A Burnable Book

by Bruce Holsinger

  Eleanor tried to shake her head. ‘I know less than nothing about the Duke of Lancaster, nor about some old book.’

  ‘Could be, could be,’ said Bickle. ‘But I suspect your somebody might.’

  ‘I – I couldn’t say naught about that, Master Bickle.’

  ‘You couldn’t say naught.’ He leaned in. ‘A dead lady’s one thing, Edgar.’ He spat her man name in a tone that terrified her, then gripped her forearm. ‘French lady of means dead on the Moorfields, you got the whole city asking questions: constables, subconstables, beadles and aldermen, the coroner and his deputy, all the way up to the king’s household wants to know.’ His grip tightened. ‘But a dead maudlyn? Who’ll give half a mind to that, hmm?’ His gaze swept her face. She saw the flicker of revulsion. ‘Dead swerver like you, floating in the Walbrook with the cats?’

  Swerver. And that’s what I am, like it or not. A man in body, a woman in soul. One day a he, the next a she, a stiff cock for some, a tight arse for others. Provided they could pay, Eleanor would do all and be all for her loyal jakes, and she had plenty who liked taking it and giving it every which way. Sometimes as a man, sometimes as a woman, sometimes as both at once, though that could get complicated. Why, just last week there was this gongfarmer, big-muscled and hairy as you could like, but get him in the stall and he starts to whinny like a gelding. Or a mare, more like, wants to take—

  ‘Speak to the man, El,’ said Joan Rugg. ‘You speak, or I will.’

  As Eleanor sat on the goldsmith’s bench, her own life threatened over the death of a stranger, she felt her fear turn slowly to resentment, then to anger. She knew it wasn’t Agnes who killed that girl on the Moorfields. Yet who’s Agnes Fonteyn to leave such a mess for Joan’s mauds to clean up behind her? A book, the beadle says. A valuable book, stolen from Lancaster. And now Agnes has it. What’s that whore doing with a book? Worse, she’s keeping it to herself, after all I’ve done for her these years, the coin and bed we’ve shared, now here I am on a beadle’s bench, getting this?

  Eleanor’s lips were inches from Bickle’s ear. ‘Agnes,’ she said. ‘Her name is Agnes Fonteyn.’ And Eleanor Rykener, she did not add, will find her first.

  SIX

  Florence, near Orsanmichele

  ‘You leave tomorrow. You will join the delegation at Bologna.’ Adam Scarlett found a more comfortable position on the stool, one of four in the low single room that served as the friar’s occasional dwelling. His left foot rested on the floor, his right on the hearth, scattered with ash and meal. As he spoke to Paolo Taricani he rocked himself slowly back until his head touched the stone wall, the cool on his neck a pleasant contrast to the chamber’s stuffy heat.

  ‘I will not do it.’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Brother Paolo—’

  ‘Send Teti. Or Efisio. Efisio makes sense. He is quick, young. Gets it up and in and twisted before the florin hits the floor.’

  Scarlett ignored the hurried pleading. ‘But you are the best, Paolo. And Ser Giovanni knows it. That is why he has chosen you for this extraordinary task.’

  ‘I am Il Prescelto, then.’ Taricani’s sarcasm was thick, and Scarlett worried this could get difficult.

  He sighed, recalling what Hawkwood had told him. Take him as far as you can, Adam. If he’s still balking bring him to me.

  He tacked right, appealing to Taricani’s ego; left, to his civic pride. Nothing worked. Finally Scarlett stood. ‘Let’s go, Brother Paolo.’

  The man frowned suspiciously. ‘Go where?’

  ‘San Donato a Torre.’ Hawkwood’s villa that season, a short ride to the north.

  Taricani shook his head, still showing no fear. That could change, and quickly, but for the moment Scarlett let him prattle on. ‘I will not go. I will not do this – this “extraordinary task”, and I will not go with you.’ He spat on the floor. His own floor. He looked tense, about to spring. His hand moved to his belt.

  Scarlett spread his arms, slowly, and raised his hands to his sides. He gave the man a conciliatory nod. ‘Bene,’ he said, and left the tenement, hating what he had to do next.

