A Fine Madness by Alan Judd

Author:Alan Judd [Judd, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2021-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

That happened sooner than I had thought. One of Lord Admiral Howard’s men roused me at my house before dawn the next morning, telling me I was to go to the Rose tavern at Temple Bar. There I would meet others outside the tavern and proceed to Master Poley’s lodgings nearby. The man clearly did not know why, nor did he know that it was actually Christopher who was to go there. Ballard must have risen to the Babington fly.

Finding my way to Widow Turner’s house in the dark was a hazardous undertaking. The sky lightened as I went, however, and the most fearful thing I witnessed were looming grey figures in the dawn in Holywell Street where some houses had been pulled down for rebuilding. They looked like ghosts assembling and alarmed me at first until I saw they were vagrants who had slept in the ashes of the bonfires to warm themselves. Two were sturdy beggars who made towards me until they saw I wore my sword. There are even more such fires and more new buildings in our city now, are there not, sir? Sometimes I imagine a terrible conflagration. We should be roasted as in the flames of Hell.

It was properly light when I knocked on Widow Turner’s door. I expected the servants to answer but eventually she herself called out to know who was there. It was another long wait until she unbolted the door. She wore a shawl and shift, her hair tousled and awry, and before I could explain my mission she began apologising for her appearance, saying she regretted I should see her so untidy. I dared not say I thought she looked most fetching.

She left me to wait in the panelled room while she found a maid to wake Christopher. When she reappeared she kindly offered me bread and sustenance and I was still declining, with genuine regret, when Christopher appeared. He too looked tousled, blinking through the shroud of sleep. I could not explain anything before Widow Turner but merely said we were summoned to our duties. As she closed the door upon us I fancied she gazed almost wistfully, but whether after Christopher or me I could not tell.

I could not participate in the arrest, of course, but walked part of the way with Christopher to Temple Bar, rehearsing what he should say or not say. Before we parted I bought us an apple each from a stall, then left for Whitehall and my numbers and ciphers.

They were ever a solace to me. I accept the necessity of action, of acting in the world, having been obliged to bestir myself more often than I desired. But it always felt like a distraction. A distraction from what? Well might you ask, sir. From the search for truth, from that human quest we find in Plato and the ancients. Now that I am confined here, without my beloved Mary for company, I become more than ever convinced that Plato was right, that truth is to be found in the mathematic.

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