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

by Patricia Finney

  ‘I think he was working here. Yes, here it is.’

  He rapped the side of the cubbyhold revealed behind ripped panelling, and it sounded dull and solid. Simon looked quizzical as Fant felt about within and at last there came a click and a thick piece of wood, deeply padded with bombast and old linen, turned about on itself to show a long deep hole. Simon stopped him from reaching in, and did so himself to bring out a small box that was locked.

  It broke open to Mali’s crowbar and within lay the little blessed discs of wax known as Agnus Deis, a rosary and a roll of parchment. Ames took it, glanced at the seal, stopped and looked again, and then opened it to scan the lines of Latin.

  Fant had taken one of the little discs of wax. He held it up to the light, squinted, rubbed his finger over the figure of the Lamb of God and then clenched his fist so the wax broke into crumbled shards.

  ‘Mr Fant, I am in your debt,’ said Simon, breathing hard with excitement. ‘Are there any other such places?’

  ‘No,’ said Fant, drily, ‘I think you have found all the others. Where did he keep the Communion wafers?’

  ‘We found none, only Mass things and some holy water and a couple of bones in a bottle chased with silver that no doubt were relics of some sort.

  ‘Catherine Nisbet’s gear.’

  ‘My master must see this at once, it confirms all I had feared.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Fant. Simon hesitated, but told him.

  ‘A plenary indulgence from the Pope,’ he said. ‘It says that no matter what Adam Strangways does and no matter what sin he commits in furtherance of his mission, he does not sin since what he does is to the greater glory of God. Thus murder is made a venial sin.’

  Fant looked as if he wished to spit, but could not bring himself to do it inside his own house, even wrecked.

  ‘It tells you nothing you did not know before, though. I told you Adam Strangways was a traitor.’

  ‘This confirms it. I had not been certain before if he were a chimaera or a true danger or in some way concerned in mine own difficulty. But now I know, I may narrow the search. Do you know who built this cunning place?’

  Fant thought for a long while.

  ‘Agnes knew him, a tall bitter man, well-built, what was his name…Gorse? I cannot think.’

  ‘No matter. We are making progress, Mr Fant, distinct progress.’

  XXXVII

  Now of all this I knew nothing then, seeing that I was well-occupied with my new apprentice. When Gabriel had gone about his business, I took the dummerer boy by the hand and led him out to the Strand. He cowered against the house walls, 1 thought for shame at his unclothed state, and so I brought him into alleys until we came to Barnet’s the pawnbroker where I bought him shoes and a brown suit of trunk hose and a.doublet that was made for a page his size, near enough. It had so much age upon it that the fashion was twenty years gone and the velvet worn down clear to the cloth nap on the front and the back. Then with the rest of Gabriel’s wealth I bought bread and went to a cookshop for peas pottage and an end of baton and so brought him to my little hole in Blackfriars. We sat by the pool in the cloisters that the iron air was forging to iron also and we ate well, which the boy did carefully and slowly, not to dribble. His manners came from some great lord’s house.

  ‘Can you read or write?’ I asked him, and he blushed and stared at the ground and shook his head. It seemed passing strange to me, seeing how dainty he was in other things.

  Boylike he was greatly interested in the cloisters and when he was done, he rose and wandered about, shying stones at the ice on the pond and peering at the hens as if he had never seen such monsters before. His hair was golden, his eyes were sharp blue, like the winter’s sky above us. His face had none of the old-man’s hardness in it of Gabriel and his henchmen, but was soft and innocent and eager. Only from time to time he would mind him of something, and sit down as he had been when I first saw him, with his arms clenched about his knees, staring into space.

  ‘Now I must have a name to call you by.’ I said to him, ‘What was it? Can you write that at least?’ Again he blushed and shook his head. ‘Why then, I shall call you Ralph.’ I knew not why I picked that name, only it seemed a pleasant and comfortable one that I should not forget. The boy shrugged. ‘Then Ralph it is,’ I said, reached over and tipped the lees of my beer in his hair. He jumped up brushing furiously at his head andI laughed as I said the baptism for those of the begging law. ‘And I hereby stall you to the rogue, that you have leave to beg and thieve for your living, so help you God.’

