The Invention of Fire (37 page)

“Why are you bringing this to me?” Brembre said. The mayor examined the bend, fingering the duke’s embroidered badge.

A question I had expected. “I intended to bring it to Edmund Rune and the chancellor, though with the recent impeachment the earl is no longer in power—and I don’t imagine the new chancellor would look kindly on an accusation of this sort against his chief supporter among the lords. But you are now one of the king’s most powerful allies in the realm, Lord Mayor. You alone have the means of bringing this before the king and forcing his hand against Gloucester.”

“Perhaps,” said Brembre, sounding dubious. “Yet Gloucester and his allies want war, and soon. The duke knows my counsel and the chancellor’s has been against his own. And he’s punishing me for it, the wily hare. My men beaten and harassed, my merchant ships and warehouses torched to the ground”—here he gestured to Rykener’s confession—“my letters and muniments intercepted and stolen. And the greatest insult of all: a pile of bodies in my privy channels, shot up with these handgonnes or hacked to death. Gloucester has been acting with impunity in London, and believes I will do nothing to stop him, not with this whore’s interrogation in his hands. So he lords it about the city as if he, Thomas of Woodstock, were the mayor rather than Nicholas Brembre.”

Or Nicholas Exton, I silently reminded him—though everyone believed Exton’s mayoralty would be a continuation of Brembre’s, with a transition in name only.

“The Duke of Gloucester, leaving his spoor everywhere he goes,” I said.

Brembre looked up, his eyes darkened. “I will have Gloucester’s men rounded up, then, as many as we can find within the walls.”

“There may be a better way, Lord Mayor,” I said.

He waited.

“I have found Peter Norris’s witness.”

He sniffed.

“The witness whose identity you refused to learn before putting Norris to death,” I said. “It is Norris’s son, Lord Mayor.”

“The cutpurse?”

“The boy is at my house. He saw a man I believe to be Woodstock overseeing the dumping of the corpses in the Walbrook.”

“A duke, about the London streets at night, tossing bodies in the privy? Difficult to credit, Gower.”

I shook my head, my confidence rising. “You are wrong, Sir Nicholas. Gloucester would have trusted no one else with the task. He is known as a controlling lord in his domain, one who would never trust an underling with an operation of this sort. It was his men who emptied the Portbridge gaol, his men who slaughtered the prisoners in the
woods, his men who brought them to London and threw them in the ditch. For you to find, Lord Mayor.”

“And who would believe the word of a boy over that of a duke?”

“Young Jack’s testimony is only one part of the proof against the duke. There is the bend given me in Calais, the word of the Portbridge reeve. And there is Gloucester’s banner, bound around the wrists of the victims.”

Brembre looked at me for a long moment, then rose and went to a low cabinet, returning with several sheets of frayed silk. The strips were in foul tatters and still smelled of the privy, though even with just two of them side by side we could make out the shape of Woodstock’s swans. Brembre had not destroyed the damning evidence he’d seized, despite what Strode had believed.

We stood there, the duke’s guilt shouting up at us from the mayor’s table.

“Gloucester will fight, you know,” Brembre said. “He’ll deny involvement as far as the moon if he has to. Is it worth the risk of civil war to bring a criminal to justice, however horrendous the crime?”

“I share your hesitation,” I said. “Yet this goes beyond murder. The duke has betrayed the safety of the realm, with powder and guns both, and no thought to the consequences.”

His gaze remained on the table.

“You are a London man, Sir Nicholas,” I wheedled. “I am of Southwark. Our lives and our towns are gravely threatened by the French force at Sluys. Thousands of ships, and the burning of London on a close horizon. The duke’s actions are threatening the realm, and the very life of this city.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I may be a conniver and an extractor, Lord Mayor,” I went on. “You may be a ruffian, with a taste for violence and corruption.” His lips pursed. “But we cannot allow such a betrayal to weaken the hand of the realm.”

“Then I move on him,” Brembre said, with a gathering strength in his voice. “And risk civil war.”

“It may not come to that,” I said. “Gloucester is not Lancaster. He
is powerful but not invincible. To raise a standing army to defeat the king would require the combined might of the other lords. Mowbray, Warwick, Arundel. If you can expose Woodstock as a traitor in their presence and the king’s, you would have a chance of isolating Gloucester and bringing him to justice.”

“And breaking this appellant faction from within,” said the mayor, his eyes coming to life. “Thus strengthening the hand of King Richard.” He turned to me. “It must happen soon.”

“A suggestion, Lord Mayor.”

“Go on.”

“Beauchamp told me in Calais that the king has expressed a desire for the lords to process with Exton to Westminster, as a sign of fealty and solidarity.”

“Yes,” said Brembre, with a scornful smile. “Another empty pageant, painting a rotten wall with loyalty where there is treason within. Though by rights Exton must formally invite them to ride before they are permitted to mount with the procession.”

