A Burnable Book: A Novel Part 33

'A change in plans?'

'The men will need to stay in place for now.'

'For how long?'

There was a pause. Millicent edged around one of the great b.u.t.tresses ascending to the undercroft's roof and beyond. She peered around and down a short stair into a wider chamber perhaps three feet below, awash in pale light from an opened trapdoor above. Weldon paced the chamber's width, giving orders to a nuncius wearing the king's colours.

'Next Friday is the feast of St Augustine, no?' the knight finally said, turning away with a hand to his mouth.

'And the third Ember Day.'

'They're to come up that day and camp at Mile End, on the green. Their orders will come Trinity morning, likely by Tierce. Then it's up Aldgate Street as planned.'

'Anything else, Sir Stephen?'

'That's it for now. Keep me posted.'

'Yes, Sir Stephen.'

The man ducked through a low doorway. Millicent watched as the knight took a few slow turns around the dank chamber, one hand on his scarred chin, the other cupping his elbow. She thought about what she had heard, putting it together with the prophecies and the failed attempt on the king's life. It sounded as if Weldon had been planning to bring troops up from Dartford in the aftermath of the planned a.s.sa.s.sination. Who knew what else he had in store. She turned for the river door.

She slipped. She quickly recovered her footing, but not before a small fragment of stone, dislodged by her shoe, tumbled down the stairs. Weldon's head spun round. Frozen in terror, Millicent hesitated long enough for him to meet her gaze. His eyes widened, then narrowed in recognition. She knew that cold stare.

Rose Alley. Weldon had been the leader of the riders, the man challenged by St Cath at the porch of the p.r.i.c.king Bishop. Looking for Millicent, and the book.

Millicent shot up the stairs. Through the door, over the d.y.k.e, down Pepper Alley. She looked back. Weldon was just making the turn.

She ducked between two tanners' stalls on the upper end. Rows of stretched hides gave some cover. An open door, at the end of the second yard. She sprinted through it. A tavern. Low ceiling, small crowd around a far table, the air sour with ale. She stepped from bench to bench and knocked several down on her way out, slowing Weldon a fraction. He stumbled, cursed. She heard his boots on the tables. The street door was also open.

The bankside again. She hesitated. Right, to the high street and the bridge? Or left, and into the stews? She went left.

The right decision, she knew as she sprinted past the mills. On the wide high street the knight would have had the advantage of speed. Here, among the dense and disconnected cl.u.s.ters of shops, houses, tenements, shacks, barns, yards and pens making up the bishop's liberties, she had the advantage of memory.

For though the neighbourhood had undergone many changes in the last ten years, it was all so familiar. Every corner, every turn, every gap between buildings came back to her. Narrow pa.s.sageways appeared right where she expected to find them. Through the twists and turns of the liberties she ran, the very air before her seeming to shape itself into the form of a child leading her on. She was not alone.

The little girl ran wildly before her, golden hair in tangled streams. Dodging barrels, cornering barns, leaping ditches. This way, Millie! Faster, Millie! She never slowed as she led Millicent through the twisted byways of the stews. I will catch you, Agnes, I will catch you! The Southwark breeze chilled the tears on her face, as the unmapped warren of the liberties became an elaborate labyrinth through which only this little girl knew the way. Finally, nearing the mills again, the girl slowed. Turning back, her face shrouded in a blinding pool of light, she rose from the soil like a dove lifted by the wind.

With no breath left in her, Millicent squatted at the corner of a pighouse facing the eastern edge of the larger millpond, the phantasm still burning her eyes. She looked behind her. No Weldon.

Loud voices on Rose Alley, a woman's angry shout. Millicent peered around the corner of the low structure. Weldon stood at the door of the p.r.i.c.king Bishop, having it out with St Cath. His head started to turn.

Millicent hurdled the fence. Squatting beside a great sow, clutching her dress tightly against the muck, she watched through the slats as Weldon looked down the narrow lane to the millpond. The deliberate sweep of his scarred chin, the jewelled scabbard at his side, the devilish gleam of his eyes: all these Millicent took in as she humbled herself with these Southwark pigs. The Overey bell rang None. The knight turned and struck St Cath with the flat of his sword. She collapsed against the doorway. Weldon spun on his heel and entered the p.r.i.c.king Bishop.

