London (71 page)

On this occasion however, they found the customs man just as he was leaving for his home, and so they went back there with him. Chaucer’s lodgings, which came with the customs position, were delightful. They stood beside the Aldgate entrance to the city in the eastern wall, a few hundred yards from the Tower, and they included a large and handsome room over the gate itself, with a splendid view towards open fields down the straight old Roman road towards East Anglia. There they found his pleasant, dark-haired wife busy with a baby, and Chaucer led them to the big rooms upstairs.

The room was certainly pleasant, and yet, as Tiffany whispered to the boy with a nudge: “What a mess.” There were several dozen books – a large collection by any standards – piled here and there on tables. Some were bound in leather, others not, some written in handsome calligraphy, others in hands so crabbed it made one’s eyes swim to read them. But it was not the books that were so untidy, but the pieces of parchment. There were sheets everywhere, in stacks or singly, some neatly copied but most half-written and covered with corrections.

“This is my retreat,” Chaucer smiled apologetically. “Here I read and write every evening.”

Tiffany knew about his literary activities from her father, and thinking of her own schooling she asked: “How many lines can you write in an evening?”

“I throw so much away,” he confessed. “Sometimes I can hardly get a line out.”

“So I don’t think,” Tiffany said to Ducket afterwards, “he can be very good at it.”

It was after they left Chaucer and walked along the old road outside Aldgate for a little way that Tiffany, who had allowed herself to start musing about her husband, suddenly turned to Ducket.

“Do you know,” she remarked, “I’ve never been kissed. I suppose you know how.” He did. “Do it, then,” she said.

Ducket found Benedict Silversleeves waiting for him on his way home at the southern end of London Bridge. Whatever Whittington might think, to him the young lawyer was impressive.

Silversleeves could not have been more polite. He spoke quietly and with dignity. He happened to be walking out of the Aldgate that afternoon, he explained. “So I think you know what I saw.”

Ducket blushed. He hoped, the lawyer went on, that the apprentice would forgive him, but he hoped, equally, that Ducket was not trying to take advantage of a young girl from a very different station in life – “and who is, you see, my kinswoman.” What could he say? That she asked him to? Any apprentice would have thought that was low. “You may feel it’s none of my business,” Silversleeves continued, “but I think it is.”

No, Ducket could not fault the man. Silversleeves was acting properly and he felt ashamed.

“Well, there we are,” the lawyer said. “Goodnight.” And perhaps, Ducket thought, he’d better not see little Tiffany for a while.

More than a year had passed since his interview with his rich cousin, but James Bull was not discouraged. “The girl’s still young,” he told his family; and he still hoped to receive, at least, an invitation to the merchant’s house some day. His mind had been on just this subject – and on the beef pie his family was to eat that day – when, entering the city through Ludgate on a wet November afternoon, his attention was caught by a pretty young girl, carrying a basket and hurrying home. It was Tiffany.

Having seen her, he hesitated for only a moment. For after all, he told himself, she cannot mind as long as I am honest. With a clear brow, therefore, he strode forward and placed himself in her path. It was just starting to rain.

“I’m your cousin James,” he informed her. “I expect your father has told you about me.”

Tiffany frowned. She knew she had many relations and did not want to seem rude. On the other hand, she had never heard of him.

“What would he have told me?” she asked cautiously.

James looked down at her, uncertain how to proceed; but since his rule was to be truthful, he blurted out:

“I think the idea was that I should marry you.” And wanting to seem encouraging: “I told him I’d be interested.”

“But I don’t know you,” she protested; and, realizing that this, in her world, was not a sufficient objection she explained: “You see, my father has said I can marry whom I like.”

“You mean,” he asked in amazement, “he said you could choose your own husband?” Could the rich merchant really have said such an eccentric thing? “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose,” he said with a frown, “that puts me at a bit of a disadvantage.”

“I might get to like you,” she suggested.

“Perhaps.” But he looked doubtful.

“You should never give up,” she smiled.

“Really?” He continued to gaze at her as the rain started to fall rather insistently. “Better go,” he said, and moved off.

