A Burnable Book

by Bruce Holsinger

  The parchmentress grinned. ‘A primer is it, a painted book of hours that’s been in your family? A Bible perhaps, or the blessed Psalter?’

  Edgar held it out. The parchmentress looked down at the book and took it briskly. Untying the thong with an adept tug, she gave the embroidery an admiring glance, handed the cloth back to Edgar, then smoothed her hands over the volume’s covers.

  ‘Thin little thing.’ She flipped through the pages without, it seemed, reading a word, inspecting the thickness of the parchment, fingering several of the leaves with an expert feel for quality. ‘Heavy, the skins are. Could be scraped, I suppose, yield a clean book to write anew.’ She closed the manuscript and slapped it against an open palm. ‘Six pence.’

  Edgar felt his jaw slacken. Six pennies, for a book sought by half of London? He shook his head. ‘Not for this book, madam. Five – nay, six nobles, and I’ll have not a penny less.’

  The parchmentress just stared, listening to her own words used against her, then burst into great peals of laughter, slapping her leg. ‘Six nobles, he says! Not a penny less! Why, aren’t you a gamey little fella! Tom! Get out here, friend!’

  The neighbouring shopkeeper appeared in his doorway. Edgar reached for the book. The parchmentress released it with a little shove, accompanied by a delighted recounting of Edgar’s demand for six nobles and he’ll have not a penny less, Tom, not a penny less. Edgar turned away and made for the corner.

  So parchmenters, he’d learned, would find no interest in the book. Their interest in books was like men’s in maudlyns: of value for the outer aspect, the fineness of the skin. Not so much the words – and it was the words, Edgar suspected, that gave this book whatever value it had.

  He was now on a smaller byway cutting down from Paternoster Row. Three-storey houses with shops at the street level, a glaze of sulphur on the air. The tradesmen here seemed to specialize in painting pages with all the florid colours in God’s creation. Illuminators’ shops displayed fine samples of their work pegged on to smoothed boards hooked beside their doors. Several painters had pulled their stools and desks out on the lane that dry day, and the sun had reached a point in its arc that allowed their work to show to its best advantage. He paused behind a painter crafting an enormous page filled with black marks in square and oblong shapes. At the top left side of the page a cluster of singing monks stood inside a letter P – yes, a P, Edgar knew that much, and the P was coloured in a shade of blue-green he imagined as the hue of the southern seas.

  His shoulders sagged as he walked to the end of the lane. For these painters, books were things of beauty. This one had no beauty to it, that was for certain: no pictures aside from the hurried sketches at the edges of the pages, no great letters filled with holy men or dragons, no blue-green hues to ravish you with longing for the oceans of the earth.

  He stepped on to a slightly wider lane. Here at least a dozen men sat at desks, in shops and out on the street, pointing ink on to surfaces of varying size. Like Master Strode’s clerks at the Guildhall, Edgar thought, putting letters to skin. A street of words.

  Halfway up it he stopped to look over the shoulder of a younger man practising his script on a large, rough sheet: a smooth line, a delicate curve, then he scratched it all out and started again, then again, until he noticed Edgar’s presence. He half-turned with a friendly smile. ‘Help you?’

  ‘You’re – you’re a scriv—a scrivener, yes?’ he stammered.

  ‘This be the shop of Roger Ybott, master stationer of Creed Lane,’ he said. ‘Tom Fish is my own name, sole apprentice to Master Ybott. Pleased to help you, whatever your wish.’

  He considered his reply. ‘Is your craft in the words of books then?’

  He frowned. ‘The words of books?’

  Edgar squinted at the writing desk. ‘These parts of London by St Paul’s be filled with the bookish crafts, all different bits of it. Those that scrape the skin, ready it for writing—’

  ‘Parchmenters on Paternoster Row, sure, sure,’ said Tom Fish, head bobbing. ‘Though they don’t do their scraping in the city, just come here to sell out of their shops.’

  ‘Then there be the painters, colouring the pages with every shade you ever—’

  ‘The limners along Creed Lane.’

  ‘And in this street there’s writing,’ said Edgar. ‘Those who lime and scrape, those who paint, and here be those who write.’

  ‘We do our share of the writing, sure,’ said Fish, finally getting his meaning. ‘A commission from an abbot or an earl, we’ll put pen to vellum quicker than you can say your Ave Marie here on Ave Maria Lane.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘Stationer’s work’s important work, important as you’ll find in all London.’

