London

by Edward Rutherfurd

  She had not wanted to come here. The courtiers always seemed so devious, and she hated any kind of falseness. Nor would she have done so if she had not felt she must. She sighed. It was all Thomas’s idea.

  Thomas and Peter, her two brothers: it really was astonishing how different they were. Thomas, the baby of the family: quick, brilliant, charming, wilful. She loved him of course, but with reservations. Large reservations.

  And Peter, comfortable, solid Peter. Though actually her half-brother from an earlier marriage, he was the one to whom she felt closer. It was Peter, the eldest of the Meredith family, who had taken the place of their father when he died young. Peter who was still, and always would be, the family conscience. She had not really been surprised when he had entered the priesthood, leaving young Thomas to pursue the things of the world.

  There had been no better parish priest in London than Father Peter Meredith. A good height, balding and pleasantly stout by his forties, his comforting presence was as familiar as it was welcome to his flock. He was a clever man and, but for a streak of laziness in his youth, he might have been a fine scholar. His parish of St Lawrence Silversleeves was not a place for an ambitious man. Yet he was content. He had restored the little church with its dark rood screen, and under his wardenship, it had gained two fine new stained glass windows. He knew the name of every child in his parish; the women liked his bonhomie because they knew he observed his vows of celibacy; he could drink with the men but keep a genial dignity. After giving the last rites, he would always hold the dying person’s hand until they were safely gone. His sermons were simple, his conversation matter-of-fact. He was a solid Catholic priest.

  Only the previous year he had fallen sick, quite seriously so, and after a time announced: “I can’t keep up the pastoral work any more.” He had chosen to retire to the great Charterhouse monastery in London; but before doing so had decided to make a pilgrimage to Rome. “See Rome and die,” he had cheerfully remarked, “though I shan’t die yet, I dare say.” He was still there now. And she had had to write to him for guidance about this business today. For the twentieth time, that morning, she had read his reply.

  I can only tell you to follow your conscience. Your religion is strong. Pray therefore, and you will know what to do.

  She had prayed. Then she had come here.

  Somewhere in the great labyrinth of Hampton Court was her dear husband Rowland. It was an hour since Thomas had led him in there – to what they both knew would be the most important meeting of his life. She had never seen him so on edge. For three days he had repeatedly been sick and looked so deathly pale that, if she had not been used to his intense and nervous constitution, Susan might have thought that he was really ill. He was doing it for her and the children, but for himself too. Perhaps that was why she wanted him to succeed so much.

  Peter’s greatest gift of all to her had been her husband. It was Peter who had found Rowland, Peter who had quietly sent him to her with a message: This is the one. “Damn it, they even look the same,” Thomas had complained. For it was true that Peter and her husband with their stout build and prematurely balding heads did look rather similar. But despite this superficial resemblance there was an important difference. Even if the monk was the older and wiser of the two, gentle Rowland had a quiet ambition which, she knew, Peter lacked. “I couldn’t have married a man without ambition,” she confessed.

  As for the physical side of their marriage, that too, she felt confident, could hardly be bettered. Yet she smiled when she thought of the early days. How devout, how hesitant they had been! How seriously they had both tried to follow the rules and make their intimacy a sacrament. It was she, after a short while, who had decided to take charge.

  “But you are wanton,” he had said, looking rather surprised.

  “I need something to confess,” she had replied. And many times since then their own priest, with a smile they did not see, had given them each a little penance and a kindly absolution.

  Now Rowland had his chance. If the interview which Thomas had arranged was successful, there was no denying what it might mean. An outlet for his talents; a respite from their endless worries over money; perhaps even modest riches one day. When she thought of the children she told herself: it must be right.

  There was one other consolation. Whatever she might think of courts, she knew they were a necessary evil, the courtiers only servants. Behind them lay the all-important figure whose cause they would really be serving. Her father’s friend; her brother’s benefactor; the man she had been brought up to love and trust all her life.

