A Burnable Book (10 page)

Chapter xiii

St. Mary Overey, Southwark

O
n the morning after Low Sunday I rose early, awakened by the buzz of the priory bell, cracked and unreplaced since the belfry fire two years before. My appointment with Braybrooke would not be for hours, but I left the house anyway, absorbing the quiet din of these Southwark streets at dawn, already alive with the work that sustained the greater city over the river. Here the trades commingled with none of London’s attempt at logic, the shops of haberdashers and carpenters, tanners and tawyers, fishmongers and smiths, coopers and brewers all side by side, spewing smells and sounds and petty rivalries even as small creeks of rubbish spilled out of alleys between them. I stepped into a baker’s shop and purchased two sweetbuns for the trip. At the river landing I paid my pennies and hopped on a common wherry, joining a few others westward bound.

I found a seat for the float to Fulham, and as the wherry passed St. Bride’s on the north bank I squinted across the wide span at a group of young men in skiffs. They were tilting, I realized, their target a square of beaten tin suspended from the lampstick of an anchored barge. Four oarsmen per skiff made wide circles around the craft, the lanceman at the bow, loose on his knees; then, a speedy approach, the lance held at the shoulder, the skiff keeping steady over the rises; and finally impact, as the dulled point of the lance struck the tin, the noise carrying over the water. An awkward game, yet several of the young men were quite skillful with their lances, taking the applause of their mates with exaggerated pride.

These, I thought with a shudder, would be the first Englishmen killed were a French invasion force to sail up the Thames from Gravesend and destroy the bridge. How would these boys spend their final moments? Would they turn tail, ditching their skiffs on the bank, fleeing through the streets? Or would they stand and fight, tilting at warships in a futile attempt to save London?

At the quay of Patrisey I changed wherries and thought ahead to my appointment with the bishop. Knowing Braybrooke as I did, I could expect a meeting full of venom and insinuation, of parries and feints. Tread softly, I warned myself.

With a slow turn toward the north bank, we passed lines of oak and elm towering over the terraced lawns leading up to the bishop’s great house, which commanded an enviable position over the river. Above the dock was a pavilion trimmed in banners of silk, cloth of gold, and sable, displaying Braybrooke’s mascles over his personal barge.

As the bank came into view I saw not only Braybrooke’s colors but the Earl of Oxford’s as well. The wherry bumped in just upriver from Braybrooke’s barge, and as I stepped up the bank I saw Robert de Vere striding across the lower terrace. Normally Oxford moved about with a larger retinue, yet his only companion that day was Sir Stephen Weldon. I bowed as the earl approached. He looked me over, his discomfort apparent as he waved me to my full height.

“Gower,” he finally said.

“Your lordship.” I nodded to Weldon. “Sir Stephen.”

Weldon returned the nod.

“How is his lordship the bishop?” I asked them.

“Supervising plantings on the upper terrace,” said the earl, forcing a smile. “Seems there are some questions about the rigor of the vines he’s got in from Bordeaux. But he’s still determined to pull a decent
clairet
from our English clay.”

I winced. “
Prêtres anglais ont toujours aimé le vin.
”

“As long as I’m not forced to sample the result,” said Oxford.

Weldon feigned choking, a comic gesture that broke the awkwardness. “I do miss the wines of Italy,” the knight said, his eyes crinkling with the memories. For years Weldon had served with Sir John Hawkwood before his permanent return to England in the fifth year of Richard’s reign. Weldon was taller than Oxford, and thinner, with a studied casualness to his stance. He wore little in the way of livery, a small badge on his right breast the only mark of his station. “Perhaps England’s next war might be fought over France’s vine rather than its cities.”

“A welcome suggestion,” I said, choosing to take Weldon’s courteous demeanor as sincere. “For that I’d happily lift a sword.”

With these elevated nothings we parted, and I was left wondering what business the earl could possibly have at Fulham. To my knowledge, all Oxford and London shared was a mutual hatred of John of Gaunt.