  After a while he laughed too, not understanding, but willing to take a joke since he must. I looked about the cloister: there was the sun shining down and the damp frost-tiled roofs about us glistening and drying slowly, a pleasant day with no need to go begging for I had sixpence to feed us on the morrow. And further, it was always a place of learning and had the essence of words in its stones, another cause for liking to live in an old cloister that was crumbling to the dust like the monks who walked it once.

  ‘Shall 1 teach you to read, Ralph?’ I asked.

  Such a succession of expressions on his face. First the blush and a boy’s eager nodding, then sullenness and a casting down of his glance to the earth and shaking of his head.

  ‘Why not? For that you are a dummerer? So? You understand me, wherefore should you not understand the written word? Oh there’s a trick to it, but it’s not so hard.’

  He tapped his head, made his jaw go slack, shook it again.

  ‘What do you…? Is it that you think you are too stupid?’

  He nodded fiercely, sadly.

  ‘What manner of ape told you that? There are astonishing many fools that not only read, write and reckon, but teach it also to boys your age. Now I am a fool, it is true, but I think you are none, only misfortunate. Come.’

  I had seen no angels and could not ask their advice. This seemed to me a fine thing to do, to offer the boy a key to open up the walled city of his head, albeit he would have little use for the art as a beggar. Still, he might choose to be a scribe in the shadow of St Paul’s and might be well-regarded as such since he could not make half-witted suggestions for the improvement of his customers’ style and the polishing of their phrases.

  Yet this that I call the Clever One was not so clever neither, or I would have thought further on it, on those who had taught him to mop his mouth nicely with a cloth, but not to write, and why they had not. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, was it pride that blinded me?

  He and I thought nothing of it then. He suffered me to lead him up to St Paul’s churchyard where I found a stationer in his stall that had not forbidden me to read his books when I was in a sane humour. On the way there I was planning how the teaching might be done, for the boy Ralph could not speak his lessons aloud but must do all inwardly.

  And so I begged spoiled scraps of paper from my friend the stationer who laughed heartily at the joke of a madman turning tutor to a dummerer, and half a broken slate and a hornbook that had lost its paternoster from being spoiled by rain, though the alphabeta was clear enough, and found chalk in broken pieces by another stall. Then back we went to Blackfriars and I set about my new trade of schoolmastering.

  Did my old friends the monks gather about my shoulder to watch? I know not, for I saw nothing but the staggering walnut tree by the pond and Simple Neddy piling dried bracken on his tender plants to save them from the cold.

  I spake the letters aloud to Ralph, and we made a row of things or pictures that he could point to and show he knew which letter I asked him, as an apple for A and a brick for B and a cat (that walked off and so must be drawn on paper) for C and so on.

  By the end of the day I could point to any letter in his hornbook with my schoolmaster’s twig and he would point at the thing that it stood for. As we worked, so my anger grew at what had been done to him, for his softness, his eagerness, his cleanliness, all spoke of his being used to ease and wealth, and yet none had thought to enqu
ire if he had a mind that was whole despite his quarter tongue. Still I never questioned if it could have been left so deliberately.

  When evening came on, we ate the rest of the loaf and some cheese 1 had by me, and finished the beer with Simple Neddy. In honour of the occasion and his tender upbringing, 1 made a fire in my little room and burned another broken desk and some panelling. It happened, alas, that there was paint on some of it still, and briefly as the wood settled, the face of a woman veiled in blue shone out of the fire with painful beauty and then blackened and peeled and was gone before I could save her. In her ashes we roasted apples and then I showed him my pallet and we lay down under two cloaks near the fire while the frosty stars bit down on London like little prickling insects.

  He huddled close, put his arms about me, and I thought he was only cold. Then I felt his hand at my points, unlacing of them right speedily, and then about my privy member. For two heartbeats I lay there with understanding growing to a foul black flower within me, and then, with what gentleness I could muster, took his hand from my parts and sat up, and laced myself again. Without a doubt he wished only to please me as he had been taught, to show his gratitude as he had been taught. Alas my face was bleak.

