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

by Patricia Finney

  The wind was blowing harder, the frost coming in like iron. When Simon moved his shirt crackled, starched by ice, shreds of it frozen into the blood of his cuts and grazes, and he shook like a man with the ague. He tried banging his arms around his body, which hurt him, and he looked up at the nearest lantern, burning feebly high above him, and his face was stung with the first whirling little dry flakes of snow. He coughed when he breathed in. No doubt there would be a frost fair on the Thames this winter and oxen roasted on the ice and men doing a roaring trade in Dutch skates and metal pomanders made to hold hot coals and incense – he still had one in his clothes chest from last year, wrought like a pomegranate.

  He must escape. Above him the wall of the bridge rose sheer, the houses of merchants and drapers with their windows gazing directly out upon the river that was their wealth, to see their ships pass, full of wealthy folk snoring in embroidered shirts and caps, pillowed and blanketed in linen and wool, guarded by bedcurtains from draughts, inured to the tumble of the waters beneath and deaf to any cries for help. He shaded his face from the snow, screwed up his short-sighted eyes: perhaps there was a ledge near the lantern? He squinted again: it was narrow, but yes, perhaps there was a ledge. Once on it, he could break a window….

  He leaned the halberd against the wall, squeezed his fingers into a long crack in the brick work, bruised his toes into another unmortared seam, hoisted himself up a little, spreadeagled like a spider against the wall, his face squashed sideways. He pushed up a little higher, his fingers scrabbled for a purchase but could find none, his toes gave way and he fell. Picking himself up, he moved along to a rougher part, set himself, tried again. His mind yammered on within, as he inched himself up the cruel bricks: could he shout for help? That would attract the ragged man, the clapperdudgeon, one of authority among beggars. Surely he could offer the man more in ransome money than he would get for Simon’s corpse? How? And why should the man believe him? Why should he come near? He had only to wait and the wind and cold would do his work for him.

  He had climbed perhaps five feet from the pier, but his fingers and toes were bleeding, the bricks filmed with frost. His calf muscle cramped agonisingly, salt sweat went into his eyes, he paused, slipped, clawed, slipped again, and fell once more. The breath was knocked out of him and he blacked out.

  He came to once more with a new thought: there was a band of white stone running along the bridge wall, just below the lantern poles and first high windows, which marked the height of the arches for ships. He had mistaken it for a ledge that he could climb to.

  He moaned in despair and turned on his side, curled up. The evil wind wrapped itself round him, the snow fell on him, he was a mass of bruises and his mouth hurt, he was alone in Becket’s nightmare, marooned at the centre of a broad river, and cold, cold. There was no escape. In the morning they would find his corpse and his soul would be gone, flown away from the ice. It would be a relief, he thought dully, trying to shelter his head with his arms, an ending to coldness and confusion.

  Oddly he was starting to feel warm again, even comfortable and sleepy. It would be good to sleep. If he shut his eyes and concentrated he could imagine that they had found him, that he was tucked up in bed with hot bricks at his feet and Uncle Hector had put ointment on his hurts, and there were warm blankets and no more need to struggle or fight….

  He dreamed he was a child again, peering up at a table set with clean linen and unleavened bread upon silver dishes, and a cup of wine overflowing and a dish of herbs and another of salt. He knew he was meant to ask an important question, but he had forgotten it while all his family stared at him for betraying them. Outside the Angel of Death was pushing on the door.

  What was he supposed to remember? He knew the words, he could hear his mouth saying them, slurring the Hebrew, making nonsense of his prayer, an empty garble though he knew them so well, they were words of power and importance, fit words for his last breath. But the wind stripping the life from his bones had also stripped memory and understanding from his mind, if he had ever really understood, and he had not. In truth, scraping along the bottom of his soul, he knew he had not, and he struggled to think, to remember, belatedly to learn.

  This was a matter between Simon and God, nor will I presume to tell it as a tale. Let it suffice that at last, in the cooling furnace of his heart, as softly as the first sight of the sun, he remembered.

