A Burnable Book: A Novel Part 10

'Not true, Mil,' Agnes pleaded. 'We got these' she grabbed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s 'and this' palmed her crotch 'and as long as they work we'll get skincoin. You know that well as I!'

Millicent looked at her sister, her small body still unruined. Agnes had always carried her beauty well. When their mother started selling Millicent's flesh at fifteen, all those quick, rough lessons in womanhood, Agnes had slipped about the Bishop with a beguiling sense of her own virginal charms that provoked Bess Waller's eager jakes. 'I'll wait for her' was a common refrain, their eyes following Agnes even as their legs followed Millicent.

Only one man had ever openly preferred her to Agnes: Oswald, the prior of St Mary Overey. Millicent had come as close to loving him as she had any man, even Sir Humphrey. An old Austin canon of forty-eight when she met him, what he wanted most was to run his nose and fingers up her bare sides and along that warm s.p.a.ce between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, never get inside her and grunt away his groats like all the others. She remembered the gentle ambitions of his lips and fingers, the firm pleasures of his clerical tongue. He talked to her of his life, his sin, his ambitions for a bishopric that would never come provoking jests from her about bishops' p.r.i.c.ks and why he'd ever want one in the first place, given how soft they all were.

One morning Prior Oswald asked her what she wanted most. She told him: a way out. So he purchased it for her, and gave her the news the last day she saw him. You shall be a laysister of St Leonard's Bromley, my dear Millie. You'll learn to garden, to embroider, perhaps to read and you'll never have to spread your legs for another man (though if the prioress herself demands a ride, you probably shouldn't refuse). He had made the arrangements that very week. She never saw him again.

In the years since Oswald's death, Millicent had come to understand the fragility of it all, and her dependence on the wealth of flawed men for the needful things that had given her life whatever coherence it held. Prior Oswald had lifted her from the life of a maudlyn, buying her a position in a revered religious house. Then Sir Humphrey ap-Roger came along, giving her access to the greatest halls, to say nothing of this house and its furnishings. Yet his wealth, too, had been a pa.s.sing force in her life.

First her prior, then her knight, and now who next? Who would step into this frightening void and fill it with apricots, and almonds, and good meats, and a strong tongue, and wine and houses and-? Yet even as she asked herself such hard questions she was filled with guilt at the stir of gluttony and l.u.s.t and covetousness in her soul. She heard the voice of Prioress Isabel ringing through her mind. G.o.d frowns on extravagance, Millicent. You must temper your desires for worldly things, stamp them underfoot along with the demons who provoke them.

Millicent closed her eyes, vowing to heed Isabel's warning, the moral charge of the nun's sobering words. She would live a measured and moderate life, yes she would, just as soon as she could afford it.

She turned on Agnes. 'We sell it, or I'll burn it myself.'

SIXTEEN.

Gropec.u.n.t Lane, Ward of Cheap Eleanor had slumped herself over the low fence, trying to ignore the soreness in her feet. It was early afternoon, not a jake in sight, though the tedium only sharpened her worry. For hours she had been hanging next to Mary Potts, going over the same ground as her foot traced lines in the dust. Agnes still missing, her brother's life threatened by a cruel master, that girl's body never leaving her inner sight.

At the moment her thoughts were all on Gerald, though she couldn't help commingling her concerns. '"Only a wooden mallet," he says. "Never hits me with the metal one!" You hear that? He's got to get out of that cutter's shop, Mary. Grimes'll brain him sure, or he'll lose an arm for bad meat. But now I'm afraid to leave Gropec.u.n.t Lane in case Agnes comes back, not that there's much chance of that, plus then the beadle'll start asking more questions. But if I don't seek out the common serjeant soon, get Gerald moved back to London why, he's dead sure as we stand here, like that girl on the moor!'

'Just go, El,' said Mary. 'You been twisting your teats about the thing for days now. What's the worst can happen? Mayor'll throw you out on Cat Street and you'll be right back here, doing what you love. I'll be here the whole time, waiting on Ag.'

Eleanor felt a nudge of hope. 'You'll cover for me with the Dun Bell?'

'If Joan asks I'll say you went off with King Richard and Bolingbroke to teach those boys how to keep their young wives happy.'

Eleanor kissed her, grateful for Mary's practicality. She snuck off through an alley; replaced her dress and bonnet with the breeches, hose, coat and cap she kept hidden behind a horse stall; manned her hair and face in a trough; and was soon in the crowded precincts surrounding the Guildhall. It was market day, though despite the morning fires the westernmost hulk of the college threw the loud press of Basinghall in a cold shadow that pimpled his arms. Pa.s.sing the eastern gatehouse Edgar came out between the chapel and the library into the more open expanse of Guildhall yard, where he paused to survey the inner precinct.

