A Burnable Book

by Bruce Holsinger

  ‘This house is in enough peril already,’ the prioress was saying. ‘Our fortunes the property of the manor, our income shrunk to two hundred marks in the year. We’ve been forced to enclose the park, and lost a thousand acres in Dagenham. And here you are, slinking back like one of King Edward’s dogs, with this news. I’d be within my rights to have you cast in the brew cellar, and the key thrown in the Lea. If our cellaress hadn’t lost the damned key,’ she muttered.

  ‘I would have thought,’ Millicent began, ‘that the Reverend Mother’s close relation to the crown—’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. We’ve had the corpse of Elizabeth of Hainault, old King Edward’s sister-in-law, mouldering in our chapel for ten years. Why, we could sell it for relics! Why hadn’t I thought of that? St Leonard’s piss is liquid gold!’ Her hands dropped to her sides. ‘I’m afraid we’re no more protected from the threat of ruination than the shrinking forest around us.’

  ‘Prioress—’

  ‘Show me the cloth.’

  Millicent reached within her skirts and pulled out the folded embroidery. Isabel spread it in her lap. She ran her fingers along the sides, where the thistleflowers, hawks, plums, and swords were arrayed in numbered sets. She stroked the heraldry arrayed against the king’s arms.

  ‘You say Pinchbeak has the book?’

  ‘I handed it to Robert Dawson, his man. Pinchbeak wasn’t there.’

  The prioress put a slender finger to her lips. ‘So we have this book of prophecies, one of them auguring the death of our king and pointing a finger at his uncle. We have the cloth, identifying the chief conspirator beyond doubt as Lancaster. And we have mere days until the feast of St Dunstan.’

  ‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’ Millicent watched the prioress’s eyes, felt the shrewd calculations taking place behind them.

  ‘I’m told you’ve been living up Cornhull.’

  ‘Yes, Prioress.’

  ‘I assume you’ve kept up your embroidery, then, given the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Well, I can’t say that I—’

  ‘An orphrey of fine needlework is what we need, and the most ingenious we have ever made.’ She stretched the cloth to its full width. ‘It must be identical in every respect to this vivid sample, with one difference – well, two.’ She pointed to the coat of arms emblazoned on the figure attacking the boy king. ‘Do you see these colours, just here?’

  The Duke of Lancaster’s. They were nearly identical to the king’s, the only difference being the ermine label above. ‘Yes, Prioress.’

  Isabel squinted at it. ‘Hand me that glass.’ The prioress pointed to a low table in the corner. Millicent walked over and lifted a triangular magnifying glass, set in a bone frame with a wooden handle below. Isabel took it from her and scrutinized the cloth further.

  ‘The brick stitch around the border is remarkable, as is the infilled foliage. And the waffling is superior, must have taken weeks. Look at that work. The ground is Italian, or I’m a pregnant goat. But in the middle, the figures of the duke and the king are – well, they’re nicely done, but their quality doesn’t come close to what I am seeing in the base. And these smaller emblems – the thistleflowers and hawks and so on – wouldn’t pass a seamstress’s eye in Cornhull, let alone at court.’

  Millicent came to the prioress’s side, catching a faint waft of rosy perfume from the older woman’s neck. Not all luxuries had been abandoned in Bromley, it seemed. She leaned over the prioress’s shoulder and peered through the glass at the cloth. She saw immediately what Isabel’s expert eye had discerned. At the edges of the cloth the stitching was tight and uniform, the product of a practised embroideress working slowly and patiently to embellish the borders with an elaborate pattern of vines and flowers. The figures of Lancaster and King Richard, as well as their arms, had been pointed into the cloth in an entirely different style. Looser stitches, higher loops. Skilful and not incompetent, not by a long stretch, but – youthful was the word that came to her mind. Finally, the figures of thistleflowers, hawks, swords, and plums surrounding the central figures had been done hastily, with inferior threads and with no regard for the surrounding ground. Three hands, then, working at different times, with different materials, and with varying degrees of competence.

  The prioress leaned back. ‘This cloth is clearly a fake,’ she said, ‘cooked up to point a finger at the duke. Besides, Lancaster wouldn’t come near a book of the sort you describe. The man eats self-preservation for supper. So who would create such a thing to wrap around a manuscript of prophecies, implicating him as a conspirator against the king?’