  It was a simple enough thing, and no secret. Beyond and between all is one Lord God. Not Simon’s god of number, not Walsingham’s god of logic, nor yet my brother’s burning god, but one single, simple God, beyond all our walls of words, who keeps us company. And at last Simon need not flee nor hide from confusion.

  Perhaps the wind changed a little, perhaps his heart found some fresh fuel to burn. It was a hard thing for him, requiring all the remaining dregs of his courage, on a single thought like a mustard seed to turn from false warmth and into cold like a dagger in each vein.

  I am dying, he said to himself, and struggled to open his eyes, blurred, dizzy, saw his hands before his face blocking the dark snowflakes. No, but I should be dead, he thought and found himself smiling a little in triumph that he was not, yet.

  He pulled his hands away from his eyes, and uncurled himself, came to his hands and knees, staggered like a new-born calf to feet which he could hardly feel. There was a clatter on the stones and he blinked down at the thing that fell there, short and stubby, fletched at one end, sharp-pointed. Why, it was a crossbow bolt….

  Simon reacted like a mummer in a comedy. He stared at the bolt, blinked owlishly through the stinging murk at what he thought was a gleam of metal on Old Swan Steps, no great distance. There was the creak of a jack winding up the crossbow anew.

  He had been about to surrender to death, but now the fear of it sent the blood into his veins again. He grabbed his weapon, ducked under the arch, stepped back on the ledge above the waters, balancing on numb slippery feet above the fading ebb, still with the halberd clutched in his hand. He thrust it up and over with all his strength and by a miracle it stuck, hooked over the beam. And then he was scrambling up beside it, pulling halberd free, eeling along the beam on his belly, hooking the halberd again between the beam and the wall and climbing down again on toes and fingers with the halberd shaft as an aid.

  As he looked out onto his new pier a crossbow bolt slammed into the bricks above him: he winced, crouched, scuttled round to the next arch. He did it once more and then again and again, his mind fogged and confined in weariness and fear and cold, but some newly deep-dyed thread of obstinacy forcing his body doggedly to save itself, himself, all the world lost to him save his aching arms upon the rough slimy oak and the wet bricks and his toes cramping upon the narrow ledge….

  At last he stopped in the middle of crossing the torrent on a bracing beam, and he knew he had no more coin of strength or courage to spend, there was nothing left in him. He peered down through a blur of sweat and ice at the Thames. He would stay where he was. At least he was sheltered from the snow and the biting wind, he would be damnably hard to shoot or hit with any weapon, and he was in a place where he would be afraid to let go of his mind and sleep again. Even if he were not afraid, the magnified roar of the river would help prevent him. It was the best he could do, the very best. Now he was in the hands of the Almighty.

  He folded his arms to rest his chin on his ruined hands, coughed, and began to consider of a problem in chess-playing.

  L

  Well it was I that led them to him, for it was I that saw his seal ring, the one he had sent in sign of his authority to Mr Recorder Fleetwood, it was I and an angel saw it in the window of a shop well-known to deal in such things by St Paul’s. When I whooped and leapt and pointed, Becket left off his questioning of a stationer and came and looked. One minute later we were within the shop, the man’s grill had given to the lever of Becket’s sword, and the shopkeeper himself was backed up against his furthest wall, trembling at the length of steel Becket was threatening to
wash in his unworthy blood.

  ‘No, I…I…your honour… I would never…sir, I beg you…. It was an upright man sold it me…. I will tell you sir, of a surety, he wishes a third of the…. Yes, he shall have it…er…well, your honour, sir… It is in my ledger… If you will permit….’ He sweated no less when the blade transferred its position to the place behind his ear where two inches will suffice to kill.

  ‘Capperdudgeon Mick Reynolds,’ he said at last. ‘That is upright-man to the beggars by the bridge…. Sir, do you not want the ring…’ I plucked the ring off the counter where Becket had made a dent when he slammed it down and cartwheeled after him. At first we thought it a foolish quest for there seemed to be no beggars on the bridge at all, and certainly no sign of Simon. Becket stamped to the fences on the drawbridge and roared ‘Simon Ames’, and we heard a faint answering cry.

