The Best of Men (2 page)

“Were you a Muslim?”

“I still am.” There was a silence. “Do you regret now that you saved me?” asked Yusuf.

“Not at all – though isn’t it forbidden for
you
to worship?”

“It is forbidden these days even to have infidel ancestry. As you may know, more than thirty years ago the
conversos
were almost all expelled, and amongst those of us left, few are brave enough to cling to our true religion. I could bring the Inquisition down upon me just for taking this bath.”

So Yusuf had risked his own life, Laurence realised, in inviting him here.

After they had dried themselves, Yusuf gave Laurence a clean shirt. “My son’s,” he said. “He is away doing business on the Guinea Coast, where I bought my Khadija. She is now the lady of the house. My first wife died when I was still captain of a ship. I have five sons who are grown and gone to sea – they inherited my passion for it.”

At table they were served by Khadija. Yusuf took no wine himself but filled Laurence’s cup generously. When the plates were cleared, he brought out a pipe and lit it. After inhaling, he passed it to Laurence, who was familiar with the smell: he had smoked hashish as a youth with his tutor Seward in Venice, and on a few occasions since. Relaxed by the drug, he listened more than he talked, yet he began to suspect, from something in Yusuf’s manner, that his host was deliberating over an unspoken question.

Finally Yusuf put down the pipe. “I must ask – why do you claim to be an Englishman? I am sure that you have Barbary blood. I should call you a Moor like myself, if it would not insult you.”

“Oh no, I’m used to being called many things,” said Laurence, amused. “I’m only half English, though. My mother is a Spaniard.”

“Ah, that explains your facility with the language. Is she in Cadiz?”

“She’s in England. I haven’t seen her in six years.”

“You have been away a while. As a soldier?”

“For most of the time.”

“So what brings you to my city?”

Laurence laughed shortly. “No good reason.”

“Are you by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Where will you go next?” Laurence shrugged. “You are welcome to stay with me however long you wish,” Yusuf said, “or I could find you passage to Africa, or to the Indies, should that strike your fancy. There is also a ship in harbour bound for the English coast. She leaves within the week. Or would you prefer to travel by land?” Laurence shrugged again; he had absolutely no answer. “Khadija!” cried Yusuf. “Our guest is in need of advice.”

Khadija came bearing a small woven basket. She tipped it on to the table and about a dozen small, shiny, oval-shaped shells fell out, smooth on one side and etched with what resembled little teeth on the other. “Pick them up and put them in my hands,” she told Laurence, in accented Spanish. “Then I shall let them fall where they will, and read them for you. They will speak of your future.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe they can,” Laurence said, forcing a smile.

“Then what have you to worry about?” asked Yusuf.

It would be churlish to decline, so Laurence did as she bade. He must pretend interest, he reminded himself, as she surveyed the shells, her broad lips parted in concentration.

“You tried to kill yourself today,” she began, her tone clear and certain.

Laurence betrayed no reaction. Privately, he was unsettled. Even if his host had described to her what had happened on the road to Cadiz, there was an earlier event about which Yusuf could not be aware.

“A woman has poisoned you,” she went on, sending a shiver down his spine. “Now you are in hiding, from the world and from yourself. Yet
soon you will cross paths with another woman, who will deserve your love. She has the name of a great queen and she will give birth to your child, if you are ready for her. But if you do not spit out the poison, you will lose her.”

His scepticism returned: it was the sort of vague, trite prophecy that Juana might have invented, assuming that everyone wanted to hear about love and fertility. In his case, this could not be further from the truth. The strange apprehension that he had just felt was probably the hashish working on his troubled mind.

“Again,” Khadija ordered. Obediently he gathered up the shells. This time when she released them they jumped apart and scattered as though possessed of their own force. She absorbed their arrangement and said with the same certainty, “You alone can prevent a tragedy in your land, and what you have that was stolen holds the key.”

“What is it that I have?” Laurence demanded, his pulse quickening. “Can you tell me?”

Khadija made no sign that she had heard, putting the shells back in their basket one by one. She was too astute to spoil the impact of her guesswork by elaborating on it, he thought wryly. Remarkable, however, that she should have been quite so fortunate.

