A Burnable Book

by Bruce Holsinger

  What I learned that day was that episcopal visitations with whores were not only not off-limits but commonplace. Unusable. I never again bothered with maudlyns.

  So despite my easy familiarity with the underside of London, I felt a bit awkward as I stood at the foot of Gropecunt Lane that afternoon, wondering how it all worked. I did not have to speculate for long. Fewer than five steps into the lane I was confronted by an aggressive young woman who stepped from the shadows of a horsestall. ‘Fancy a bit, good sir?’ Her hair, unhooded and wild, swept from her brow in a tempestuous wave. Her eye sockets had been blackened with coal or pitch: a Gorgon, her cheeks painted in a red shade rubbed into pink circles. I shook my head tightly and walked on.

  Several more maudlyns accosted me on my way up the lane, chirping of their smooth skin, their fair breasts, their shapely buttocks, ripe for you, sir, ripe for you. Near the end of the lane one final woman stepped forward. Her hair had a reddish sheen and she was small, delicate. She put her arms around me, pushing her lithe form against mine. ‘I’ve a young body for your use, good sir,’ she said. ‘Youngest you’ll find on this stretch, sure.’

  I gently removed myself. ‘Fourpence to talk.’

  ‘Talk?’ She pulled away. ‘Want to talk to me that way, do you? Price be the same, though.’

  ‘Not that kind of talk. I need to ask some questions.’

  ‘Like them constables?’

  ‘I’m not an arm of the law. Not even a finger.’

  She squinted up at me, scrutinizing my intentions. ‘You’ll want me bawd,’ she said softly, putting a hand on my chest, and I felt in the lingering pressure a gentle warning as she hurried down toward St Pancras. She returned with a large, triple-chinned woman wearing a dun dress of shapeless wool and a hat covered in embroidered flowers, all faded with the years.

  ‘This be Joan Rugg, sir.’

  I nodded my thanks, then half-bowed to the bawd. ‘Mistress Rugg.’

  She beamed. ‘Your first time on Gropecunt Lane?’

  ‘It is,’ I admitted, strangely abashed, as if I should have been expected to possess more experience of whoring.

  ‘Well,’ she huffed. ‘We’re a mite careful up this way with strangers.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Your purpose?’

  ‘I seek a young woman.’

  ‘Queynt?’

  ‘Questions. It will be worth her while to meet with me.’ I jangled my purse.

  Joan Rugg eyed it. ‘What sort of questions?’

  I took a risk; time was short. ‘Questions about a book. And a cloth.’

  Her eyes narrowed into doughy crescents. ‘We’re not much for books up this way.’

  ‘I don’t imagine you are,’ I said, watching her. ‘Though this book is a special case.’

  She considered this. ‘You’re not the only one asking questions about such matters.’

  ‘Oh?’ I said, acting surprised.

  ‘We’ve had constables, beadles, brigands of a sort.’ She was boasting about it. ‘Busted us up something good, shut us down for a bit – though the well be full again already, appetites of cock being what they are.’

  ‘Your maudlyns are in danger, Mistress Rugg.’

  She put a hand to her chins. ‘You puts me in mind of Master Gartner, good sir, the great lover of me youth. Been departed this earth these many year, though not a bell tolls without his face comes to my imagining. Knew the ways of queynt, Master Gartner did. Played me jolly body like a sautrie, and the pole on him would do Gawain’s charger proud.’

  She took my stunned silence as an invitation to continue.

  ‘It was Master Gartner purchased me this hat by Haberdasher’s Hall.’ Fingering it. ‘Bands of silk, leather for the brim, the most curious flowers here, and here’ – her wide arms rose together as she pointed at the faded buds – ‘and all for his ladylove. This hat, for all its beauty, Master Gartner says, be the unworthy gloss of your own beauty, Joan Rugg. Let it ever rest upon your fair head as testament of our cherishing. Let it have humble place there, Joan Rugg, its role ever to shade thy fair skin from the ravages of sun and rain. And ever there it has sat, good sir, nigh on twenty year, and there it will sit even to me grave.’

  She stared off in a silent reverie that I ended with a gentle cough. The bawd snapped her head around and saw the quarter noble between my fingers. She snatched it. ‘Didn’t tell them any of it, nor did my girls breathe a word.’

