Kings of Albion

by Julian Rathbone

  This time my companion on the forecastle is the ship's boy, a twelve-year-old with a twisted arm caused, so he says, by a break that did not mend properly when he fell from the yardarm of his first ship. Although he has the dark skin of an Arab, he is a Londoner, or near enough, from Deptford, a village on the south bank, and he names for me each place of note as we idle by.

  At first we can hardly see the land, which lies low and flat a couple of miles away on either side, but slowly both banks inch in towards us and the great river begins to meander the way rivers do, and the villages we pass become more frequent: Gravesend and Tilbury, Greenhithe and Purfleet, Thamesmead and Creekmouth. The traflic increases too, or seems to, as the space it can move in slowly narrows: carvels like ours, some from distant parts, smaller cogs, flat-bottomed wherries, fishing-boats trailing nets, skiffs and tiny coracles.

  Lord Djym – that is his name or nickname for he surely is no real lord – points out to me men and women who swing their way across the mudflats on wooden plates for shoes to gather oysters, scallops, clams and mussels wherever a turn of the river makes a bank of shingle the tide will soon cover, while in the mouths of the smaller streams that empty into the mighty one others cut reeds with billhooks to make roofing thatch. We see slipways, too, and sheds where boats are built, and sawmills powered by the water of the inland streams. Although it is the depths of winter, and we can see snow lying on the hills behind Woolwich and Greenwich, there is bustle and business almost everywhere, except on Bugsby Marsh to our left, an evil, cursed patch caught in a loop of the river where blue flames flicker above outlets of poisonous air.

  And then, suddenly, an unnatural darkness tails on us, and the sun, which had shone wanly but low and bright enough to make me want to shade my eyes with my hand, becomes a red disc floating in a pool of blackness.

  'What's happened?' I ask, thinking perhaps some sort of eclipse or heavenly intervention is marking our arrival.

  Lord Djym is puzzled. 'Nothing.'

  'But it's all gone dark, and the sun is almost blotted out.'

  'Oh, that's just the smoke from the city. In winter, and especially when it's cold and frosty and there's not much wind, it lies like a blanket over everything. Sometimes it comes down so heavy you can't see your hand in front of your face at midday.'

  Slowly, very slowly, we edge round a tongue of land this time on the right bank. It's flat and looks marshy apart from heaps and heaps of smouldering rubbish whose fumes must make up much of the cloud that hangs above and around us. The smell is overpowering, sickening, because amongst it all there is much rotting flesh and much of it is burning.

  'The Isle of Dogs," says Lord Djym, and cups his ear towards it. Indeed now I can hear a monotonous howling and barking, and just make out through the gloom the shapes of diseased, emaciated canines loping along the strand and barking at us, or nosing and digging in the piles of waste and garbage.

  The river turns again and now is almost straight for a couple of miles or so with the sun about setting above it. Beneath the swirling fog, the surface runs red, not solidly so but splashed in zigzagging lines where the light catches the crests of the ripples, as if a dagger has been slashed finely but closely across its velvet skin and made it bleed. Soon, looming through the smoke and fog on the right-hand side, we can see four big square towers, capped with pyramids of black slate or lead, heavy against the sky, behind a battlemented curtain wall that snakes round them over a low hill. Behind these towers soars the tall, elegant spire that has been on our horizon but getting ever nearer through most of the day.

  'Tower of London,' says Djym. 'And St Paul's.'

  And that's as far as we go tonight, for the ship's master lays us alongside a wharf on the southern bank, and March calls us into the waist of the boat around the main mast.

  'We stay on board tonight,' he says, his voice loud and firm. 'It's not safe to walk through the city streets at night without a guard, and it is too late to find a proper lodging. We shall be up early in the morning and we'll decide on our next move then."

  The sun dips below what looks like a line of houses upstream of the towers, or Tower, and suddenly all is dark except for the glimmer of a torch one of the crew is holding. Dim lights glow in casements along the riverbank on the other side, more numerous than the few stars that are bright enough to prick the mantle above. The blood has gone from the river, but fills the western sky instead.

