A Dead Man in Deptford (12 page)

- Why myself?

- Walsingham speaks well of you. Both Walsinghams.

Kit shuddered at that and took a draught of cold ale to
quell a certain mounting heat in his veins. He said:

- It is still term time.

- It is near over. Your absence will do no harm. Remember
that great power boils and thunders behind you. Hardly, hardly.
There is no noise and must be no noise ever. Let me say something of Thomas Morgan in Paris. He is secretary to the Queen
of Scots and most dearly and deeply trusted. She has ever been
a trusting woman. Morgan is Gifford’s passport to the lady. She
is a most beautiful lady and she heats the blood of our Catholics,
especially when they are drunk. She is the Jezebel whom Knox
execrates and she is also the Virgin Mary rediviva. Women are
terrible creatures. I think we may ride to London together.

And so they did, Nick, as he was to be called, proving, des
pite the rain and wind into which they rode, a man cheerful and,
though moral scruple in the higher affairs affected him little,
tender towards snotnosed starvelings in villages and even towards
a dead pied dog that lay with swollen belly ripe to burst on the
road. He gave a reasonable rendering of Catullus’s irrumabo,
approving pedication as a punishment though not as a pleasure,
and listened to Kit’s half-remembered versions of Ovid with
an approving ear. He was dark of eye and skin and beard
like Walsingham his master, and Kit thought on the utility
of such colouring when centres of Spanish intrigue must be
broached. He spoke of Machiavelli and the need to understand
the ferocity of certain acts of policy, as for instance Sir Walter
Raleigh’s massacre of the Irish five years, was it, back, women
and children on their knees begging for their lives ruthlessly
slaughtered and all justified by the need to wage war fast and
then forgotten. Did Kit know Sir Walter? Kit did not. Strange,
for their two names had come together in a pretty posy of poesy
a month or so back printed by Ed Blount, was it. No, Kit did
not know, he had not been told, he had received no copy, he
felt aggrieved. Well, if the time should come when Sir Walter’s
strange doings with mathematicians and atheists had needs be
probed by the Service, then Kit, might he call him Kit, had his entree. Yes, he knew some French. It was known he knew, and
that was a recommendation.

In London, where a high wind clattered down the bricks
of chimneys and women were skirted and men shod in mud,
Kit went at once to Tom Watson’s house. Tom’s servant, the
humpbacked Ralph, let him in and said he might proceed at once
to his master’s bedchamber, as from tomorrow though no longer
his master, and Kit, entering, saw at once the vindictiveness of a
servant dismissed, for Tom was frotting away in full nakedness
with a wench or woman or lady, naked too, the covers of the
bed all fallen, clothes hastily doffed mingled with the rushes of
the floor. Kit excused himself and felt sick. On a table in what
Tom called his study he found four, five, six copies of a thin
book with the title Gaza. Samson and his blindness? No, gaza
was the name of the treasure house of a Persian king, hence of
any foreign prince. In it, his fingers atremble, he found his poem:

And he found also a reply:

No. He read all through, his poem entire, the other, called
a reply, entire, then quatrain answered by quatrain. Then the
names - his and that of the great bejewelled courtier whom the
Queen called Water and he himself, in grandiose magnification,
Ocean. Kit, the very sound of dripping, kit kit kit, faced the roar
and swell. Up in the world sang a far hautboy. Tom Watson
entered girdling his nightgown about him, his face thunderous.
Kit excused himself anew, blame Ralph. Tom said he had already
buffeted him out. The lady? My lady wife. No. Yes. My lady. We
are two months wed. Your lady. My heartiest, my most cordial, it is a surprise. It was sudden. Yes, you were not told of your poem
in print, Raleigh, well there was the wedding and the ways mire
and the carriers slack. My heartiest. It will do no harm, this dour
response to pastoral prettiness. Much happiness. It will help sell
the printing, already four hundred odd on sale in Paul’s yard.
Why are you here? An eternity of. My thanks. Why here?

Kit saw Robin Poley the next morning. Poley was all smiles
and amiable strokings. Here is the letter sealed and here a
pouch to enpouch it. You must be armed, you know that?
On the Queen’s service in a perilous city. You have no sword
but here is one I loan, my father’s, God rest him, and precious.
The scabbard worn and the belt frayed but no matter. It is foul
weather for riding and expect a rough Channel which they call
the Sleeve or Manche.

I must guess and suppose as ever, but that Kit was in
Canterbury that November is attested by his name in good black
ink in the form Marley. The last will and testament of a certain
Mrs Benchkyn bears it as fourth witness. I spoke to one who
had seen it, but this is of no moment. I see Kit as queasier than
before on the bouncing packet over seven or more tumultuous
leagues of churning bile answering his own, hiring his horse at
Calais with money but adequate that Philips or Phelips had rung
out, and proceeding to Paris in the foul weather that lashed and
enshivered northern France as much as southern England. Paris
put fear into him, a city of monstrous size to which London was
but a market town. Its ambages of streets bewildered. He had
been told he must seek the lodgings assigned to Service agents
great and small between the rue de Champ Fleury and the rue
du Coq near to the Louvre. Here were stinks and ordure
enough, beggars and pimps, cutpurses and cutthroats, whores
with pocked bosoms open to the wind and rain. It was termed
a safe house, the one to which he rode. Its street door was open.
Kit dared not yet enter for fear that a Paris prigger of prancers
would steal his mount under pretence of holding, but an ostler
that was English, though of rascally appearance, doubtless fled
France to escape English justice, appeared to lead the horse to a
stable. Then Kit found Berdon, or Beard, a name for one place and another for another, Walsingham’s Paris agent in chief, a
man who appeared with a bone in his fist, chewing and weighing
up the visitor. He said:

- Well, you must shift as you can, we are crowded out. We
keep a deal of straw for our odd helpers to doss on. Do not be
made afraid by such as you meet, few are fine gentlemen. We
must use what we can. You are a philosopher? You have studied
of how old absolutes must yield to new relatives? There is but one
crime for us now and you will know what it is. A man may be
a thief or murderer and yet shine in the great virtue of loyalty.
Who are you after?

