London

by Edward Rutherfurd

  An hour later, when Silversleeves entered, the Exchequer court was hard at work. Normally by now the Easter session would be over, but with the extra business of the prince’s coronation there was still much to do. Grateful for something to take his mind off the executions, Pentecost made himself busy.

  How quiet and normal it seemed, the scribes bent to their tablets, the faint click and murmur from the great table at the far end. Only gradually did he realize that the silence was unnatural. The scribes were studiously ignoring him. If he glanced towards them, the courtiers by the door looked awkward. He knew what it meant: it was embarrassment for a person who has just become an official outcast. He tried to take no notice, but after a while he went out. He walked about the Palace of Westminster for some time, his head bowed, trying to sort out the pictures that crowded into his mind.

  His parents when he had told them. His mother, tall, pale, shocked, unable to comprehend that her son could do such a thing. His father, terrible in his silent anger, but effective in getting his son cleared. The trial. The bishop’s eyes. The bodies turning in the breeze. The silence in the Exchequer chamber.

  He was finished as a cleric as long as Foliot lived, but what about the Exchequer? Was he really finished there too, all for one youthful indiscretion? It was too early to know. “Perhaps it will pass,” he murmured.

  He had just come to this conclusion when, turning into a broad passage, he looked up to see two painters at work on a wall.

  Many of the walls in the chambers around Westminster Hall were painted; this one consisted of a series of moral scenes from the lives of Old Testament kings and prophets. In the centre, half finished, was a single wheel.

  The two painters were obviously father and son. Both were short with bandy legs, stubby hands, large round heads and solemn eyes. They gazed at him placidly as he paused to admire their work. “What is this wheel to be?” he asked.

  “This is the wheel of fortune, sir,” the father replied.

  “And what does that signify, fellow?”

  “Why, sir, that a man may rise to fame and fortune, then just as quickly fall again. Or the other way round. It signifies that life is like a wheel, sir, always turning. And it teaches us to be humble, sir. For even when we are high, we may be brought low.”

  Silversleeves nodded. Every literate man knew about the wheel of fortune. It was the Roman philosopher Boethius, much admired in contemporary schools, who, himself cast into prison after a political reverse, had urged a stoic acceptance of fate and likened men’s fortunes to a constantly turning wheel. So popular had the idea become that even humble painters like these, who knew nothing of the philosopher, knew all about his wheel. He smiled to himself. How apt. He would be philosophical about his own reverse. No doubt if he was down now, the wheel would turn again. He passed on.

  It was a few minutes later, standing in the huge, cavernous space of Westminster Hall, that he saw a group of men coming towards him. There were half a dozen of them, in rich cloaks; they were walking quickly to keep up with the figure in the middle. And as soon as he saw who it was, Silversleeves caught his breath and ducked behind a pillar.

  Unlike his courtiers, King Henry II of England was as usual simply dressed in plain green hose and jerkin, like a huntsman. Of medium height and strongly built, he might have inclined to fat if his ceaseless, driven activity had not always burned it up. This morning, as at all times, he was brisk, trim and all-seeing.

  Perhaps, if Pentecost had not tried to hide behind his pillar, he might have been ignored. Instead, as he instinctively pressed himself against the grey, Norman stone, he heard a harsh voice call out in French: “Bring me that man.” King Henry did not like people hiding from him.

  A moment later, they were face to face.

  Though he worked in Westminster Palace, Silversleeves had never seen King Henry close before. This was not surprising. His northern kingdom occupied only part of Henry Plantagenet’s time, and even when he was on the island he was constantly travelling from place to place, hunting as he went.

  A freckled face. Norman, ginger hair, close-cropped and flecked with grey. Dear God, the Conqueror’s great-grandson. Hands nervously twisting a length of twine. A restless Plantagenet, too. A terrifying combination. Eyes grey and piercing.

  “Who are you?”

  “A clerk, sire.”

  “Why were you hiding?”

  “I wasn’t, sire.” A stupid lie.