  The morning is another of those magic mornings like the one we had the day we arrived in Calais. The sky is perfectly clear, a pale-azure not the lapis blue of the dawn sky in Vijayanagara, but more like an aquamarine. Smoke, white from wood and black from coal, climbs into it in perfectly straight lines from ten thousand chimneys – it looks like the warp on a weaving frame. Frost glitters on every shingled roof and coats the slates and tiles like ground glass. No thatch: within the walls it's forbidden, Djym tells me, for fear of fire. Shadows long and deep fill the spaces between the houses with purple darkness. Most marvellous of all, every rope and spar on our boat and on all the others moored nearby is coated with tiny sharp crystals.

  For a moment there is stillness, then downriver, the sun pushes an edge above the water, fills the sky above with gold, and makes the river, too, run with gold where the night before it ran with blood, and at that moment the city comes to life: church bells ring, cocks crow, a cannon cracks on the battlements of the Tower and a puffball of white smoke hangs like a fist for almost a minute above the water – so still is the air. The river begins to till with boats that ply as ferries, for the most part carrying goods and people from the south bank to the north. Vendors appear on the quay beside us. selling bread hot from the ovens, filled with melting cheese and the crisp, smoked and salted porkmeat they call bacon, and canteens tilled with hot spiced red wine. This is welcomed by the men for, as March says, coming to stand beside me: 'Cold, ain't it? Bloody cold.' then, 'Get brekkers out of the way first, then we'll have to organise some animals here for your baggage. Shouldn't be a problem. There's an inn a couple of streets away called the Tabard where pilgrims heading for Canterbury meet. But the pilgrim season don't get under way until April, so I reckon they'll have spare beasts.'

  He throws what is left of his pint of wine down his throat, buys a second lump of bread, and saunters off down an alleyway, whose cave-like shadows quickly swallow him up.

  But as he goes a strange thing happens. On the corner of the alley he tosses a copper to a legless beggar whose sawn-off stumps rest on the cobbles. This beggar looks after him, watery eyes narrowed, then blinks the rheum out of them, staring still at March's retreating back, shakes his shaggy head. 'Fuck me,' he says. He grabs his crutches and. with remarkable agility, hoists himself into the air above them and swings himself like a tall bird, a heron or a crane, first one stick then the other, along the quay, upstream.

  One by one the others come on deck and I repeat to them what March has said while they, too, buy food and drink, though they refuse the hot wine and take warm milk instead. Then Ali makes our porters bring the baggage up from the hold. The ship's master insists it stay on board until he has been paid and Prince Harihara, not knowing what would be a fair price for our voyage from Calais, agrees to leave it on the deck until March returns. Which he does, about an hour later, by when the sun is higher in the sky, though not much – so low is its trajectory in these climes.

  It's all bustle now for twenty minutes or so, getting the mules he-has brought with him loaded up, together with two Ingerlonder muleteers, the ship's captain paid, and so on. Then all at last is ready, and I say goodbye to Djym, who surprises me with a kiss. The last to leave is Genet who, for a horse, is quite intelligent and. perceiving he is to be returned to dry land, gives no trouble. One of March's grooms saddles him up yet March does not mount him, but leads him by the bridle. Perhaps he sees the question on my face.

  'Don't do to be conspicuous,' he says. 'Although I have many friends in London, I have enemies too.'

  This puts me
in mind of the legless beggar, who, I now believe, recognised March and I tell him about it. His face clouds, he pulls his lower lip, then goes to the mule where his own personal baggage is stowed, and, undoing a strap here and a strap there, pulls free a scabbarded broadsword, two-handed, all of four feet long, and buckles it to Genet's saddle. Then he turns to Ali. 'Ali,' he says, 'if you lose me or lose your way, ask for the house of Alderman Roger Dawtrey off East Cheap, can you remember that?'

  Ali nods.

  'He's expecting you and will look after you.'

  And so at last we set off, March leading Genet, Ali at his side, and the rest of us following with the mules in the rear. Many of our spice sacks have already been sold so now the Prince's crossbows account for nearly half of them.

