the answer and so I went to the cows. While she gentled each one, I milked their'teats into my begging bowl and so filled my emptiness with warm sweet milk. They lowed at me, thanking me for easing their udders a little. With luck the cowherds would blame hedgehogs or Robin Goodellow for the smaller yield.

  The Queen Moon pointed and nodded at the way I should go: I climbed the gate and squelched south down Gray’s Inn Lane towards Holborn. Here was a true time of angels, in the silence and cold of the dark raining pool of night where the sun hides his head before his awakening, yet was I now as cold and lucid as a Secretary to the Queen. The walls of Gray’s Inn gardens gleamed in the drizzle clear and sharp where the lantern light fell, and every sound cut through the air like a knife.

  It was still an hour before dawn when I came at last to Fetter Lane by a short cut behind Rolls House and Clifford’s Inn. There was a clattering and a roaring and crying out in the lane and shouting for water. I peered from behind the garden wall and there was a house afire, smoke rolling from the thatch and flame licking and cracking the windows. Down in the street milled men in shirts shouting at each other and Mistress Carfax in her night rail and cap and cloak, beating her breast and weeping. Some of the men had formed a long bucket chain up from the conduit in Fleet Street, no mean distance, while others were working the well behind Rolls House as fast as they could.

  Tom loves a fire and he laughed and cheered the devils dancing in the sparks on the roof and swinging merrily from one rafter to another.

  There were two particular devils, one large and broad, the other thinner and smaller and less nimble, both black-faced, that had clambered through a small window in the attic and were clinging to a ledge. Their neighbours in the street were using the long fire hooks to pull out the thatch, while urchins darted among them cheering the two devils, cutting purses and shouting advice.

  The two on the ledge inched their way along to the gateway that constricts Fetter Lane a little way along. There the larger devil stepped down onto the upper part of the arch, clinging to some headless carvings of saints, hung by his fingers from a moulding and dropped the last few feet into a soft midden heap. He was followed in a scramble by the lesser devil, who plumped down upon his bum and coughed his guts up there and then. The greater devil stood with his hands on his hips, coughing sometimes, watching the burning roof intently and an ugly look under the soot and sweat blackening his face.

  God sent the rain to come down harder and so between the buckets and the sky the fire guttered and smoked and fell at last to a sullen smouldering, leaving the house unroofed but still standing and Mistress Carfax weeping and sniffing upon a gossip’s bosom.

  The cobbler across the way had invited Becket and Ames into his house where there was a crowd drinking beer and talking loudly about the good fortune of the rain and the notable bravery of Jemmy Burford who pulled down the worst piece of burning thatch himself, and the right way – much disputed – of forming bucket-chains. Someone brought Becket the sword and cloak that he had tossed down into the street from the window, but Ames had lost his second sword in a week. On the other hand, Becket had lost all he had that was not in pawn, save what he wore. His black ringlets were plastered to his neck by heat and rain and fear. As the grey daylight seeped its way out of the east, his face grew uglier, even after he had washed it in an ewer of water brought by the cobbler’s wife. He and Ames coughed by fits and turns like a
madrigal of crows, but Ames seemed to have lost the power of speech and sat in a comer by a heap of calfskins and some labelled lasts, holding his elbows together and blinking at his singed boots.

  When the Watch at last came tottering in and quavered out their questions, it was Becket answered them one word at a time, miserly between coughing.

  No, the fire in the grate had not been burning, for the reason he had nothing to feed it with and had not got around to buying any more. No, he had not gone to sleep with a taper still lit. He knew not how the fire came about, being asleep at the time and his friend too, and no, neither had been the worse for drink, both of them God-fearing men.

  Then Becket caught sight of me, eating half a sausage. He stepped away from the folk asking questions and took me by the elbow, backed me into a comer by some half-finished roses and pompoms and leaned his face fiercely towards mine. I could see his tongue darting behind the gap left by a long-ago loss of one of his eyeteeth.

  ‘What do you know of this, Tom?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, trembling. ‘Nothing, I have been dancing with angels and…’

  ‘I know that,’ he snarled. ‘You came prating to me yesterday of some man you had seen that you took to be Lucifer, and more nonsense of a firedrake. What do you know of thisV

  ‘Nothing. Is it a mystery?’ I asked, trying to unscramble my thinking and recover the beautiful clarity of the cows’ milk. ‘Could angels have done it? No. Angels never set fire.’

  ‘Ah, but you Tom have set fires to my certain knowledge for you set light to an awning with a torch once when you said a devil was hiding in it. Well?’

  ‘Not this,’ I said. ‘No, not this. Your own angel would have stopped me.’

  ‘Pfft,’ he said in disgust. ‘And you saw nothing in the lane neither?’

  ‘I was not there. I came when I heard the noise.’