  Taricani’s house sat at the ass end of a narrow alley leading south from Orsanmichele. At the other end waited three of Hawkwood’s roughest men, unmounted at the moment, their horses posted out in the piazza. Scarlett gave them the signal, then went to wait in front of the church, selecting the sharp corner at Via dei Pittori as his spot. The crumbling house of the Bigallo loomed overhead, knots of thirsty pilgrims draped around the plinths, waiting, like Paolo Taricani, for a miracle that would never come. On a high scaffold an old painter and his apprentice were at work retouching a David, hurling his stone at the giant. Scarlett wondered whether the outmatched Paolo, too, would fight, and if so, for how long. The man had too much to lose, though, and it was not long until he stumbled into the piazza, his hands bound at his waist, one eye blackened, the other cut and swollen.

  Hawkwood’s men had fared no better. One of them had earned a long gash across his cheek, which he wiped with a quiet fury as the others threw the friar over a horse and set off across the piazza. Scarlett took his time, arriving back at San Donato a full hour after the others. Hawkwood had waited for him, though, and as Scarlett walked through the yard toward the house the condottiero was just coming out the villa’s entrance. The men had bound Taricani to a chair, an ornate, high-backed seat brought out from the hall, and the man’s thin face now showed a few more bruises, a second black eye.

  Hawkwood stood before the chair, fixing Taricani with a friendly smile. ‘You were Bernabò Visconti’s swiftest knife for years, Brother Paolo. Why he let you retire I’ll never know.’

  Taricani shrugged. ‘The signore has his methods, Ser Giovanni.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Hawkwood. ‘Might be interesting to plumb them with you someday.’

  Taricani bunched his lips, exuding confidence. ‘At your pleasure, Ser Giovanni.’

  Stay humble, Scarlett silently warned the man.

  Hawkwood knelt in the dirt. He placed a palm on each of Taricani’s knees, looked up at his face. ‘You have a beautiful woman, Brother Paolo.’ He let that sit, then, ‘And a daughter who ripens by the day. My men have seen her at the markets, Paolo. She can’t be more than, what, ten, eleven?’

  Taricani nodded, his eyes darkening.

  ‘And her name, Paolo. It is memorable, isn’t it, but I seem to have forgotten it. Help an old man, Paolo. What is your daughter’s name?’

  ‘Pic-Picco-Piccola-Piccolamela, sire.’

  Hawkwood chuckled at Taricani’s difficulty. ‘Piccolamela. Now I remember! “Little apple” in my native tongue. An exquisite name for an exquisite girl, this virgin bastardess of an uncelibate friar. Did you choose this name yourself, Paolo?’

  ‘My – her mother chose it, sire.’

  ‘Well good for her. Piccolamela. How about that?’ Hawkwood clapped his palms on Taricani’s thighs, reading the new terror on his face. ‘Though it’s a strange coincidence. For do you know what my favourite fruit is, Paolo?’

  Taricani shook his head.

  ‘Can you guess?’

  He shook his head again. Less confidence this time.

  ‘Apples, Brother Paolo. I like apples best.’

  Taricani’s tongue flickered across his lips.

  ‘And you know how I like my apples, Paolo?’

  The assassin was still.

  ‘Green, Paolo. I like my apples green.’

  Taricani pressed against the ropes, then the pleas started. No, Ser Giovanni, you wouldn’t, Ser Giovanni, she is only a girl, Ser Giovanni, oh mercy, Ser Giovanni, mercy mercy mercy! Scarlett listened for a while, then looked off into the hills until the begging faded into the familiar moans of a newly broken man.

  Hawkwood stood, all business. ‘The fate of your daughter’s virtue is entirely up to you. If you refuse us we’ll have her in hand this evening, and your whore as well. I’ll make you watch, Paolo Taricani.
I’ll taste your little apple first, then hand her to my man Scarlett here, then we’ll bring the garrison up from the river. I’ll cut off your eyelids if I have to, but you’ll watch every man take her, one by one, and in every way imaginable. You know I’ll do it, too. You’ve seen me do worse. By God, you’ve helped me do worse, Paolo. And if you fail in your mission, if I get word you’ve bungled the thing, or fled, why – why then I will take your Piccolamela to Venice and sell her to the Turks. Little apples fetch a handsome price in the doge’s slave markets.’

  He bent over the puddled friar. ‘On the other hand, Paolo, if you do this, know that I will take care of your daughter, and your woman too. They won’t be short of florins, and no one will lay a hand on them. And if you don’t come back I will still protect them. Your daughter, though the illegitimate spawn of a half-lapsed friar, will marry well.’