  Good King Henry, England’s pious king, head of the house of Tudor.

  The Plantagenet dynasty had collapsed in that terrible series of family feuds between John of Gaunt’s House of Lancaster and its rival the House of York, known as the Wars of the Roses. So many royal princes had been killed, that an obscure Welsh family, married by chance into the old royal house, had emerged. When he killed the last Plantagenet, Richard III, at the Battle of Bosworth, fifty years before, Henry’s father had established the Tudor dynasty on England’s throne.

  Susan could still remember the day – she had been five, a year before her father died – when he had taken her to court; and how, advancing across the great hall had come the most splendid figure she had ever seen. Big and broad-chested in his jewel-encrusted tunic with its huge, rolled shoulder-pads, Henry was a magnificent giant. His tightly fitting hose revealed the powerful legs of an athlete; and between them, padded to emphasize the bulk of his sexual parts, a bulging cod-piece. Her heart missed a beat when suddenly a pair of tremendous arms scooped her up, raised her high, and she found herself looking straight into a large, handsome face with a pair of wide-set, merry eyes and a square-cut, reddish-brown beard.

  “So this is your little girl,” the mighty monarch had smiled, as he brought her to his face and gave her a kiss. And, even at her age, Susan knew that surely this was everything a man could be.

  No prince in Europe was finer than Harry of England. England might be small – at under three million, her population was only a fifth of that of the now united kingdom of France – but Henry made up for the deficiency with lavish style. Mighty sportsman, accomplished musician, occasional scholar, tireless builder of palaces – he was everything a Renaissance man should be. At Flodden, his armies had crushed the Scots; at the gorgeous pageant of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, he had made a peace with the equally splendid King of France. And most important of all, at a time when Christendom was facing its greatest crisis in a thousand years, Harry of England was devout.

  It was early in Henry’s reign that Martin Luther had begun his religious protest in Germany. Like the English Lollards before, the Lutherans’ original demands for Church reform had soon grown into a huge challenge to Catholic doctrine. Soon these Protestants were denying the miracle of the Mass and the need for bishops, and were saying priests could marry. Shockingly, some ruling princes were even sympathetic. But not good King Henry. When German merchants had infiltrated Lutheran tracts into London, he had stamped them out. A translation of the New Testament by Tyndale had been publicly burned seven years before at St Paul’s. And the scholar king had personally penned such a splendid rebuttal of the heretic Luther that the grateful Pope had given him a new title: Defender of the Faith.

  As for Henry’s recent problems with the Pope over the question of his wife, like many devout people in England Susan had great sympathy for Henry. “I believe he is doing his best in a very difficult position,” she would declare. Besides, the business might still be resolved. “I’m not prepared,” she said, “to judge him yet.”

  The grounds that lay before Hampton Court, known as the Great Orchard, were typical of those around such houses – an elaborate network of formal gardens, gazebos, arbours and private places which King Henry, who loved such displays, had been decorating with all manner of heraldic beasts, sundials and other ornaments in painted wood or stone.

  It was chance
that, as she walked by a high, green hedge enclosing one of the gardens, she should have heard the whispers. Then she thought she heard a laugh.

  Daniel Dogget stood by the landing stage at Hampton Court, looked down at his squat wife and her sturdy little brother, and wondered.

  It was quiet. Out in the stream, white swans glided and black moorhens bobbed, as though that summer would never cease.

  Dan Dogget was a giant. Over two centuries had passed since Barnikel of Billingsgate had visited the Dogget sisters on the Bankside and left one of them with a baby. The child took on the Barnikel stature, but the sisters’ colouring and name. His children, apart from their size, were hardly distinguishable from their cousins of the old Ducket family, except by their slightly different name; but by the time of the Black Death, when little Geoffrey Ducket was taken in by Bull, it was this other, Dogget branch of the family that had mainly survived. Dan Dogget was six foot three; big-boned and spare in build, with a huge mane of black hair with a flash of white over his forehead. He was the strongest waterman on the Thames. He could break a chain across his chest. Ever since the age of twelve, he had been allowed to row with the men; by the age of eighteen he could out-curse any of them – a notable achievement, for the watermen of London were legendary for their loud mouths. At twenty, not a man would fight him, even in the roughest of the waterside taverns.