  Isabel stared at the wall for a moment, then shook her head. ‘Well of course. Who else?’ She took up the cloth, picked at some threads. ‘This work is too tight to unravel without damaging the ground. You, Millicent, will create a new shield for this fellow here, with new arms altogether. In the first quarter, we must have a silver mullet borne upon a field gules.’

  Millicent’s eyes widened. ‘Do you mean—’

  ‘I do.’ The prioress’s eyes sparkled, and she allowed Millicent the slightest of smiles before returning her attention to the cloth. ‘The other must be similarly altered, though with different arms. Here, parti per fesse gule, and on the chief of the second there must be – ah, what is it?’

  ‘A demi-lion, rampant of the field,’ Millicent said, remembering the shield. A tournament two years before, she on Sir Humphrey’s arm in the stands, the Earl of Oxford mounted below.

  ‘Exactly. Now.’ Isabel clapped her hands three times, summoning the young nun from the other side of the door. ‘Bring us thread of silver, gold, azure – all of it. We haven’t a moment to spare.’

  Soon Millicent found herself in her old place at Isabel’s feet, frame and needle in her hands. Following the prioress’s instructions, she pinned out a portion of the pattern within the smooth frame: the demi-lion, a complex figure to execute, though Millicent felt confident she could complete it in good time, at least as well as the earlier embroideress had pointed in the arms of Gaunt. The pull of the needle, the occasional click of the thimble against the frame: though her fingers soon ached with the unfamiliar labour, it was a good ache.

  ‘Reverend Mother?’ she said at one point, tentatively.

  ‘You may speak, Millicent.’

  Her given name from the prioress’s lips: a balm over a forgotten wound. ‘How can we know this will work?’

  Isabel gave her a bland stare. ‘There is a great conspiracy in the land to slay our king, my child. We can be sure of nothing. But we must do what we can to foil the plot. To bring this cloth before the king on St Dunstan’s Day, and from a credible source, we must put it in the hands of someone in the inmost circles at court. Someone of unassailable standing.’

  ‘Your relations?’

  The prioress snorted. ‘The concubine of the king’s second substeward has stronger connections in the court than my relations these days. No, I have in mind one of our dear sisters. Just there.’ She nodded toward the door. ‘Margaret is her name. She’s properly a nun of Barking, but we’ve taken her in for a few months given the unpleasantness between the king and his uncle. Abbess Matilde wants her to disappear for a while, at least until after the bishop’s round of visitations.’ Barking, the much greater house several miles to the east, would often impose on St Leonard’s for ‘gifts’ of space and provision, taking undue advantage of Bromley’s diminished numbers and extra dormitory space.

  The girl, no more than fourteen, stood out of earshot in the half-opened doorway, her head pointed demurely to the floor.

  ‘I don’t understand, Reverend Mother,’ said Millicent.

  ‘Her mother has an intimate connection to John of Gaunt,’ said Isabel.

  Her mother. ‘The Infanta?’ It was a guess. Millicent knew the young woman had looked familiar, though the face of Gaunt’s Castilian duchess didn’t seem a match.

  The prioress glanced up. Blinked. ‘Hardly. She’s Margaret Swynford, daughter of the late Hugh Swynfo
rd. And her mother is Katherine, Lancaster’s whore.’

  THIRTY-NINE

  Church of St Lawrence Jewry

  Edgar Rykener joined the small knot of beggars gathered at the foot of the St Lawrence steps. Some gave him unfriendly glances, taking him for an interloper who would diminish their proper share of charity. He ignored them; the wait wouldn’t be long. Master Strode was to appear at the first stroke of the Sext bells, he’d been assured at the Guildhall. The common serjeant likes to take a walk around the ward, one of his clerks had said, before returning for his midday meal with the mayor.

  The St Lawrence bell struck, Mary Magdalene soon followed, then Bassishaw, the three parishes competing for the proper ringing of the hour. Still no Strode. Edgar thought nothing of the delay at first, yet as the minutes wore on his concern mounted, until finally he pushed himself off the wall and stepped up on to the porch.