  An apprentice ran delightedly for a ladder and the drawbridge was groaning under the weight of sighseers, experts all, by the time it arrived. Some urged waiting on the Watch, others would have the Mayor and Aldermen sent for, and in the meantime Becket lifted the long ladder over the fence, set it firmly on the nearest pier in the sugar-dusting of fresh snow, climbed the fence and began his descent. I held the ladder for him and shook my head fiercely at the naughty imp that said I should topple it over to watch him swear.

  Shaded equally from night and the sun by the weight of the bridge above him, Simon had not realised day had come and that the glittering pattern of water reflected on the stones was not the glitter of a distracted mind. He thought there might be some beast burdening his back and searching his ribs with a fiery icicle but he heard his name called and answered. A little time later he looked up and saw sunlight streaming past the black broad shape of Becket, peering round the pillar and under the arch at him.

  ‘Jesu, Simon,’ said Becket. ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘I thought they could not reach me here,’ whispered Ames a little complacently. ‘Nor did they.’

  ‘Well, I cannot reach you either if you got up from that little ledge, my fat arse will not permit of it.’ Ames smiled feebly. ‘So my friend, you must climb down yourself.’

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Die then.’ said Becket harshly. ‘Would you have me run a boat beneath you to catch you as you fall? Come, if you got so far, you may come further. Move along, slowly, gently…

  He came to the place where he knew he must swing himself down, grip with his toes and transfer his weight to the tiny ledge. How had he done it in the dark? Now he could see what he was about his heart quailed in him.

  He tried gingerly twice, but the second time he nearly fell and gripped the comforting width of the main beam like a woman.

  ‘I cannot,’ he gasped hoarsely. ‘No, David, I…’

  ‘Can you hold still then?’ demanded Becket.

  ‘Ay,’ Simon whispered shakily, ‘that I can do.’

  ‘Wait there.’

  Where would I go? Simon wondered pointlessly. He heard shouted orders, much thundering on the bridge, saw a thick rope dangled uselessly from the other side of the bridge, Becket return to his pier.

  ‘Stay still no matter what,’ shouted Becket. ‘Hold tight. A boat will come through…’

  And in a little while it did, sculled by a delighted waterman with another balancing in the prow. Simon was too short-sighted to see clearly how it was done: as the boat came racing in between the piers of his own arch, the waterman that was standing caught hold lightly of the rope that was trailing from the bridge, let it run through his hands as the other waterman tossed his frail craft from white eddy to rushing stream and then threw the end of the dripping coil to Becket as he passed. Becket meantime had hammered a strong hook into the far pointed end of the pier. He pulled the rope taut, passed it about the hook and then dusted his hands.

  ‘There is a good way about this and a better way. The good way about it is to clasp your arms across the rope so and push off with your feet and slide down to me. But that will bum your arms cruelly and you might leave go for the pain.’

  Simon nodded and tried to concentrate through the fog in his mind and the stabbing in his back. Had the crossbow bolt hit him after all and he not noticed in his numbness? Listen, pay Becket good mind, he knew what he was about….

  ‘The better way is to take the halberd you have with you hooked on the beam there, grip hands close on that across the rope and let the halberd shaft bear the pain of burning on the rope. Do you understand?’ Simon nodded, reached for the halberd, in terror lest he drop it in the water and end up burning his arms. Burning might be better than freezing…. No, better the halberd.

  It was heavy, heavy as his head. Infinitely slowly he passed it under the rope that stretched below the beam, just touching it, gripped tight with both hands, swallowed hard in a burning throat, set himself and let himself slide over sideways from his precious beam.

  The jerk on his arms almost unloosed him and the end of the halberd struck sparks from the stone as he slid down it and his legs trailed in the water which he could do nothing about and the breath had been blown from his body but Becket had knelt and spread his arms wide to take the force of his arrival and he was clamped tight and being hauled up and onto the pier again.