  “So what will you do?” the little man asked again. Receiving no reply, he delivered his considered opinion. “You know your problem, Daniel? You’ve got too many obligations.” To which Dogget only sighed, but said nothing. Not that he had ever complained. He was devoted to his tubby wife Margaret and their brood of happy children; he was kind to his sister’s family; and now, when poor Carpenter’s wife had died giving birth to her fourth, he had brought his own wife and children upriver from Southwark to the lodgings at Hampton Court where Carpenter was working. “They can live with you until things get sorted out,” he had offered, and Carpenter’s gratitude had been obvious. But if only this were all. There was still the matter of his father.

  It was a year since he had let the old man live with them in Southwark – and a year that he had regretted it. Old Will Dogget might be a standing joke to his friends, but after his last drunken escapade, Dan confessed: “I can’t handle him any more.” What was to be done with him, though? He couldn’t just throw the old man out. He had tried his sister, but she wouldn’t take him. He sighed again. Whatever the answer was, he thought, you could be sure of one thing. “It’ll cost money.” And short of stealing, there was only one way he could get that: which was why, now, his eyes were scanning the barges moored by the jetty. Could one of them provide his answer?

  Though they came in many sizes, all the Thames passenger barges conformed to the same basic pattern. In construction, they were essentially Viking longboats with a shallow keel, and planks laid, in the overlapping clinker fashion, in long, sweeping lines. Inside, they were divided into two parts: the fore section, with benches for oarsmen; and the aft section where the passengers reclined. The variations upon this theme, however, were many. There were the simplest row-boats, the broad and shallow wherries, which one or two oarsmen could send skimming across the river between Southwark and the city. There were longer barges, with several pairs of oars and, usually, a canopy over the passengers. These frequently had rudders and a man to steer as well. And there were the huge barges of the great city companies, with entire superstructures for the passengers, magnificently carved prows, and a dozen or more pairs of oars to pull them, like the gilded barge of the Lord Mayor, as he was now called, which led the yearly water procession.

  Daniel loved the waterman’s life. The work might be physically hard, but he was built for it. The feel of the blades dipping neatly into the water, the surge of the boat, the smell of the riverweed – these brought him a contentment that could not be bettered. Above all, as he fell into the slow, powerful rhythm, he would experience a huge warmth swelling up in his broad chest as though, like the river’s flow, his strength were endless. How well he knew the river – every bank, every bend, from Greenwich to Hampton Court. Once, rowing a young courtier, the fellow had sung a pretty ballad with a chorus:

  Sweet Thames, run softly

  ’Til I end my song.

  This had so pleased him that often, on a still summer morning, he would find himself murmuring the words as he slipped down the stream.

  There was plenty of work. Since London Bridge was still the only road across the Thames, and it was frequently congested, there were always wherries hurrying across the river at the city and at Westminster. For longer journeys, too, the river route, if not quicker, was certainly more comfortable. Many a courtier due at Hampton Court in the morning would spread out on cushions in one of the noble barges and let the watermen, dressed in gorgeous livery, row him upriver through a warm summer night. It was much better than setting out at dawn down the rutted lane known as the King’s Road, that led past Chelsea towards the royal palace. Sweet Thames run softly. On such journeys as these, with gratuities in addition, the watermen were well paid.

  If only he could get work on one of the fine barges, he could make a very different living. But, “You’re so big,” he was told, “it’s hard to pair you.” And for the good jobs, even in the humble Watermens Guild, you needed connections. “Which is what I haven’t got,” he would sigh. Somehow, though, he had to find a way, if only to save his old father. Then his troubles would be over.