  ‘Tell them what?’

  ‘But I suppose I’ll tell you who might tell you who has it. Or tell you who might tell you who might tell you who has it, as the case might be.’

  Patiently I said, ‘And who would that be?’

  ‘Bess Waller,’ she whispered. ‘Queen whore of Southwark. Sign of the Pricking Bishop, Rose Alley.’

  Rose Alley. The Bishop of Winchester’s liberties, up the bankside from St Mary Overey. Joan Rugg had named a bawdy house not a hundred steps from my own front door.

  I arrived within the hour to find the narrow lane nearly deserted. Grateful for the lack of idle eyes, I approached the Pricking Bishop and gave a nod to the old woman seated in the low stone entryway. Her skin, pitted with pox and age, twisted into a quizzical frown when I announced myself.

  ‘Gower, flower, hour, power – your name makes no difference to me,’ she wheezed. ‘Now, coin? That’ll open St Cath’s ear, sure as a morning stiffie opens her legs.’

  I tossed her a groat then stepped into an empty front room, the only furnishings a low table swirled with old candle wax, a rough bench against the far wall. A narrow door gave on to the next room, where a young woman wearing only a shift lay on a pallet, snoring loudly. Despite the open window the space reeked of couplings. The maudlyn’s eyes fluttered open, then narrowed as she put on an alluring smile and, keeping her gaze locked on to mine, rolled on to her back and raised her shift.

  I looked away. ‘Cover yourself.’

  ‘As you please,’ she said, coming to her knees. ‘Most like to start right off, but I don’t mind the wait.’

  ‘Is your proprietress about?’ I asked.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Bess Waller?’

  She fixed me with a cold stare, then got to her feet and put her head out the window. ‘Besswaller!’ One animal-like burst of sound, then another: ‘Gen’manforyou!’ With that she stalked out of the room, leaving me alone. I paced the width of the chamber, trying to ignore my surroundings.

  ‘Sir.’

  I turned. In the doorway stood a woman of uncommon beauty despite her age. Her hair fell loosely about her shoulders in ringlets that clung to a long neck rising from a yellow dress. This was faded, austere, but shaped closely to her slim form.

  ‘Mistress Waller?’

  ‘The same.’ A sharp, inquisitive voice; no need for niceties here.

  ‘I’ve come to make a purchase from you.’ I held out a purse.

  She looked at it with some irritation, then back at me. ‘Want a girl to carry along, take home to bed? That’s not my trade, sir, not been these five year. The law of the bishop’s stews makes plain: swyving permitted in his houses only, not yours.’

  ‘It’s not flesh I’m after. It’s a cloth.’

  She started, tried to hide it. Turning away, she went to the window and laid her hand on the sill. ‘Yet you come here unarmed.’ She gave me a wistful smile. ‘Joan Rugg sent you, I’ll be bound.’ Her voice had dulled, tinged with sorrow.

  ‘She did.’

  ‘All my slits been chased from this house on account of that damned book. Constables, king’s men – St Loy knows what they were.’

  ‘A cloth?’ I prompted. She said nothing, and still looked suspicious. ‘We’re fellow parishioners, Mistress Waller. I let a house from St Mary Overey, and have for some ten years.’ Though I had never seen the bawd at the priory, parish identity is nearly as strong as blood. We are neighbours, I was telling her; you can trust me.

  She sighed. ‘You’ll be wanting my daughter.’

/>   ‘Your daughter.’

  ‘Millicent,’ she said. ‘Millicent Fonteyn. Got herself in a muck of trouble, she did, and my Ag as well. My younger. Buried her in Spitalfields, poor little maudlyn as she was.’ Her eyes teared.

  I waited a suitable interval. ‘Was your daughter the woman slain in the Moorfields this March?’

  She shook her head. ‘But Ag’s the one saw that girl die, sure as light from lamps.’

  I recalled the barristers’ play at Temple Hall: the wig, the paint, the furore of the serjeants. ‘Where is Millicent now?’

  ‘Not up Cornhull, that’s sure.’

  I shook the purse. ‘Where is she?’

  She looked down at the purse, then into my eyes. She exhaled. ‘St Leonard’s Bromley.’ Bess Waller turned and departed the chamber, leaving the purse in my hand.

