Authors: Bruce Holsinger
It was at some point in those hours that I found myself thinking of the Duke of Lancaster, and wondering where in his tangled relations he found the most comfort in the face of so much loss. John, Edward, the second John, Isabel, four of his children with Duchess Blanche, all of them buried in Leicester years ago; another John with Duchess Constance, felled by fever before his second year. Such childhood deaths harden a man, whip his heart with chill and heat even as he bites his lips to keep the pain from speaking for itself. Now this one boy who had somehow clung to life was here, with me, and despite all that he had done the feeling that almost overwhelmed me in that moment I can only describe as a grateful, joyous calm. The calm of kin, I suppose.
We sat in the garden, eating a midday meal I barely tasted. As Simon devoured his food I turned the conversation to his life in and around Florence, at the service of the English
condottiero
. His position, as he described it, seemed to consist in a variety of clerical tasks for Hawkwood’s company: contracts for service, purchases of supply, provisions for garrisoned troops around the peninsula. At one point in our conversation his face darkened.
“What is it, Simon?”
He hesitated. “I should tell you as well, Father, that I was betrothed.”
“Was?”
His lips tightened. “She died. Fever. We never made it to our vows.”
“How long has it been?”
He slightly shrugged. “Months. But every day I wake up imagining she’s still alive.”
“What was her name?” I asked, thinking she might have died right around the time Sarah passed.
He closed his eyes. “Her name . . . her name was Seguina.” He could barely utter it, and when he had he started weeping, not the cry of a man with an eye to his status, nor a boyish mewl, but a ripping keen, the phlegm pouring from his nose to glisten his lips and chin, his chest and shoulders heaving in a haphazard rhythm, animal-like chokes barking from his throat. In a strange way I found myself feeling almost jealous of his pain, its comfortless depth. I had never wept with such abandon for Sarah.
“Seguina,” I finally said.
“Seguina d’—d’—d’Orange,” he hiccuped, still a boy in that moment.
“A beautiful name,” I said, and just like that it was settled. I still marvel at the ease with which Simon slipped back into my daily life, like a hand-warmed coin into a silk purse. Often I wonder how everything would have turned out had I gone with my first impulse, sending him away from Southwark with an oath and a boot. Or if I had demanded to search his meager luggage.
But Simon was my sole heir, as Chaucer would not stop pointing out, and with all the stir around the book and the Moorfields killing, the lingering emptiness left by Sarah’s death the year before, I suppose I was looking for some source of comfort in those turbulent weeks. No one can be blameless in such circumstances, and I now understand why I remained ignorant—was kept ignorant—even as the clouds thickened above. Yet as I look back on our reunion that day I can still be sickened by my self-deception, my blithe acceptance of its terms.
That, I am afraid, was my own doing. For never once did I think to question the timing of my son’s return from Italy. Nor its meaning.
San Donato a Torre, near Florence
A
dam Scarlett, hungry, muddy from the road, in no hurry to deliver his news, leaned against the stable wall and watched the battle unfold. Three lancemen, shields held high, began their charge at the small artillery company, who waited until the last moment to launch the payload. Clods and stones peppered the attackers, then the trebuchet broke, sending a cracked feed bucket rolling between the ranks. The five boys traded screams and blows, coming together in a loud melee before collapsing in a heap of giggles and sweat. The farrier, mumbling about the yearlings, came out and chased them off.
Scarlett turned away and started his ascent to the villa, the scene replaying in his mind as the scent of freshly turned dirt rose from beneath his riding boots. War never ended in the communes, it seemed, every season grinding its hundreds of young men into the clay. Soon enough these boys, most of them sons of bought soldiers, would be riding out themselves, bound for a seasonal cattle raid, or another pillage in the Romagna.
In the gallery Hawkwood was dressing down one of his chief men, a
tenente
from the garrison near Perugia. Scarlett had arranged the man’s summons and transfer to Florence several weeks before, after Taricani’s departure, and now he was here to face due punishment. Private deals with a Jewish banker, sums moved off the books. Scarlett found his usual place along the south wall, within easy sight of the
condottiero
. With the mess he had in hand he was happy to wait.
“Please, sire, if you would only—”
“Silence, pig.” Hawkwood was enjoying himself, and the kneeling man seemed to know it. Scarlett watched as the soldier’s cheek paled, his fright like a layer of wash swept over a fresco.
“You think I haven’t had enough of this from my countrymen already? First Cocco, pulling his little
truffa
. And now you, Antonio?”
“But, sire, the Raspanti—”
“Ah, the Raspanti. Blame it on the poor, shall we? That’s the best you can do?”
