The Invention of Fire: A Novel

by Bruce Holsinger

  Why, who would find it surprising that such a harrowing adventure would lead to new twinges here or there, as her mind and her flesh molded themselves to the stark realities of this unwonted exile from the dreads of her former life? It was only natural that she would feel a slight tingle as this man handed her down to the mounting block, his skin rough and dry on her palm, his eyes respectfully averted from her feminine form, as was proper.

  Yet why did this agitate her further? Why was she craving the touch of those eyes, the grip of those callused hands? She pushed away the unclean thoughts and allowed the boy to take her horse.

  With their beasts stabled they followed the company into the front eating room. There was no separate chamber for gentles at this less spacious inn, and she found it a relief to mingle with the others, to dine without the close intensity of his singular presence.

  It was a diverse array that had set out from the Bethlem Priory, just north of the London walls. Seven men, five women, twelve all told including themselves, and as she sat with the women, listened in on their talk, she learned what had brought them there, what circumstances of life and longing had provoked them to make the long journey to Durham and the holy bones of St. Cuthbert.

  Two were sisters, Catherine and Constance. Widows both, husbands years in their graves, and a more accomplished pair of pilgrims would have been hard to find.

  Yes, we have been to Jerusalem, they boasted loudly, walked in the footsteps of our Savior Jesu, trod the stations of His Passion, prayed on the hill of Calvary. They had taken in St. James at Compostela along the way, as well as Rome, where they enjoyed an audience with English bishops and a cardinal at the Curia, receiving blessings and pilgrims’ alms from all. Weeks on an old hulk in the great sea, a month in the blood-drying heat of the Holy Land, then home again, and who was to say they wouldn’t attempt the journey again before they died?

  “And Canterbury?” someone asked. “Have you made the journey to Becket’s tomb?” There followed an uncomfortable pause, which Constance broke with a light and condescending laugh.

  “Why yes, my lovely, we have been to Canterbury once or twice, have we not, Catherine?”

  “Oh, twice or thrice, I’d wager, twice or thrice,” said her sister, her eyes sparkling with amusement. “Though never Durham.”

  “No, never the Palatinate,” Constance allowed. “So here we are, filling a little gap!”

  The next woman, Evota, a pert young wife with a wandering eye and a rich liking for gossip, was traveling with her new husband, “the slight fellow with the yellow face and that lovely lump of suet on his chin,” as she described the poor man and his unfortunate carbuncle. He was yeoman to an Austin canon of Durham, to which they were returning after a sojourn in London to retrieve the inheritance left by her late departed father. “Sixteen pounds, and a silver ring,” she said, holding it up for them. “Tried to leave me his cooking pots as well, though we sold them to the peddler for a few pence rather than haul them along.”

  Maud, the fourth, was also young though great with child. “With a bastard, I’ll warrant,” Constance had loudly opined. This seemed to be the case. Her father was a tight-lipped mercer of Queenhithe Ward. The talk was that the pair were bound for Durham to rid the family of the child’s stain.

  Margery was the last, and she answered their questions with the same lies and half-truths she had spun in her mind from the beginning. We are from a village on the Sussex coast, up from Brighthelmstone. Our only child, a girl of six days, gone to her grave, and before her mandated baptism. The fever. How to assure her eternal rest, to save her unblessed soul from the fires of purgation?

  A pilgrimage, they had decided with the parson. To what shrine? Durham in the Palatinate, he had advised them, and the shrine of St. Cuthbert. For old Cuthbert is the saint of incorruptibility, a reminder of God’s triumph over death. Let this long journey north along the length of all England serve as a pilgrimage of thy soul to sweet Jesu, and soothe thee and the soul of thy babe in the balm of His eternal and undying love.

  “So we departed,” she said softly, “our little Alys dead only a fortnight, and it is all my Antony can do to stay on his horse, his heart sits so heavy in that strong chest.” The women all looked over at that strong chest and the ruddy face above it, cooing in sympathy as they imagined the sorrow of this bereft father, pictured the ways he might be comforted.

  This was the story she told them, to some moist eyes and pats on the hand, for how could she tell them her true tale, the sum of all that had brought her here?