She gestured to him to give her his hands; hers were soft, her fingers slender and pliable as those of a girl. Was he meant to thank her, he wondered, or was she offering him some kind of blessing? Her expression at once tender and severe, she inspected his palms, calloused from riding, and his nails, broken from months of living rough; and she rolled up his sleeves to the elbow, palpating the lean flesh of his forearms with her fingertips. “You earn your way with your hands,” she commented.

“He is a soldier, Khadija,” Yusuf informed her.

“Not any more. He makes his living through games of chance.” Laurence blinked at her, astonished. “And the night this was done to
you,” she said, touching the scar on his left wrist, “you played a game that changed your fate.” He gasped, shuddering as she caressed it.

“Khadija, now you are scaring him,” said Yusuf. “He’ll think you are a witch.”

She dropped Laurence’s hands and leant forward to murmur in his ear. “You must go home.”

“Why?” he whispered, his voice as tremulous as the rest of him.

“That is for you to learn.” She slipped from her arm a thin leather bracelet, which seemed to contain something stitched inside. “Here – it will protect you on the journey, and remove the worst of the poison,” she said, looping it about his scarred wrist. “Wear it until it falls off of its own accord.” As she fastened it, uttering words in another, incomprehensible language, he felt every nerve in his body tense and he could not avert his gaze from hers. Then she ran her hands over his face, as if to release him from her spell, and smiled sadly.

He bowed his head, trying to comprehend what had passed through him, and when he looked up, he was half relieved to see that she had vanished.

Yusuf was refilling the pipe. Apparently oblivious to his guest’s unease, he started to talk about the many ports he had visited, and the many occasions that he had braved death when his ships had been overrun by pirates, or swept into storms or wrecked on hostile shores; and he spoke of his love for the ocean, as whimsical a mistress as the goddess Fortune herself. “There is no life without her,” he concluded, “and maybe one day I shall set sail for a last time.” He fell silent, regarding Laurence with his dark, hooded eyes, before asking, “Which course will you choose tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Laurence said. “I honestly don’t know.”

“Not so,” Yusuf told him quietly. “In your heart, you have already decided.”

“H
ow is it for you, Beaumont, to be in England again?” Ingram asked.

Beaumont glanced around as if he might find an answer somewhere in the dank atmosphere of the taproom. “Strange,” he replied.

“Well, you look much the same,” Ingram said, although this was not completely true.

“But look at
you
, Ingram. You’ve lost some hair.

“Ingram ran a hand over his scalp. “Kind of you to mention it.” Beaumont, he observed, had not lost any of his hair, which was as black as ever, wavy and unkempt, tied back with a piece of string. As always, he appeared conspicuously foreign beside his fellow countrymen with their red and pink complexions, even when he was not burned to his present dark brown by a harsher sun than theirs; indeed, his colouring had earned him the derogatory Latin nickname of
Niger
when they were at university together. He still possessed his attitude of relaxed grace, leaning back against the wall so that he did not have to sit up straight on the wooden bench. He was clean-shaven, though not very well, and not very recently. He wore no jewellery save the plain gold earring that had a special significance for Ingram: on the night Beaumont had got his ear pierced, he himself had lost his virginity at
an Oxford brothel. While waiting for him, Beaumont had submitted to this small operation, performed by his favourite girl. When she wanted to give Ingram the same treatment, he had refused, blushing after what he had just done, and anxious to return to the safety of their college.

It amused him to see that Beaumont’s clothes were in typical disarray: his collar was missing, the front of his shirt hung open, and his doublet lacked most of its buttons. Apart from his shirt, which seemed reasonably fresh, everything was stained and torn. His dishevelled state could not be taken as an indication of his material circumstances. Ingram had known him to have his pockets full of money and be no better dressed.

