High in the curtains of the bed sat a crooked spider. In the book spiders were the daughters of Arachne, the girl cursed because she dared to talk back to the gods. On the chair beside me hung Talbot’s borrowed velvet, hunched round a man of air. How dare you hire new faces, it seemed to say, you and that farting hoaxer beside you, what right have you to put on borrowed clothes; it is against the laws of man and heaven to create yourself anew. Arachne was a poor man’s child; she could weave better than Minerva, but what did her skill weigh against Minerva’s power? The goddess simply twisted her into a crooked, creeping thing. That was honesty’s reward – as though heaven’s lords and ladies, and her fat burghers, would allow a fair fight – and with a woman, too!
When day broke through the slats my head ached, but I didn’t feel subdued or guilty. If Arachne had learned how to play a part she would never have had to scuttle and hide so. She deserved better. Only when a dew-spangled web caught the slant light of morning did we catch our breath at her skill. The world was set against clever women; it was no sin to trick it if you could.
Or think of it this way, I thought. Every second parish had a tale of the devil being cheated of a soul. At Cockerham sands our guide, learning that Talbot was in the way of a diviner, told us a story of a local cunning man. No cleverer man had ever walked the banks of the Lune, he said. So of course, when the devil came to Cockerham the people begged his help. He stepped onto the sands and drew a summoning ring and the Fiend in all his fiery wickedness stood before him. ‘I’ll leave this place in peace,’ Satan said, ‘if you can pose me a task I cannot answer; three chances you’ll have, and if you fail, I’ll take your soul.’ First off the wizard asked him how many raindrops hung on the hedgerows between the sands and Ellel. ‘Thirteen,’ cried Old Nick. ‘All the rest were shaken free by the wind I raised in coming here.’ ‘Count how many ears of corn grow in Tithepig’s field.’ the wizard said; before he could draw a breath the Old Enemy answered him and though the number was beyond count he felt in his bones that the devil had it right. ‘One task left,’ said the devil. ‘Look how the jaws of hell slaver for you.’ So the wizard looked out at the sea, sore afraid, thinking he might be seeing it for the last time. He dug his toes into the cool sand and felt how it shifted as the water passed through it. ‘Twist a rope of sand,’ he said, ‘and wash it here, in the Cocker, without losing a grain.’ Well, the devil screamed at that and quivered and kicked, but there was nothing he could do. He was beaten.
The devil could not hook your soul if you were wilier than he, not if you stepped ever so near, not so long as you watched the world closely and did not overreach.
The carousing that night set the pattern. Talbot let his reputation bubble through the town and then he followed after, enquiring for loans, with the deeds in his satchel as surety. He was very careful to borrow discreetly, so that each lender believed himself the only patron, the deeds he held the only mortgaged property. I gave him the rings I had left to pawn alongside. The men who lent to him – three in all – were bloated with greed and gold, and congratulated themselves for lifting property so lightly from a noble fool. Talbot himself had fits of conscience, alternately jubilant at the sound of gold or on his knees in church, wringing God for forgiveness for sins he would continue to commit tomorrow, but I held myself a hardened wretch, and did not have a qualm that I was party to deceit.
30
One night in a low-roofed tavern in Butchers Street I fell into talking with a grizzled, burly man who said he was a cooper. He showed me where he had lost two fingers to a burn. The skin was pink and smooth still, knotted up like peeled wood. I helped him to ale and nudged him into talk of scandal. I’d lately come, I said, from the Marches; there was open fighting in Shrewsbury between my lord Croft’s men and his brother knight Thomas Coningsby. Talk was they’d quarrelled here in Lancaster, round Easter time.
He nodded, he remembered them. A great to do there was. The party had been here almost a week, at the manor at Highfield, when the lords quarrelled and Croft took rooms at the Blue Boar. He brawled through every tavern, lined the pockets of every card player in the town. It was as though he held a grudge against peace itself. There were rumours he had a harlot stripped and made to stand against a wall so that he and his men could throw their daggers between her thighs. Almost any other man’s son and he would have been pinned in the castle – but his father had long fingers in the north. Then a man was murdered and he left – cantered off at dawn like the wind was after him.