Millicent hesitated, every part of her wanting to spring out and flee across the bridge, leaving Weldon to do what he wished. She thought of her mother, this woman who had never given her more than a bed to swyve on for her own profit. And why should I give her anything more in return? Then she thought of Prioress Isabel, and how the holy woman would answer this question. Finally she thought of Agnes, her sister's generous, selfless spirit, and it was then that she knew what must be done.

Millicent closed her eyes, said a prayer, and hopped back over the fence. With her fists clenched at her sides she strode down Rose Alley, wondering how on earth she might save her mother's life.

St Cath still lay on the stone, though she looked to be breathing. Millicent edged through the door and stood listening. She moved toward the rear of the building and heard the knight's heavy footsteps above, as he stomped around the upper floors, raising screams of terror from the maudlyns, a few indignant shouts from their unlucky jakes.

'Millicent.' She peered through the gloom. Bess Waller stood at the kitchen door, beckoning her forward. 'In here, girl,' she whispered.

Millicent dashed forward and had almost reached the kitchen when she tripped on the corner of a pallet. With a crash she fell into a deal table against the wall, knocking a bra.s.s ewer on to the floor. The clang resounded throughout the Bishop. The sound of the knight's boots above ceased, then began again with a renewed vigour as he crashed down the side stairs.

'Quickly,' said Bess Waller, pulling Millicent from the floor. In the kitchen the cellar door lay open to the stairs. It was all Millicent could do to stay on her feet as her mother pushed her toward the gaping hole in the floor. Once below she scurried down the steps. Her feet met the dirt floor. She looked back and caught a last glimpse of Bess Waller's face as the door slammed shut above, sealing her in darkness.

FIFTY-THREE.

New Rents Weldon was gone by the time I exited the palace through the postern and reached the market. I stepped up on a half-barrel and peered in both directions. Nothing. The knight had disappeared, absorbed into the thick crowd. A clutch of five street urchins were plucking at my hose, begging for coin. About to swat them away, I thought better of it and stepped off the half-barrel, reached into my purse, and knelt down, a handful of pennies clutched in my palm.

'One for each of you.' Three boys and two girls, their faces grimed in that way only a young Southwark face can be grimed, though they all seemed eager to earn despite the squalor. 'And another if you'll find someone for me.'

'Who, sir?'

'Who?'

'Who?'

'Who's it to find, good sir?'

'Man or woman, I'll find them, that's sure,' said the smallest of them, a girl of five or six.

'You know Sir Stephen Weldon?'

A few tentative nods, but the little girl shook her head truthfully.

'A knight with a curved scar, just here?' I traced it on her small chin.

'Hook on his face, bright as the moon!' crowed the little girl.

Nods all around. 'We know him, sir!'

'Find him for me, then,' I said. 'He left by the postern a little while ago. He can't have got far. First one back gets two pence.'

They sprinted off, getting underfoot of the merchants, pus.h.i.+ng around the corners, spreading like a dropped sack of grain. It wasn't long before the first of them, the little girl, returned. Out of breath, she steadied herself on my leg then looked up in triumph.

'Saw him, sir, saw him I did.'

I knelt in the dirt. 'And where did you see him, my dear?'

'Past the millpond,' she said, 'on that Rose Alley. Going into the p.r.i.c.king Bishop for a swyve, looked like.'

After paying the girl off I headed west past the Overey churchyard and toward the stews. Skirting the millpond I dodged a pighouse and entered Rose Alley. Few residents were about, all drawn to the palace, and no one looked my way as I walked beneath the low awnings and haphazard upper extensions lining the narrow lane. I was halfway up when I saw a figure leaning over a prostrate woman before the front door. Not Weldon, but a much younger man, slight, almost feminine. The old woman gave a gentle moan as he leaned her against the house's outer wall. He stroked her hair then turned for the door, which was unlatched and partially open. He turned, we locked eyes, then he disappeared into the Bishop. After peering up and down the lane I jogged to the house and followed him within.

Edgar heard the shouts from the back of the house, which he approached through the same front room he'd crossed weeks ago, before taking the book. Reaching the kitchen door, he pressed his ear against the rough wood surface.

A man's voice. '... in the rancid stews of Southwark. Home of women and fish.'

Then Bess Waller: 'Get you gone from here, sir, there'll be no-'

'Where is she?' A few mumbles, then: 'So she is here, you lying wh.o.r.e.'

'No no, sire, she's not, I'd swear it on-'

'On what?'