“Yes, sire—I mean no, sire—”
“Enough,” said Hawkwood, quietly this time, and in English. “Enough.” He turned and his gaze found Scarlett, who gave his master the slightest of shrugs. A
What did you expect?
sort of shrug. The
condottiero
widened his eyes in agreement, his irises white flecks on brown, hues of frosted mud, of winter campaigns and Yule sieges.
Hawkwood reached down to his side for the stick. La Asta, the Rod, a notorious forearm’s length of hard elm, its core drilled out and filled with a pour of lead. He palmed it gently, looking from his hands to the
tenente,
now a whimpering dog waiting for a boot. With one movement Hawkwood brought the stick up, across, and the man’s head whipped to the side with a hard crack of bone. Wretched moans, lots of blood, and when he brought his head back to center Scarlett could see the ruined jaw hanging by a slab of torn skin and ripped muscle. Hawkwood leaned forward and cupped the broken bones, shoving them back into place with an excruciating thrust. Scarlett winced for the
tenente
.
“Keep this shut for a while, Antonio,” he said, back in Italian. “Take the silence I’ve imposed on you as an opportunity, hmm? To think about virtue, about service, about loyalty and the consequence of what you’ve done. We’ll talk again next year, when your mouth works again.” He jerked the loose bone to the side, and the
tenente
fell to the floor, writhing in pain.
Later, after Hawkwood had sorted through the day’s correspondence with Pietrasanta, his chancellor, they walked through the gardens, looking at the week ahead. Scarlett was procrastinating, and badly. He listened to his master going on about the Perugia situation.
“I’ve grown sick of these southern men, Adam. The heat makes them lazy, and now all this conjuring with the Jews. Really, I’ve taken all I can take. Give me an Englishman over these rude peninsulars any day. Or even a Scot.” He paused to look across the ravine to the north. “It will be good to see London, won’t it? And after so many years.”
Scarlett took a breath, another, then said it. “The book has disappeared.”
Hawkwood froze. “When?”
“Five weeks ago Monday, my lord. Our messengers have just brought the news from Westminster.”
Scarlett told him the rest of it: the incident at La Neyte, the pursuit in the Moorfields, the fear spreading like fire among the English gentry. The messenger had been sent on his way within a few days of the theft, with instructions to spare no expense in bringing the news to the great
condottiero
in Florence with all due speed.
“I shudder for the poor horses,” Hawkwood said absently. He turned and looked at Scarlett. “You’re telling me, Adam, that a French spy has stolen the book from under our beak, and Lancaster’s?”
“All we know is that it was pilfered by an unidentified woman,” said Scarlett, letting the implication sink in. “Now she’s dead.”
“A woman.” Hawkwood’s eyes widened. “Could it be—”
“That is my assumption, sire.”
Hawkwood considered this for a while. “Resourceful little thing, isn’t she?”
“Wasn’t she.”
Hawkwood smiled thinly. “And the others?”
“That’s not known,” said Scarlett. “Yet.”
Hawkwood continued walking. “The last dispatch spoke of the work’s popularity among these Lollers.”
Scarlett paced behind, watching his master’s face. “The late Wycliffe’s disciples, and friends of Lancaster. Some of them have it by rote, and by the time of its disappearance it had become the most notorious writing in England. A book of ghostly prophecies, with dark portent for the fate of the realm! But now no one can find the original manuscript, nor the cloth. And I worry—well—”
“Tell me, Adam.”
“I worry that this may be Il Critto’s doing.”
“Oh?”
“I do not like coincidences. First Il Critto takes a leave, suddenly and without warning. Then this young woman, who was nearly betrothed to him, disappears without a trace from her father’s house. Next your slinky poetical friend comes back from Rome. You know the gossip, sire. He was seducing her. Then
he
leaves us—quite distraught, from the servants’ reports. And all of this just a few weeks after the book leaves our hands. A book now missing.” They took a few more steps. Scarlett was the one who stopped this time. “I don’t like it, John. I don’t like it at all.”
Hawkwood’s face was hard to read at that moment, though it soon broke into a serene smile. “Well, there’s little we can do about it now, eh? And in some ways the theft may be the best thing that could have happened.”
“Oh?”
“This will only draw more attention to the book. Soon enough every man and woman in London will be singing these prophecies from the towers. Then what will our long castle have to say for himself? This changes nothing, Adam.”
Scarlett could see Hawkwood’s point about the theft, though he did not share the
condottiero
’s confidence that all would be well. With the book on the loose and the prophecies bandied abroad, there was no telling where all of this might end up
.
He thought again of Il Critto, as they had dubbed him soon after his arrival in Hawkwood’s circles. Young, ambitious, sizzlingly brilliant. A charmer, but Scarlett had distrusted him from the first instant. Il Critto had distrusted Scarlett as well, especially after that unfortunate misunderstanding over the faked dispatch from London. It was merely a loyalty test, and the young man had passed it admirably, though he had taken the whole thing as a personal affront, an assault on his honor. Scarlett had tried to make peace, but Il Critto would hear none of it, and the young man had spent the next two years in Florence despising the sight of him.
It had been weeks since Scarlett had given Il Critto more than a passing thought. Now he was concerned.
Non tenet anguillam, per caudam qui tenet illam.
A bit of wisdom ground in by long experience among these venomous communes. “He who holds a snake by the tail doesn’t have it under control.” And at the moment, Scarlett worried, we don’t hold even the tail.
Hawkwood, feeling none of this, gave his most faithful man a fond smile. “And now, Adam, you will join your kingmaker in a game of cards.”
St. Paul’s churchyard, Ward of Farringdon
W
ill he recognize you?” Agnes Fonteyn asked her sister.
Millicent ignored the question as she gazed across the expanse of the great churchyard, where swift clouds bowled shadows among the hucksters, pilgrims, guildsmen, and idlers. With her gut tightened in fear, every sight and sound reached her with an acuity that cast the peril of their situation in sharp relief. The line of swearers spilling out the south door, clutching contracts as they awaited their turn at the altar to sign or make their mark. Construction at the south end on a line of dwellings for canons: the pounding of hammers, the loud claps of boards, carpenters’ swears. The banter from the steps, bakers’ daughters and fishwives hawking from their leased stations around the broken cross, and every word bounced off the stone.
River mallard, roast bittern, five roast larks for two, here here, sir.
Cristina Walwayn’s pigeons’re putrid, sir, hardly fit for pasties.
Don’t y’purchase from that station, good sir. That’s Evota there, Our Lady of the Stale Buns.
Fish, sir, roast fish? Henry Holdernesse be my master, trustiest monger in town, sure. Not like Tilda Cooke over there, she’ll sell you a flat a’ pigshit and call it a herring-cake. Mine goes down easy, sir, and sells easy as well.
Though selling a book, Millicent had discovered, was more difficult. Over the last week she and Agnes had become industrious fishers of men, posing as middling singlewomen of Cornhull, their hook baited with the only worm they possessed. This book, Millicent firmly believed, would bring a high price from the right man—a man ambitious enough to use it for the unique sort of personal gain its contents promised. A few whispered conversations at service gates, furtive proffers at tavern doors, a handsome profit.
Yet none of these men had taken the bait. Not a one of them had even understood the significance of what she was offering them, nor the grave threat the book represented to the realm. That morning Millicent had made a decision. Their next prospect would be a greater man. Not a lord, but something like a lord: a man belonging to the Order of the Coif, a serjeant-at-law with deep connections in the king’s affinity.
Thomas Pinchbeak had once been close with Sir Humphrey ap-Roger, who had relied on him for a number of legal matters. She had met the lawman at a mummers play along the embankment, Sir Humphrey showing her off on a Midsummer Eve, the shore fires painting the river with a devilish sheen. That was nearly three years ago. Pinchbeak might recall her face, though surely not her name, as she hadn’t encountered him again since well before Sir Humphrey’s death. What would he think of her, she wondered, approaching him with such a peculiar offer—or, depending how he received it, such an unsettling threat?
With the book concealed in her coat lining, Agnes turned to wait at the top of the south stairs while Millicent approached the gate. Pinchbeak stood with two of his fellow serjeants-at-law within the parvis, a low-walled area before the portico enclosed as a small courtyard. The lawmen were engaged in a lighthearted dispute of some kind, with Pinchbeak the wry observer and mediator, two of the younger serjeants more animated. On the stone benches that lined the sides of the parvis sat several other lawmen conferring with visitors—two wealthy burgesses and a knight. To the side of the gate stood a young man of perhaps seventeen, gangly, tall, puffed with his minor station.
“A word with Master Pinchbeak, please,” Millicent said, giving him her most winning smile.
He spat in a gutter. “The serjeants have little time for hucksters or women, nor women hucksters. Be off with you.”
Millicent looked down at her dress, now shabbier than any garment she had worn since St. Leonard’s. “But it’s known that the serjeants-at-law gather in the parvis to serve
all
the citizens of London. You’d deny a freewoman of the city such privilege?” Her raised voice attracted the attention of the lawmen. Pinchbeak approached the low gate, then leaned out to address the young man.
“Let her in, Dawson.”
The young man bowed his head. “As you wish, Master Pinchbeak.”
Pinchbeak gestured to Millicent to follow him, and she matched his slow progress toward the far wall of the parvis. He walked with a stick, topped by a carved skull of ivory that looked small beneath a massive hand, which belied his compact frame. He didn’t look at her until they had taken a seat, and he said nothing once they were settled, merely raising an untamed eyebrow.
Millicent reached into her bodice and removed her medal, the silver replica of St. Leonard that still identified her with Bromley. She displayed it for Pinchbeak. His expression softened. “As you see, Master Pinchbeak,” she began, “I was once a poor laysister of St. Leonard, no more than a peeler of roots to that great house. Yet I come to beg the indulgence of a lawman famed across England for the wisdom of his counsel.”
Pinchbeak, ignoring her flattery, studied her face, his gaze wandering freely over her features and down to her breast. “We’ve met before.”
“I don’t believe so, Master Pinchbeak,” she quickly said. She stole a glance at his collar, a band of chained silver about his neck with a pendant badge below, bejeweled with the livery of his affinity: a single white star, opposed fields of gold and red, the whole surrounded by ornate tangles of vines, leaves, and flowers, the subtlest metalwork to be had in London. The gifting of this collar had been a sign of singular distinction, marking Pinchbeak as a prestigious member of that extended network of knights, squires, freemen, and servants orbiting Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
Pinchbeak tilted his head. “I’m rarely wrong about such things. But no matter. State your business. Always happy to help out a sister of Bromley, whether lay or avowed.”
She spoke of the book. His face remained impassive as she described the volume and its poetry, the dark histories inscribed in its strange verses; the cloth and its heraldry, the incriminating livery woven in its strands. She recited the four bits of prophecy she had gotten by rote, including the one that mattered most, on the death of King Richard. She said nothing about the manner in which the book had come to her, nor about the murdered girl. This piece of the story, she suspected, might prove more useful at a later point.
All the while Pinchbeak observed her with a practiced calm, his fingers steepled before his sharp nose. She could not read the lawman’s eyes even as well as she had read the book, though in their depths she sensed genuine concern. The hollow of his neck created a dark well of stubbled skin that pulsed as he listened. She was watching a vein throb beneath his chin when he finally spoke.
“To whom else have you uttered these lines?” He leaned forward slightly.
“You are the first,” Millicent lied. “The very first, Master Pinchbeak.”
She waited. With a shuddering groan, the bell struck in the St. Paul’s belfry far above, wrapping Millicent in its deep throb and shaking her guts like jelly in a bowl.
Pinchbeak remained still through the last of the clamor, his gaze on Millicent far from kind. “You deal rather freely with these prophecies,” he said into the final, dying tone.
“Though freely is not how I hope to part with them, Master Pinchbeak,” she countered.
His frown was severe. “You haven’t the devil’s idea what unholy hell you’ve dug yourself into, Mistress—”
“Rykener,” she said on an impulse, thinking of the Gropecunt maudlyn showing up at her door. Through the parvis gate she saw Agnes, lingering by the stairs. “Eleanor Rykener is my name.” Her sister would flay her if she knew she had betrayed her friend in this way, yet giving her own name would lead the authorities right to her door.
“Mistress Rykener,” Pinchbeak said, attempting patience, though she could now see the cords in his neck standing out against his skin, which had colored to a deep purple, “I’ve heard noises from others about this book. A hideous thing, and if what you say is true, if you really have it, why, you’ve dug yourself a pretty little hole. The very words you’ve uttered in my presence—the words alone are treason.”
Millicent subtly smiled. She had Pinchbeak just where she wanted him. “Though they are not my words, good sir. Nor my treason described in the prophecy.”
“Not your words,” Pinchbeak said, sitting back. These was a challenge in his gaze, perhaps even a small degree of admiration. “Yet whose words are they? That’s the question, hmm?”
She shrugged. “Though to my purposes a useful one only insofar as it aids me in their sale.”
“Your purposes will best be served by bringing this book to me. You’ll receive a handsome fee, I assure you.”
At last. “And the size of this fee, Master Pinchbeak?”
He thought about it. “Four shillings.”
Millicent sniffed. “Four shillings? Four shillings, when a prince’s ransom would hardly suit? Think of your own reward, Master Pinchbeak, should you deliver this book of prophecies to your lord. And the penalty should he learn that you were presented with the opportunity to recover it—but failed.”
He sputtered for a moment, but he knew she was right. “Let us be clear on this, Mistress Rykener. The line you quoted concerning the day of the regicide, the feast of St. Dunstan. The thirteenth prophecy is clear on this matter?”