I nodded and raised my cup to cover my face a moment. His words stirred a memory – the party of horsemen cantering through the wood on Easter Eve, when Meg and Mary and I were gathering flowers. One, in front, grimacing into the wind on a fine black courser. How could I not have recognised Edward Croft? By this time I had learned to recover myself quickly. It was as though the story were not of Jacob but of some other man. I looked over the lip of my beer and drew up my brows for more, batting away a red-lipped doxy who had hovered about me all evening like a fly. You could make of that what you wished, my companion said, dropping his voice, and glancing just enough towards the jug for me to know to pour it, only you’d better not be making too much of it if you didn’t want an accident one night when the fog was thick enough to make the watchmen and the constables forgetful.
Soon after, as I picked my way out, through rushes sticky with beer and spit, I found the girl was on my arm. I tried to shrug her off. I was used to jades – half the alehouses were stews on the side and I was not such a fool as I had been when the girl in Worcester had set about selling me to her friends.
‘Leave me be,’ I said, as gruffly as I could. ‘I’m not for you.’
‘No,’ she said, drawing me into the shadow by the door, ‘I’ve guessed that much, duckie, you’ve no yard, unless it be buckram. But I don’t mind that, not if there’s silver nesting where your prick should be.’
The room felt suddenly distant. I tried to appear scornful, but her eyes were too clever, there was no practising on them. I tried to push past her to the door, but there she was before me. I watched her glance merrily at the room behind me and for a moment I was afraid. If she were to denounce me, here, before this rabble? But she didn’t denounce me, instead she took my head in her hand and pulled me into a long kiss, so that the men behind us cheered and stamped. ‘Better let her pluck your cherry, lad, ’fore some carrion bird makes off with it.’
Her lips were soft and sweet and I felt nothing at all, except a desolating loneliness.
She took me by the hand and drew me into the street then, leaning her back against a wall and pulling me close by my shirt. ‘There,’ she said, ‘did you like that?’
‘No,’ I said. We were the same height, more or less; the same age too I’d guess. Her face still had a softness to it beneath the paint, but her expression was sharp – she had given over coquetry and was all over shrewdness, ‘What do you want?’ I said. ‘Money?’
She smiled. ‘You like secrets, don’t you? Costly things, they are. How much will you pay for a secret, I wonder?’
‘To have one kept or to have one told?’
‘Well,’ she said, leaning in to me as a man walked by, ‘You’ll be needing the first, if t’other’s to be any good to you. Come with me.’
I followed her along Butchers Street to a damp alley off Fish Market where a door stood ajar and a candle burned in the casement, flickering over the gutter that ran beside the flagstones. A cat wheedled against my legs. Jacob’s knife was in my belt, but I knew it would be of little use – if this was a trap I could not cut my way out. There was a parlour of sorts on the first floor, with gaudy hangings and a bird in a cage. A farmer was snoring on a couch with his head on the lap of an old jade who was picking at her nails. She looked up as we came in.
‘Got yourself a fine colt for breaking in, have you Betsy?’ she said with a wink, then turned to me. ‘You’ll be wanting wine sir? And pie? Sarah!’
A small girl appeared from behind
a painted cloth.
‘See to the gentleman’s shoes, girl. And bring him wine.’
‘No!’ I said, as she bundled herself at my feet and began unlacing me. ‘No, thank you.’ My voice sounded ridiculous, leaping higher than the candle. The old punk exchanged a glance with Betsy, but so smoothly it passed with a gutter of the flame.
Betsy led me up dark stairs to a further room, ripe with the smells of the market, even now that the moon was rising. She lit a pair of candles and I caught my breath, for the place was hung with bits of coloured glass stitched into lace, ribbons, strips of lawn. The walls glinted like a church.
‘You’re fortunate,’ she said, ‘I don’t show everyone. When the sun is just so, it throws colour petals all across the room.’
‘How did you come by it all?
‘Found some, was given some. Folks know I like it. Some call me the glass girl. Some say I summon spirits with the lights.’