  He had shrunk back against the wall, staring at me, tears in his eyes, shaking. ‘Ung ung,’ he said, shook his head in frustration and wept like a maid.

  I stood also, shaking also but with rage, that this should be an explanation. If a man is warped to love boys and not maids, that is sin enough. But here was a far greater one: for some rich man, being warped so, had taken him a catamite that could never tell who had corrupted him, taught him ease and wealth and courtesy, but never given him the printed and written word that he should forever be a sealed vessel, a locked casket, unable to speak of nor threaten his master. And then whoever had done this, I thought, had tired of his toy or found fresher meat, and had thrown him out to die upon the street, like a dog. And this was why he had been so shocked, so lost, for whoever had brought him up to sin innocently had then broken his world asunder.

  ‘Did you not know it is a sin for a man to lie with a boy?’ I asked him, clasping my hands together that he see not my anger and be afraid.

  He stared at me open-mouthed, a very dummerer. I tried again. ‘Do you know what it is to sin?’

  Now he nodded eagerly. He picked up a piece of wood, glancing about him as if in fear he should be caught, hid it under his doublet, then stood and crept away. Then he put it down and came to me, opening his arms, with his head on one side like an amorous girl.

  I took his hand, clasped it that he should not think I hated him, and caused him to sit down again.

  ‘Now Ralph,’ I said, ‘you must listen right carefully to me, for what I say concerns your soul. Know you what your soul is?’

  He nodded, linked his thumbs by his breast and flapped his hands like wings. Then he shut his eyes, lolled his head, and flapped his hands away from his chest.

  ‘Ay, then you are not completely heathen,’ said I. ‘Hear me. The man that was your master before, did he bring you to his bed and…and use you as a man does a woman?’

  His brows wrinkled deeply and he stared at me in puzzlement. I breathed deep and mimed as best I could, and he smiled and nodded.

  ‘Know you what God is?’

  He looked insulted, pointed up at the ceiling and mimed praying.

  ‘You master did not tell you this for he wished to have what he wanted of you and not be prevented, but God hath said that it is a sin for a man to use a boy so. Indeed it is wicked.’

  His face clouded, fell, his mouth began to tremble and he shook his head violently.

  ‘No, not that you are wicked, for you must know that ye sin before you can sin, but he was wicked, your master, for that he used you so and also that he kept you in ignorance of what he did. I will not do so with you Ralph, for I am mad not wicked. You have not seen me when Tom comes and wrests me from myself and speaks with angels. Tom does strange and foolish things then, but I think even Tom will not commit this sin. And while I am in my senses, so I will not. It would be evil in me to do so.’

  He put his face in his hands and made a low moan. I could not think what ailed him now, but then when he stood and went drooping to the door, I saw his thinking.

  I upped and brought him back to the fire. ‘Listen to me, Ralph. That I will not lie with you is not for the reason that I do not like you, nor that I will cast you out on the street as your master did, but only that it is wrong and besides, I prefer women to sin with, if sin I must. You may stay here as long as you wish, although it is poor enough compared with what you are likely used to, and although I have little enough, all that is yours also.’

  He stared at me, tense as a cat that must pass a dog.

  ‘Do you understand me?’ I asked. After a moment he nodded. Then he reached out gently, gingerly, took the tipmost ends of my fingers, brought my hand to his face and kissed it reverently.

  For all the cold of the night, we slept on either side the fire. I slept hardly at all, because instead of two covers above both we had one each. But we could not be bedfellows any more than if he were a girl, until he was weaned from his sin. He was exhausted and slept, turning his head once and calling out without words, an ugly sad sound. I thought about him and wondered in the depths of my anger who had been his old master.