The common serjeant might have been anywhere, so Edgar chose a position outside the west doors to the side of the porch, edging near a clutch of women selling hand food. He was used to leaning against posts watching men's faces for long stretches of time. No different than swyving. He settled in for a wait, studying the trawl of tradesmen and bureaucrats and hucksters moving in and out of the doors and gates.

Edgar had encountered the common serjeant of London once before, at the procedure terminating his wardship upon his majority. An ample man. Reddened cheeks. A ma.s.sive nose. The man had treated him with a genuine if cursory kindness on that earlier occasion, and Edgar's hope was that he would be similarly disposed toward Gerald.

Now here he was, coming right toward him. There were three men, deep in conversation, and as they stepped up to the porch Edgar took a few idle steps in their direction, picking up a fragment of their exchange.

'... could not have been clearer,' one of them said, 'though the mayor's lost his patience.'

'All of us have.'

'Don't have much of a choice, though, do we?'

The shortest one walked through the Guildhall door with a grim nod to the others. Ralph Strode and the first man huddled together, their voices too quiet to make out, then the other man followed his colleague into the great structure. Strode turned about and made his way along the south side of the building, waving off the hucksters thrusting buns and pies at his face. Edgar followed him as he angled for a cl.u.s.ter of lower timber buildings at the far side of the Guildhall.

He quickened his pace. 'Master Strode.'

Strode looked down at him but did not slow. 'Busy just now.' They pa.s.sed along the western edge, the scent of roasting chicken in the air from the spits in the side yard.

'Pardon, Master Strode, but there be a matter of some urgency that requires your attention,' said Edgar, trying to sound proper.

'Some urgency,' Strode said, his voice strained. 'How many times have I heard those words this week?'

'It concerns my brother, Gerald. He's but fourteen, sir, and I worry for him.' He stayed at Strode's heels through a narrow pa.s.sage between two of the outbuildings. 'He was one of your charges, Master Strode, an orphan of the city. Now he's a butcher's apprentice and his master beats him, beats him somewhat awful. With a mallet, sir. I fear for his life.'

Strode stopped in mid-step, his frame swaying like an overfilled cart. Slowly he turned. 'Tell me your name,' he said, his robed bulk looming over Edgar in the shadows.

'Rykener. Edgar Rykener, and my brother's Gerald Rykener, butcher's apprentice of Southwark.'

'Rykener.' A voice resonant and deep. 'Edgar Rykener. And your brother is Gerard, you say?'

'Gerald, sir. Gerald Rykener.'

He waved him along with a heavy sigh. 'You've found the right functionary to your purpose. Step in here. We'll have the matter out.'

Edgar followed him into a two-room stone-and-timber building with parchment windows on the outer walls. In the front chamber were three desks, a small hearth currently cold, and a generous amount of crammed shelving. Two of the three desks, the largest one against the far wall, were occupied by four young clerks, one huddled over each side and all busy scribbling on to the parchments, papers and ledgers spread before them. Iron-looped oil lamps dangled from chains of varying lengths, like a strange tree bearing fruits of smoky light.

The clerks sat up at the common serjeant's entrance. Strode summoned one of them with a raised hand and a snap. 'Tewburn.'

Edgar started and blushed, recognizing the clerk immediately. James Tewburn was one of her more frequent mares. Liked to take it as a woman, mouth and a.r.s.e alike. But he was always tender, always paid well. He didn't recognize Edgar in mannish garb. Not yet.

'Mark what this young fellow says, James,' Strode ordered the clerk, without noticing Edgar's discomfort. 'Take his name, the location of his brother's shop in Southwark, the name of his master all the pertinent details. Write them up as an appeal to Wykeham and keep at it until the matter is resolved.'

'Yes, Master Strode,' said Tewburn, looking right at Edgar, though still without a trace of recognition.

Strode flashed an easy smile. 'Pardon the lawyerly cant, Edgar. I've explained to Tewburn that we must make an appeal to the Bishop of Winchester, William Wykeham, in order to transfer wardship of your brother into the City of London. Southwark is out of my jurisdiction. But I know Wykeham well. I can't imagine he'll have a problem with our request.'

Edgar nodded, overwhelmed by the man's generosity. 'I I don't properly know what to say, Master Strode, nor how to thank you.' He could think of some improper ways, though the common serjeant didn't seem the sort.

