The Lost Boys of London

by Mary Lawrence

  Once inside, Bianca drew water from the barrel in the alley to wash the roots. She set a bowl in front of Fisk and gave him a rag, then sliced bread for their meal. Hobs heard them return and appeared on the window sill to keep watch over both of them and the lane outside the rent. Butter being a particular favorite food of his, he made himself a pest when Bianca slathered the bread and sprinkled dried sage on top.

  “Here you are, my house spirit.” She gave him a dollop, and he closed his eyes to lick it one direction, then the other.

  Fisk devoured his slices before Bianca had finished her first. She pushed her remaining portion across the board to him. “Eat, you need it if you want to be taller than me.”

  “I already am!”

  “I think not quite.” Bianca drew them a couple of mugs of ale with a mind to get more from alewife Guildford, who made a flavorsome morning brew.

  She had just sat down when they heard a knock at the door. Since living alone, so few people visited that when she was interrupted, she immediately grew suspicious. But with Fisk around, Bianca worried less about uninvited callers.

  Bianca cracked open the door and peered out.

  She blinked in disbelief.

  “John?”

  A grin spread from behind a shaggy beard. “By my life I thought I would never see you again,” he said.

  Bianca flung open the door and John reached for her. The weight of care slid off their shoulders. Only the press of body against body would do; the feel of skin, the smell of familiarity.

  Finally, they broke apart and Bianca stepped back to look at him.

  “You are more disheveled than I could have imagined.”

  John lightly touched the scar on her cheek. “I fear to ask,” he said.

  “In good time,” replied Bianca.

  John rolled up his sleeve and showed her his wound, still wrapped in a length of linen. “It will heal,” he said to her concerned look.

  “Well, good sir, you have come to the right place.” Bianca took his hand and pulled him inside. Fisk had gotten to his feet and was watching the two with interest until John spotted him.

  He looked at Fisk, confused. “I have not been gone so long,” he said. He glanced around the room. “Where is our son?”

  Bianca had feared this moment almost as much as she’d feared John’s possible death. Her eyes found his, and though she had often imagined and dreaded his reaction, it was not blame or anger that she found in his stare. It was sadness.

  John shook his head in question and Bianca’s lips moved, “The baby did not survive.”

  John’s head dropped. His finger went to the corner of his eye and he stared at the floor, then he took her in his arms, realizing that his disappointment was also hers. “It seems we have both survived life’s battles,” he said. “I am grateful that I did not lose you in yours.”

  Fisk shifted his weight side to side looking uncomfortable. He made a move for the door. “Mayhap I will go home now,” he murmured.

  Bianca turned to her young friend and opened her arm for him to come closer. “I’ve made Fisk my apprentice. And he is a fine one, at that.”

  John’s eyebrows rose. “And he does not mind inhaling the stink?”

  “Nay, sir. It does not trouble me. It is worse along the Fleet.”

  “Ah, then this is a good match, I see,” said John.

  “Fisk, come tomorrow and we will start anew,” said Bianca. She went to her purse and handed him his pay and a little extra. “Buy yourself and Anna a treat. You have time to make it to market before they close.”

  Fisk’s eyes brightened, and donning his cap he bid them both a good night, eager with thoughts of sweetmeats on his mind.

  Bianca closed the door and without a word dragged out the tub that she lined with sheets. She put pots of rainwater on her calcinatory stove to heat. They talked while waiting for the water to heat, and John noted the crooked door jam and windows in need of repair that he would undertake mending in due time. And when the water steamed, Bianca undressed John and placed his war-torn uniform in a pile to be dealt with later. There were no complaints that the tub was too small, or that the water was too hot. John eased himself into the tub with an appreciative sigh.

  His arm wound needed attention and this she provided, cleaning off the dried blood to better apply a healing salve. She scrubbed his back, stopping long enough to give him a long kiss. He almost pulled her in with him, but they saved their desires for later. As in battle, John ignored his painful ribs when he needed to.

  “When you are able,” said Bianca the next morning, “we must go to the Dim Dragon. There are those who will be glad to see you.”

  John fell quiet, picking at his bowl of oats and chopped walnuts. Bianca noticed his sudden reticence.

  “Is it too soon to remember your friends?” She asked this, thinking he must need more time to accustom himself to civilian life.

  “Is Cammy still working there?”