I was directed to an upper side terrace, reached after a circuitous route through a network of gravel walks. I found the bishop of London on his knees, thinning roses. At a discreet distance stood two servants bearing bowls, flagons, and gardening tools for the bishop’s use, and, closer, four additional men holding his robes, mitre, and cap: two friars, a canon of some kind, and Fulham’s head gardener, the last with his hands crossed tightly in front of him as Braybrooke assaulted his art with the unpracticed hand of a knight shearing sheep. The canon, noticing me, cleared his throat. Braybrooke turned.

“Gower.” The bishop was a man of awkward, treeish height; to see him on his knees, his meaty hands scooping dirt from the ground, was something new.

“Your lordship.”

Braybrooke loosened a stone. “How’s Gaunt?”

“I would not know, your lordship,” I said. “I caught a passing glimpse of him the other week at La Neyte, but that is all.”

Another stone, a spray of soil. “Can’t be comfortable for the duke, can it, being a constant object of suspicion?” I listened as the bishop muttered over the royal troubles of the last year, still the talk of the realm. He had been at the council tournament in February, and I learned a new detail about the aftermath of Oxford’s plot against Lancaster. If not for the peacemaking interventions of Countess Joan, the bishop claimed, either Gaunt or King Richard would surely have been dead by now. And with the king still young, always gullible, and increasingly unpredictable in his alliances, things could only worsen.

“What about you, Gower?” the bishop said. “You’re content with your own alliances?”

“I’m for the king, your lordship,” I said cautiously. “From whatever faction he comes, I’m for the king.”

“An easy vow.” He packed dirt into the new hole. “For a man who takes such stark moral stands in his verse, you’re remarkably reluctant to choose sides.”

My jaw tightened.

“The lines are being drawn, Gower. Two popes, two churches—some would say two kings.” The bishop looked up, his eyes cold. “Your friend Geoffrey Chaucer, too, would do well to clarify his allegiances. Not a lover of friars, that one.”

I glanced at the two Dominicans. “Chaucer is a lover of the good,” I said. “He loves good friars, as he loves good bishops such as your lordship. Good wine, too, and good lawyers.”

Braybrooke barked a laugh. He clipped and dug for a while, then looked up at me again. “This book you’re looking for has a name.”

I blinked.

“You think I’m a fool, Gower? You make a wide-eyed request of Katherine Swynford, the yawningest mouth in the realm, and you expect her not to gossip?”

“A fair point,” I conceded.

“
Liber de Mortibus Regum Anglorum.
”

“My lord?”

“
Liber de Mortibus Regum Anglorum.
That’s what this work is called.”

“ ‘The Book of the Deaths of English Kings,’ ” I translated.

“A book of prophecy, written by a certain Lollius during the reign of the Conqueror.”

“That long ago? What relevance could a book three centuries old have in our day?”

“The
De Mortibus
prophesies the death of every English king since William. The houses of Normandy, Plantagenet, with the circumstances of each royal death rendered in detail. The time, the place, the means.”

“I’ve never heard of this Lollius. Are people taking this seriously?”

“The book is being read by Wycliffe’s minions, Gower. They gather in conventicles and recite the prophecies one by one. Thirteen kings, thirteen prophecies, thirteen deaths, all foretold and retold as a goad to revolt.”

“I loathe Wycliffe’s teachings as much as the next fellow, your lordship. But he never questioned Richard’s legitimacy.”

“I suggest you learn a bit about this book before you dismiss it, Gower. One of my friars here has mingled with the Wycliffites during their readings. He’s got a bit of the work in his head.” He looked over his other shoulder. “Brother Thomas, a taste. The death of King William, if you please.”

One of the friars stepped forward with a bow. At a nod from Braybrooke, he spoke the requested lines.

“A bastard by birth, of Brittany bane,

A duke rendered king by Deus decree,

With fury so fierce all England will fight,

Shall matins and masses restore to all men,

Then in Mantes to muster his might shall appear.

Unhorsed by his hand this sovereign full hale

On pommel full pounded from saddle shall pitch,

And goeth to ground to giveth the ghost.

At sovereign of swords in death swoon he will,

No more to flee mors, his reign an end make.”

The friar stepped back, assuming his position, still by the tree. Something about the lines sounded familiar.

Braybrooke sat on his heels, prompting the gardener to step forward hopefully. The bishop waved him off. “Thus shall die the first of thirteen English kings.” Braybrooke wiped his brow. “Let me correct myself: thus
did
die the first of thirteen English kings, this one at the great battle at Mantes, of which we read in our chronicles.”

“Of which this Lollius read in our chronicles, unless I’m an utter fool,” I muttered, unswayed by the bishop’s lofty tone.

He glared at me. “If you’re skeptical, Gower, keep listening.” He nodded to the friar, who began a second series of lines.

“With seven of swords to swing at their will,

To chasten with chattel, and chase their king down.

In Gloucester will he goeth, to be gutted by goodmen

With rod straight of iron, in arsebone to run.

With pallet of pullet, his breath out to press,

And sovereign unsound for Sodom be sundered.”

My hand went to my gut. “The second King Edward.”

“And his disgusting execution,” Braybrooke said. “Lying on a feather pallet, a poker shoved up his arse. A fitting death for a Ganymede king. And finally the more peaceful death of good King Edward.”

The friar spoke a third time. I could not hide my surprise at his opening words.

“Full long shall he lead us, full rich shall he rule,

Through pain of pestilence, through wounds of long war.

Yet morire is matter all sovereigns must suffer.

This long-lived leader, beloved of all,

At three of thistles shall suffer his fall;

Gold bile shall him bite, with bitter wound wide,

At Sheen will be shent, last shrift there to render.”

Braybrooke scrutinized my face as I remembered where I had heard these lines before. At Holbourne cross, shouted into the drizzle by that deranged-looked preacher. The man had spoken this very verse.

“Some say the gomoria took him,” the bishop said, turning away with a smile, “though I believe the old fellow had a simple stroke.” With the rocks removed and the ground cleared, he knelt to address the large rosebush before him. The gardener was trying not to weep.

“The prophecies, if that’s what they are, are full of enigmas, Lord Bishop,” I said, wondering how Braybrooke could be swayed so easily. “What are the ‘three of thistles,’ the ‘seven of swords’ in the account of Edward, or the ‘seven of swords’ in William’s case? These sorts of symbols don’t appear in the chronicles, not in the ones I’ve read.”

The bishop pricked a finger, brought it to his mouth. “The thistle is important to the Scots, I’m told,” he said with a smack of his lips. “Perhaps some new Robert de Bruce is on the rise.” His voice sounded almost jocular now, as if he were putting me on.

I looked at his rounded back. “With respect, your lordship, the work your friar just recited is written in a modern fashion—its style, its rhythm. It sounds like the story of King Horne, or that vision of Piers the Plowman that was so much in favor around the Rising. I have to say, I’m surprised so much is being made of an obvious forgery.”

He turned to look at me. “The thing could have been written by anyone schooled in our nation’s chronicles. Is that what you are thinking, Gower?”

Finally some sense. “The church is familiar with false prophets, my lord.”

With an audible crack of his long spine, Braybrooke stood, flicking dirt off his hands. “Your skepticism is admirable, Gower, and matches my own.” An attendant stepped forward with a bowl. Braybrooke dipped his hands and wiped them on a cloth. He turned to the friars and canon, who robed and capped him. He waved off his mitre like a cat refusing tack.

“We are men of the law, Gower,” he continued as we walked to the river. “I serve the church now, but I still have faith in our earthly institutions. The crown, Parliament, even the courts. You know all too well how my trust was once challenged in this regard, John, and I’m still grateful for the compassion you showed.”

It was a rare moment of candor from Braybrooke, whose ambition often outstripped his memory. I murmured my thanks.

He puffed his cheeks, blew air. “My contempt for Lancaster is no secret.”

“I’ve witnessed it.”

“Heresy and war arrange us in peculiar alliances.” He said nothing of Oxford, though I assumed he was thinking of the earl. “If the reports I have received are accurate, the thirteenth prophecy is known only to a few.”

“The thirteenth prophecy?”

“England has had thirteen kings since the conquest.” He waited a moment, then said, “Thirteen,
including
William.”

“Yet if William—” I stopped walking, finally understanding and feeling like a fool.