The Invention of Fire (5 page)

FROM THE NARROW PASSAGE
before Chaucer’s house I walked north through the boundaries of the parish of St. Botolph, lingering at each tower to dispense coins and questions. From that height London appeared almost tranquil, cleaner and somehow nobler than the square mile of squalor and moral compromise sprawled between these walls. The city’s roofs formed a grand patchwork of ambition and decay, the spans of greater halls and the thrusting heights of new towers set within the humbler timbers of tenements and lower shopfronts. Even the smoke rising from smithies and ovens possessed a humble majesty, grey tendrils striving for the sky, vaporous strands of the city’s hopes.

Yet London was hardly at peace. Masons were at work at every turn, fortifying the wall and heightening it in certain places deemed particularly vulnerable to engine or incursion. It was known that a great navy had been assembling at Sluys since midsummer, ready to seek vengeance for years of English brutality in France and Burgundy. With the Duke of Lancaster in Castile seeking a crown and much of the upper nobility increasingly belligerent toward the king, a mood of lowering doom had settled over the realm of late, as the nation braced itself for invasion from the sea.

The feeling sharpened as I neared Bishopsgate and the armories. Somewhere below three smiths worked in tandem, the varied weights of their hammers entwined in a clanging motet, turning out breastplates,
helmets, hauberks, the mundane machinery of war. I spoke for a while to the tollkeeper, whose wife I had bought out of a city gaol the previous summer, though learned no more than I had from Bagnall.

Now Cripplegate. On the second level above the gatehouse there was a small hermitage, filthy from the habits of its longtime occupant though an unavoidable stop given my needs. The low and nearly secret door, reached by squeezing around one of the guard towers from the lower walkway, was closed against the wind. A smudged face could be seen through the rectangular gap in the bricks that served as the chamber’s sole window aside from a narrow squint low on the far side. The hermit’s eyes were closed above his massive beard, a swath of matted filth that covered nearly every inch of a face thinned by years of self-denial and hunger. The stench from the hole was a rich stew of man, dung, and time.

I squatted and peered in. “Good day to you, Piers.”

With a start the hermit opened his eyes, then gapped his mouth in a dark and toothless smile. He kept his door closed but scooted his ragged frame toward the window, jutting his nose and lips into the aperture. “Why, John Gower himself, the Saint of Shrouded Song! You have—oh—spices in your pouch for Piers, do you, or—oh—a heady lass?”

Piers Goodman, though thin of brain, was one of the city’s more useful hermits, with sharp eyes and good ears, unafraid to stick his head out of his hole and sell what he knew, which tended to be a great deal. The Hermit of St. Giles-along-the-Wall-by-Cripplegate was the rather pompous title he had chosen for himself long ago, and for years its grandeur fit him. Nobles from the king’s household, bureaucrats from the Guildhall and Chancery, mercers and aldermen: all sought his counsel on matters large and small, climbing up to the old storeroom he had claimed as his hermitage, offering thanks, charity, and spilled secrets to a man as discreet as he was pious—or so it appeared to most of those who consulted him. In reality the hermit leaked like an old wine cask, sharing the private lives of others for trifles: coins, fruits and pies, the occasional whore. In recent years the cask would often run dry, though with Piers Goodman you seldom knew what you might get.

It took a while to lead him around to the subject of the day, but when I finally did, he was as usual quite forthcoming. “Strangers, you say? Company of men? Oh, we’ve had our share of strangers we have, and companies—why, just Saturday or was it Tuesday a little brace of—oh—Welshmembers it was. Whole flock of Welshmembers, herded through Cripplegate quick as you please. Piers saw them he did, looking down through his slitty slit, and Gil Cheddar told him all about it. Big trouble for the mayor, says Gil Cheddar, those Welshmembers. And had a carter of Langbourn Ward up here—oh—last week? Weeping mess he was, too, with a sad sad sad sad story to tell about his cart and his cartloads. What’s in his cart and cartloads, Gower, hmm, what’s in his cart and all his cartloads? Not faggots, mind, not beefs, mind, not Lancelot, mind, but—”

“Stop there, Piers. A company of Welshmen, you say?”

“Aye, Welshmembers they were, and right through the gate they went, says Gil Cheddar, who brings Piers his supper and his—”

“You said this Gil Cheddar told you about them?”