He waved a hand. 'Keeping our city's wards free from harm is my greatest duty. I do it happily. Just confer with Tewburn here, and he'll have it settled.' He disappeared into the inner chamber.

Tewburn led him over to his desk, where Edgar stood as the clerk shuffled through a mess. The man was younger than he looked, with shoulders already sloped and a discernible hump midway up his back. His eyes, small and round like little black beads over his thin whiskers, took Edgar in with a bureaucrat's scrutiny.

'Your brother is apprenticed to whom?' he asked, his swollen knuckles poised above a ledger.

'Nathan Grimes, master butcher.'

'Of?'

'Cutter Lane in Southwark.'

'Your brother is to be a butcher, then?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And he's in what year of his apprenticeship?'

'His third, sir.'

'Age?'

'Fourteen, sir.'

'I'll take up your brother's wardship as quickly as I can,' said Tewburn, a ready warmth in his voice as he discerned the depth of Edgar's concern. 'Come round in a week or so.' Still no flash of recognition, and Edgar left Guildhall yard with a tentative hope that Tewburn would truly help his brother.

Later Eleanor crossed the bridge to risk another visit to Grimes's yard, where she found Gerald alone, shovelling dung. His arms, bare and glistening with sweat, showed a patchwork of fresh bruises, and a gash on his brow had recently scabbed over. His eyes when he looked at her were empty, his shoulders slumped.

After she greeted him he wiped a forearm across his brow. 'Might be time after all.'

'Time for what?'

His shifted on his feet. 'To find me another station. Butcher's shop back in London.'

She slapped him, hard. 'So now it's time, is it, when I been saying the like for two years?'

Gerald shrugged, not defensively but with a sort of sullen fear, the coldness gone from his eyes. 'Grimes got himself in some deep stick, Edgar. Real deep.' He looked over his shoulder at the butcher's streetfront office, separated from the slaughterhouse by a series of narrow pens, each containing a few animals just shy of the knife. 'You got to get me out of this, and right soon.'

'What kind of stick, Gerald?' she said, not wanting to hear the answer.

'This priest, he shows up time to time. Been four, five times now, to meet with Grimes. They pray and get to talking about another Rising. Grimes was on the bridge, you know, with Wat Tyler. He's still got plate he took from the Savoy before they torched the place.'

'But that's wood talk, Gerald,' she said, wanting to believe it.

'They say Wat Tyler should've quartered King Richard when he had the chance. Now it's like to be their job. They're butchers, after all, quick with a knife. Grimes keeps mumbling about his fate, how he's been chosen for it by G.o.d. That's what the priest told him, so he says when he's in his ales. Butchers, biding by a bishop's bank, then springing out to kill the king.'

Eleanor took this in with a mix of contempt and fear. On the one hand, the notion of these Southwark butchers plotting rebellion was ludicrous on its face. Yet when it came to treason the king's men wouldn't deal in niceties. If a butcher was conspiring on the death of the king they'd take his apprentices along with him, and happily hang them all. 'Grimes is a lunatic, Gerald,' she said, trying to sound convincing. 'Man doesn't have the brains to start a revolt of the mutton against the cows.'

'Still,' he said, 'I want out of Cutter Lane, Eleanor. Get me back to London, yeah?'

She looked at his face, set with genuine fear. Gerald only called her by her she-name when he really wanted something. 'It may be a stretch of time before I can get it done, Gerald.'

'But soon, Eleanor,' Gerald said. He hefted his shovel. 'Soon, yeah?'

Eleanor swallowed, the fear for Gerald eating at her as it never had. 'Soon as I can, Gerald. Then you'll be free.'

SEVENTEEN.

Colbrokes Quay on the Thames, Tower Ward The Ides of April, and the river's surface churned beneath a pale sun as I walked the last length of the wharf toward the customhouse, a hard knot in my chest. The book was out of Swynford's hands, G.o.d knew where it was, and Chaucer had no business with it. Seditious, Braybrooke had called it. A traitor's book. The sensible part of me wanted to warn Chaucer off before the whole thing got us both strung up at Tyburn.

Yet my motives were hardly pure. From everything I had learned the De Mortibus Regum Anglorum could become the single greatest piece of information I would ever acquire. To possess this book of prophecies and learn the ident.i.ty of the king's supposed a.s.sa.s.sin? The ma.n.u.script would open doors I had been working to unlatch for years: to the Privy Council, to the lord chancellor, to the court's uppermost magnates. It was clear that Chaucer had been less than honest with me about this book and I had little enthusiasm left to put it in his fumbling hands.