  Scarlett could see the resignation on Taricani’s face, the defeated angle to his shoulders. But only for a moment. Taricani was a professional, after all, and this was a job like any other. Just a job. Scarlett watched him take a deep breath, nod at the ground, and look up at Hawkwood, his eyes lit with the cold flame of a born killer. ‘At your service, Ser Giovanni.’

  Hawkwood clapped the man on the shoulder. ‘Very well, then.’ He started to untie the knots, freeing Taricani from his chair. ‘The rendezvous is set for Bologna. You’ll have four spears of ours, in addition to any accompanying the delegation. From Bologna up to the Aosta pass and over to Geneva, then on the Rhine from Basel to Cologne. Next a hard ride to Hamburg, where you’ll sail to Dover. The French are likely massing in Flanders, so there’s no getting through by land to Calais.’ Even as Hawkwood rattled off the sites along the itinerary Scarlett could hear the mix of wistfulness and anticipation in his lord’s voice, thick with longing to make this journey his own.

  ‘You will arrive in London the third week of May or thereabouts, and the thing is set for – well, Scarlett here will fill you in on the details. Should be a beautiful spring day.’

  Hawkwood walked inside. Scarlett spoke to Taricani for a while longer, then hailed several of the men who had brought the man up from Florence. ‘See him back to Orsanmichele. And, Paolo, this is for your woman, and for Piccolamela.’ He tossed a purse on the dirt. Taricani rubbed his wrists, reached for it, and peered inside. He looked up at Scarlett. A grim nod. The job would be done, and done well, despite the cost. With that Paolo Taricani was taken back to Florence, for a final farewell to his family.

  Inside the villa Hawkwood was staring up at the arms of his father, Gilbert Hawkwood, now his brother’s: a lion rampant above a bend, the tendrils curling up the sides and the centre. The Inheritor, Hawkwood liked to call his brother. The condottiero’s own arms, much more prominently displayed on the east wall, consisted of a lone falcon poised above a tangled forest of vines.

  ‘My father was a strange man, Adam,’ Hawkwood said into the gloom. ‘Imagine having three sons, and naming them all John. The eldest son, heir to the name, and all that comes with it. The youngest, also John Hawkwood, has the luck to die young. And the middle son? That’s right: John Hawkwood.’

  He sniffed. ‘Middle John, my mother called me. “Does Middle John want his cider now?” “Time for Master Middle John to get him to his lessons!” And it all stacks on, doesn’t it? Thornbury and the others, fled back to suck on Lancaster’s teat with scarcely a word of thanks. My son-in-law takes my daughter away and now sits in Parliament, one of the highest men in Essex. Then all this business with Chaucer …’

  ‘You’ve bought up half of Essex, John,’ Scarlett said. ‘Sible Hedingham, the lands around Gosfield.’ He put a hand on Hawkwood’s shoulder, a gesture to frame the familiar use of the condottiero’s first name. Hawkwood permitted it when they were alone, though Scarlett rarely took advantage. ‘You own more of England than your brother ever could, let alone Coggeshale.’ The son-in-law. ‘Are you absolutely sure this is the wisest course? This is what you want for yourself, to reclaim your legacy under such circumstances?’ He had been trying for weeks to turn the condottiero from his dark purpose; one last try, however weak, could not hurt.

  Hawkwood reached up and patted Scarlett’s hand, clasping it tightly as he nodded at his family’s arms. ‘It is not about me any more, Adam. It is about my son.’

  ‘Your – your son, sire?’

  ‘He’s in Donnina’s belly. I can smell him in there, baking away.’

  This was news to Scarlett – and, he suspected, a bit of wishful thinking.

  ‘The next Sir John Hawkwood will be a baron, Adam. Perhaps even an earl, belted by the king himself. And I won’t curse the poor fellow with a brother, either. Perhaps I’ll name him George.’ He smiled, looked at his friend. ‘Or Adam.’

  Scarlett felt it, more deeply this time. The warm glow of inevitability and fate. Sir John Hawkwood was a hard man, the hardest he had ever known, but this plan of his, despite its ruthlessness, was melting the great mercenary into a soup of sentiment. ‘His given name hardly matters, John. It’s his surname that will bear his nobility.’