  “You still haven’t told me your name.”

  “Pentecost, sire.”

  “Any more? Pentecost what? Of where?”

  It was no use. “Silversleeves, sire.”

  “Silversleeves.” Henry Plantagenet frowned, searched his mind, and remembered. “Silversleeves. Aren’t you one of those louts who attacked my armourer?” Silversleeves was very pale, Henry’s eyes suddenly harder than stone. “Why weren’t you hanged this morning?” He turned to the courtiers. “Weren’t they hanged?” The courtiers nodded. “Why hasn’t this one been hanged? Why weren’t you hanged?”

  “I am innocent, sire.”

  “Who says so?”

  “The Bishop of London, sire.”

  For a moment King Henry was silent. Then a flush began to appear just below his left ear, quickly spreading over his face. There was a sound like a snort from his nose. Silversleeves noticed that the courtiers were starting to back away.

  “A criminous clerk,” he hissed. A rogue hiding from the king’s justice behind the skirts of the Church. It was the very matter that had poisoned his relationship with his old friend Becket. A criminous clerk skulking in his own hall at Westminster. He snorted again.

  And then Silversleeves had the privilege of witnessing the other characteristic for which the king’s family was famous: a Plantagenet rage.

  “Viper!” King Henry’s face had suddenly become so suffused with blood that it darkened to ochre, as though some wooden effigy from an antique royal tomb had come to life. His eyes were so bloodshot they seemed to glow. He brought his face close to Pentecost’s until they almost touched, and in his nasal French, beginning in a harsh whisper and rising to a furious shout, he spoke his kingly mind.

  “You long-nosed son of a whore! You hypocritical, half-baked priest. You think you’ve dodged the gallows?” Here his voice began to rise. “You think you can cheat the king, you crapulous toad? Do you?” He glared straight into his eyes. “Well? Do you?”

  “No, sire,” Pentecost stammered.

  “Good!” His voice rose further. “Because you shall not. By the bowels of Christ, I promise you, you shall not! I, personally, will have your case reopened. I’ll pluck you from the bishop’s skirts. I’ll slit you open. You’ll hang until you rot. You understand?” And now, summoning all his Plantagenet fury: “You shall taste my justice, you stitched-up sack of slime. You shall smell death!” The last was not so much a shout as a guttural scream that echoed all round the cavernous spaces of Westminster Hall.

  Pentecost Silversleeves turned and fled. He could not help himself. He fled down Westminster Hall from the Court of Common Pleas, past rows of pillars to the Court of the King’s Bench and out through the great, ribbed doorway into the yard. He fled out past the Abbey, through the water gate and over the Tyburn stream; he fled along the banks of the Thames to the Aldwych and beyond; he fled past the Temple and over the River Fleet; he fled into the city up Ludgate Hill; he fled into the sanctuary of St Mary-le-Bow. And there he sat quaking for upwards of an hour.

  On a warm afternoon near the end of September, a man and a woman sat quietly on a bench in front of a large range of buildings along the eastern edge of Smithfield, and waited. The man, who wore a grey habit and sandals, was Brother Michael.

  The woman was an ageless twenty-two. She was short and stout; her face wore a perpetual frown of friendly determination; her left eye stared out at a rakish angle; and only her red hair, pulled severely back, gave a clue that she was one of the Danish family of Barnikel. Perhaps the faint air of confusi
on behind her determination hinted at something else. “I have to think very hard,” she would often say, “because otherwise I get things all muddled up.” But this did not take away from the central feature of her personality: she knew her own opinion. She, too, wore a grey habit. She was called Sister Mabel.

  The buildings behind them were comparatively new. Less than five decades had passed since a worldly courtier, loved by the king for his wit and his jests, had suddenly experienced a vision, turned from the world and founded the priory and hospital dedicated to St Bartholomew. The priory was rich and grand. The hospital was humble.

  It was to the Hospital of St Bartholomew that Brother Michael and Sister Mabel belonged. Now she turned to him.