“He should invite them today, then, as a show of goodwill, a gesture to appease the king at a difficult moment for his relations with Parliament,” I said. “After the Riding all of them will naturally be in audience at Westminster before King Richard. Exton will process through the great hall and kneel at His Highness’s feet. You will be at Exton’s side as the king takes his hand and blesses his election as mayor. As you know, it is customary for the king to ask the new mayor if he wishes any shows of royal favor to mark his inauguration. At that moment, Exton will ask King Richard to consider a pressing matter of war. Exton will then turn to you, the king’s truest friend, the man who stood with him at Mile End against the rebels and did as much as anyone to save his head. You will present the case against Gloucester in the hearing of the peers of the realm, calling on their duty to expel a rotten apple from their fair barrel.”

Brembre, warming to it, said, “It pains me to make such an accusation, Your Highness.”

“And I would presume to do so only under the direst of circumstances, my liege lord,” I said.

“And only with indisputable evidence of the highest of treasons, sire,” said Brembre.

“Then you bring forth the banners, the bend, the boy,” I said. “And if Gloucester counters your accusation by raising the swerver interrogation, you simply laugh and demand that he show proof.”

“Which he may well produce.”

“If he has thought to bring the confession with him. Unlikely, and even if he has, so much the better. It is an obvious forgery. Even your wife knew it was a mere nothing, a jest. That is why she wrote a letter on its overleaf, you will say. Showing it before the king will only weaken the duke’s hand.”

We exchanged looks, thinking it through. It was a perilous plan, and much could go wrong, yet it had the appeal of surprise. At last Brembre said, “You should be a captain or an admiral, Gower, rather than a—whatever it is you are.”

“You are overly kind, Lord Mayor,” I replied, with the doubts wheeling through my mind. The lords were already disposed strongly against the king. It would take a convincing performance by Nicholas Brembre to achieve the desired effects. A weak plan, and a desperate one.

My concerns must have been visible on my face. “I am not a fool, Gower,” the mayor said. “I know what is at stake here, as well as the risks.” He looked around as a burst of shouting from the yard drifted through the silence of his chambers. Brembre had spent many years as lord mayor of London, and now, at the end of what would prove his final term and at the very height of his power, he projected a melancholy awareness of things coming to an end. “Leave me, Gower. And, Bernes?” he barked to a waiting attendant. The man had slipped in unnoticed and stood by the edge of the partition.

“Yes, Lord Mayor?”

“See to Master Gower’s guard, will you? Four men for Southwark and the priory starting this moment, rotated out for the next two weeks. Exton will approve on my word after tomorrow.”

“Yes, Lord Mayor.” Bernes spun on his heel and left the chamber.

Brembre regarded me. “I thank you for this, Gower. You have
prevented a great deal of anguish with the recovery of this record. Perhaps even helped to save the city, and certainly my relations with Lady Idonia.” He allowed me a mayoral smile. I returned it, thinking of the new and heavy coin in my purse of favors owed by this powerful victualler. He dismissed me with a promise to speak on the morning of the Riding. Before returning to Southwark I stopped in on Hawisia Stone. She was in the foundry’s display room, thankfully seated this time, though even at rest she appeared greatly afflicted, her breathing labored, her skin flushed.

Our exchange was brief. She had spoken with Stephen Marsh at the Tower, she told me, though could get nothing out of him about the guns, nor discern a glimmer of Snell’s plans.

“Wouldn’t say much of a word but mum,” she said between breaths. “Wanted to shake the fellow but he just stood there like a sapling.”

“Did Marsh give any indication that he understood the peril his guns are causing the realm?”

She shrugged heavily. “Was his own peril seemed to be more on his mind.”

“How so?”

“Kept looking over his shoulder, like the guards’re listening to his every breath,” she said.

“What about the pardon? Did you hold it out to him?”

“Aye, that I did. Didn’t seem to move him, not that I could see.”

Her news was not as bad as it would have been an hour earlier. If all went according to plan, Snell would be exposed at Westminster along with Gloucester, so penetrating the Tower was no longer as crucial to subverting their treachery. Yet Snell’s wanton violence and trade in arms remained a distinct threat.

She moved a hand up to rub at her chin. “Was only one bit he said that seemed peculiar.”

“What was that?”

“Told me the Tower wouldn’t let him out even for the Riding.”

“Surely not a surprise, given his circumstances.”

She shrugged. “That’s why I thought it strange, Master Gower. He
said it again, right before he was taken back down. Said it heavy, like he wanted me to hear him well, as if it were a message. ‘Not even for the Riding,’ he said.”

“He said this in the hearing of the guards?”

“Aye.”

“And how did he seem when you left him, mistress?”

She said one word. “Afraid.”