“Aye he did, told me all that business. Not ale, mind, not—”

“And who is Gil Cheddar?”

“An acolyte of St. Giles Cripplegate is Gil Cheddar, and the sweetest face you’ll ever see on him. Gil Cheddar brings his old hermit his suppers he does—not every day, but some days his suppers he does. Breads, fishes, cheeses, a dipper of ale for Piers and I’ll thank you for a piece of silver, and now a song for you, Gower? A song of hermits pricking bold, aye, that is what Piers’ll seemly sing.” And he intoned it in his nose: “
I loved and lost and lost again, my beard hath grown so grey. When God above doth ease my pain, my cock shall rise to play . . .”

I pushed a coin through the window and left him to his melody. Back on the walkway I had a decision to make: proceed along the wall through the remaining gates or descend to the outer part of the ward and try to find Gil Cheddar. It was not a feast, and as an acolyte, Cheddar would likely not appear at St. Giles until later in the day. I would return in several hours.

Soon after Cripplegate the wall bent southward, angling past the peculiar roof of St. Olave’s and the five towers placed like sentries
above this misshapen corner of the city. I learned nothing at Aldersgate nor at Newgate, where I had extensive connections among the guard, though I did gather a few nuggets about unrelated matters for later use. On leaving Newgate I got a warning from one of the guards to watch my step farther on. As I soon discovered, the walkway had collapsed perhaps forty feet short of Ludgate, beams leaning askance from the wall, planks dangling creakily in the wind. A heavy scaffold had crushed an abandoned shack beneath, leaving a sprawl of broken timber that looked too rotten for salvage.

I retraced my steps to the stairs before Newgate and descended into the narrow ways of St. Martin, the small parish spread between St. Paul’s and the wall. My whole day had been spent floating above London, with scarcely a thought for the eternal squalor below, though descending now to the close streets I knew so well came almost as a relief, despite the fatigue of a long and trying day. I walked nearly to the cathedral before turning to approach Ludgate from the east, angling around the gateyard to avoid repair work on the conduit ditch, which looked to have sprung a leak. At the corner of the yard I bought three bird pies and a dipper of ale.

From the pillory holes in the yard dangled the hands of Peter Norris, a parchment collar affixed to his neck, his uncovered hair lifting morosely with each gust of wind. He must have been in place for hours already, as the area was free of hasslers. A boy of about eleven sat at the foot of the stocks, faking a cough.

Norris’s eyes were to the ground as I approached. His unshaven neck rasped against the parchment collar, inscribed in high, dark letters with his crime:
I, Peter Norris, stole pigeons.
His was quite a fall, for Norris had been a powerful man in former days, a wealthy mercer with nearly exclusive command of the city’s silk trade with France, though that was before he would be brought low by his own poor decisions.

“Norris,” I said, handing two pies to the boy and holding one out to his father’s mouth.

As the boy started to eat Norris made an effort to turn his head, angling his gaze up to meet my own.

“Spit that out, Jack!” Norris commanded weakly when he saw me. The boy stopped chewing, his eyes gone wide. “John Gower here’s like to poison you dead, without a thought for your boy’s soul.”

I sniffed. “Not today, Norris.”

I glanced at his son. The boy, twig thin, wore a woolen cap, his golden hair stuffed beneath the narrow brim. The cap had ridden up slightly, exposing ugly stumps where his outer ears had once been. A cutpurse, then, caught knifing and sliced for his crime. He took a few coins from my hand and wandered off toward the gate, both pies already gone.

Norris looked after his son as long as he could, neck straining against the skin-slicked wood. “That boy, he’s a loyal one, he is. He’s got as much rot thrown in the face this week as his father, with no fuss about it, and sits here with me all through the day. ‘The Earl of Earless,’ they taunt him on account of his stubs. Worse things, too.” He shook his head.

“Can he hear it all?” I asked, curious about the boy’s affliction, thinking of my own.

“Oh, young Jack hears what he wants to hear, as all boys do.” He laughed fondly.

Norris, I realized as I followed the boy’s progress, had a perfect angle on the traffic into the city from Ludgate. Beyond the imposing façade lay the legal precincts and the royal capital. An important city entrance, bringing visitors and goods from Temple Bar, the inns, and finally Westminster a good walk up the Strand.

“How long have you been at the pillory, Norris?” I held the cup for him.