  A husband may do what he wishes with the flesh and flower of his wife. Walter had always liked to remind her of this, quoting canon law as he smacked her face, broke her ribs, ruined her inner flesh front and back, and it seemed that was the only sentence of the church’s decretals that meant anything to him. He’d had two years at Oxford in his bachelorhood, failed miserably reading theology, then he returned to Kent to suck once more at the small teat of his father, a gentleman of modest means albeit well respected in the shire—despite his wastrel of a third son. By the time Walter married her he’d become a bitter, sullen man, often drunk, full of foul smells and ugly noises. From the start he had treated her like one of the deer carcasses brought back from his slovenly hunts. There had been no escape, it seemed. Until there was.

  Margery felt a hand press her arm. It was Constance, leaning against her. “Bear up, dearest. Eleven children I bore, and but six live now, the rest sleeping with God. It is our woman’s lot, such suffering, daughters of Eve as we are. St. Cuthbert will comfort your soul, you shall see.”

  “Aye, he will that,” said her sister, Catherine, with a pious nod, and a sober quiet settled around the board.

  The men, hearing nothing of the exchange, were as loud as they liked, relieved to be off their tails for the day, installed around a table with ample ale to dip and share from the common cask. As the women resumed their own conversation she caught his eye, as a wife does, smiled openly at him in the candlelight. His own eyes widened in surprise, thrilled her with a gleam of unspoken want.

  Over the following hours the room filled with villagers, there to mingle with the pilgrims passing through, and to hear the news from London and beyond. A large crowd, at least forty strong. Out here there was little of the rough trade she’d heard was common in the city taverns. In London a gentlewoman like her would not be seen in such a place, yet here she felt unobtrusive, welcomed by the diverse company.

  Margery found herself more at ease that evening than she had felt for many months. Robert seemed content as well, happily playing the lower gentleman’s part, drinking neither too much nor too little, affecting an air of light condescension toward men who were surely his betters. He was easing into this strange role circumstance had forced on him, and playing it well.

  Someone in a far corner began to sing. A ballad from the north country, one she had never heard, and a dark song it was, with a haunting, warbling tune that matched the eerie matter.

  Sir Aldinger, steward to King Henry, is smitten with Queen Eleanor, who refuses his advances. Furious and ashamed, Sir Aldinger vows to watch her burn. That very day a leper, on the verge of death, limps into town. Sir Aldinger, seized with a plan, lifts the sick man onto his back and carries him into the castle, promising him his health will be restored if only he will obey the steward’s commands. While the queen sleeps, Sir Aldinger places the leper in her bed, swearing him to silence, then rushes off to find King Henry. The king, upon being led to his wife’s bed and spying his queen lying with a leper, pronounces a sentence of death upon the corrupt lovers.

  A pair of new gallows shall here be built,

  Thou’ll’st hang on them so high.

  And a fair fire beneath be lit,

  To burn our queen thereby.

  The sentence sent a thrill through the assembly, all eager to learn how the queen would elude noose and flame. Sensing the ardor of their audience, the singers slowed, hummed, mouthed a string of lee-dee-las and
lee-dee-loos in place of words, dilating the story as long as the company would tolerate before relenting.

  They had begun the next verse—Forth then walked our comely king, to meet our comely queen—when the outer door burst open.

  There was a shout of alarm in the courtyard, the scuffle of feet on dirt, then six strangers clambered through the inn’s door. Two of them bore a child in their arms, a boy of seven or eight. The nearest table was cleared, the boy stretched on the board, water and cloth requested by one of the men who had carried him within. She could see little, as she sat on the far side of the room, though she could hear the low moans. She caught a glimpse of the boy in the candlelight, his dirt-streaked face divided by a deep and oozing gash.

  As three village men rushed off to ride for the nearest surgeon, the story was quickly told. Another, smaller group of pilgrims, a Kentish fellowship from Canterbury, had been riding along the highway, bearing for this very inn. They reached the outskirts of the village later than they had intended, and just before emerging from the woods were set upon by a gang of brigands in the night. Though the thieves were well armed, one of the company, the father of the wounded boy, had resisted, drawing on the band of criminals and provoking them to unsheathe their short swords and assault the would-be defender.