S
TEPHEN COULD SCARCELY BRING
himself to lift his mallet, nor bend a sheet of steel, nor even stir the coals at the foundry forge, so weary were his arms. He looked out at the Tower yard, the ordered chaos of coming war. The serpentine guns had been completed at Snell’s orders, and now the armory’s attention had turned back to the necessities of the coming battle. Twenty London armorers had been ordered within for the week, their wares spread out on the ground. The business of the day was jack-of-plate, more of the rough outfits than he could have imagined possible. Small iron squares cut from hammered sheets, each awl-punched with a single hole, then laced together between two layers of cloth to form a sleeveless hauberk, using undyed wool brought in by the bolt from the clothiers’ shops along Broad Street and Cornhill. No refinement in this craft, no art, no clever joints to lessen the weight, as on the armor of knights and lords who could afford such contrivances. No plates for the shins, the feet, the neck, the arms; no couters for the elbows, no poleyns for the knees.

This was infantry armor, scalloped in unsubtle layers up the front with nothing in back, and rough-hammered helms to go on top.
Naught fancy or newish,
London’s armorers had been warned by Snell.
Efficiency and numbers. Those are your orders.
They obeyed, the pieces fastened together with old leather thongs cut from worn harnesses and even their own discarded aprons. The goal was quantity, armor
to suit five thousand men, perhaps ten, depending on how much time remained before the French invasion from Sluys.

The worst part was outfitting the horses—not the knights’ shining war mounts, but the laboring beasts charged with hauling the wheeled engines and gun carriages into the front ranks. Again, nothing subtle or polished or painted, just raw plates of sufficient thickness to stop an arrow or bolt whistling from above, a few rivets where back met neck. Hundreds of them, each to be encased in dull sheets of hammered iron, huge swaths of it, bent over neck, back, and rump, all to save the hide of a mute and fear-shitting beast.

Never had Stephen seen such a mass of men toiling over the same sorry tasks, never had he witnessed such a waste of talent and industry in the service of slaughter. He knew many of the armorers and their apprentices, had seen the cleverly wrought suits of plate and chain they were capable of crafting for knights and higher lords. And he knew and admired the work of Stone’s rivals in the founding trade, the melodious bells poured, bored, and sounded to every house’s version of perfection.

No longer. Now that the serpentine guns had been completed Stephen was merely one of two dozen metalworkers muling for the Tower armory, hammering steel and iron as a scullery maid peels carrots and roots. Half of London’s smiths pulled from the clever art of gates and grilles, their precision work sacrificed to the cause of war and its blunt instruments. Now all these crafts had been intermingled, with none of the beauty and subtle art that distinguish the mysteries of metal each from the other. In the Tower of London, it seemed, England’s metalworkers had become no better than slaves.

As for Stephen?
The softer sort,
as Snell had branded him. He wondered if that was how the world saw him, as a weak and pliable man. Yet not everyone thought him soft, he assured himself. Not Hawisia Stone.
Think on your iron and your steel and your bronze, and you will find your strength,
she’d told him. It was those words that had inspired him to risk those final hints to his mistress. Had she comprehended their meaning? And even if she had, would there be time to use them to any effect? The new mayor’s Riding was now two days away, and as he watched the teeming work in the armory he felt a new despair. He
wanted to believe the clouds would clear and all of this go away with them, that he would escape the dark vision of these last weeks to find himself pardoned, relishing his freedom, even working contentedly for Hawisia Stone and serving out his sentence with proper contrition for what he had done. Yet what could a pregnant widow hope to accomplish against the malignant force of the king’s armory?

The cooks’ shouts rang across the yard, signaling the midday meal for the Tower’s companies of laboring men. They poured out from every corner of the compound, carpenters and masons, armorers and smiths, farriers along with the stableboys and numberless others, lining up at the kettles to receive their food and ale. The men sprawled wearily along the wall with their meals, hollow trenchers of water-thinned cream mixed with oats and barely warmed.

As Stephen choked down another bite of the tasteless gruel William Snell appeared among the forges.

“Marsh,” he called out, beckoning him over. Stephen trudged to his master’s side.

Snell led him beneath the awning of the gun shed, where the hundred barrels and stocks Stephen had made stood by the tens.

“Your little snakes will be put to use soon, Marsh, and quite memorably,” the armorer said, looking out over his arsenal. “Be sure all is prepared. By tomorrow night I want you to check every one of these handgonnes. Every barrel, every stock, all the pans and chambers, inspected by your hand alone. The serpentines especially. The guns must be in firing order. Cleaned, scraped, greased, tightened—whatever you must do to make them ready. Is that understood?”

Stephen looked out past the cooks’ tables and over to the wall, where the king’s lion had collapsed. He saw the other deaths he had made, the flesh ravaged by his craft. The flaming arm of Robert Stone, the ruined neck of a country maiden. And in that instant, as Snell waited for his underling’s reply, Stephen knew his greatest work still lay before him.

“I shall check them, Master Snell,” he said, his voice ringing as clear as Stone’s finest bell. His work-bent spine straightened with the challenge. “I shall check every last one of them. You may depend upon it.”