  “Perhaps he will not come.” She was not afraid, not for herself, but she was afraid for gentle Brother Michael. “You take care,” she had earnestly warned him. “He has a black heart.” The jaws of hell were already open; the fiends would drag him down. For the man they were awaiting was, she was sure, the wickedest in London. And their task that day was to save his soul.

  “He’ll come,” Brother Michael said serenely. Then, with a smile: “Mother will make him.” And then, seeing her still looking doubtful: “I’m not afraid, Sister Mabel, with you to protect me.”

  Mabel Barnikel was the sister of the fishmonger who had inadvertently caused such damage to the ship of Alderman Bull. Many people thought her a joke. Yet if they laughed at her behind her back, they were wrong to do so, for she was a humble soul.

  She had always, ever since childhood, listened very carefully to anyone she thought was wise, trying as hard as she could to make sense of the puzzling world she saw around her. As a result, when she did finally satisfy herself that she had got an idea straight, she clung to it with all the doggedness of a shipwrecked man who has found a raft in perilous seas.

  She was thirteen and just going through puberty when she had discovered that she was in danger of suffering hellfire. The reason for this sad state of affairs was very simple. She was born that way.

  “The trouble is,” she would state matter-of-factly, “I’m a woman.”

  It was the parish priest who had explained it to her. He had preached a sermon on the subject of Adam and Eve and used the occasion to deliver a stern warning to his female parishioners. “Women, if you would save your souls, remember Eve. For it is the nature of woman to incline to frivolity and the sins of the flesh, and mortal sin as well. Women are in special danger of hell.”

  He was a white-haired old man whom Mabel revered. The sermon alarmed her, and the next time she saw him she had begged him to explain: “Why are women more likely to sin, Father?”

  The old man had smiled kindly. “It is in their nature, child. God has made woman the weaker vessel.” It was an old belief, dating back to St Paul himself. “It is man who is made in God’s image, my child. Man’s seed produces his perfect likeness. Woman, being only the container in which the seed matures, is therefore inferior. She may still reach heaven, but, being inferior, it is harder.”

  Several days passed while Mabel digested this authoritative information. Certain things still puzzled her and so, afraid he might be angry and apologizing to him for her confusion, she once more approached the kindly old man and asked: “If man’s seed produces his perfect likeness, how is it that women are born as well as men?”

  Far from being angry, the priest had placed his hand on her shoulder. “A very good question,” he told her. “You see, some of the seed is defective. But – and this is one of the wonders of God’s creation – it is necessarily so, to provide vessels by which mankind may continue. Is that all?”

  “I also wondered, Father,” she continued humbly, “if a child is born of man’s seed only, why is it that children often resemble their mother and not just their father?”

  To her relief he positively beamed. “God’s providence is wondrous indeed. Why, child, you think like a physician. The answer to your question is not certain but the great philosopher Aristotle” – he smiled at this evidence of his own learning – “was of the opinion that while it grows in the womb, the unborn child drinks fluid from the mother which may have some effect. So you may take it that this is the reason.”

  “Tell me one last thing, Father,” she asked meekly. “If it is so hard for a woman to be saved, what must I do?”

  Now the priest frowned, not because he was irritated, but because he did not know. “It is hard to say,” he replied at last. “Pray earnestly. Obey your husband in all things.” He paused. “There are those, my child, who say that it is only virgins who can easily pass into heaven. But that is not a path for all.”

  From this kindly conversation, Mabel came to understand three things: that women were inferior; that she herself might have some talent for the arts of the physician; and that virginity was the likeliest path to heaven. Few of her contemporaries would have doubted the first or last of these statements.

  It was not surprising, therefore, when, a few years later, realizing she had little chance of ever finding a husband, her earnest nature should have made her desire to enter the religious life. Here, however, she met a difficulty that might have been insuperable: “Our family are only fishmongers,” she acknowledged.