The door to the customhouse stood open, though no one was inside. Around the near quay a crowd had gathered beneath the highest crane on London's waterfront. The Goose, the machine was called, its charge to raise with pulley, crank, and the sweat of ten men the most ma.s.sive arrivals at the city's port: great slabs of Kentish stone, casks of iron shot, the occasional mast. Chaucer stood there waving his arms up at the crane. From its hook, over the wide deck of a merchant barge, was suspended a large bale of cloth, the subject of a dispute. I went inside to wait.

Surveying the office, I marvelled that the crown collected any customs money at all. I'd long been amazed at the administrative burden Chaucer had taken on with this post. Virtually no surface was free of the slips that marked every collection of fee in the port going back years. There were thousands of them, spilling out of drawers and crates, papering the seats of stools, leaving a single narrow path across the floor. The countless c.o.c.kets crowding my craw, Chaucer once put it. The line hadn't made it into his verse.

As I looked across the littered office of the wool custom, it occurred to me how closely this doc.u.mentary rat's nest resembled the disordered sprawl of Chaucer's poetry. Stories of mundane dealings between men, accounts of every imaginable human exchange, recorded on these slips of skin just as they filled his poems with the endless flow of his imagination.

On the far end of the desk sat the quire I had sent over a few days before. It was our private game, the difficult glue of our friendship. Months could go by between our poetical swaps, yet then we'd sit right down, berating one another for a tenuous metaphor, an ill-chosen trope, a lazy rhyme. That morning Chaucer was to critique some of my elegiacs, fragments of a long Latin work I had been composing since before the Rising and still had not completed. I expected to leave the customhouse with some new writing of his.

Nothing, I felt confident, would divert us from this ritual we had both come to cherish. Not even murder. Not even treason.

'John, you're here!' Chaucer stepped into the customhouse, his eyes going to the bag at my side. He gave a few instructions to a waiting clerk, signed a bill of some kind, and sent the man back to the wharf. 'Let me dig out my little book.'

The air thickened immediately. He wanted to know. But our practice was always to begin with the poetry. He dug through the mess on his desk and emerged with his 'little book', as he called it: the familiar pigskin bifold in which he would keep only those quires of parchment currently in use. It was Chaucer's custom, once he had filled an existing quire with his writing, to remove it and slip a fresh one within the covers. So familiar was his old, faded bifold that it took my poor eyes a moment to see he had replaced it with a new one.

'Lovely, isn't it?' he said, showing off the elaborate tooling and the shiny leathern cover, dyed a striking red. 'It's goat. From Africa, swears a leatherworker I know in Florence. He does great work for the Bardis.' He opened it and took out two loose quires wedged between the fixed pages. 'These verses are a small taste of a larger compilation I've been tossing around. The idea is a pilgrimage, a well, the frame is unimportant. Two tales here, each to be preceded by a prologue. One is earnest, the other's all game, and next time I'll expect a devastating sed contra to both.'

I tucked the parchment quires into my bag while Chaucer started humming distractedly and knuckling his desk. I waited.

'Have you read them, Geoffrey?'

He frowned.

'My elegiacs, on the virtues and vices?' I felt almost childlike, waiting for his attention.

A rea.s.suring smile. 'Of course, John. Pardon my distraction.' He sorted through the loose sheets on his desk, found my own booklet of verse. 'Here we are. Let's just see ...' He scanned his notes in the margins, his lower lip tightening in displeasure. 'Rather stark, wouldn't you say?'

'The lines weren't written to be light, Geoffrey. Not like these fabliaux.'

'As you'll soon learn.' He gestured at my bag, and the work he had given me. 'Honestly, though, they could use some leavening.' He took on a preacher's voice, gazing at me over the folios as he spoke my Latin lines. '"The schism of our church has cursed us with two popes, one a schismatic and the other legitimate." And the next couplet: "France worships the schismatic and holds him in awe, but England is a defender of the true faith."' He set the booklet down, a wry challenge in his gaze.

'Should I be amused or offended by your tone?' I asked him. 'The church is divided: we're allied with Rome, France with Avignon.'

He shook his head. 'Take these next lines, on bishops. Listen to yourself, John.' He went on in my Latin.

'As I seek for followers of Christ among the prelates I find that none of the rule survives that was once in force.

Christ was poor, but they are overloaded with gold.

He was a peacemaker, but they are war-mongers.'

His voice had taken on a sing-song cadence, rising before the caesura, then falling toward the end of each line, as if my elegiacs were some child's rhyme.

'Christ was generous, but they are tight as a closed purse.