  A couple of hundred yards and we reach what, the night before, I had taken to be a line of houses marking a bend in the river beyond the Tower, but which now reveals itself to be a bridge, the only bridge for many miles across the Thames. It has big stone gateways at either end, a church in the middle and both sides are lined with houses, with shops on the lower floor opening on to the crossing.

  But before we can enter or use this bridge we have to take our turn in a long line of traders, local gardeners and fanners coming to the markets with flocks of sheep, cartloads of cabbages, herds of steers and heifers, pigs and fowl, and now, like it or not, while we wait, we cannot escape the horrors attached to the stone lintel above the gate. For a moment the unwary traveller wonders: why should the sides of several clumsily slaughtered pigs be transfixed with pikes, hoisted and left for the crows and kites, of which there are many, to squabble over? And then it dawns on one that these are not the remains of beasts but of men, and possibly women.

  March himself pauses, almost as we pass under these horrors, and looks up, shading his eyes against the glare of the still luminous sky, and I see him shake his head and bite his thumb. I le turns to Ali and since I am right behind him I hear most of what he says. 'These are not criminals. The man on the left is Sir John Thin – he changed sides at the battle of More Heath and joined my lord of Salisbury.'

  At this moment a fork-tailed kite flies off with offal in its beak, is attacked by a black crow, and drops the offal into the crowd. It lands on a costermonger's shoulder. The man brushes it off and, with much laughter from him and his friends around him, kicks it into the gutter, for a moment March eyes his sword, hung from the pommel of his saddle, but restrains himself – which is just as well since one thing I already know about him is that he has a temper. As we pass the offal, a thin cat is already sniffing and dabbing with its paw, and I realise it is a kidney, and quite like a porker's since the build of this Sir John belied his second name.

  'What ecstasy these men must have suffered,' I murmur to myself, 'for being men of honour and courage they would not have surrendered to fear or howled with pain..’

  Chapter Nineteen

  I have a man here says you are Edward March. Is that so?' We've come off the bridge which, on account of the forty or so shops on each side, whose stalls and wares spilled out and obstructed easy movement, took all of twenty minutes, and are now to turn left up an alley called Crooked Lane. In front of us is a tall man, dressed in rich crimson velvet, with a black hat and red beard above a heavy gold chain with an enamelled disc on his chest. He's holding a carved stave with a silver ornament on top, and behind him is a small posse of armed men. They wear helmets with the front rim turned up, breastplates, mail, spears, swords, and the three bowmen among them have their bows strung and arrows in place, ready to let loose. At that range one of those could go right through my chest and pin me to Ali who is behind me. I shiver at the thought but feel excited, aroused too. Next to this official is the legless beggar with his crutches.

  Eddie looks the official in the eye. 'And what are you that gives you the right to question traders come from the east on lawful business to sell and buy?'

  'My staff and badge say who I am. I am Alderman Thomas Gilpin, sheriff of Bridge Ward, and one of my duties is to arrest known miscreants and traitors who come across the bridge. Whatever these people with you might be is no concern of mine, but you, March, are no traveller from the East, but a man attainted by Act of Parliament, and I must ask you to surrender your sword and come with me.'

  March looks round him now and behind, so I can see the smile, a grin, really, that is playing on his lips, though his eyes are narrowed in a calculating way. I follow his gaze and see that many of the crowd gathering round us are looking restless, eager. Those who are armed loosen their weapons in their scabbards, and one man’s hastily buying eggs from a passing pedlar woman's basket. Eddie raises his voice and shouts, in a strong voice from his deep chest. 'Who here would see a man of York, a loyal subject of King Harry, taken from you and put in gaol?" And with one quick movement he hoists himself into Genet's saddle and with a flourish draws his sword.

  'Not I,' says the man who has been buying eggs and he manages to throw three, two of which hit the sheriff as the rest of the crowd close in round the men before they can draw their weapons. The bowmen, though, loose their arrows into the air above our heads. They mean no harm but to frighten us. However, one hits a woman at an upstairs window in the shoulder. The spurt of her blood and her raucous scream madden the crowd and they surge forward, led by Eddie who makes a pass or two at the armed men then raises his sword to decapitate one who has slipped on the skin of a black plantain.