  The decline of the Barnikel family from their glory in Viking days had been steady and probably inevitable. Since the Conquest, the old Danish families of London had lost their hold, pushed steadily aside by incoming merchants from Normandy and the growing network of German Hanseatic ports. The present Barnikel of Billingsgate was a fishmonger, meaning not that he sold fish in the street, though he did have a stall, but that he dealt in fish and other cargo for shipping. And though he was a prosperous and respectable fellow, albeit one given to occasional rages, he and his fellow fishmongers enjoyed a status about the same as the richer craftsmen and far below that of wholesale merchants like Bull and Silversleeves.

  Yet why should this be such a problem? It was a commonplace of the time that by adulthood nature provided a greater supply of women than of men – about 10 per cent more in England at this date. By Mabel’s generation, this difference had been increased by the growing number of men entering holy orders and, at least in theory, a life of celibacy. It might have been expected, then, that many women would also choose the religious life.

  But it was not so. True, there were the great nunneries, but they were few, select, and expensive to enter, the preserve of noble families and the richest merchants. And though the Catholic Church might be content to idealize a few pious noblewomen, given its view of women in general as weaker vessels there was little interest in expanding the female orders. As for the humble merchant and craftsman, the spare women of the household were absolutely necessary to his economy, working in the house and helping him at his trade.

  Mabel, therefore, was too lowly born to serve God in any formal capacity.

  But she was persistent. She heard of a nunnery that took lay sisters to perform menial tasks. Some of the crusading orders were even using women nurses. Finally, a place was found for her in the hospital attached to the rich priory of St Bartholomew. No donation was required.

  And she was happy. She liked tending the sick. She knew every herbal cure, real or otherwise, that the hospital used, and was always on the lookout for more. In the larder she kept a veritable treasure-trove of jars, pots and boxes. “Dandelions to clean the blood,” she would explain, “cress for baldness, wort for fever, water lilies for dysentery.” For the truly sick, she would bring holy water from the rich canons regular in the priory, or she would help a struggling invalid across London to touch some holy relic that was, she knew, his only hope of a cure or, better yet, of eventual salvation.

  And then there was Brother Michael. From the moment she had set eyes on him early that June, she had felt sure he was a saint of some kind. Why else should a rich merchant’s son desert Westminster Abbey not for the rich priory, but for her poor sister, the hospital? How she admired his quiet, stately ways, the fact
that he read books and was wise.

  Yet as one month passed, and then a second, she realized that not everyone shared her opinion of him. Some, like his wicked brother, even thought him a fool. This made her angry. “He’s just too good for them,” she would mutter. So that while she continued to revere him, she also began to feel protective.

  But now Brother Michael was looking towards the city gate and waving.

  “Here he is,” he remarked pleasantly, as Alderman Bull strode towards them.

  The wickedest man in London was in a very bad temper indeed.

  He would not have come there at all if it had not been for his mother. For weeks now she had been begging him, “Be reconciled with Michael before I die.” When he replied irritably that she was not dying, she would only answer: “You never know.” Finally, he had been able to stand it no longer.

  Why did his mother always take Michael’s side? She had done so ever since his brother was born. Personally he had never thought so much of his younger brother. When he had gone into the monastery at Westminster, he had been contemptuous. But when he had left that June, his fury had known no bounds. “The donations we made,” he shouted, “completely wasted!” He had not spoken to Michael since.

  But that was not the real reason why his mother had plagued him to see Michael. He knew the true cause very well.

  It was Bocton. Despite the delay caused by the kiddles, his ship had completed her voyage successfully. Negotiations with Abraham had taken time, but tomorrow the agreement would be concluded. Which was exactly what so shocked his pious mother.

  “Can’t you see it’s a crime?” she had protested. “You’ll be damned for all eternity.” And many in London would have agreed with her.

  A crusader was a holy pilgrim, ready to suffer martyrdom in God’s righteous war. In the eyes of the Church, his crusade absolved him from his sins and gave him a place in paradise. Though the repossession of the estates of bankrupt crusading knights was one of the commonplaces of that century, many considered it a serious moral crime and sought laws to protect crusaders from their creditors.