  Edgar pulled out the book. ‘Would you be so kind as to value this, Master Fish?’

  Fish looked surprised, though also pleased to lend his expertise. ‘Let us see here,’ he said, taking the book and handling it with a careful adeptness. ‘Mm … hmm … ahh, yes …’ he murmured, showing off. Like the parchmentress, Tom Fish seemed to be examining the book at first only for its physical make-up, tugging at the pages, holding the spine against the sky. Then he started reading from the beginning, at first with a neutral curiosity, then with a slight frown, then, as he read on, with a widening of the eyes that made Edgar want to turn and flee. At one point he gasped softly. He flipped ahead to the final pages and scanned. He took a large step backwards, holding the book out in front of him as if it were a serpent about to bite.

  He looked at Edgar, eyes wide with fright. An older man walked out of the shop. ‘What’s this then?’ he demanded. The shop’s master stood only slightly taller than his apprentice, though his hewn face matched his craft, his eyes narrowed in a permanent squint, deep lines reaching for his ears. On his thinning hair he wore a round hat of blue silk, embroidered letters in black and white filling every inch.

  Tom Fish turned to his master. ‘This young fellow here, Master Ybott, he – he wished to have this book examined, and so I’ve been about it for the last little while.’

  ‘To sell, Master Ybott,’ Edgar clarified. ‘I have no reading, so books be of no use to me excepting what price they might fetch.’

  Ybott took the book from Tom, taking no notice of his apprentice’s state. He read selectively through the thin volume until he, too, went pale. He looked at Edgar, then at Fish. ‘Well now,’ he said, his voice husky. ‘Not a book to bandy about, is it? And you’ve been carrying this on your person? Just walking along with it, not a care for your head?’

  ‘Yes, sir – I mean no, sir,’ said Edgar. ‘I know not the words nor the meaning of it. But it it must be worth more than sixpence, yeah?’

  ‘More than sixpence,’ said Ybott, staring at him. Recovering himself, he cleared his throat, leaned toward Edgar, and rested a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘How came you by this book, young – what is your name, young man?’

  ‘I am called Edgar, sir.’

  ‘How came you by this book, Edgar?’

  Edgar crossed his arms. ‘That be no man’s affair but my own, sir. The book be rightfully mine now, and I mean to sell it for what I’m able.’

  Ybott gave him one of his deep squints. ‘You don’t know what pile you’ve stepped into, Edgar. You best come inside.’ He held out his other hand, gesturing toward his shop.

  Edgar stood his ground, recalling the encounter with Bickle, the beadle of Cheap Ward. He had no desire to enter yet another man’s shop, nor to be assayed further about this damned book. ‘I’d rather not, sir, if it be all the same to you.’ He stuck out his jaw. ‘Now give me back my book.’

  Ybott tilted his head, holding a tense smile. ‘As you wish. Be warned, though, this book is a dangerous thing to its owner, whether an illiterate vagrant, a Cambridge master’ – he paused – ‘or a young woman taking on a man’s role.’

  Edgar shrank away from him. Ybott had got it wrong, but not by much.

  ‘We’re in the business of books,’ the stationer said, pr
essing him. ‘We know what’s best when it comes to the worst, yes?’ Sensing his hesitation, Ybott went on: ‘You appear hungry, or lost. There’s a desperate look about you. Come inside, please, and let me lend you whatever bookish wisdom I possess.’

  Could Edgar trust him? Even as he supposed the man’s warmth to be motivated by something other than Edgar’s well-being, he felt his suspicions dissolving – foolishly, perhaps. Yet Ybott was not a constable, nor a beadle, nor, he trusted, a murderer. So he allowed himself to be guided into the stationer’s shop, the apprentice close behind. Once the three of them were inside, Tom Fish shut the door. At the sound of the latch Edgar shuddered, wondering what lay before him.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Ave Maria Lane

  From the top of Paternoster Row, Millicent Fonteyn watched the stationer guide Edgar Rykener into his shop. The apprentice followed them inside, his worried glance in both directions telling Millicent all she needed to know.