  'Steady on, milord!' cries the man, looking up from the greasy cobbles. 'I meant your worship no harm, I swear.'

  Eddie puts the point of his sword on the man's breastplate and pushes him on to his back. Then urging Genet on and waving his weapon above his head he charges on up Bridge Street, tipping over a fish stall spilling silver flounders beneath the feet of the crowd.

  Led by one of the muleteers, who seems to know where we are going, we dodge into Crooked Lane, take a right up St Michael's and so come on to the western end of East Cheap where we see Eddie, still riding Genet and waving his sword above his head, coming towards us at a brisk trot, which sends the passers-by scuttling out of his way. No sign now of the sheriff.

  He sheathes his sword, grins at us all broadly, high on his little adventure, swings a leg over the pommel and drops to the ground in front of me. He then scandalises all who still believe me to be some sort of eastern monk, and a male at that, by kissing me warmly, in much the way Lord Djym did, firmly on my lips; with one arm round my waist he pulls me close so I can feel the coldness of his iron sleeves.

  'That was fun,' he says. 'I enjoyed that.'

  I am left with three perceptions. One, I also enjoyed it all; two, this Eddie March, for all his arrogance and fine airs, is still a lad; three, a sense of deja vu, as if I have been here before, will be here again, almost as if, in the previous ten minutes, I have been living a cliché. But I push this aside: it is, after all, a feeling to which we can all be subject when disoriented and tired. And then I notice Eddie has not come through his adventure unscathed: the lower part of his left arm, below the armour, is gashed and bleeding quite heavily.

  'I am not,' he sighs, many hours later, 'able, I think, to do what I most want to do at this moment. Though the spirit is more than willing, my flesh has been so weakened by this damned cut…' and his right hand passes across his bare chest, smooth like marble though rippled with bone and muscle, and almost as free of hair as marble, to touch the swathe of bandages on the other side.

  I am lying on my side, supported on my elbow above him. For a moment I allow my free hand to wander slowly over his chest and across his stomach. He flinches and the skin beneath my palm shrinks a little. 'That tickles.'

  I reach across him, take hold of his wrist, which is strong, hard, bony, and pull his arm back, slide my hand up to his, lift his fingers, smell his fingertips and suck them gently. They smell of the sea and taste of oysters stewed in honey. I lick his palm, lift my upper thigh a touch and put his hand back where it had been.

 
'Could be,' I say, 'that you drank and ate too much.'

  Indeed, Alderman and Mistress Dawtrey's hospitality had been royally generous, better than anything we had experienced since leaving the Caliph's palace in Misr-al-Kahira. Their house, just a few yards up East Cheap on the corner of St Clement's Lane, was a big three-storeyed building, double-roofed and gabled, timber-framed, with red tiles on top. The Alderman and his wife were in the front doorway waiting to welcome us and there I received the third and fourth kisses of the day (there were many more yet to come), full on the lips, which I now understood is the English custom, before taking us through a narrow, wood-panelled vestibule into a hall which fills much of the ground floor though offices, both household and to do with Dawtrey's commercial enterprises, lead off it.

  The rest of the day passes in a confusion of eating, entertainment and business, of much coining and going. A physician is sent for to bind Eddie's arm and I have to forbear from openly challenging the idiocies In- practises in the name of medicine and offering my own poultices and herbal remedies, though later on I put together a potion using some of the spices we have brought and some herbs from the kitchen garden behind the Dawtreys' house. This will keep his fever down and speed up the healing process.

  The people he saw through the afternoon were, of course, merchants. What Eddie wants for the Yorkists is money. What they want is lowering of duties, and a lifting of restrictions once a York is on the throne or, anyway, the government in the hands of Yorkists rather than a mad, spendthrift king and a witch of a queen. And, of course, Eddie can't deliver without the cash, and they daren't be seen to support him until the Yorkists are in power as to do so might be putting their heads all too literally on the block. So they proceed with mouse-like caution, while Eddie makes promises he can't keep.