'On the blood of Mary, and the Maudlyn, and-'

'And your own?'

'Sire?'

'Or perhaps on the blood of your daughter. Not the one I've just chased through the stews, but the younger one. That pretty little thing over by Aldgate.'

Silence. Edgar closed his eyes, the sight of Agnes's body coming back to him with a wave of sadness. Then a groan of metal, a clap of wood, a shout.

'Leave her be!' Millicent's voice.

'Ah!' shouted the man. 'So that's where you were hiding, you snooping s.l.u.t.'

Edgar pictured the kitchen. Bess Waller must have hidden Millicent in the cellar-the same dark s.p.a.ce in which Edgar had trapped the bawd while searching for the book.

'You're the devil.' Millicent this time, her voice low with fury. Edgar braced himself against the door.

'Millicent, is it?' the man hissed. 'Former consort of the great Sir Humphrey ap-Roger, Humphrey the fat, Humphrey the codger, hmm? Your blood, perhaps?'

'Not her blood, false knight.' Bess's voice had steeled. 'Not Millicent's blood. I'll not have her harmed. Though this is Southwark there be laws in the bishop's liberties, and you're bound by them well as I. You leave her be.'

Edgar heard the swipe of the knight's sword. 'I'll leave neither of you be.' Another swipe, a splinter of gla.s.s.

'No.'

Edgar had heard enough. He looked about for a weapon of some kind. He pictured Weldon's short sword drawn, the point at Millicent's throat. His hand brushed a heavy candlestick. It would have to do. Calming himself with a deep breath, he grasped the latch.

A hand squeezed his arm. He turned in fright, ready to swing. Gerald. His brother had removed the dress and stood in his breeches, bare-chested and thin, though butcher's muscles were already outlined on his arms and torso. A knife was still at his belt.

'There another way in?' he asked. 'Through the alley, p'raps?'

Edgar thought about it, recalling his search through the kitchen. 'The walls be eight, nine feet deep on the wharf side. Door's bolted.' There had been so much flooding on this side of the Bishop's Wild that high berms had been built between the river and the lanes and alleys up from the sh.o.r.e, leaving the embankment vulnerable to severe erosion in the event of the river's swelling. 'There's a high window in there, you can get to it from the back. But you'd have to climb-'

He was already gone. Edgar watched his back for a moment, then turned to the kitchen door and pushed it open.

The door swung wide. Millicent saw Edgar Rykener, in butcher's raiment and brandis.h.i.+ng a candlestick. At his entrance Weldon spun and swiped the blade in an arc close to Edgar's face. With one step Edgar sprang toward Bess and Millicent. Now he stood with them, the candlestick held in front, the three of them huddled against the kitchen wall.

The high windows beneath the eaves, fully covered in parchment during the winter but now partially open to the air, let in enough light to catch the glint along the blade's embossed fullers. The same shafts brought out the scar on Weldon's chin, the jagged crescent Millicent couldn't help comparing even in her fear to the hooks aligned above the hearth. She imagined being impaled on them, suspended before the knight's seething eyes, hooked iron in her brains.

She glanced sidelong at the garden door.

'Don't think of it,' said Weldon. 'I'll cut you before you reach the bolt.' He moved to the side. Pushed a table and a heavy cutting board against the door, blocking any hope of escape. He took a step toward them, waving his blade. Another step.

Millicent shrank back. Edgar raised the candlestick. He gave it a feeble swing. Weldon dodged it. With one slash Weldon sliced Edgar's hand. He dropped the candlestick. Millicent picked it up, then swung it through the air as hard as she could. The knight dodged this blow, too, with a deft step to the side. He raised his blade and plunged it into Bess Waller's chest.

Millicent screamed, then the inner door to the kitchen was filled with the faces of Bess's girls, drawn by the commotion. The moment stretched, and Millicent would always remember the three things that followed it. The first was a tearing sound from above, as the rolled parchment fell away and a figure leapt from the upper window. He landed on the knight's sword shoulder, disarming him with the force of the impact. The second was the rush of the maudlyns, five Southwark wh.o.r.es descending on the knight. The third was the aquamarine eyes of John Gower, the gentleman from St Leonard's. Now he was here, in her mother's kitchen. His features were the last thing she saw as her vision darkened and Bess Waller died in her arms.