- Mr Gifford.

- Aye, dear wayward Gilbert that goes his own way and
is hard to track. Here he is called Monsieur Coleredin. He
will be here for his London post though none knows when.
You talk of urgency. There is nothing that is not urgent, so
London says. But there are relative urgencies. You may come
and eat.

A sort of dinner was proceeding in a room fairly furnished
in the French manner, a couple of silent men in black dipping
each a half of an avian carcase of some kind in a brown sauce
and finickingly though drippingly biting off what flesh was left.
Berdon or Beard made no introductions but offered Kit bread,
a highly stinking cheese, and a decanter maculated by greasy
fingers. Then he said:

- There are troubles coming here. St Bartholomew will
be nothing to it. They talk of the war of the trois Henris,
you know enough French, good. That is the Henry that is the
Third, him of Navarre and him of Guise. And behind the King
is Medical Kate as we call her, bitch and woman devil. Him of
Navarre is out of the succession because the Pope has damned
him to hell for ever, and Guise, who is a duke, is going to kill
all the Huguenots. He is to get the crown, they say, and help put
Scottish Mary, who is another French bitch and harlot, on the
Catholic throne of England. He is a cousin or some such thing.
So you see what we are in the midst of. Beware of the streets.
Eh, friends, eh?

That was to the two carcase-chewers. They chewed and
nodded. Kit asked to hear more of Guise.

- Guise? They call him already King of Paris. You know the
rue St Honore? No, not yet, you will not. There is what they call
the Hotel de Guise and when he emerges in his finery they all bow
down to him and beg to kiss his arse and the women to lick his
poxed prick and there he is waving his hat of many feathers and
crying to kill the Huguenots, rob their shops, knock out their
teeth with crowbars and much the same, rape the women and
roast the babies on spits. And then off the blackguardly rogues
go to do as they are bid, it is all great sport for them, eh, bullies,
eh?

Kit left the straw-filled garret that danced with fleas early the
next morning. He had half-slept with his fist round the pommel
of the borrowed sword. Rogues snored or lay awake or sat awake,
sucking their teeth and scratching, looking at him. At dawn he
saw an act of buggery proceeding, a double act, turn and turn
about with the straw flying and a sneeze timed with a final thrust,
irrumabo. The look of the act of what could be love or lust did not
please him. The beauty was all within, behind the locked doors of
the eyes. He had, back in Cambridge, taken one of Jem Follett’s
boys for a penny, an envisioned Tom Walsingham in his head
like a god and the motion towards irrumation like a prayer. He
rubbed his face and hands with rose water, a mother’s gift, before
seeking a shop where hot possets might be sold. But they did not
know of hot possets in the tavern where workmen downed harsh
red as a breakfast, eyes on him the sworded stranger. He drank
a mug. He was given the morning’s bread.

- Anglais?

- Anglais. Et bon catholique comme vous. Exile.

They spat before leaving. A French flea jumped from his
hand to his shoulder. And with this weight I’ll counterpoise a
crown or with seditions weary all the world. Words often came
to him thus, they were dealt by a ghost called the Muse. Since
all cards are within your hands to shuffle or to cut. A clinching
rhyme needed. Surest thing. Deal yourself a king. Fill in the
lines. He went out into a street enlemoned by a weak sun. The wind had dropped to sleep. He caught and crushed another flea,
or perhaps the same, on the sleeve of his doublet. I’ll either rend
it with my nails to naught or something something. How high
could a flea leap? Scale the high pyramides. It was a long walk
to the rue St Honor&. In a tavern where he took a second cup
he heard men talking in French he could barely follow. Come
from Chalons-sur-Marne where the League was (what league?)
to meet les seize. The arrondissements were planning their final
coup under him. Vive le duc. He thought he understood. He did
not wish to see the duke at his street levee. He could fashion a
better duke in his brain. He saw this duke enstaged, ranting in
rhythm. Heroes were in a sense lining up for his inspection. All
of the age, however set far back in the mists. Was then that a
mission, to give the times their images of pure power, an alembication of Machiavelli (himself no mean playmaker), pure in that
the heart with its allegiances and meltings would not pollute it?
He could hear now as he sat near the mean spitting fire of this
tavern a noise some streets off, that of a crowd howling, belike
for blood. Le duc, an old man nodded.

He left, leaving small English silver, it was all one, and
walked away from the noise. Where could he go, where could
he wait, for it was all waiting? November Paris was plaguily
cold. He entered the first church he came to and warmed
himself at a bank of candles. A low mass proceeded with few
worshippers kneeling on the stone paving. Hoc est corpus meum.
He kept his eyes coldly on the raised host. A Huguenot gesture
so he bowed. Tavern, church, tavern, a host in each. He left and
walked aimlessly but briskly. His feet, one two, one two, were
a faint drum to the recorder of his verses: