A Burnable Book (17 page)

Back through Guildhall Yard. A flash of color before the eastern gate, and a few scattered laughs. On approaching I saw the cause: a bit of street theater of the sort often seen in the city’s larger gathering places. With Strode’s concerns still preoccupying me, I paused, distractedly, to watch.

The mimes were performing a play about the first King Edward. Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots. The company had reached the deathbed scene, performed with the king prostrate on a mat, his lords gathered round. The speaker stepped to the front to interpret the scene for the crowd.

“As he lingers his last, with lords all about,

By six-less-two swords he shall say as he dies,

‘My heart you must heft toward heaven on earth,

To Jerusalem journey, joy to enjoin,

And my bones against Bruce to be borne into war,

My gravestone to graveth: Leave Gaveston gone.’ ”

The mime playing Longshanks put a hand to his forehead, chortled out a last breath, and expired, to the warm applause of the circle of Londoners gathered around the actors. He leapt to his feet, the mimes collected small coins in their caps, and the scene broke up as quickly as it had gathered, the company heading for St. Paul’s or the bridge with the heat of the day.

My own skin had gone cold.
By six-less-two swords he shall say as he dies.
Seven of swords, sovereign of swords, prince of plums, three of thistles—and now six-less-two swords, another numbered symbol echoing with the voice of the
De Mortibus
prophecies. Even this rough street spectacle of Longshanks’s death had drawn its language from the book, which now seemed to be everywhere I turned. A street preacher, the bishop and his friars, the common serjeant, and now the mimes of London, all speaking the morbid idiom of Lollius, the whisper of kingly deaths on their lips.

It was at that moment that I started imagining the prophecies as a kind of pestilence, raising boils on the vulnerable body of the realm. Despite the laughter of these Londoners, the image stayed with me the rest of that day, as the book spread its ill portents through the city and the realm.

Men of our time have a peculiar fascination with a form of story. It is the story of raptus, of ravir, of ravissement. It has various names, in the Moorish tongue the muwashshah, in Spanish the serranilla, most commonly in French the pastourelle.

A simple story, always the same. A young shepherdess strolls in a field or on a road. A knight on horseback swoops in and seeks to seduce her, beguiling her with poems, or clever words, or promises of fame. She resists his advances, resists yet more, until eventually his desire goads him to force himself upon her, destroying her virtue. There are variations here and there: the shepherdess is carried off by an evil knight or a murderous giant, so her gallant rescuer saves her life even as he sullies her flesh. Often there is a rival involved, and one knight must defeat another to win the lady.

Yet however the matter falls out, the young lady remains silent about her rape, her tongue as useless as Philomel’s after it was severed by Tereus. So acceptable a part of lovemaking is this vile act that even Father Andreas, in his
Art of Courtly Love
, enjoins noble men to delight in it without thought: “Remember to praise them lavishly,” he writes, “and should you find a suitable spot you should not delay in taking what you seek, gaining it by rough embraces.”

Yet where is the woman’s sovereignty, her choice in the matter? The woman never writes her own story. She is rather like the lion in Aesop’s little fable, who sees a painting of another lion being strangled by a man. But who paints the lion? Tell me, who?

He who paints the lion claims to know the lion, and with his brush he may color whatever lies he wishes. The power of the teller, you see, is inestimable.

And so it is with women in these pastourelles, these tales of rural virgins who know not their own desire well enough to keep from resisting the rapes they must suffer with all the inevitability of death. I have heard them in the langue d’oïl, I have heard them in the langue d’oc, in the tongue of Juan Ruiz, in the tongue of Dante, and translated from the tongue of the Jews. In every human language, it seems, men have depicted the joys of ravishment, and never with consequence for the ravisher. Just one time I would like to hear a version with a righteous end, one in which the perpetrator—

I flee my matter.

One morning, as the girl sat with her mother in their bedchamber, learning to pin out a broad stitch on her frame, there came a pounding at the outer door. They heard voices, then one of the servingwomen entered.

“The prince requests an audience, my lady.”

“Very well.” The lady gathered her embroidery and placed it in a basket. “I shall receive him in the salon.”

As she left the bedchamber she turned, stooped down, and held her daughter by the chin. “Stay here, my sweet. Just here.
Do not come out until I call you.
Do you understand?”

The girl nodded. Her mother kissed her nose and walked out of her private rooms, closing the door behind her.

Through a knot the daughter watched as the foreign prince entered the salon. Her mother called for her maidservant, moving in frantic circles as she sought to elude his grasp. It happened so quickly: a brief struggle, a hand clamped over her mother’s mouth, her dress torn from her shoulders, the horrific sight of the lord in his nakedness.

Through it all the girl obeyed her mother’s last command.
Do not come out until I call you.
And she did not. What could she have done?

The prince, dressing himself, left his victim on a cushioned chair, weeping with pain and humiliation. At the sight of her mother’s bruised thighs, her reddened breasts, the little girl let out a whimper of sympathy.

The prince’s head whipped round. Before she could move he had flung open the door to the bedchamber, grabbed her small arm, and pulled her violently to the middle of the salon. He drew a knife, madness in his eyes, and made ready to cut the girl’s throat.

A crash of splintered wood, and the door to the upper hall burst open. In the opening stood the foreign duke, a short sword in his hand. He took two long strides and held the blade at his brother’s throat. No
words were exchanged, though the thunderous tension between the brothers
filled the salon. Finally the prince shrugged, smirked at his younger brother, and left the room.

That evening, as she walked with her mother through the lower hall, the girl sensed a movement behind them. She turned.

There, in a doorway, with his grey, fishlike eyes, stood the prince. His arms were crossed over his doublet, pointed with the same lions and flowers depicted on his shield. His eyes took in her mother’s form, surveyed the bruised and battered flesh he had ravaged. Then he looked at the girl. She gave him her cruelest glare, surprising herself with her childish defiance, and on his face she saw it: a flinch, a smear of utter shame at what he had done.

She felt a dark and secret thrill. For all his brutality, she recognized in that moment, for all his shows of strength, what defines this man above all is his weakness.

A weakness I shall never show.

Chapter xxii

The Guildhall, Ward of Cheap

T
he gentleman the clerks called Gower had departed the Guildhall a while before. Edgar Rykener wondered whether he, too, should put his head in the doorway and ask them for assistance. But he’d overheard that James Tewburn wasn’t about, so he gave his name to one of the other clerks and returned to the bench. The wall’s dark stone cooled his blood, easing him into an upright slumber untroubled for once by thoughts of all that pressed him: that mess with Bickle the beadle, the dead girl on the Moorfields, his worry about Gerald, the missing Agnes.

He was deep in a dream when a hand on his shoulder shook him gently. “Edgar? Edgar Rykener? You are here to see me?”

“Ye—yes,” he stammered, waking to the sight of James Tewburn. The clerk’s threadbare coat was cinched too tightly, giving his thin fingers no quarter as he kneaded the chapped skin at his neck. His eyes shifted about, darting from Edgar’s face to the chamber door. “As I was in the precincts of the Guildhall, I thought—”

“Right, yes yes, of course,” said Tewburn.

Edgar glanced up and down the passage between the buildings. The bench had emptied during his slumber, though voices floated from the structures on either side.

“Master Strode’s chambers are in heavy use today,” the clerk continued. “Let’s find a more suitable spot.” He led them in a circuitous path around several more buildings to a remote corner of Guildhall Yard, obscured from view by a high privet hedge. Had Tewburn recognized him this time? Edgar wondered.

“Here,” Tewburn said. There was a short stone bench slightly apart from the wall. The clerk sat forward with his elbows on his knees. “There have been some, ah, difficulties in the matter of your brother’s wardship,” he rasped.

“Difficulties?” Edgar said with alarm. “Is Gerald well? Is he safe?”

“I believe so,” he said, though Edgar could hear the doubt in his voice. “His master knows nothing about the transfer, and he won’t know until the day it’s to take effect. Our common serjeant is scrupulous.”

“I see,” Edgar said weakly. “And what’s caused these difficulties?”

Tewburn shrugged. “London and Southwark are discrete cities, with distinct laws, distinct manors, distinct courts. Master Strode has no jurisdiction on the far bank, and though his arm is long, there are limits to the speed and force with which even he can negotiate with his counterparts there. In Southwark he’s nothing.”

“But what—”

“We must find an accommodating judge in the Southwark manor court wielding jurisdiction over Grimes’s shop. And even to determine in whose authority Cutter Lane lies presents a considerable difficulty. The lane runs along the boundary between two Southwark boroughs, dividing them as prettily as Pythagoras himself could bisect a circle.”

The flood of details overwhelmed Edgar, for what did he know of borough courts and jurisdictions, of bisected circles and Pythagoras? What he did know was that Gerald needed to be moved out of Nathan Grimes’s shop, and moved soon.

He also suspected there was something Tewburn wasn’t telling him. The clerk’s voice was stiff, too proper even for a Guildhall man. For Edgar knew Tewburn, in that way he knew his most frequent jakes: knew his voice and his manner, the way he responded to certain gestures and inflections. “When will you know more, Master Tewburn?”

“We should receive official word by Monday, I’m told, Tuesday at the latest, and we fully expect a resolution—”

“James,” Edgar said, his voice soft but severe.

Tewburn stopped, then turned slowly, his eyes widening with recognition and desire. Tewburn knew that tone, asked for it every time.

“I—how—”

“James,” he said again. “If you have something to tell me, tell it now, or there won’t be much of this in your future.” He took Tewburn’s hand and put it on his breeches.

The clerk’s face reddened, his tongue flicked his upper lip, then he sprang to his feet.

“What is it, James?”

He put a hand to his eyes. “Ah, hell with it all.” He gazed through the privet, making sure they were not being observed, then blew out a long breath. “The truth is, your brother’s mixed up with some foul men. The butchers seem to control that whole manor over there. They’ve paid off the judges, the bailiff, the prior for all I can tell. They’re a hard bunch, waylaying cattle and sheep before they’re driven to market, scaring off the inspectors. No one knows who’s in charge, and whenever I push for an answer on who has the authority to approve the transfer, I get a spin on somebody’s finger.”

Edgar considered telling the clerk what he knew but decided against it. Too risky. No reason to muddy the waters with all Gerald’s talk of treason, which could interfere with the transfer of wardship. “Anything else?” he asked.

Tewburn shrugged. “I’ll know more in a few days, after I’ve met with one of the Guildable justices. It looks to me like Gerald’s kept himself clean, but Grimes is thick in it. I’ll have it sorted by Monday. We can talk then.”

“Here?”

“Better that I come find you. Our usual place?” Tewburn took the sacrament most often in the north churchyard at St. Pancras, a disused and overgrown spot of land lying between Gropecunt Lane and Popkirtle Lane and running nearly up to Cheapside. The newer yard to the west of the church was now the parish’s burial plot, so the maudlyns tended to use the older one with certain jakes who were uncomfortable coupling in the horsestalls.

Edgar nodded and stood. “Monday, then, just after the Angelus bell.”

Tewburn peered through the privet, then back at Edgar, going to his knees with a questioning glance. Edgar allowed him to reach up and unlace his breeches. The clerk was eager, and within the short whiles of three paternosters, said in his mind while he was sucked by Strode’s clerk, his seed was in Tewburn’s mouth, Tewburn on his feet, and they were winding back through the mayor’s outbuildings. Edgar refused his offer of a groat. This one, he told the clerk with a grateful smile, is on my tally.

As he left Guildhall Yard, Edgar pondered the troubling encounter. Whatever Tewburn had learned across the river about Grimes and his gang of butchers couldn’t be good for Gerald. He shuffled along Cheapside back to Gropecunt Lane, his gloom returning. Perhaps Master Strode, for all his might and goodness, wouldn’t be able to help after all.

No surprise there. Tewburn, after all, worked for the City of London, and Strode worked for the City of London, and Bickle the beadle worked for the City of London—yet the City of London, Edgar Rykener thought with a grim sense of his own place in this hateful town, most surely did not work for him.