I have witnessed many deaths. Hangings, quarterings, drownings, knifings on the Southwark streets. Once I watched at a tournament as a knight of the king's chamber was decapitated by a lance, his blood arcing toward the stands, his head falling to the earth with a gruesome finality as hundreds of England's highest of birth held their stomachs.

Yet nothing had quite prepared me for the grim work of these Southwark maudlyns as they swarmed toward Sir Stephen Weldon, covering him like a hill of ants meeting a honeyed bun. They gouged his eyes, bit his ears, pummelled his neck and his stomach. They stretched his arms and legs to their full length, tore off his clothing, and wrote their fury on his bare skin. They killed him with their fingers, their fists, their feet. They killed him with their teeth and their nails. The way his body was tossed among them they might have been a pack of dogs at a hart. I could almost feel sorry for Weldon, despite the private satisfaction I took in his death.

'Enough!' I shouted into the dim light. 'Enough!'

The fury slowed. The young man who had leapt from the window crawled toward the far wall, moaning with the pain of a broken leg. He made it to the side of the slight man I had seen on Rose Alley. The two embraced. Beside them was Millicent Fonteyn, the laysister from Bromley, holding her mother's outstretched body in her arms. The maudlyns circled their dead bawd, pawing at her b.l.o.o.d.y neck and chest. I stared at them, wondering at their peculiar courage.

A wheeze from the floor. I looked down with amazement at Weldon. Incredibly, the knight was alive, though clearly moments from his last breath. I knelt beside him, s.h.i.+elding his broken frame from view of the maudlyns, who were still crowded around their dead bawd.

He looked at me, blankly at first, then his sole remaining eye flashed recognition as the ragged edges of his lips lifted into a thin, cruel smile. 'Hawks,' he croaked, his windpipe nearly crushed. 'Hawks always strike twice, Gower.'

'What's that you say?' I hissed, shaking him, wondering what secrets would die with this man, wis.h.i.+ng I could buy them all. I slapped his face. 'Who are the hawks, Weldon? When will they strike?'

'Always twice,' he said, then his eyes froze in death, the meaning of his final words lost in the slaked howling of the wh.o.r.es.

The fingers throb, the eyes weaken, the bent back aches. I have sc.r.a.ped these words throughout this long winter night, all the while picturing you in Rome, venturing out from the abitato to walk with the sheep among the ruins, clearing your fine head after a day of subterfuge at the papal curia.

Such pleasant thoughts must now be pushed aside, and this sad tale brought to an end.

Simon Gower, no fool, had been watching us most carefully: our subtle looks, our secretive gestures, the wanton press of skin on skin as we made our greetings. He sensed the rising heat between us, our swelling need.

Jealousy is as fierce as the grave, the Song of Solomon teaches us, fuel of the truest fire and the fiercest flames.

It started, it must have started, with the cloth. My piece of youthful handiwork had hung in the gallery for over ten years, embroidered with the livery of Wales and Lancaster, both sons of old King Edward. The only distinction between their heraldry was in the labels: three points argent on Prince Edward's, three points ermine on Lancaster's.

As I recollect it now it seems so obvious, yet so darkly ingenious at the same time. With the death of Prince Edward, the royal arms pa.s.sed to his son, then a child but now the king, who retained his father's label of three points argent. In every respect King Richard's arms match King Edward's. To anyone viewing the cloth in our day, the duke would appear to be attacking not Prince Edward, but King Richard.

Ermine against argent. Duke against king. Once a scene of n.o.ble rescue embroidered by a lost girl, the cloth now showed a spectacle of royal murder.

If the cloth inspired Simon Gower's betrayal, it was his envy of you, my heart, that guided his pen. 'Why, if Geoffrey Chaucer can fool his readers with counterfeited prophecies, so can I!'

But how did he do it? Let your thoughts take you back just four weeks, the day before your company's departure to Rome. You will remember your distress one morning at my father's house. 'My little book has gone missing from my rooms on the Via dei Calzaiuoli,' you whispered to me, your hand pus.h.i.+ng through your thick hair. 'The quire is gone, and with it the prophecies I wrote for you.'

Yet your anguish seemed too great for such a trifle. Yes, you had written me an amusing poem, but its loss would hardly merit the fear I read on your face. There was more to this book, I suspected, something in it other than your clever prognostications.

It was Simon, of course, who stole your little book stole it, copied it, then augmented your work with a poetical prophecy of his own. A thirteenth prophecy, added to your twelve, bringing the book's dark matter into the present time.