  FORTY-THREE

  St Leonard’s Bromley

  In the parlour Millicent sat at the prioress’s feet, watching John Gower. A tall man, quiet but confident, handsome if somewhat gaunt, with a neatly trimmed beard and a peculiar cast to his aquamarine eyes. These were piercing yet somehow clouded and he blinked frequently at times, as if warding off a troublesome gnat. Millicent had heard the name before, a whisper of disapproval from Sir Humphrey ap-Roger in one of his frequent fits of pique at the vagaries of courtly politics. She could tell Gower was troubled, or else hadn’t slept in weeks. Dark crescents smeared beneath those curious eyes, his spine a tired arc. Yet he seemed to have the trust of the prioress.

  With her work obscured by Isabel’s robes, Millicent listened as the two of them discussed it all. The book, the prophecies, a futile search at Oxford, the fate of his missing son. It was amazing, what he said. For during the same span of weeks in which she had sought to sell the book, this man had been searching urgently for it, and would have been happy to part with a great sum to procure it – yet Millicent had never crossed paths with him, nor even heard of his existence. Now here they were at St Leonard’s Bromley, neither in possession of the manuscript, yet both intent on forestalling the threat to King Richard this evil work embodied.

  ‘You haven’t seen the book yourself?’ Isabel asked him.

  ‘Not the original,’ he replied. ‘Though I have read the De Mortibus in a copy.’

  ‘And you believe we have this book here at Bromley?’

  ‘No, Reverend Mother. Not the book.’

  ‘You’ve come about the cloth, then.’

  ‘I was told by a certain – well, a certain procuress of my acquaintance—’

  ‘A procuress, Gower?’

  ‘—a bawd of Rose Alley—’

  ‘A bawd?’

  ‘—by a bawd of Rose Alley—’

  ‘Not of your warm acquaintance, I should hope.’

  ‘I only met her yesterday.’

  ‘And she told you what?’

  ‘That I should ask after her daughter, Millicent. That I would find her here, at St Leonard’s.’

  ‘And what is the significance of this cloth, Master Gower?’

  ‘I have been told that it is embroidered with the livery of the supposed conspirators against King Richard. That it reveals their identity without question.’

  ‘So this cloth must be revealed, to preserve the life of the king against his would-be assassins?’

  Gower hesitated. ‘Or be destroyed. This entire affair, I believe, is a fabrication, an attempt to make an innocent lord appear guilty of the worst crime imaginable.’

  ‘Oxford’s doing, of course.’

  Gower stared at her. ‘How—’

  ‘Oh, you’re not the only one with good sources, Gower.’ She cast a sidelong look at Millicent.

  ‘Yes, Reverend Mother.’ He cleared his throat, blinked those eyes. ‘In any case, the feast of St Dunstan is in a week. The king will appear at a great feast at the Bishop of Winchester’s palace. The details of the prophecy suggest the attempt on Richard will happen there.’

  ‘When, precisely?’

  ‘The prophecy maintains that the assassin will spring forth “at spiritus sung”. I believe this refers to a processional proper to that day. Evidently the attempt on Richard’s life will take place during its performance. At “Prince of Plums”, so the prophecy reads.’

  ‘A curious phrase, Prince of Plums.’

  ‘I believe it refers to a game of cards.’

  ‘Cards.’

  ‘Playing cards, Prioress. They’re all the rage at court. Swynford herself owns a deck, and is known for inventing new games. The plums, thistleflowers, hawks, and swords are suits – with cards ranging from one to nine in each suit, and face cards ordered as princes, dukes, queens, and kings.’

  Seven of Swords, Millicent thought with a thrill, finally understanding the strange symbols positioned around the centre of the cloth.

  ‘So then.’ She tightened her habit, spreading the material tautly across her knees. ‘It all comes down to the cloth.’

  ‘The cloth is the key to the book. If we can—’

  ‘We have it.’

  A pause. ‘I suspected as much, Prioress.’

  ‘Allow me to present Millicent Fonteyn, one of our laysisters. She brought the cloth here several days ago. Millicent, explain how it came to you.’

  Millicent stood and Gower raised his chin, watching as she haltingly began her account. She watched his face in turn, noting the flickers in his eyes, the changes in his colour as he heard her story. He interrupted her to ask questions, probe the details, and it was in those moments of heightened attention that his eyes remained open and unblinking. He was taken with her intricate memory of the prophecies, which seemed to match his own knowledge. When she had finished she bowed her head and waited.