  The two men were laughing as they walked through the great courtyard, their footsteps echoing softly against the brick walls. It was time to rejoice.

  Rowland Bull was laughing with relief. The interview had gone better than he could have imagined. Even now, he could hardly believe that they had said: “We want you.” It was no small thing for a conscientious lawyer to hear from the Chancellor of England himself. Rowland Bull, son of modest Bull the brewer of Southwark was needed at the heart of the kingdom. He was flattered. As for the income – it was more than he had dreamed. If he had had doubts about the worldliness of the court, when he thought of his little family and how this would transform their lives, it seemed to him that it must be God’s will. He turned.

  “I owe all this to you.”

  It was hard not to like Thomas Meredith. Slim and handsome, with his sister’s colouring, he was the family’s worldly hope. The Merediths were Welsh. Like other Welsh families, they had come to England with the Tudors. Thomas’s grandfather had fought at Bosworth; his father might have risen at court if he had not died when Thomas and Susan were children. But King Henry had not forgotten the Merediths and had given young Thomas a position with the powerful royal secretary, Thomas Cromwell, where he seemed born to succeed. He had studied at Cambridge and the Inns of Court; he sang and danced well; he fenced and drew a bow; he even played the royal game of tennis with the king. “Though I make sure I lose,” he smiled. At the age of twenty-six he was altogether charming.

  If Rowland Bull wanted to sum up the influences that had brought him so far, he could do so precisely. Books, and the Merediths.

  The books were easy to explain. It had been a member of the Mercers Guild, a fellow called Caxton, who had brought the first printing presses to England from Flanders and set up shop at Westminster, just before the Wars of the Roses came to an end. The effect had been astonishing. A flood of printed books had soon appeared. Caxton’s books were easy to read. In place of illuminations they often had lively black and white woodcuts; and above all, compared to the old hand-produced manuscripts, they were cheap. Bull the brewer, though he liked to read, would never have owned several dozen books otherwise. And so it was that Rowland, the youngest son, had been allowed to bury his nose in Chaucer, the stories of King Arthur, and a score of sermons and religious tracts; and it was this love of books that had finally led him away from the brewery to become a poor Oxford scholar and then to study the law. It was the books, too, that had caused him as a young man to contemplate the religious life.<
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  But all the rest was the Merediths. Wasn’t it Peter, the man he respected above all others who had told him: “There are other ways to serve God, you know, than in holy orders.” Wasn’t it Peter who, when he had feared he could not keep a religious vow of chastity, had smilingly remarked: “Better, according to St Paul, to marry than burn.” Through Peter he had discovered Susan, and a happiness he had never dared to hope could be his. And if, from time to time, he still yearned for the religious life, it was the only secret he ever kept from the wife with whom, now, his duty lay. As for today, his thanks were due to Thomas Meredith, and he gave them gladly. He trusted him.

  But that August afternoon there was more important news which, after the summer of uncertainty, was today being whispered throughout the palace. As they came out of the courtyard through a heavy archway, Thomas nudged his brother-in-law and remarked, with a grin: “Look up.”

  The arch was certainly fine. If the previous century had been darkened by the Wars of the Roses, its compensating glory had been its architecture – in particular that very English culmination of the Gothic style known as Perpendicular. Here, the tiers of pointed arches gave way to a purer structure of simple, elegant shafts between which hung not walls but great curtains of glass; and above this the ceiling, nearly flat now, spread out in the lovely fan vaulting, a lacework in stone, the finest examples of which were in the chapels at Windsor and at King’s College, Cambridge.

  The ceiling of the archway also had a fan vault; and it was there, amidst the delicate tracery, that Thomas and Rowland could see, lovingly entwined, the two initials which, this summer, were bringing a new hope to England: H, for Henry and A, for Anne.