  She surveyed the narrow lane. The trio had attracted little attention from the neighbouring craftsmen, all busy at their work. Yet there was one of them, a man standing in front of a shop just across the lane, who had witnessed the interaction. He was staring at the door with a hard intensity that gave Millicent a prickle of concern. She and Agnes weren’t the only ones searching London for a book. There were others on the watch, others working on behalf of whatever forces or factions sought to use its perilous contents to their advantage. Others looking to take, and to kill.

  She stepped out and signalled for Agnes to join her. Two other girls waved in relief as Millicent dismissed them with a grim nod. For days now, and at Bess Waller’s orders, a clutch of Southwark mauds had taken turns lying in wait for Eleanor Rykener in these precincts, some watching Paternoster Row itself, others surveying Ave Maria Lane, still others keeping an eye on Amen Lane above Pembroke’s Inn. All setting a net for the wretched little fish, the swerver who’d stolen the book out from under Bess Waller’s nose and now sought to sell it for whatever it would bring.

  Now they’d found her. Him.

  Yet it appeared they were too late. How could Edgar be so foolish? Did he have no idea what it was he possessed, how much of his own future might turn on the fate of the book he’d stolen, and now sought to sell to half the bookmakers of London? For soon the master stationer would realize he had little choice but to inform the authorities that a book prophesying the death of King Richard had come into his possession. Nor could Millicent steal it from the stationer as Eleanor had stolen it from the Pricking Bishop, for all the master’s attention would be on the volume for the duration of its stay in his shop.

  Could she and Agnes take the thing by force, grab a few logs on the way in and have at it? Hardly. A master and his young apprentice, hale men both, would be more than a match for them, even if the sisters took them by surprise. Besides, she reasoned, the streets in this neighbourhood were so narrow escape would be impossible. The guildsman would raise the hue and cry, summon a constable. It would all be over within minutes, the sisters taken before they got as far as the Boar’s Head.

  ‘So,’ said Agnes. ‘Let’s walk in.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Agnes looked at her. ‘Let’s walk right in there, talk to Eleanor. She’ll give it back, come with us.’

  ‘Have you gone wood, Ag? She’s the one stole the book from us!’

  ‘She’ll listen to reason, if I know Eleanor Rykener. She’ll listen to me.’

  Millicent scoffed. ‘Listen to that man’s coin, I’ll be bound. That’s what he – what she’s here for.’

  ‘Eleanor’s not like you, Mil.’ Agnes’s tone was suddenly hard. ‘Sure, she wants good shills like any maud of London. But that’s not what’s most important to her.’ She looked away. ‘Not like you.’

  Millicent, stung, stared at her sister’s profile. ‘Well,’ she said, then looked back up Ave Maria Lane. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  ‘No maybe about it, Mil. We go in there, get her, get the book, she’ll come right along.’

  Millicent smoothed her dress, held out a hand. ‘Come, then.’

  They walked up Ave Maria Lane with locked arms and furtive looks at the work of the scriveners on either side. When they reached the shop door, Millicent turned to face the oaken surface, which was free of tracery and grillwork; nor was there a lock. Blowing out a breath, she pushed it open.

  A one-room shop. Clean, well lit, books displayed on single shelves. Two writing desks faced one another in the middle of the shop. The scrivener, seated at one of them with his apprentice and Edgar standing before him, looked up in surprise. On the desk the book lay open.

  ‘What’s this?’ he demanded.

  ‘We came for that,’ said Millicent, pointing. ‘Our book, just there.’

  ‘Your book?’ Ybott looked from the sisters to Edgar. ‘The young man here tells me it’s his.’

  Edgar raised his chin. ‘That it is, sir.’

  ‘Then you two best be on your way,’ said Ybott.

  ‘The book is ours,’ Millicent insisted. ‘It was given to my sister by – it was given to her, weeks ago. You hand it over or I’ll summon a ward constable.’

  ‘Will you now?’

  ‘Get out, Ag,’ Edgar snarled. ‘Both of you, now, get out!’

  ‘You know better than that, Eleanor,’ said Agnes, conciliation in her voice. ‘You know I be your good gossip.’

  ‘That right, Agnes Fonteyn?’ said Edgar. ‘Leaving me high and dry on Gropecunt Lane, finding that killed girl, that bloody hammer with her brains still on it? That how you treat your “good gossip”?’

  Millicent winced at Edgar’s use of her sister’s full name, and the incautious crowing of their profession. The scriveners, she saw, were taking it all in. Gropecunt Lane, a bloody hammer, a dead girl.

  ‘We are taking the book,’ she said quickly. ‘This one stole it, and now we’re taking it back.’ Ybott started to protest. Millicent raised her hand and stepped right up to him, threatening. ‘Think about it. Think about a constable, or the ward beadle stepping in here once you summon him. What do you suppose he’ll do? Comes in a stationer’s shop to find this book of prophecies in your possession, what do you suppose he’ll think?’

  ‘Now, look here, by what right—’

  ‘That it belongs to a few maudlyns wandering by, trying to scare up cock on Ave Maria Lane?’

  Ybott was speechless. Tom Fish shot a fearful glance at Edgar, then at Agnes.

  ‘Would you believe such a thing, sir, if this one here’ – Millicent pointed at Edgar – ‘hadn’t slunk up from St Paul’s to sell it to you himself?’

  A feeble shrug.

  ‘What you would believe is what’s before you: a London stationer closeted in his shop with a treasonous book, trying to pin the blame on some poor maud he brought within to swyve of a spring afternoon.’

  Ybott turned away. Millicent approached the writing desk, lifted the book, and dropped it in her coat’s broad inner pocket. She turned on her heel and walked to the door.

  ‘Wait, Mil.’

  Millicent turned back to her sister. Agnes approached Edgar, whose face registered a mix of confusion and fear. Agnes reached forward and put a hand on his cheek. Edgar’s response was considerably less gentle: a hard slap to Agnes’s face that rang through the small shop.

  ‘Where you been, Agnes?’ he demanded, his voice hoarse with rage. ‘Not on Gropecunt Lane, nor on Cornhull, nor in Southwark, nor lying dead on the Moorfields.’ He stomped a foot on the rushes. ‘Like that girl I thought was you.’

  Agnes shook her head against the tears. ‘Oh, Ellie, I don’t know what to say to you, dearheart.’

  Millicent opened the door a crack. The tradesman who had been watching from across the street was gone. She stepped forward and grasped Edgar’s wrist. ‘Come along. You be a part of this now as much as I am myself, and Agnes here.’

  He tried to pull away. Millicent tightened her grip. ‘Don’t be a child.’

&nbs
p; Millicent felt Edgar’s acquiescence in the loosening of his muscles. She tugged, and he finally allowed himself to be led from the shop. By the next bell they were halfway across the bridge.

  They passed the following days at the Pricking Bishop, stowed in a third-storey room overlooking Rose Alley. It was sour in there, the linens strewn across the pallet crusted with the spent passions of the men who dried their parts on them every day. The book rested in an alcove beneath a low shelf, just within the door. Thomas Pinchbeak, Millicent felt certain, was determined to purchase it, despite the delay caused by Eleanor Rykener’s theft, and she was equally determined to sell it for the greatest sum she could extract.

  On the fourth night, in the stillest hours, they awoke to hoarse shouts on the street below. Cracking a shutter, Millicent looked out to see five men on horseback, dark hoods and cloaks obscuring any features. They were clustered up by Smith’s Rents, their animals circling in the darkness. One of them dismounted and approached the Pricking Bishop, his short sword glistening at his side.

  The shouts had come not from him, though, but from his unexpected antagonist.

  ‘Y’aren’t Southwark men, that be sure.’

  Millicent leaned out. Down below stood St Cath, yawping in the lantern-light, a withered arm in the air, her shift billowing obscenely in the night breezes. The old woman pointed up the alley in the direction of the palace. ‘By what right do you trounce in the bishop’s liberties? By whose warrant?’

  St Cath’s crazed bravery soon brought company. Three maudlyns joined her on the street to confront the armed man. They were joined in turn by a dozen girls from the other houses, all shouting at the company to leave the stews the way they had come. Soon nearly twenty maudlyns of Southwark had encircled the men, cackling a righteous din to fill the stews. More lanterns were brought out, the lane filling with a shimmering glow.

  Millicent moved for a better view, and her elbow pushed the shutter slightly to her right. The movement drew the man’s attention. He looked up. His face was covered, all but his eyes and forehead wrapped in a black scarf tucked between his doublet and cape. For a long moment, in the glare of the lamps, she stood frozen by his stare. His eyes, deep and cruel, smouldered as he memorized her face. Then he looked away.