At his answer her nostril flared as if she’d tripped over a dead dog. “Ahemm, yes. So Mistress Black has avowed.”
Ned tried not to glare at the apprentice apothecary to his right. Something was going on, and he had the strongest suspicion the apprentice herb dabbler was about to dump him in the proverbial privy. How did all this concern him?
“Ahemm. Walter is travelling to Zurich after Twelfth Night. He’s been promised a position in the household of the eminent Pastor, Zwingli.”
Ned bowed his head in reverence. Ahh yes, that mention gave him all the information he needed to place Lady Dellingham. She was one of the clique of ardent church reformers that were said to be associated with Lady Anne Boleyn. From what he’d heard at the Inns, and from Meg Black, Ulrich Zwingli was reformist enough to be condemned by the church and moderate enough to be lambasted by Luther.
Lady Dellingham gave another of her distinctive coughs and continued. “Ahemm. His father and I felt it would improve his education to view the city, while we consult with Councillor Cromwell and tour some establishments practicing modern reform.”
To Ned that sounded like the beginning of a ‘however’ statement. “Ahemm. Poor Walter here has a delicate constitution and Doctor Butts has prescribed a few days of rest and a diet of lettuce and cooling foods to bring his humours into balance. However, since my husband and I have to travel to Hampton Court, Councillor Cromwell said we couldn’t do better than commend Walter to your care.”
Ned tried very hard not to scream out a refusal. Both his angel and the daemon choked the words into a strangled cough. Remember, they counselled nervously, the Dellinghams are friends of Cromwell.
“Ahemm. Walter is as ascetic. Like all our family, we model our lives on the early church fathers, and follow the pure unencumbered strictures of Our Saviour as translated by our dear brethren overseas. Back in Shropshire we live a simple life of devotion and prayer.”
Ned gave what he considered to be a reformer’s tight smile and bowed again, while shooting Meg Black another curious glance. He still wasn’t sure how all this effected him. So this pair was as touched as the maddest Bedlamite. What was the point of dragging him away from the pleasures of his Christmas Revel?
Lady Dellingham gave forth another of her peculiar throat clearings and started up again. “Ahemm!”
In the meantime Meg, cursed be her name, Black spoke up. “My lady, it would be an honour to have him as our guest.”
No it bloody well wouldn’t, screamed Ned’s daemon, though luckily all that come out was a slight strangled gasp. Even that sound gained an instant disapproving glare. Ned apologetically rubbed his throat as though the chill airs of the season were affecting him.
“Ahemm! Master Bedwell, I hope that is not an ague? Poor Walter’s humours are so easily unbalanced. Even the sight of some poor soul coughing sends him into a deeply melancholy humour.”
At this bizarre reproof, Ned was momentarily lost for an answer. He needn’t have bothered. Meg Black immediately stepped into the gap. “My lady, Master Bedwell is under the supervision of a most distinguished physician who, in the past, served the Royal household, and I dose him weekly to maintain a regimen of good physick.”
To Ned this was all news. He tried hard to look healthy and respectful, though his daemon saw fit to question whether this was a concocted story for the benefit of their particular visitor? Or was Mistress Black still consorting with that notorious trafficker in dark arts, Dr Caerleon?
It didn’t matter. Lady Dellingham gave him the sort of long nosed, questioning stare he was sure she bestowed upon known lepers and ‘sweats’ victims. “Ahemm, if that is so…”
Lady Dellingham left the statement open and shifted her bulk up from the chair in a slow ponderous upheaval and, ignoring his instant and very courtly bow, turned to her son. “Walter I leave you in the care of these two. Remember that in the city the devil lays out snares even for the pious.” Then giving both Ned and Meg a final lemon-sucking, pinch-mouthed glare, she strode out of the suddenly opened door.
Ned was the first to recover from the abrupt departure and gave his companion-in-care a quizzical shrug before walking over to Walter with a friendly smile. “So Walter, what do you want to do and where do you want to go now you’re in the premier city of the kingdom?”
Their mousy charge gave them both a timid hesitant smile that would shame a cony, and stared at them with those bulging, watery eyes and murmured his request. Later on Ned would curse that as his greatest mistake. If only Meg Black had spoken first the trouble may have been less. But then, when Lady Fortuna deals you a Ruff hand, it pays to play it bold.
***
Chapter Three: The Relics of London
Ned wasn’t impressed. In fact to be honest, the sermon was boring. He lent against the stone pillar impatiently waiting for the service to finish. In the past he’d found the celebratory masses a real pageant of colour and the singing was as if angels had come to earth. As for the vaulting arches and painted ceiling of St Paul’s, the greatest cathedral in the country, it was still magnificent, especially when the light cascaded in a rainbow waterfall through the stained glass windows. Once upon a time when he was young and innocent, this had all been the most majestic experience, and even in the company of his uncle, the Christmas service was a glorious wonder bringing the treasure of the birth of our Saviour to life.
Now however, a few years later, he felt jaded and cynical. Almost losing his life while caught up in a treasonous plot of the premier prelate in England had caused a monumental crisis in faith. After that the scales, to use a biblical phrase, had fallen from his eyes. Since then, he’d done some serious thinking and an awful lot of heretical reading. Erasmus of Rotterdam’s The Praise of Folly, an acceptable Church tolerated tome, had been the first. In it Ned had discovered that the flaws, faults and corruption of the Church looked so much worse when delivered in a satirical, chiding tone. Erasmus had lampooned the pompous vanity of Cardinals and the self serving priests, keener for gold than God. It had slotted in very nicely with Simon Fishes A Supplication of Beggars, which detailed the ravenous exactions of the Church in England. The part on indulgences and purgatory had been particularly interesting.
They say also that if there were a purgatory, and also if that the Pope with his pardons for money may deliver one soul then: he may deliver him without money: if he deliver one he may deliver a thousand: if he may deliver a thousand then he may deliver them all and so destroy purgatory. Then is he a cruel tyrant without charity if he keep them there in prison and in pain till men give him money.
So simple. Ned had to admit it sounded an awful lot like how Cardinal Wolsey had acted in the courts. A decent ‘gift’ and you gained the verdict you wanted. It seemed to him such a betrayal, that Holy Mother Church also saw no difference in the gaining of access to Heaven. How could that work out? Say old Lord Falseheart, who’d stolen, murdered and engaged in the vilest treacheries, lay in his deathbed, rich beyond measure and in the end had given all his treasures to the Church. By Apostolic decree, he was guaranteed a place beside God for his payment. Now here was the problem, as Ned saw it. Was Lord Falseheart’s purchased right as valid as the innocents whom he had slaughtered? According to the latest English translations of the Bible coming across from the Low Countries, that wasn’t so. Nor was it in Ned’s admittedly peculiar interpretation of justice. It shamed him to see how earthly law, as defined at the Westminster Courts, pandered to those with wealth.