A Dead Man in Deptford (10 page)

- Aye, aye, and Frizer retreated though bunching still, you
are good at beating, we all know of you. Well, you are warned.
You are no more than a drunken booby and foul bugger. And I
do not speak of myself, for I can put men on to you that strike
to the very liver.

- Ave aye yourself, and Kit sat on the edge of his bed
in some queasiness. Off, off.

- I saved him from drowning, know that and keep it in
your black heart. And I can outbook you in learning if I wish.
I know the Greek word tupto and can act on it.

So saying he left, and Kit straightened his wrinkled hose,
blindly attached his bloodied trunks thereto, and put on his
dirty shirt. He was in need of a hot posset. This he got in
the College kitchen, where he instructed an undercook in the
curdling of hot milk with wine and the adding of cinnamon and
cloves. Then he went to the College chapel and sat in its cool
dark in a manner of self-disgust. There were confession boxes
here and, the hour being eleven, some students were lining up
on their knees at one of them. Auricular, as it was called, from
the Latin ear, but auric meant gold. Golden confession, a trinket
of the old faith reformed out of being. Now one confessed, if at
all, to God direct, but God rendered no absolution. He creaked
over, his headache still at him, to join the end of the line, asking
in a whisper:

- What is the formula?

- How?

- What do I say?

- I see, your first time. Say: Bless me father for I have
sinned exceedingly in thought word and deed through my most
grievous fault. And then peel your sins off one at a time, seriatim
if you prefer.

When his turn came he found himself in a dark cell with
a prie-dieu under a curtain of black lawn through which, by
grace of light beyond, he dimly saw an outlined seated figure.
A sacramental seal, a double anonymity. He said:

- I have committed fornication.

- So have many, my son. With women married or unmarried?

- Never. With boys and with men. (Married. Unmarried.
The rhotic weakness tried to strike a nerve, but the nerves
would not stay still for the striking.)

- So. That is a foul sin since it is against nature. We
have not merely the condemnation of Holy Mother Church herself, which ordains burning as Sodom was burned, but the
prohibition of reason, since the male seed is for purposes of
generation.

- Is all waste of the male seed equally heinous? Is mastru-pation as evil a sin?

- Less so since it does not win others to sin, but souls
resident in man’s seed in potentia that might at the last people
God’s kingdom are thwarted, nay murdered by an unnatural act.
And sodomy is most unnatural, iniquitous and beastly. I beg you
to give up that sin.

- I cannot, save by vowing celibacy. I am drawn to my
own sex, not to the other. I was born so.

- No man is born so. Male and female created he them.
You have been perverted at some point in your life recoverable
to memory.

- Not so. I am as I am. I can no more repent than I
can change my skin or grow another finger.

- You say cannot, I say will not.

- If I say I repent, I lie. If I undertake to turn my face
from it, this as I am told being a condition of forgiveness, then
the undertaking is a lie.

- Well, my son, you must needs be damned.

- And if I say that damnation itself is a lie?

- Then you commit yourself to atheism and what sins you
will. But make no mistake about damnation. When you die
you go to hell and stay in hell for ever. This is no matter
of supposition. Holy Mother Church is built on the rock of
Christ’s ordination. Turn your back on truth if that is your
will, since all men have free will, but be prepared (prepared,
prepared, arhotic) for the ultimate fiery embrace of the Father of
Lies.

- I say that my condition is condoned by Christ’s own
love of the beloved disciple.

- That is foul blasphemy and sulphurous ignorance and
shows lamentable perversion in confusing eros and agape. You
seem to be a lost soul.

- Amen.

He left black in mood and ready to fist Frizer to jelly,
though his headache was cured. He sat in the refectory with
students on whom no sanctity seemed yet to have descended,
for they threw bread pith at one another and lifted their arses
from the bench the louder to rap forth. They were quiet though
when one of their number stood at the lectern to read of the
sorrowful but triumphant end of a chosen Catholic martyr, one
Thomas Braintree who saw Christ in his glory as the flames
ate first his skin, then his flesh, then his bones. It was not
a savoury accompaniment to a meal of charred mutton and
unsalted turnips. And what of the martyrs under bloody Mary?
Kit cursed as he belched and burnt flesh and bland turnip met
in his mouth in ghost taste, tenuously bowing one to the other.
By the supernumerary testicle of St Anselm and the withered
prick of Origen, he would be away from here. By the renneted
milk of St Monica, he could stand no more of it. After the meal
he went to stand near the inn with its flowers of the season in
pots, but Tom Walsingham did not appear, nor dare he enter
after last night’s fury of love or whatever it was to be called.
He went to sleep on his pallet in the dormitory where one
sick student only moaned and called on his recusant mother.
At sunset, a great drama of flaming armies, he sought a new
tavern, ready if need be for fight, and found there the soldierly
questioner of yesterday, much at his ease and ordering wine for
a student circle around him. Kit asked of the tapster:

- Qui est ce gentilhomme?