Yet he had changed, Ingram thought. Though lanky as ever, he was broader in the shoulders: life in the army must have forced him into some more strenuous physical activities than drinking and bedding women. The shadowy skin around his pale green eyes had deepened in hue. His face was thinner, the lines on either side of his mouth now more pronounced, as were his high cheekbones, and he had acquired a small scar across his lower lip on the left side. His expression was not quite so mischievous as Ingram remembered; perhaps he even had a guarded look about him.

“You hardly acquired that blackamoor colour fighting in the Low Countries,” Ingram remarked.

“I was in Spain for the last two or three months.”

“In Spain! To see your mother’s family?”

“No.”

“Why, then?” Beaumont shifted in his seat. “Let me guess,” Ingram said. “It was for a woman. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Were you in love?” Beaumont squinted at him. “Tell me about her. Was she some Spanish duchess bored by an inattentive husband? A courtesan more skilled in the arts of seduction than you?”

“Enough, Ingram.”

“It ended badly, I assume.”

“Very badly.”

“I’m sorry. Did you sail here straight from Spain?”

“No, I flew,” said Beaumont sarcastically. “Let’s get some more wine.”

He gestured at the serving woman, who approached at once with a new jug. He asked her name, at which she blushed and answered, giggling, and hovered by their table until summoned by another drinker.

“Ever prodigal with your charm, aren’t you,” Ingram commented, when she had gone.

“It doesn’t cost anything to be pleasant.”

“Speaking of pleasant, this is the lowest tavern in Newbury. I wouldn’t have set foot in it if you hadn’t insisted. Why didn’t you come to my brother’s house, half a mile off? We serve much better wine.”

“I’m sure you do,” said Beaumont, availing himself of the inferior liquid, “but I didn’t think Richard would be happy to see me. And I like low taverns.”

“As well I recall. Oh, Beaumont,
I’m
overjoyed to see you. I kept wondering if you were alive, hoping you were.”

Beaumont responded with one of the beautiful flashing smiles that Ingram had never managed to resist no matter how much his friend might irritate him, and reached out to pat Ingram’s hand. As he did so, Ingram saw that he bore another much longer scar on the underside of his left wrist, a jagged white line that contrasted painfully with the skin around it and ran from some point hidden beneath his sleeve all the way down to the base of his thumb. About the same wrist was tied a curious leather band that he now pushed back beneath his sleeve as though he did not want Ingram to notice it.

“How did you get the scar?” Ingram asked.

“A game of cards,” he said, dismissively.

“Still playing the tables, are you?”

“If the need arises.”

They were silent for a while; then Ingram said, “I’m glad you caught me when you did. I was about to leave for Oxford to join my troop.”

“Your
troop
?”

“I know – you’d think I’d be the last man to take up arms. But then
you
weren’t exactly full of martial spirit six years ago.”

“I wasn’t, and I’m still not,” Beaumont said, with a laugh.

“We may have no choice in the matter soon,” Ingram said, lowering his voice. “War is very likely.”

“What brought it all about, Ingram – politics or religion?” Beaumont inquired, pouring for them both.

Ingram sighed and considered. “As much the one as the other, I’d say. Parliament had its grievances over the King levying taxes without its consent, and imposing his prayer book, here and in Scotland. But there’s been rioting everywhere. You may not have heard yet – Parliament has accused His Majesty of being seduced by evil counsellors, Lord Digby above all, and Queen Henrietta Maria herself. Can you imagine – the radicals in the House of Commons were threatening to impeach her, to bring her to trial! They believed she was scheming to import Catholic troops from Ireland to stamp out the dissent in London. His Majesty had to send her to The Hague, they were both in such fear of her life. Hard to believe their own subjects would show such disrespect for her – and for a king who ruled in peace for so many years.”

“For over ten of which he couldn’t even be bothered to hold a Parliament,” Beaumont said, in his ironic way. “He only summoned it back because he was short of money. That doesn’t show much respect for his subjects.”

“I see you’re more informed than you pretend to be. Why did you ask for my opinion of events?” Beaumont merely shrugged. “I think you enjoy playing devil’s advocate. You always have.”

“Don’t be annoyed with me, Ingram. All I’m suggesting is that there seems to be wrong on both sides, and that the differences between King and Parliament could be negotiated –”