  Isabel said, ‘Show him the cloth.’

  Millicent reached for her work.

  ‘The other one.’

  She turned to Isabel’s great chair and lifted the original cloth from the back. She held it out for Gower’s inspection, seeing through his eyes the violent scene of treason limned in thread of so many hues: the boyish face of a crowned prince or king, his brows knit together, his mouth opened in a cry of surprise; the long knife pointed at his heart; the bearded face of the attacker, scowling as he aimed the weapon at the royal breast; the heraldry of England’s greatest magnate, poised against the royal livery of his victim.

  Gower slowly shook his head. ‘Lancaster, of course. The obvious suspect.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Isabel. ‘The cloth is clearly an attempt to incriminate Gaunt, to make him seem the prophesied slayer of his nephew.’

  ‘Though—’

  ‘I don’t believe it for a minute, of course, and neither do you. Yet what we believe is hardly at issue. What our flighty young king can be made to believe? That is another matter.’

  ‘The cloth must remain hidden, Reverend Mother. If anyone puts this with the book there will be no mercy for Lancaster.’

  Isabel turned. ‘Millicent, show Master Gower your work.’

  ‘Yes, Prioress.’ Millicent stooped and gathered up her embroidery: a shield and badge, crafted in the style of the cloth, and nearly ready for careful boring into the original.

  Gower stared, his high brow lined in thought. As Millicent watched, the creases grew shallower, his skin smoother, until his lean face took on an almost beatific smile. Finally he looked up, his hand on his stomach, and laughed the laugh of a man unused to merriment. A crazed and joyous sound.

  When he recovered, Gower looked at the prioress, his sobriety returned. ‘How will you get the altered cloth into the right hands?’

  ‘Millicent will pass it to Lady Katherine Swynford just before the feast,’ said Isabel. She explained the abbey’s connection to Gaunt’s mistress. ‘Lady Katherine will be expecting the cloth, and we’ll depend on her to reveal it at the right moment.’

  Gower shook his head. ‘With respect, Reverend Mother, I don’t believe relying on Swynford is wise.’

  Isabel was unused to being contradicted, especially
in her own parlour. ‘You have a better idea?’

  A slender finger to his chin. ‘I have in mind an unusual alliance, Reverend Mother. An alliance that only the direst threat to the realm could create.’

  The prioress tilted her head. ‘Tell me, Gower.’

  FORTY-FOUR

  St Mary Overey

  Southwark suffered the vigil of St Dunstan beneath a soaking spring rain, the clouds low and close, the house damp with cold as I spent a day alone at my writing desk. Scribbles, pen trials, some scattered rhymes in French and English were the extent of my accomplishment, distracted as I was. I drank far too much wine at supper, also taken alone, and retired early with an ache in my head and a tightness in my gut, fearful of what the feast day would bring.

  Though the fear, I discovered, was not as acute as the ignorance. Having gone through most of adulthood in firm control of nearly every aspect of my life, it was jarring to anticipate an event of such magnitude that was entirely out of my hands. No one to threaten or bribe; no whispered scandal to use; no idea whether my son lived or suffered; no certainty about whether the entire course of events over the last weeks had been anything more than a phantom.

  That night, sunk in a deep slumber, I saw a tower on a hill, and below it a field stretching to the horizon. On the field were hundreds of ploughmen, toiling silently in unison, digging in the soil, though for what wasn’t clear. All they turned up was rock, heavy stones they would shove to the side before going back to their holes for more. The ploughmen worked for what felt like hours, days, weeks. Then, like a scythe cutting through a lawn, sleep overcame them all simultaneously, and they fell to the ground.

  It was only then that I realized I was one of them. My hands were filthy with the muck of the field, my back an aching quarter moon, my joints exhausted and worn after a fruitless search for the unknown.

  At one point in my dream I had the distinct sense of an obscure figure hovering over me. I could not make out any features, as a luminous arc shone from behind. An angel? Its touch was warm, its breath moist on my skin. It spoke. I am sorry, Father. Sorrier than you will ever know. An urgent whisper, a gentle hand on my cheek.