- C’est le capitaine Foscue.

- Bien connu ici evidemment.

- Assez bien connu.

The captain was quick to hear the enquiry and said in
good humour:

- It is their version of Fortescue. Do not sit alone. You
seem sad. Here is good belly cheer. Join the company.

- Fotescue? (The r was weak.) I am Marlowe or Morley
or Marley.

Fortescue. Sit. Unsure of your family name, is it? A
name is what we hear ill and, alas, write ill. For long we did without these additions. It was enough to be named as in the
Holy Bible. Enough to be a John, like my friend Savage here,
or a Gilbert, like young Gifford here, though a Gilbert is not in
the Bible and comes from where? And you are what?

- Christopher.

- Not in the Bible either, but who would not be a bearer
of Our Lord Jesus on his back? Well, Christopher, drink. And
to what do we drink? To a Scots queen or a carroty Tudor? To
faith old or new-fangled? Well, for dear Gilbert we know what
the answer is, but Jack Savage is chronically unsure. This makes
him savage.

Kit took in the trinity - Captain Fortescue in silver-buttoned
doublet, cape gold-laced, black-bearded, black of eye, at ease
with himself, easily pleased; Gilbert Gifford (was it?) in a student’s black that made the more intense an extreme pallor as of
bloodlessness; Savage rufous, in rutilant taffetas threadbare but
defiant. Savage said:

- It is all a struggle. And the taking of sides may as well
be on the roll of the dice. Let us for God’s sake go back to
our fighting, for, fighting, a man is freed of the bondage of
thought.

- He fought well, Fortescue assured Kit, and will fight well
again. That was in the Low Countries whence we come. In a day
or so we take ship for England to raise a new company. We will
do for the Don.

- My brethren in the faith, Gifford said, but to hell with my
brethren. When England was Catholic we could have Catholic
enemies. I hate the French as I hate the Spanish and I have had
to live among them. Too few see the true injustice of the Reform,
that it makes false alliances between peoples opposed in blood.
What did my family do wrong? We were in Staffordshire back in
the mists, serving the God that was good enough for Harry Seven
and his son till the black eyes of the whore Bullen seduced him.
We stay, we do nothing, we become traitors. Then Gifford drank
bitterly. Fortescue’s eyes were, it seemed to Kit, very catholic in
their sympathy. Kit said:

- Here in Rheims we seem to be in a limbo where the blood of opposition is drained away. I mean protestant and
Catholic may meet without rancour over wine. I study divinity
at Cambridge -

- I am an old Caius man, Fortescue said. You?

- Corpus. Divinity, as I say, and am drawn here to resolve
doubts. Doubts dissolve in knowledge that religious change has
never been truly religious. Faith is corrupted by matters of state.
Christians should be Christians, that and no more.

There has to be work for curious theologians, Fortescue
said. They thrive on division. Leave it to them and go your own
way. The bread of the altar is what you think it is. Forget religion
and think on justice. It is unjust that slobbering Spaniards bring
their racks and thumbscrews en el nombre de Dios to oppress the
honest Dutch. The Hollanders are men of trade who would be
left alone. I fight Philip of Spain in the spirit of one who hates
empire.

- And, Gifford says, in the extending of his empire he may
put a Catholic monarch on the English throne. The Giffords
may be restored to the ancestral seat in Staffordshire. By grace
of Spain. What am I to think?

- Do not think, Fortescue said. Drink. Sing.

His voice was high and pleasing. The words and tune were
his, he said, but he had gotten no further. Could Christopher,
whom he would call Kit with his permission, add aught, he had
the look of a poet. Kit tried:

- You lack a rhyme, but no matter. (Weak the r in rhyme
and matter but what Kit thought might be so was not possible. There was a limit to contradictions.) Now Jack here will sing of
shepherds. It is deep in the race, this longing to be at rest on
a grassy knoll, piping to sheep. And see what happens. Christ
rightly calls himself the good shepherd, but the bishops carry
metal croziers that would never disentangle a baaing prisoner of
a thorn bush. So by metaphor all things be in time made false.
Sing, Jack.

So Savage sang:

It was now that Tom Walsingham entered, alone and smiling.
He knew Gifford, the others not. Fortescue said:

- Of the tribe of Walsingham that is the Argus of the
Queen, God bless her?

- Argus as faithful watchdog, Argus of the hundred eyes.
Not so many. Yes, his cousin but not in his service, Heaven
forfend.

- And you do what here?

- I am here with my friend. (He stroked Kit lovingly.)
To help ease the torment of decision.

- Where is your man? Kit asked.

- Beaten soundly for presumption and went whinging to
bed. Is it song we are having?

Savage said he could not remember the rest. Kit said they
might try this: