The Invention of Fire (15 page)

Outside they strolled to the street wall, a husband and wife taking a turn before going in to bed. The night air carried a spreading chill. The first week of October, yet they had traveled far already, nearly into the north country. Tomorrow they would cross the Trent at Newark.

“Tell me,” she said, her hand a ball of heat in his ample palm.

He told her.

I
HAD THOUGHT SATAN
’
S MINIONS
were leaving us in peace, at least for the season.” William Rysying, alderman of Portsoken Ward and prior of Holy Trinity, looked at me over the pious arch of his joined hands.

“This is a special advisement, Reverend Father,” I said, unsurprised by the prior’s dry greeting. “He unchained me for one afternoon only.”

Rysyng stood and gestured for me to precede him from the almonry, unwilling to tolerate my presence within the priory. He led me briskly away from the Holy Trinity gate. The prior’s head was down, a grey cowl bunched around the neck of this short, angry, ungraceful man. A piggish nose flattened above thick, dry lips. Eyes closely spaced and incurious, of no memorable shade. Hair too thin for a proper tonsure at the front, though overgrown into greasy, almost boyish ringlets where the circle met the shave. He smelled that day of sour cheese and smoke, though the priory’s seasonal laundering had left his wool habit unsoiled, scented with lye and rosemary. We skirted the priory’s western face through the great court up to Bevesmarkes, and walked with the looming bulk of the walls to our backs.

“You wished to speak with me, Gower,” said the prior. “So, speak. You have come to buy away our cartulary, or extort a measure of gold, I suppose?”

“No, Reverend Father,” I said. “It is city business that concerns me.”

“City business. So you are here to see the alderman of Portsoken Ward, not the prior of Holy Trinity.”

“Correct.”

“By whose warrant?”

“Father?”

“By whose warrant are you here?” He lifted his chin. “For you are not a freeman of London, Gower, nor even a resident of the city. You are a Southwark man, as Southwark as those maudlyns coining away their queynts in Rose Alley. As prior I serve my house and my order. As alderman I serve the men and women of my ward, and his lordship the mayor. What I do not serve in either capacity is the disordered population of Southwark. Move to London, purchase your freedom of the city, and buy a house in my ward, Gower. There are fine tenements just without Aldgate, and along the ditch above the Tower postern. Or you might pitch a tent in the green and live with the soldiers. Until then I’ll have no doings with you.”

The prior stopped in the street. His left foot had found a mud clod, which he kicked to the gutter. His eyes gleamed with righteousness as he looked at me, tensed to turn away.

“A pleasing homily, Reverend Father,” I said quickly. “Would that a scrivener were hard by, inking it on a bill. I’d happily hang it up on the gate of Winchester Palace, for every Southwark man to see and admire.” The bishop of Winchester, a neighbor of mine across the river and recently become an ally, was fiercely proud of his Southwark domain, claiming that our growing suburb embodied the future of London.

The prior scoffed unconvincingly. “I am not afraid of Wykeham. The bishop has larger things to concern himself with than the doings of a house such as ours.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “Though the doings of its leader could bear some episcopal probing, don’t you think?”

His lip quivered. “Whatever do you mean?”

As we delayed there in the street I told him. It was a piece of information I had held on Rysyng for nearly a year, waiting for the right moment to use it. A series of liaisons with the daughter of a fellow
alderman, the young woman put away to birth the prior’s child—and much worse, the purchase of a position for her in a sister house under the sworn pretense of virginity. The child was now a ward of the city of London, under the care of a Cheapside chandler.

“A whisper to the bishop, and you will be expelled from the order, lose your office and your livings.”

“You wouldn’t—you wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, but I would, Reverend Father. I would, and with no small pleasure.”

His face reddened, his jaw shook, his head acting like an abscess about to burst. Then his eyes closed, and something resembling peace settled into his features. It is often like that at these moments, as men confront their hidden lives anew in this quick and brutal form of confession I offer. With acceptance and submission, relief displaces fear.

“What do you want?” he finally said, resuming his walk along the walls. We were nearing Bishopsgate, our paces slowing.

“The last court session, at the Guildhall.”

“What about it?”

“You and several others seemed quite intent on hearing out Peter Norris. He had something to tell the court.”

“So he claimed.”

“Why wasn’t he permitted to speak?”

“The mayor was convinced he was lying. Trying to purchase his freedom with a convenient bit of deceit.”

“You didn’t believe him either? Norris, that is?”

His eyes shot toward me, then away. He turned, and we started our walk back toward the court and the priory. “None of the aldermen know what to believe.”

“He claimed to have the name of a witness.”

“Yes.”

“To the dumping in the Walbrook.”

He nodded tightly.

“When did he first speak of it?”

“After his previous arrest, a fortnight ago,” he said, looking around cautiously as we went along. “He started chatting about it his second
day in the stocks, going on to the sheriff’s boys on his return to the gaol each night. No one paid him any mind, everyone thought he was raving. Then the bodies were found. One of the serjeants told Brembre what Norris had been saying. At first the mayor was after speaking to Norris right away. Then something changed, and he refused to hear or even see the man.”

“And then?”

“Then Norris’s sentence ends. But he robs again. After the second arrest Norris was taken in by my men and thrown in the Counter.” A city gaol in Rysyng’s ward. “The next morning he started larking again, this time to my beadle, who told one of Brembre’s sheriffs, who told the mayor. And then—” He shrugged. “Then Brembre intervened. Norris’s trial would be held before the Mayor’s Court the next day, he ordered. The Guildhall would hear nothing about this other matter. London would have done with Peter Norris. And so it was. A quick trial, a quick hanging—”

“And any memory of a witness to this greater crime dies with him,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Why was Brembre so intent on keeping Norris silent?”

“Perhaps his witness saw something. Something damning, or at the least inconvenient.”

“Does Brembre know who was responsible for throwing the bodies in the channel, then?”

A short sigh, almost a gasp, as if Rysyng’s throat were reluctant to release its owner’s words. “He may.”

“And do you believe Brembre himself killed these men, or had some role in their deaths?”

The prior shook his head with confidence. “He did not, Gower. Of that I am certain.”

“How can you be so sure, given how the mayor has been acting since the killings?”

His swaying head jellied his cheeks as he walked. “I’ve told you all I know.”

I observed him from the side. “You are hiding something from me, Rysyng. What is it?”

His chin tilted up.

“Very well,” I said, stopping in the street once more. “I will visit the bishop tomorrow. I trust you’ll hear from him shortly thereafter.”

Rysyng stomped a shoe and wheeled on me. He puffed his reddened cheeks, then blew out a long, wheezing breath. “There was a piece of evidence,” he said. “Something found with the bodies. Brembre had it taken from the scene and ordered destroyed before the coroner’s arrival.”

Strode had hinted at this, though he had known none of the details. The coroner would have examined the bodies shortly after their recovery from the Walbrook, while Strode hadn’t been pulled in until the day after the inquest.

“What was it?”

“Strips of a livery banner, used to bind several of the victims’ hands.”

“The mayor ordered them removed?”

“And burned, or so I understand. All prior to the inquest, which was a cursory affair in any case.”

Nothing unusual there. The office of the king’s coroner lived on bribes, and if Brembre had wanted a cursory inquest he could have purchased one readily. “Could the heraldry on the banner be discerned?” I asked.

He hesitated. “Yes. Early that first morning, when the bodies were spread together on the ground, one of the sheriffs removed the silk strips from ten pairs of wrists. He laid them out together, and there it was.”

“Describe it.”

He made a decision, then, “Twin swans gorged, their necks entwined,” he said while closing his eyes. We both knew what this meant. The entwined swans distinguished the favored livery of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, uncle of the king and leader of the appellant faction of lords opposing Richard. The man Michael de la
Pole had invoked with such hatred at Westminster a few days before. The lord in whose household William Snell had labored before his appointment as king’s armorer—at the duke’s request. In that moment I felt something wobble on an unseen axis, as this inquiry into a London crime took on new weight and width, stretching itself beyond the city walls, reaching into the uppermost ranks of the realm.

“What can it mean?” I wondered aloud.

“Who can say?” Rysyng replied. Too lightly, I thought. “The duke, leaving his mark in the privy?”

Or an enemy, leaving the magnate’s livery on the victims. I wondered why the mayor would destroy such a telling piece of evidence, and what else Rysyng knew. Gloucester was Brembre’s sworn enemy. Anything damning of the duke should have been a treasure in his eyes. Yet something or someone, perhaps Gloucester himself, had got to the mayor following the recovery of the corpses.

We had made our way back to the priory’s almonry. Rysyng appeared eager to return within. I looked at him closely. “Why would Brembre do such a thing, Reverend Father? What kept him from publishing the duke’s banner far and wide, and thus casting his enemy in a foul light?”

“Perhaps he is being discouraged from pursuing an inquiry against Gloucester,” he said hintingly.

“By whom?”

An arch smirk. “You are not England’s sole trader in damning secrets, Gower, much as you like to imagine yourself so.”

“Only the most skillful,” I said wryly. “Now tell me.”

His face assumed a distant sadness. It lasted only a moment, then he said, “I must be free and clear of this matter, Gower. No more threats and extortions, do you understand?”

Not the murderous Walbrook affair, I realized, but his own, more delicate transgression.

“Tell me what you know, Reverend Father, and the history of your calamities shall be scraped from the tablet of my memory,” I said. “You have my sworn word.”

Though he had no reason to trust me the prior looked relieved. With relief came words. “I’ve heard only rumors, though believable ones. Several months ago the mayor’s name came up during a proceeding at the Guildhall. A routine interrogation by the sheriffs. The mayor himself was out of town.”

“Whom were the sheriffs questioning?”

“I wasn’t informed, though I’m told the subject was an embarrassing one for Brembre—quite dangerous as well. When Brembre returned to London he heard whispers of the interrogation and went into one of his rages. He threatened those involved, then seized the transcript of the interrogation by force before it could be copied into the rolls. Ripped it out of the scrivener’s hands, by all accounts.”

“If Brembre has the record, how is it being used against him? He would hardly fear idle gossip.”

“You assume he still holds it,” said the prior with a tight smile.

I stared at the almonry wall. “Gloucester,” I said softly.

“The record came into the hands of the duke soon after the proceeding at the Guildhall. No one knows how he laid his hands on it, nor will anyone say what it concerns for fear of Brembre’s swords.”

“Who else knows about this?” I had no inroads to the Duke of Gloucester’s household, yet if what Rysyng had told me was true, Woodstock was at the foul center of this whole business. It was a humbling thought, to imagine my own craft being practiced so far above my head.

Rysyng smiled. “You might speak to the Lady Idonia.” Brembre’s wife. Noting my surprise, he said, “The mayor is a venereal man, Gower. All anyone will say about his transgression is that it somehow involved his wife. She has been heard cursing him openly. She surely knows the nature of his offense.”

The prior turned into the almonry, the door held open by a novice.

“One last question, Reverend Father.” Rysyng had proved himself a goose well stuffed that day. Perhaps he held one morsel more.

He paused at the opening, his back still to me. “What is it?”

“Peter Norris’s son, the earless one.”

“What of him?”

“Norris was a man of your ward. I need to find the boy.”

He turned around, looking amused. “What can you want with a mutilated cutpurse?”

“The boy is an orphan. He needs the city’s charity.”

The prior scoffed. “Is John Gower going downy?”

“Merely a gallows promise to his father that I would see to Jack’s wardship.”

Rysyng’s reaction to my half-truth was bland and convincing. “I haven’t seen the boy since his father’s sentencing at the Guildhall. I’m sure the constables will net him soon enough, then they’ll take off his hand. Can’t help you on that one, Gower, no matter what scandals you threaten.”

With that he left me at the low door through the almonry, and as it closed behind him my vision was engulfed with the most frightening darkness I have ever experienced. The world went black, as if some shade had stolen out of the underworld to tear across my sight. This sensation of utter blindness was accompanied by a deep pain in my skull, a stab followed by a continual throbbing that left me weakened in my limbs, sickened in my gut.

I fell back against the priory wall, to the side of the door. My face and arms had broken out in a profuse sweat, drenching my clothing through to my cotte. My hands clutched at the wall, searching for purchase on the rough stone. Shallow, panicked breaths, no sensation in my legs or feet. I nearly collapsed.

Slowly, as I bent forward over the wall-side gutter, my sight started its return, though in a manner that I found if anything more alarming than its initial loss. A flicker, a brighter flash and then another, and soon a thin halo of daylight began to gather above the void at the center. The glow widened to reach around the darkened middle. Now two concentric circles, the outer a nimbus aglow, the inner an unlit coal. The glow gradually thickened, pushing inward against the blackness, now melting like a disc of ice in full sun.