He took a slow sip of ale, smacked his lips. “Since the dawn bell,” he murmured. Another sip. “But an hour and a bite and I’m free, for all that’s worth.”

“This is the last day of your sentence?”

“Aye.”

“And the rest of it?”

“Ten hours in a day right through a week, as was my sentence at the Guildhall, and all for a festering brace of pigeons swiped and sold to
a pieman! Constable wouldn’t have taken me in at all, if an alderman’s daughter hadn’t happened to stomach one and empty her guts.” He looked out at one hand, then the other. “Give me Jesu’s cross over the pillory. A man’s not meant to stand bent this long.”

He was right about that. Though the punished generally stood at the stocks for no more than an hour at a time, the longer sentences could lead to permanent disfigurement. Pillory back, its sufferers easily identifiable by their crooked spines and frequent grunts of pain as they hobbled through the streets.

After a few pitying murmurs I began gently, asking Norris whether he had noticed any unusual activity at the gate in recent days, particularly involving a large company of men.

“Not Londoners, but a company from outside the city,” I said. “Sixteen of them. All dead now, thrown in the privy ditch beneath the Long Dropper. They were walked in some time in the last week—or carried, I suppose. Does anything come to mind?”

Norris thought for a moment, then looked up and surprised me. “Welshmen, I’ll be bound,” he said.

I felt a satisfied warmth. “What do you know of Welshmen, Norris?”

“The first day of my sentence. A Wednesday it was,” he said. “Caught a little glimpse of them skirting along the yard, just there.” He nodded toward the mouth of Bower Row. “Only reason I remember it is, those Welsh carls gave us a nice respite.”

“How is that?”

“My first day in the stocks. Seemed half of London was out hurling eggs, cabbages, dungstraw at me and my boy, anything they could lift. But then those strangers come by, and all at once every man of them leaves off and starts tossing his rot at the poor Welshers instead.” He laughed weakly. “Should have heard them, Gower, our good freemen. ‘Savages!’ ‘Sodomites!’ ‘Child burners!’ ‘Leap off the walls, you filthy Welshers!’ Those sorts of roses, is what they shouted. And so it went until the strangers were beyond the bar.”

“What were they doing at Ludgate?”

“Wouldn’t know. Couldn’t hear a thing of them.”

Young Jack had returned and took his place to the right of his father’s protruding head and hands. He had purchased himself an oatloaf and nibbled at it slowly.

“You didn’t see who was leading them through?” I asked.

He sniffed and spat. “What I’ve seen a lot of is my feet, and little Jack’s fair nose. Hard to look at Welshmen when your face is forced to the ground.”

He bent his straitened neck upward into an awkward angle, grunted from the effort and relaxed, his frame sagging with the work. I wetted his lips again, then held the last pie below his mouth. He took a small nibble, a larger bite.

“Tell me about your witness.”

His jaw stopped, his eyes shifting to the side, away from me. “Ah. No act of charity, these pies and ale?”

“You know me better than that, Norris. Who is it? What did he see?”

A heavy gust spiraled a pile of leaves into the air above the pillory platform. “Why should I tell you? You’ll go and sell what I say to the Guildhall, and then where will Peter Norris be?”

I shook my head. “The Guildhall is not disposed to believe anything you say. No buyers there, as you well know.”

His eyes closed. He sighed. “Perhaps. Though I shall bide my time, Gower. My witness is quite convincing, and my sentence ends at the next bell. The right moment will come, I trust.”

Was he lying, or simply a fool? Either way I could get nothing more out of the man despite my offer of considerable coin. I turned to leave him, and his earless son gave me a hateful and piercing look, as if my hand had been one of the many hurling filth at the boy and his father. I walked away and toward the gate.

The guards and tollkeeper at Ludgate were forthcoming but unhelpful, none of them recalling the Welsh company, though promising to ask about. It was now past four. I hesitated just outside the walls, knowing I should walk back up through Cripplegate to see Gil Cheddar, the acolyte at St. Giles. Yet the occasional gaps in my vision had returned, as they often did with the fatigue of a long day and a
late afternoon. The wind had moistened somewhat, too, and a distant rumble of thunder threatened a city storm. I would visit St. Giles the following morning, I resolved, and call on Cheddar then. It was one of several mistakes I made that day along the walls of London, hearing only what I wanted to hear, deaf to what mattered most.