  The interior was nearly silent, a heavy wheeze the only discernible sound. It came from one of the side chapels, a half-lit space with shuttered windows and several rows of old seats wedged askew against the walls. Ralph Strode sat on one of them, a silent mound of concern. Even in the dim light Edgar could see his face was ashen. His wide chin sat propped on his knuckles, robed elbows on his knees. The man could have been one of the painted statues, but for the whistley breaths from his guts.

  ‘Master Strode,’ said Edgar, his voice a small thunderclap.

  Strode’s opening eyes caught the glare of the lone candle on the chapel altar. No other movement. Finally he half-turned, his brow bent in a distant frown. A slow nod. ‘Edgar, is it?’

  ‘Yes, Master Strode.’

  ‘Came about your brother a few weeks back.’ He seemed mildly pleased that he had remembered.

  ‘Yes, sir. James – Master Tewburn was a great help.’

  ‘Tewburn.’ Strode shook his head. ‘Senseless. A senseless loss of a good young man.’

  ‘Yes, Master Strode. I’m sorry he had to go and die, sir.’

  Strode’s gaze found him in the gloom. ‘You heard, then?’

  Edgar nodded, casting about for what to say.

  ‘For my life I can’t figure out what is happening in London,’ he said. ‘Factions moving in stealth through the streets, with their feints and counter-feints. Young men being plucked off the lanes, tossed off the bridge, throats slit in churchyards, dragged from their homes and thrown in nameless pits, all for baseless suspicions from above. London is being torn apart at the seams, and despite my office I am feeling powerless to stop it.’

  Edgar took a deep breath, then said, ‘It was I found his body.’

  His eyes widened. ‘Tewburn’s?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘It was you who alerted the constables, then?’

  ‘Not – no, sir.’ Strode was staring at him. ‘I found him the day before the coroner’s men took him from St Pancras.’

  He sat forward. ‘Yet you let his body lie there for another day?’

  ‘We had us a time, you see, to meet in the churchyard, and—’

  ‘Tewburn was at St Pancras to meet you?’ Strode clapped his knees, fixing him with the fiercest stare. ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Master Tewburn said he’d have some news for me about getting Gerald a wardship in London. Said he’d tell me that night when we met. But the justices over there, in the manors—’

  ‘Guildable Manor.’

  ‘Master Tewburn says they were giving him all kinds of grief just to find out how to transfer Gerald’s wardship from Grimes’s shop. And Gerald says the butchers are stirring up bigger trouble in Southwark. Got a priest riling them up, with Grimes taking the part of Wat Tyler, and the other butchers—’

  ‘The butchers. My God.’ It was as if the common serjeant had been struck with a seizure of the heart. The large man came to his feet with a surprising agility. He turned to the side, and with his body facing the chapel altar whispered a portion of verse.

  ‘By bank of a bishop shall butchers abide,

  To nest, by God’s name, with knives in hand,

  Then springen in service at spiritus sung.’

  Edgar gasped. The last time he’d heard these lines they’d come from the mouth of Millicent Fonteyn, who’d read them from the very book Agnes took from the doomed girl in the Moorfields. Now here was Ralph Strode, common serjeant of London, speaking the same verse.

  He had to press him. Strode was staring off toward the upper nave, a haunted slackness to his face. ‘That verse, sir. You think it’s Grimes and his men set to kill King Richard?’

  He barked a laugh. ‘It’s not what we think that matters. It’s what others can be made to think. The perfection of art is to conceal art, so Quintilian tells us.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘We have two sets of butchers before our eyes.’ He stooped, hands on his broad thighs. ‘Butchers in this prophetic verse, and the butchers of Southwark – and one dead clerk. I am not a believer in coincidence, Edgar, not by a far sight. You say you talked with Tewburn about your brother, yes?’

  ‘A few times, sir, he was very helpful, always—’

  ‘Wait.’ Strode grasped Edgar’s shoulders, his eyes wide. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That Master Tewburn was ever so helpf—’

  ‘Before that. About the snatch of verse I recited.’

  ‘Oh … yes. If you thought Grimes and his men were to be the butchers to kill the king.’

