A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess Page A

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.