  He tried to rise to his feet but his animal part had used its last strength and he was crowing at the frosty air. He fell again, crumpling up, and found himself lifted up on Becket’s shoulder, very inelegantly and arse foremost. The ladder creaked ominously as Becket scaled it while the sightseers about cheered and clapped.

  Byt the time he reached the top Simon had gone silent, his eyes half-shut in his trodden face and his breath barely whistling and creaking under his grazed ribs. Rather than wait about finding a horselitter, Becket slung his own cloak round Simon and carried him through the streets at a long angry stride, straight to his uncle’s house in Poor Jewry trailing a clamour of nosy small boys and dogs. There all was a flurry of hot bricks and blankets and his Aunt Leonora magnificent and imperious calling orders more rapid than a file of arquebusiers in Portuguese and English combined. A boy ran to find Dr Nunez who had gone out to attend upon a goldsmith with the gout.

  Yet ever Simon lay still and cold and so Leonora called up one of the boy-children and bade him get into bed and snuggle up to his kinsman to warm him out of his deathsleep, which was a heavy thing to put on a child. Yet he did it willingly.

  Dr Nunez returned, breathing heavily from running up the stairs, took Simon’s pulses and pronounced that there was not a one of his humours that was not so dangerously low, but that he felt letting blood would further unbalance them. The day passed and gradually the warmth came back into Simon and the child was bidden out of the bed again and downstairs to eat his supper. Simon tossed and turned and a flush began to bum high on his cheek and he suddenly broke through the skin of sleep and clutched at Dr Nunez’s sleeve. When Dr Nunez soothed him he croaked louder, first Portuguese, then English, angrily.

  ‘Tom O’Bedlam, ask Tom O’Bedlam, there’s the answer, when they will kill her…. Listen…the number is one, three, four and seven.

  …One for God, three for your Trinity, four for your evangelists and seven seals upon some book of the Apocalypse, there is the key…’

  Becket came down the stairs two at a time and stormed into the kitchen to find me, eating pottage with the children by the fire. He lifted me up by the front of my doublet and made it tear.

  ‘What do you know, what have you not told me you half-wit zany, you counterfeit crank…’

  I curled up and held my arms over my head, but I knew from my angels what his question meant and began to sing as the ballad singer had done once, before Becket stopped his song forever.

  * * *

  ‘From the hag and hungry goblin

  That into rags would rend you,

  And the spirit that stands by the naked man

  In the book of moons, defend ye.

  That of your five sound senses

>   You never be forsaken

  Nor wander from yourselves with Tom Abroad to beg your bacon…’

  * * *

  Dr Nunez was behind him, rumbling an order, Becket was staring at me thunderstruck.

  ‘The ballad of Tom O’Bedlam. How do you know the words?’

  ‘I made it,’ I told him, straightening up and unloosing his hands from me, driven sane with anger that the last good spawn of my brain should be bent to treason. ‘I made it, I wrote it in Bedlam on stolen scraps of paper and sent it to my brother. All but this part.’

  ‘Alas the sorrow of that bastard child Which soweth love will make me wild, And if I must die so on I moan

  ’Till her Moon’s face become mine own And sorrow has ceased on a silver feast, Hey diddle, sing diddle, hi diddle I drone…’

  And I spat to show my opinion of Adam’s doggerel chorus which the song needed not.

  ‘Sing it again,’ demanded Dr Nunez, clearing a space next to a fascinated little girl and opening his penner. I sang, he wrote while the little girl dutifully held his bottle of ink, and then he went among the words, plucking them out with underlining and muttering the numbers under his breath.

  ‘The…bastard…will…die…on…her…own…feast. ’

  And I laughed at the simplicity of it, to make a date for murder and rebellion upon the Accession Day and to pass the knowledge of it about under guise of a ballad that every child in London could sing now and was already tiring of.

  ‘It is the dragon,’ I shouted. ‘The dragon of danger, rising up in his house of secrets, and Lucifer within to shoot her down, seek ye the dragon…’