  “Aye, she is,” said Bianca cheerily. “We shared many a meal, commiserating over our lost loves.”

  John hid his reaction behind a drink from his mug.

  “Why?” Bianca searched his face.

  “Might she have found a new love, perchance?” He set down his ale, avoiding her eyes.

  “Nay. She most fervently pines for her archer. Truth be, I have not encouraged it.” Bianca tried masking her alarm. She blotted her lips with a napkin and laid it beside her bowl. “Is it Roger? Do you have news of him?”

  “He won’t be coming home.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Aye,” John said softly. He offered no more and Bianca did not ask. They were both guilty of murder and it was this ultimate transgression that they could not discuss. In time, perhaps they would speak of it, but for now, burying their secrets was easier than telling them.

  And so, as a young couple worked to regain their lost time together, a city, oblivious to time’s relentless passing, unflaggingly carried on. Citizens would live and die under a king who wrought havoc and prosperity in unequal measure. And while this king refused his mortality, others prepared for it. Such is the way of rule. Such is the way of power.

  Some men trust their king. Some trust those of education, or wealth. Some trust God. And when these disappoint, innocence—that treasured gift of faith—is gone forever.

  Here ends this story of Bianca and her coterie of misfits, thieves and friends—the people she called family. And in a world full of lost boys—abandoned children, of men killed in battle, men scarred from war, of boys who grow into petulant kings, and men who forfeit the gift of loving their children, this lost boy of London, this soldier, murderer, apprentice, and lover, found his way home.

  Glossary

  angel—a coin worth ten shillings

  arquebus—early portable gun, forerunner of a rifle

  assureds—Scots who had sworn allegiance to King Henry

  beadle—a parish officer who dealt with petty offenses

  Blackfriars—Dominican monks

  bothy—Shephard’s shack

  brae—a steep slope rising from the water

  broderers—those who embroider

  cozen—a cheat

  cullion—a base fellow

  curber—a thief who uses a hook on a line or a curved stick to steal items from open windows

  Droch áird chúgat lá gaoithe—May he be badly positioned some windy day (Gaelic)

  fleering—jeering

  foin—thrusts (sexual connotation)

  fripperer—one who sells used clothing

  God’s nails—an oath

  Grayfriars—Franciscan monks

  grimalkin—cat

  hagbut—another word for an arquebus

  hagbutter—a soldier armed with a hagbut or arquebus

  jack—soldier’s jacket sewn with metal plates

  jerkin—a man’s close-fitting jacket

  kirkton—a Scott
ish village next to a church

  loneful—lonesome

  losel—good for nothing fellow

  lubberwort—lazy, fuzzy-minded person

  monadh—moorland covered mountain

  nigglesome--bothersome

  parchmeners—parchment makers

  pizzle—penis

  plodge—mud

  pribbling—trivial speech or a pointless squabble

  puling—whining

  quoits—curling stone

  rondel—typically a twelve-inch dagger with a sharp point. Reminiscent of a strong ice-pick

  routers—bullies

  sack—Spanish spiced wine

  Scotch—Scot

  slugabed—an individual content to rise late

  snouter—wise-ass

  stomacher—triangular boned bodice

  sumptuary law—used in reference to control what people wore. A man must not dress above his station.

  swasher—swaggerer, a narcissist

  tarpawlin—cloth coated in tar

  View of Arms—a test and demonstration of men’s archery skills

  wagtails—whores

  wally—buffoon

  water roses—urinate

  whobub-hubbub

  Authors Note

  By the late winter of 1545, King Henry VIII had waged war on both France and Scotland. There is nothing like a war to distract a man and his country from his recent cuckolding at the hands of his licentious fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Harry’s reasons to invade France were several. Firstly, France had long been England’s enemy. Harry argued that while France and Spain wrangled over northern Italy, he could join forces with Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and take Paris. Not only did the aging king pine for military glory but he wanted to force King Frances I to honor pension payments in arrears and other obligations to the British crown under past treaties. Harry just didn’t like the French monarch and had always been competitive and perhaps jealous of his successful rival across the channel.

  Then too, there was the not so small matter of subjugating the Scots in the north. Henry sought to punish Scotland for breaking their Treaty of Greenwich in December of 1543 which would have united the two kingdoms through the marriage of the infant Mary (Queen of Scots) to Henry’s son, Prince Edward. He also took exception to Scotland realigning with France and feared a French invasion at the northern border. For the next eight years Henry undertook a cruel offensive of death and destruction against the Scots, later known as “The Rough Wooing.”