James Bull went out and got drunk that night. It was not a thing he had done before. He wandered down to Southwark, entered the George, for no particular reason, and sat alone drinking ale. He did not attract the interest of Fleming, since he did not look like a learned man, but halfway through the evening Dame Barnikel came and sat with him for a while. “You look down in the mouth,” she said, and asked him what was the trouble.

“Never you mind,” she told him. “A handsome fellow like you will find a girl.”

“Sometimes,” he confessed, “I think I’m a bit simple. Being honest, I mean.” She told him not to worry and gave him another jug of ale. But later in the evening she came and sat down again beside him.

“Do you see that man over there?” she muttered, and indicated a tallish, swarthy man in the far corner, who had a woman each side of him, and who smacked his lips when he drank. “He always gets the women. But do you know what he does? He’s a highwayman. Robs pilgrims, they say, on their way through Kent. And do you know where he’ll be in five years’ time? Swinging on a gallows, I can promise you. So you just stay honest the way you are. You’ll be all right.” And she gave his shoulder a friendly pat.

As he went to sleep, very drunk, that night, James Bull saw, with a measure of contentment, the swarthy highwayman swinging, while he watched with a girl on his arm: Tiffany, he supposed. The thought gave him courage enough to mutter in his sleep: “I’ll show them.”

If James Bull had been discouraged, for Tiffany, soaked though she was by the time she got home, the interview had been an agreeable revelation. This business of being sought in marriage, she realized, might be rather enjoyable. And when at Christmas her father asked her if she had any thoughts about the matter, she begged him, with every show of meekness, if she might have a few years more to consider: to which he agreed easily enough. “After all,” he remarked to his wife that night, “with my fortune, I dare say we could find her a husband even if she were fifteen.” And there, for the time being, the matter rested.

1378

While the threat of further war with France, now aided by Scotland, continued to perturb the young king’s council, the latest development was even more infuriating: French pirates were freely attacking English merchant vessels and the council seemed impotent. The king’s uncle, John of Gaunt, proud if well-meaning, had led an expedition to the French coastal region, but got nowhere and came home looking a fool. Yet no sooner was he back than a mere London merchant, an enterprising fellow called Philpot, of the Grocers company, had equipped a small flotilla at his own expense, routed the pirates, and sailed back in triumph to the city.

“Our own guild,” Fleming cried to Ducket in triumph. “He should be made mayor.” And from that day Fleming would say proudly to his apprentice: “Gaunt is royal; but Philpot is the better man.”

But after this triumph, there was a setback. One night, another royal uncle, Gaunt’s youngest brother, had been attacked with his companions by a gang of ruffians near the city. The prince decided it was a plot by the Londoners, and nothing the mayor and aldermen could say would convince him otherwise. Their failure to admit guilt or bring anyone to trial infuriated him.

“The royal princes have been insulted,” he claimed. And John of Gaunt agreed. “It’s time,” the princes decided, “to teach those impertinent Londoners a lesson.”

Kings had threatened the Londoners with troops before, and levied fines, and even redirected trade to weaken powerful merchants; but the tactic used by the royal uncles to teach the city respect was new.

It began on a bright morning, shortly before winter set in. Ducket and Fleming had just set up the stall when a group of horsemen came jingling along the Cheap. One of them drew his sword and knocked a great earthenware bowl of stewed fruit to the ground, where it broke. Instead of apologizing, his companions merely laughed and rode on. A moment after this strange display, a large cart laden with equipment lumbered after them. Only a few minutes later, as Whittington hurried by, did they learn what this meant.

“Didn’t you know? The princes decided last night. They’re going to withdraw from the city.”

Within an hour a stream of people started to emerge from the city: knights and men-at-arms, grooms leading strings of horses, servants driving wagons piled with household effects. A cortège of elegant ladies, accompanied by squires, drifted past, and headed towards Ludgate.

“They mean to ruin us,” Fleming cried in despair. It was true. With their vast landholdings and their huge retinues, half the wealth of England flowed through the hands of the princes. And into the hands of every tradesman in London.

