A Dead Man in Deptford (17 page)

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 behind, 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.

- Have you any of these?

Baines took with a hard look the purse at his waist and
shook a few ill-shaped pieces shilling-sized out so that they
clanked dismally on the table. A drinking soldier peered, hearing the dull ring, and took one without permission to try with
his teeth. He threw it down with a loud mouth-fart. Kit peered
too. It had an ill-wrought Queen of England on its face. Baines
said:

- That man there, see, knew it for bad goods.

- But with a right stamp and worthless metal any man
could do it?

- There are many taught by Gilbert how to do it. I will kick
him into the hold of the ship that takes him to the gallows. It is
a foul crime and a heresy.

- I am not altogether sure of the foul crime but I am
ready to be taught. Heresy is not the right word.