I turned to her; she must have thought me disapproving, for she went on. ‘I ain’t no devil-dealer. God is light, it says so in the Gospels.’
‘All the same,’ I said, ‘you should take care. The gallows get hungry. I was called a witch once.’
‘And were you?’
‘No more than you,’ I said.
‘Is that why you feign to be a boy?’
There was a knock at the door and the small girl came in with the wine I didn’t want and a great hunk of pie. Her coming broke into what had begun to feel like an openness between us. I was glad – I should have learnt by now to be more careful.
The room was thick with heat. I unbuttoned my jerkin and leaned out of the casement in my shirt. The roofs overlaid each other like a pile of planks. Not far off a dam rat and all her young softly picked their way across the tiles.
‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s not the reason. I’m looking for someone. Petticoats get attention on the road. People say he was stabbed here, the week before Easter.’
‘Your leman, was he?’
I turned and looked at her and despite all my resolutions a sob rose in my throat. ‘I have been to every pigswill brewhouse in the city and all I hear is that he’s cold. It’s said there were knives drawn over a girl, but I don’t believe it. He was – he is – truer than the morning.’
She was sitting on the bed, idly circling the rim of her goblet with her finger. ‘You don’t know much of men, do you?’
‘What do you mean?’
She patted the bed next to her for me to sit down. I was minded to stand, indignant, at the window, but she did not laugh and I was too tired for resentment. I sat down a little awkwardly and she put her goblet down and reached her arms round me, pulling my head onto her shoulder. She was almost as skinny a wretch as I was, but for a moment I could have believed myself with Sally; it was so long since a woman had embraced me. I missed it so.
‘It en’t the same. The world don’t hold it’s false for a man to dally when he’s away from home, not if he’s heart-whole. They can no more keep from it than shitting. But you think he’s living still?’
‘He’s not dead.’ I sobbed out, ‘Nobody could show me to his grave.’
She stroked my hair while I wept and then she let out a long sigh. ‘There now. You’re a nesh fool, you are, you’re like a ballad, tramping heath and hollow to find your lover. Look how you’ve made my face run in sympathy. What will you pay me to learn a little more?’
I pulled back abruptly at that and stood and wiped my eyes. There was no comfort from strangers, only pursuit of gold. She had played me better than a pipe. A little show of pity and I’d spilt like a cracked cup. To look for honesty from a spotted whore!
‘Oh, look at you,’ she said, ‘stiffer than a puritan at prayer. Do you think I don’t eat? I could be sitting on a butcher’s knee nibbling my way to a silver shilling, if I hadn’t pitied you. You never touched a bit of gold with dirt on it? Is that it? I should call you out, you and that swindling dissembler you’re confederate with. He’s no more a gentleman than you are a squire.’
She was right. Who was I to judge her stratagems and play the puffed-up cock? ‘I’m sorry sister,’ I said, and reached out for her hand, which after a moment she let me take. I sat back down on the bed. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘tell me what you know and I promise I’ll pay you better than the butcher.’
She sniffed a little and trimmed the candle. ‘There ain’t that much. There was a girl working at the Saracen’s Head, hadn’t been there long. Fresh sweet thing she was, the landlord’s niece, although that only came out later. One of your lordings took a fancy to her and as the devil willed it came across her late when he went to take a piss. Only the work of a minute, and a sovereign flung at her and all done, but the poor wretch screamed and bit his hand before he had his pizzle out.’ She paused and took both my hands. ‘Your young man, if that’s the one, happened to be running into the alley. Perhaps it was a foggy night; perhaps the shadow was too thick, or perhaps he was as rash a niddicock as you are – he stepped in front of the girl and took his master’s dagger in his belly.’
My breath had stuck in my chest while she talked. I saw it all – Jacob pushing Croft back from the terrified girl; Croft’s disbelief – this man, half a head taller, stronger than he was, defying him, was one of their own servants. A cur from Coningsby’s stables! I doubted he said a word, I doubted he paused at all, but simply reached for the blade and stuck it. I nodded. ‘So,’ I said, forcing my voice level, ‘is he dead indeed? Did he bleed to death in the gutter?’
