Free A Dead Man in Deptford by Anthony Burgess Page B

that
the scent of blood was on the street before one entered. Here
French Catholics of the lower orders - draymen, ostlers, butchers and the like - were taunting English Catholics, of moneyed
families though in exile, with their impotence to restore their
faith, a deformed faith since these were English, to their island
of mist and snow and no vineyards, without the aid of French
arms and money. And, said they, votre roi avail douze femmes
et preferait que son peuple fut damne s’il pouvait inserer son baton
dans une treizieme, adding too that their present queen la vierge
etait en realite une grande putain, and much more of the same.
With this, despite exaggeration, they would have been disposed
to agree, except that some nerve of patriotism was set ajangle,
and a young and burly aspirant to Catholic orders clanked his
winemug on the sleek head of a lawyer’s underclerk and set a
minor riot afoot. In this Kit would not have joined had these
French truculants let him alone, but as he was standing not
sitting he was easy to trip and went over in his clean garments
on a filthy floor to the partially toothless derision of the strawy
ostler whose large tripping muddy boot he at once grasped and
so upped the leg and had him down. The fighting was brief, for
the tavern-keeper was of notable muscle, as was his wife, and
Kit was chosen for the attention of the latter, whose bare arms
were like thighs. So, with bruised head and blood on his jerkin,
he departed with some of the Catholic English to another quieter
tavern, where there was song and pedantic theology enough. He
would, when he had both money and his mastership, buy himself
a sword.
    By midnight he had vomited thrice under the moon, not in
pain since it was the mere mechanical voiding of a surfeit, and
one more cup of wine settled his stomach but set his drunkenness newly awork. He tottered towards the inn where Tom
Walsingham was, battering the locked door and crying Courrier important de la reine d’Angleterre pour le milord Walsingham. He
was doubtfully admitted and clattered up the stairs to the known
room, finding it unlocked and, in strong moonlight, Tom awake
and startled in his shirt. Kit called Mon amour, me voici and
ripped off the shirt as well as his own bloodied raiment. What
he then did was more brutal than before, making Tom howl.
The news from la reine d’Angleterre must, so the wide-awake
keepers of the inn must now assume, be of appalling gravity.

    The next day Kit woke alone in the dortoir, his sleepfellows
long out and at their lectures. He found Tom Walsingham’s
man, Ingram Frizer, standing over him, chewing a straw. So it
was he who had been part of a dream of being newly pummelled.
Frizer was ready to pound again but desisted on seeing bruised
Kit blink in the painful light. He spat out his straw and spoke,
saying:
    - I will not have this, master.
    - Not what?
    - Blood upon him and he sorely battered. My office is to
protect him I serve and I will not have you nor any other do
him harm by slyly getting under what is my guard. So you are
warned and told.
    - What are you, fellow, that presume so? Kit asked with
scorn under an aching sconce.
    - You know what I am, fellow yourself, what are you in
spite of your fine bloodied clothes and your graces and airs? A
boy student and no more, that had better mind his book than
meddle with my master that is brother to the Lord of the Manor
and will inherit. So keep away from him or it will be the worse.
Here he bunched a mottled fist in threat.
    - Learn manners, mannerless lout. Raise your fist at me
and you will be beaten black. By God, I will leave my bed
now to do it.
    - 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