  Strode’s stare was deep and cruel, as if a hand were reaching out from his eyes, down into Edgar’s bowels. ‘And how did you know?’

  ‘Sir?’

  Strode’s grip tightened on his shoulders. ‘How could you possibly have known those three lines referred to the slaying of King Richard?’

  His jaw loosened. ‘Well, I – I suppose with the bishop, and the knives, and all that, it just seemed—’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, boy.’ Strode shook him. ‘You’ve heard someone else speak those lines, haven’t you?’

  ‘Please, Mast—’

  ‘What do you know about these prophecies, about the book?’

  His hands squeezed harder. Edgar flinched with the pain. Could he trust him, after all, this great man of London, so many spheres above his own?

  Edgar left nothing out. The Moorfields, the murder, Millicent, the man with the hooked scar on Gropecunt Lane, the death of Agnes. He even told him about the couplings with Tewburn, and his life of swerving – all of it. Strode breathed deeply when he was done, his lips sucking and blowing the stale air of St Lawrence. The common serjeant’s face was calm now, his eyes agleam with a certainty Edgar wished he could share.

  ‘Will the king die, Master Strode?’ he asked, and looked into that confident gaze.

  ‘It’s not the king we need to worry about,’ said Strode. ‘No, Edgar – or is it Eleanor?’

  He shrugged. ‘As you wish, sir.’

  A smile, tentative but serene, played on Ralph Strode’s generous lips. ‘No, Eleanor, I’m afraid we have a smaller life to save.’

  FORTY

  San Donato a Torre, near Florence

  Jacopo da Pietrasanta stood at the door, clutching the letter. Scarlett watched with some amusement as Hawkwood’s chancellor worked up the nerve to speak. ‘Sire,’ he finally said.

  ‘What is it?’ said Hawkwood, focused on the game.

  ‘An urgent message, Ser Giovanni. From your brother-in-law.’

  ‘Lodo?’

  ‘Carlo, sire,’ said Pietrasanta.

  Hawkwood took Scarlett’s four. ‘Read it.’

  Scarlett looked at his lord. With the coming departure for England Hawkwood had grown increasingly impatient with his Italian functionaries, even Pietrasanta, and it was all he could do at times to control his sharpness when addressing them.

  The chancellor cleared his throat. ‘We send this to inform you that in Milan the hateful count Giangaleazzo Visconti has unrightfully seized our beloved and magnificent lord Bernabò Visconti, as well as our beloved brother Lodovico. We a
re holding here at the fortress in Crema, and we have the castle at Porta Romana under our protection. We urge you to gather your garrisons and march to our comfort and defence in Milan. You will be amply rewarded for your effort. The time has come, Giovanni Acuto, to prove your mettle.’

  Hawkwood made him read it again, and when he had finished his lips curled up into a sneer. ‘He’s taunting me, the hammy little shit.’

  Pietrasanta flinched at the epithet. Scarlett knew what the man was thinking. The Visconti are the most powerful and ruthless clan in Italy, more than a match for this northern roughneck. Who is he to hurl such insults at la famiglia lombarda principali? ‘How would you like to respond, Ser Giovanni?’

  Hawkwood shrugged. ‘We’re in no position to respond, Jacopo.’

  ‘Ser Giovanni?’

  ‘I am in Florence. Our brigades are massed in Bologna. Bologna still owes us, what, twenty thousand, thirty? What does Carlo expect, that I’ll pull up stakes and hoof it up to Milan at his bidding? It could take weeks, months, even, to prepare for such a relief effort.’

  ‘What should we tell Ser Carlo in the meantime, Ser Giovanni?’ Pietrasanta was working hard to keep his voice measured, Scarlett could tell.

  ‘Write nothing for now.’

  ‘Ser—’ Pietrasanta began.

  ‘There is no hurry, Jacopo.’ Hawkwood turned on his chancellor, his eyes grown cold. ‘This is a family squabble, nothing more. We’ll bide our time.’

  There was a heavy pause as Pietrasanta absorbed the condottiero’s decision. Hawkwood’s chancellor had no idea what his master was planning, nor the bearing of these plans on his own future. Within a few weeks the dirty wars of the Visconti would be only a memory to the man they had both served for so many years. And Pietrasanta would be out of a job.