‘All I know is, he was believed dead and his body taken back to the Saracen’s, but the girl sat vigil beside him and bound him as well as she could. Towards dawn she declared a stir of life in him. Then he was gone. Some said he was slipped away by the other lord, some said Croft had paid men to see him well buried on the moors. Then an agent of Croft’s father turned up and made it understood that no one must say anything at all. The girl was sent to another house.’
I sat silent a long while and then I nodded and thanked her and gave her a whole reckless angel from my purse. I wanted to hoard and count over what she had told me alone.
‘Tell me,’ I said, as she took me to the stairs, ‘did you know me at once a girl? I had almost given over fearing discovery.’
‘Don’t fret. You are barely a girl at all; there’s few would wonder enough to make you out.’
‘Yes,’ I said, nodding, ‘I’ve learned how little people care to look at their fellows. But you knew, straight.’
‘For us it pays to be attentive. Any whore could tell you that. The sots down there in the marketplace, they see the world as their wishes reckon it – as it appears in their looking glass. We know that’s all just dazzle and reflection – bits of truth and broken shards and splinters.’
31
Two days later I left Lancaster with Talbot for Hornby Castle. After meeting Betsy I had spent a day loitering round The Saracen’s Head, but even my attempts to bribe were fruitless. I was impatient. By the afternoon nobody would speak to me and finally the landlord stepped out from his barrels and kicked me onto the street. As I limped off a boy pulled at my breeches and whispered he’d been sent to say I’d better leave, or maybe I’d be made a present of my tongue. It could be the landlord sent him, I don’t know, but I was frightened. I skulked back to the inn glancing into alleys for a man with a knife. There seemed little I could do more in the city anyway. Wherever Jacob was, it was not here.
My own reasons for leaving aside, I was anxious about Talbot’s activities. As we’d drawn north he’d grown ever more reckless and now, just as he neared his lady patron, he appeared heedless of risk altogether. He had paid for our hired clothes and bought fine collars and even after this had too much gold to sew into our seams, but it was not his cozening that worried me so much as the rumours that had spread about his sorcery. He had had dealings at the inn with men who had sold him a pouch of red dust and a scroll inscribed with magical signs that he loudly declared contained wonders, and must n
ot be spoken of. His candle coal had been polished to a beautiful round stone that could give a man back a picture of himself; Talbot spoke of it with awe quite openly, said it would lead him to the company of angels. A little magic might be safe for a dissolute gentleman, but that ruse could scarcely last and then our situation would be dangerous. A man might go to a scryer to find his goods, or his wife, but he’d join the mob against a conjurer.
He had evidently sent ahead, for we were expected; the horses were led off and our luggage carried by servants to fine lodgings near to the tower itself. The Lady Elizabeth, we were informed, would give Talbot an audience in an hour, after we had eaten.
‘Are you afraid?’ I asked Talbot, when the servant came to fetch us.
Talbot gestured at the grey looming tower, with its high windows, ‘Of this?’ he asked. ‘Yes, a little. Of course. I’m not a fool, Jabez. But a new world is coming and the old will fall. For now this tower rises above us with all its power and we are creatures who creep about at its base, but when the last days begin I shall be golden.’
I glanced at him. He had left the counterfeiter behind and was all prophet now, but I didn’t have his faith or confidence. The last time I tried to enter a great house I had been chased away and handed to a mob who clawed the skin off my back. My hands sweated at the thought of it. I glanced at Talbot – how little he knew me; how little we knew each other! We were ushered into the hall itself where a fire roared despite it being harvest.
I had expected an old woman, laden with jewels that mocked her loose, thin skin, but the Lady Elizabeth was not old, although she was pale enough, with a way of throwing her hand up to her forehead to feel the heat or the moistness of it. For a second I thought what it might be to approach her with my bag of simples – to gauge the pinkness of her eyes and the smell of her sweat and mix her up remedies – but I was not such a simpleton as to think I could safely physic a body like hers. She and I and Betsy of the stews would all be worms’ meat soon enough, but till then, her silks and velvets deterred any healer who could not read Greek. She gestured us to sit.
The Good Wife Page 21