  ‘Well spoken, Scarlett.’ Hawkwood turned back to his family’s arms, his eyes verdant with the ambition of a much younger man. ‘England, Adam,’ the condottiero said. ‘It is time to go home.’

  SEVEN

  Temple Hall

  Dozens of struggling lamps cast a hellish glow on the huddled apprentices, all stomping their feet against the raw air, their eager faces greyed by the smoke lowering down from those few chimneys rebuilt in this precinct since the Rising. I slowed in the middle of the courtyard and just watched them: their pent-up energy, their fear of rejection, their tentative pride at this rite of passage, all readable in the nervous poses struck as they waited. Forty young men, no more than half to be utter barristers by the evening’s end.

  Fifteen years had passed since my own, less formal initiation at the Temple, yet the occasion could still raise the hairs. As I stepped beneath the row of arches along the cloister a familiar voice stopped me. ‘Is that you, John Gower?’ I turned to see Thomas Pinchbeak hobbling along from Temple Church, with Chaucer holding an arm. ‘Wait there.’ He wiped his high forehead, exposed by the tight-fitting coif worn by his order. A capped stick bore part of his fragile weight.

  ‘Good evening, Thomas. Geoffrey.’ I took his stick and his other arm, my hand brushing the silk rope belted around his banded robes. Pinchbeak was a man who had grown into his name, with a long, sharp nose that jutted forward above lips pursed against some unnamed offence. Behind the serjeant-at-law’s back Chaucer gave me a meaningful look, which I returned with a subtle shake of my head. We hadn’t spoken since Monksblood’s, I had no real news yet about the book, and I didn’t want him to think I was avoiding him.

  ‘Lurking at the fringes, I see,’ Pinchbeak said to me, and I smiled at the ribbing. My ambivalent ties to the legal world were a matter of occasional amusement to Pinchbeak, newly a member of the Order of the Coif, one of the most powerful lawmen in the realm and now a royal nod away from appointment to justice of the King’s Bench.

  ‘You are one to talk.’ I gestured across the lane at the last of the crowd straggling into the hall. ‘Late, as always.’

  ‘Ah, but I have the excuse of a wound,’ he said, though something in his eyes belied his easy manner. A compact and wiry man, Pinchbeak had taken an arrow in his left thigh at Poitiers yet stood and fought for hours after, an incident that had rendered him both lame and legendary. When he gave the gold and ascended to serjeant not a soul in the realm begrudged him the honour. Yet his face that evening was troubled, and he seemed about to say something more when a small group of other serjeants-at-law surrounded him, hustling him gaily into the throng.

  Chaucer watched him go in, then turned to me, his face lined with concern. ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What did Swynford say?’

  ‘Very little,’ I said, deciding to mention nothing about the book’s theft, nor about Swyn
ford’s peculiar suggestion regarding its prophetic nature. I needed to learn more first, and I was not in the business of giving away information, even to an intimate friend. ‘She doesn’t have it, if that’s what you want to know. She’ll do some discreet asking around.’

  ‘I see,’ said Chaucer, looking at me dubiously.

  ‘I’ve only started searching, Geoffrey,’ I said, wanting to give him something. ‘London is a big place. A book could be anywhere.’

  He gave me a tense nod.

  ‘Just one question.’ I pulled him out of the human flow. His eyes darted to the hall door, then back to the lane as I leaned into him, my mouth inches from his ear. ‘What do you think this book is, my friend? What do you know about it that you haven’t told me?’

  I felt his breath on my cheek. ‘Less every day, it seems.’

  ‘And you’re aware you’re not the only one looking for it?’

  ‘I suspect not,’ he said. ‘But I need you to find it first, John.’

  I backed away, found his eyes. ‘You know me, know my skills. If it’s there to be found I’ll find it.’

  His shoulders rose slightly, and he grasped my arm before turning for the feast. We parted at the arched doorway into the great hall, where hundreds of lawmen were already at table, ladling soup, picking flesh from lavish trays of sauced cod and porpoise. At the front of the space stood the pageant wagon, covered in a cloth that obscured everything but the wheels. As I found a seat the men around a far table lifted their glasses in song. The crowd joined in, the din rising to the rafters and the darkened spaces high above.

  Twice two full quarts we lawyers need,

  To fill a legal jug.