In the days and weeks that followed, the full extent of the crisis became plain. The West Cheap was half empty. “All the grocers are hit,” Fleming reported, “and the fishmongers and butchers even more.” But it was not until shortly before Christmas that the Londoners decided what to do. “They’re going to bribe the royals to come back,” Whittington told Ducket, and when the boy looked baffled, he explained: “A huge present from the city. All the big men are contributing. Bull’s giving four pounds.” Even a rising young mercer like Whittington himself was going to contribute five marks. “It’s called buying your customers,” he said wryly.

Ducket pleased his master Fleming well enough, but he knew that as far as Dame Barnikel was concerned, his performance was less satisfactory. He had not succeeded in winning Amy’s heart, nor did he think he would. Not that he had tried very hard. Either she likes me, or she doesn’t, he thought. If he made advances and they were unwelcome, it would make relationships in the household impossible.

Soon after Christmas, Carpenter and Amy went to see her parents. The proposal they made was simple enough. They wished to be betrothed; but since, at thirteen, Amy was not yet a woman and the solemn young craftsman was anxious to establish himself as a master of his trade before entering what he called “the dangerous state of matrimony”, he had asked Amy to wait for three years before the marriage should take place. “But perhaps you think that’s too much to ask,” he had suggested to her parents. “No, no. Not at all,” Dame Barnikel had hastily assured him. “You can’t be too careful.” And if she had not seen Amy glaring at her, she might have advised him to make it five. While to Fleming, later, she growled: “Please God she’ll grow out of him by then.”

Fleming himself was quite content with the arrangement, and Amy clung to it with silent determination, as if the carpenter were a raft in a stormy sea. To her the issue was settled.

But not, it seemed to Dame Barnikel. A little later, coming home early one day, Ducket had just wheeled the cart into the yard at the George when he saw Dame Barnikel hovering by the door. As soon as he did so, he cursed his stupidity. He had forgotten. It was the time of the month when she got drunk.

Dame Barnikel’s red hair was loose; with bloodshot eyes she was staring at her daughter like a beast about to eat its prey. The girl quailed before her.

What Dame Barnikel had been saying, Ducket never discovered, but as soon as she caught sight of him, she turned with a strange half-smile. “You’re just the man we need,” she cried. And before he knew what was happening, Ducket found his arm in a powerful grip. “You too,” she muttered and, seizing her daughter as well, began to haul them towards the storehouse. Taking no notice of their protests, she opened the door and shoved her daughter inside. Then she began to push Ducket as well, and though he was certainly stronger than most young fellows his size, he found that against Dame Barnikel he was completely helpless. She picked him up and tossed him into the store as easily as if he were a child. “Time you two got to know one another,” she growled. A moment later the door was banged shut, and bolted, and they heard Dame Barnikel departing.

It was cold in the store. They both sat in silence for a time. Finally, it was Amy who spoke.

“She wants me to marry you.”

“I know,” he said. For some minutes more, neither said anything.

“Do you think Ben Carpenter’s mad?” she asked at last.

“No.” He waited a while. “Are you cold?” She did not reply, but he moved closer and, putting his arm round her, discovered she was shivering. And there, for another hour, they sat together in silence until Fleming discovered them and let them out.

The mystery began a few days afterwards.

Fleming had seemed rather low of late. With business in the market so meagre, Ducket had several times noticed him drifting into fits of abstraction at the stall; and if he could not find anyone to talk to in the evenings, he would sit by the fire with his head bowed, looking so sad that Ducket informed him: “You look as if you’re waiting for bad news on the Day of Judgment.”

Ducket was glad, therefore, one evening when Fleming seemed about to slip into one of these moods, to see an unexpected figure appear in the tavern. It was Benedict Silversleeves, well wrapped in a large black cloak, who had just returned up the cold road from Rochester.

Though he was rather in awe of the young lawyer, and though the last time they had spoken had been when Silversleeves rebuked him for kissing Tiffany, Ducket did not hesitate now. Fleming was depressed; Silversleeves was exactly the sort of educated man his master liked to talk to. He went across the room, introduced himself, and invited Silversleeves to join his master by the fire.