  XXXVIII

  Tom slept dreamless within me while I kept the boy Ralph as my apprentice. He had a boy’s bottomless hunger and the money and food were soon gone, so I took him out upon the begging cheat with me the next day, though he wept like a girl and shook his head so frantically I feared it might unship itself and fall off. I shook him and shouted that he might like to feel his belly cleaving to his backbone, but I liked it not, and we would make better profits with him than without, which was as well since he ate three times as much as I. It breaks my heart that I was angry with him for he had good reason to be afraid. But being a man and he a boy and schooled to obedience, I won the contest bravely, and he stood sullenly by me in the street and hung his head, while I cried his misfortune like a Smithfield stallman. Hunger lent wings to mine own tongue and I told a fine tale of how he was bom with but the rump of a tongue, so to speak, and words were lost to him, and how he was of good family but cast out therefrom when his mother that protected him died, and so he was double unlucky in that he had known easeful life and had now lost it. This is something I know myself, that it is far harder to bear the loss of wealth than it is to be brought up to harshness and hunger and find wealth later on.

  Once a fine neat merchant’s wife of the City stopped in front of us and berated me that I had myself cut the boy’s tongue out the better to beg with him.

  Ralph flushed with anger, stepped between us shaking his head fiercely, made a good deep bow and opened his mouth. When she saw no scars she tutted and dropped a groat in the bowl, and stalked off.

  So we ate well enough thanks to other wives and the boy’s bashful manners and soft sad face. Once we had food for the day and a faggot of wood for the night, we stopped and turned to lessons. Teaching him to read was no easy thing – for without him being able to recite his lesson, how could I know he had learned it? Soon all the cloister courtyard was snowed with little pieces of paper that titled the tree TREE and the hens HENS and Simple Neddy’s garden GARDEN. Sometimes I changed the labels about and bade him set them aright, or I wrote him a message on the slate, telling him to take off his cap and scratch his nose with it, and so on. It was hard for him, being unable to sound letters aloud and so find the riddle of a word’s meaning, but he had been encompassed about by men who could read and did so and he was apt to the work. Indeed it was like putting water on drouthy soil, whatever of learning I gave him was sucked and swallowed up.

  As evening fell, I was moved to take him into St Bride’s church and up to the great Bible that was chained there. He knew well of churches for he doffed his cap reverently and never spat nor coughed while he was there. At t
he lectern upon its hard eagle I opened the Bible at venture, to see what would be a text for him, and found it at the place where Christ saith, he who believes in me shall not die, but live forever.

  The candlelight lay like a shadow’s shadow upon his grimy face and he smiled at me and nodded.

  ‘Here is simplicity.’ I said to him, for I also am a lily of the field, that toil not neither do I spin, ‘Here is comfort.’

  He nodded again and then jumped from the shout that came out of the unlit rear of the church.

  ‘You two! Begone! Ay, you, out of this place.’

  Well, it was a churchwarden bustling between the carvings, waving his staff and bellowing at us. We ran out again into the dark alley and so onto Fleet Street, where I took a fit of laughing at the man’s furious face and frightened eyes, while Ralph frowned and punched his boy’s fist in his palm. I patted his tense shoulder.

  ‘Think you that a Man acquainted with sorrow would know him?’ I asked. Ralph frowned until he placed the reference and then smiled grimly as he walked.

  I chanced to look up and saw Becket at an upper window of Mrs Fumey’s shop, lit from behind by a fire and a tallow dip, the unmistakable lour of his shoulders.

  His shape disappeared and on a whim, no doubt from an angel clouting my suddenly dense head, I took Ralph’s hand and led him to the tables of a boozing ken opposite, where we sat on the bench beneath the red, lattices. Ralph was impatient, but I gentled him.

  Soon Becket sauntered from Mrs Fumey’s door, looked at the sky, spat, adjusted one of his pattens, wandered towards us as if hearing the beer calling and then suddenly turned and walked the other way.

  A tall well-dressed man behind him almost collided with him, excused himself and found Becket’s hand at the front of his doublet, was lifted two inches from the ground and carried backwards through an entrance into a court.

  Daring three horses and printer’s wagon, I pranced across the street followed by Ralph, and slid in at the entrance.