  Ultimately, Henry’s triumph at capturing Boulogne and subjugating the Scots came at a huge financial cost. He drove the Tudor dynasty to the brink of bankruptcy, leaving his heirs to struggle with the crippling burden of his debt.

  Chief among my sources regarding the various campaigns in Scotland, I consulted The Earl of Hertford’s Expedition Against Scotland--A Tudor narrative of the landing at Granton, the Capture of Leith, Edinburgh, the Burning of Haddington, Hawick, Dunbar, and the sack of Jedburgh and other places. For the movements and descriptions of the battle of Ancrum Moor I read numerous accounts of the crucial battle and pieced together the main points. Any mistakes in interpretation are my own.

  Aside from Henry’s political ambitions, matters of religion wavered under the King’s final years. The pope’s refusal to grant a divorce from Catherine of Aragon had set in motion numerous reforms too involved to go into detail here. Initially, Henry defended Catholicism against Martin Luther’s reforms, but when those reforms could serve his purpose, Henry broke with the church in Rome and effectively made himself pope of his own church. He always considered himself a Catholic and towards the end of his life he adopted a more conservative stance on earlier reforms, retreating from the more extreme proposals of his now fallen chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. Perhaps he experienced feelings of guilt towards his treatment of monks during the dissolution of the monasteries, or worried for his soul’s afterlife which may help explain his conservative decisions.

  My reason in bringing up religion in this particular Bianca Goddard mystery is to point out the volatile times in which people found themselves. Clerics were required to take the oath of supremacy swearing allegiance to the monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Failure to do so was considered treason. Reformists who wished changes other than those implemented by the king were treading on dangerous ground.

  During the middle ages, the Virgin Mary was the focus of devotions for pious Catholics, but beginning in the mid-fifteenth century amid calls for reform, evangelical Catholics shifted their devotion to Jesus. By the sixteenth century the abbreviation of the holy name had become quite popular and was considered a talisman, similar in significance to a crucifix. IHS or YHS is based on an abbreviation of the word JHESUS in Greek. The cult of the Holy Name focused its attention on the figure of Christ and for my purposes in the novel, I associated their devotion with a group of pious Catholics resistant to reform.

  On the matter of the printer’s ink—I am basing its compounds on ether which was discovered in 1275 by Raymundus Lullius, a Spanish alchemist. Known as “Sweet Vitriol,” its paralyzing effects were noted by Paracelsus and his student, Valerius Cordus in 1540. I have no evidence that ether was specifically used in compounding ink in the sixteenth century, however, its use as a solvent could have been possible.

  Writing the Bianca Goddard Mysteries has been challenging in the sense that I am not an academic historian. Yet I write about life during the Tudors, one of the most exhaustively plumbed and researched periods in history with a multitude of devotees. I am acutely aware of my shortcomings, and I spend a great deal of time reading and researching the period. I do not record my references or a bibliography at the end of these mysteries, but I have shelves of reference books and notebooks filled with material from what I’ve learned.

  My lack of training in history and the logistical hindrance of 3000 miles of ocean and 500 years between myself and my subject matter, may result in me being remiss in some of my interpretations, and for this I apologize. An authentic “feel” and “atmosphere” of the time is chief among my goals for attempting these Tudor tales. I love the language, I enjoy learning about the politics and interplay of religion, and I never cease to be intrigued by the personalities of the time, whether real or made up in my head. I so much prefer being transported to another time period that perhaps I presume that my readers wish this too. Reading is the highest and most creative form of escapism--one must use her mind to imagine the landscape of an author’s words.

  I invite interested readers to subscribe to my newsletter at my website, www.marylawrencebooks.com for news of any forthcoming projects. They will be the first to know of any developments.

  About the Author

  Mary Lawrence lives in Maine and is the author of five Bianca Goddard Mysteries. Two of her novels—The Alchemist’s Daughter and The Alchemist of Lost Souls were named by Suspense Magazine as best historical mysteries of 2015 and 2019 respectively. Her articles have appeared in several publications, including the national news blog The Daily Beast. Visit the author at MaryLawrenceBooks.com.