Millicent nodded and repeated the two lines:
“By Half-ten of Hawks might shender be shown,
On day of Saint Dunstan shall Death have his doom.”
Pinchbeak rose with some difficulty, his right arm shaking on his stick. “What’s to prevent me from having you seized this very moment?” he asked. “Here you are,
femme sole
in the presence of a serjeant-at-law, with no husband to shield you. Newgate is full of traitors this season, man and woman alike.”
Millicent had anticipated this. “I have made certain arrangements for the disposition of the book in case I’m taken, Master Pinchbeak. It’s safely hidden.”
“I see,” he said, looking skeptical. “And you intend to approach every prominent man in London with this book until you find one ready to snap it up?”
“Only those known for the keenness of their discernment. Their wisdom in making difficult choices.”
He gave her a thin smile, then leaned forward awkwardly, his breath warming her cheek as he wedged his stick between his chest and the parvis pavers. “Come see me next Friday, Mistress Rykener, in my rooms at Scroope’s, the serjeants’ inn at Ely Place. By then I will have inquired about these prophecies. If I learn there is anything to them we’ll discuss a suitable price.”
Millicent, delighted, rose from her bench while Pinchbeak turned away for the company of his fellow serjeants. She rejoined Agnes at the south porch and they headed back to Cornhull, talking excitedly about the fortune that awaited them. Though she felt a nagging worry that Pinchbeak’s inquiries might lead him to spurn her offer, Millicent had been stirred by the encounter, and had no intention of waiting until the next week to inquire with Pinchbeak about his price. Why, the serjeant-at-law could make an offer for the book along with other gentlemen interested in its purchase. They had settled on the next wealthy man to approach when Agnes tugged her sleeve.
“What do you suppose he wants, Mil?”
“Who?” The turn for her house was just ahead.
“Man over there. Spicerer, looks like.”
Millicent looked to see George Lawler, standing before his shop and urging them over. He was agitated, his gaze shifting left and right. Arm in arm, the sisters crossed over and cleared the gutter. “Yes, Master Lawler?” Millicent said when they reached him.
“Men’ve come.” He peered back into his shop. “To your house, and also here.”
“Pratt, sure, and his son,” Millicent said. “He’ll have what I owe him, as soon as I’ve settled with you.”
“Not Pratt.”
“Who, then?”
“Loy if I know. Constables? But not of our ward, that’s certain. Had the long knives at their sides, no badges. Asked after the sisters Fonteyn, do I know them, know their whereabouts.”
Millicent gasped. “The
sisters
Fonteyn?”
“Knew that one of them, the rich one, frequented Lawler’s. With a fondness for sugared things. And that the younger one’s a mau—” He stopped himself. “Didn’t know you had a sister.”
Millicent turned to Agnes, her fury rising. “And how could
they
have known, Agnes? Spreading rumor of your famed chastity about the city, hoping it would burnish my name?”
Agnes stepped back as if struck. “I been gone from Gropecunt Lane weeks now, Mil. So they’re looking for me, looking for the b—”
“Stop!” Millicent cried.
They all turned at a harsh laugh from Lawler’s shop door. Mistress Lawler, arms folded, taking it all in. “Look at the shiny side of the coin, your ladyship,” she said as Millicent felt herself redden. “Least now you’ll have an honest way of working off your debts.”
Millicent turned and strode off, Agnes hurrying behind her.
“Never had a doubt about that one, Lawler,” she called to their backs. “A maud’s a maud, wherever she gets her pennies. Let that be a lesson to you, George. The wisdom of wives, deep as the sea is green.”
“Aye,” she heard Lawler mutter. “And just as cold.”
They reached the corner. Millicent had to force herself to place one foot in front of the other.
“Mil,” said Agnes, working to keep up. “Mil, what if the men are still about? Shouldn’t we get away from here?”
The visitors had been thorough in their inquiries. It seemed London’s entire cloth industry was staring at them as they slunk past the colorful displays and hangings lining the lane: dresses, smocks, hoods, coverlets, and a host of other goods that now made Millicent feel trapped by the opulence rather than a part of it. Finally they reached her house.
The door stood ajar. Heedless of Agnes’s warnings, Millicent entered, surveying the destruction. In the front room, chair cushions had been torn apart, feathers and straw scattered across the floor, wooden shelves torn from the walls, leaving gaping holes in the plaster; in the kitchen larder, already-empty barrels were broken on the floor, her recent purchases from Lawler’s studding the rushes. She raced up the back stairs and into the rear bedchamber. Her trunk lay in pieces, hacked apart with an ax or sword. It seemed that nearly every garment she still owned had been sliced in two and tossed about the room.