  A brief but vicious struggle ensued, bags and purses violently cut and seized by the brigands, ending only when the man’s son, mounted before his mother, leapt down from his horse, raced to his dying father’s side, and received slashes to the neck and face for his troubles. The boy’s screams had frozen both companies in place, until the shame of an injured child caused the brigands to flee with their spoils—including two of the victims’ horses.

  The father’s body had been thrown over a remaining horse, the rest of the company double mounted for the last push to the village. Now the mother, this new widow, stood leaning over her son’s prostrate form, weeping for his wellness. In low voices everyone began to describe his worst wounds seen, suffered, or tended. All had witnessed much worse than this, as the slash to the boy’s face was shallower than it had at first appeared, and it was generally held that he would survive.

  The talk then turned to the conditions of the highway. Some recounted prior incidents of robbery, others cursed the sheriffs for inadequate patrolling, though all agreed that it was best to leave even the safest of the king’s roads well before nightfall.

  The boy stirred on the table. She heard a cough. He asked for drink, prompting sighs of relief. The mother collapsed against a bench, and the keeper’s wife directed two other women to help remove her to a room. As the distraught company settled into the relative safety of the inn the subdued chatter resumed.

  Once the room had calmed, Robert stood to leave, swishing past her back. She watched him go out a side door, to the privy, she assumed. In a few moments he returned, though not to his table. As he slipped past her he placed his hands briefly on her shoulders, then went to the hearth. He stood there, unmoving.

  She felt his stare but could not return it, afraid she would betray how it had moved her, this new firmness of his touch. Finally she turned her head, looked straight at him, her eyes blazing with invitation—and saw the fear in his own. His face was ashen and drawn.

  The sounds around her faded. She heard only the pulse in her ears as she rose slowly from the table and walked to him, feigning unconcern. She touched his hand.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “We must go, Elizabeth.” His voice was soft, barely a whisper. His neck was bent, his lips just inches from the hollow of her neck. She felt it throb with his nearness. “That mother.”

  “What about her?” she said.

  “I had to see her more closely to be sure. I went back to the rooms. She was there, with her son. I saw her face in the candlelight.” His voice caught. “Now I am sure.”

  She looked over her shoulder to where the mother had wept for her boy. All was as it had been before, no trace of the diminished family, and the others in that company had mingled with the evening crowd. She turned back to him, her mind astir with new concern.

  She pressed his wrist, wanting to comfort him, though unsure how to begin. “Come.” They made their way between the benches. She nodded good nights at their fellow pilgrims, received knowing smiles from Constance and Evota in return.

  Outside they strolled to the street wall, a husband and wife taking a turn before going in to bed. The night air carried a spreading chill. The first week of October, yet they had traveled far already, nearly into the north country. Tomorrow they would cross the Trent at Newark.

  “Tell me,” she said, her hand a ball of heat in his ample palm.

  He told her.

  Chapter 12

  I HAD THOUGHT SATAN’S MINIONS were leaving us in peace, at least for the season.” William Rysying, alderman of Portsoken Ward and prior of Holy Trinity, looked at me over the pious arch of his joined hands.

  “This is a special advisement, Reverend Father,” I said, unsurprised by the prior’s dry greeting. “He unchained me for one afternoon only.”

  Rysyng stood and gestured for me to precede him from the almonry, unwilling to tolerate my presence within the priory. He led me briskly away from the Holy Trinity gate. The prior’s head was down, a grey cowl bunched around the neck of this short, angry, ungraceful man. A piggish nose flattened above thick, dry lips. Eyes closely spaced and incurious, of no memorable shade. Hair too thin for a proper tonsure at the front, though overgrown into greasy, almost boyish ringlets where the circle met the shave. He smelled that day of sour cheese and smoke, though the priory’s seasonal laundering had left his wool habit unsoiled, scented with lye and rosemary. We skirted the priory’s western face through the great court up to Bevesmarkes, and walked with the looming bulk of the walls to our backs.

  “You wished to speak with me, Gower,” said the prior. “So, speak. You have come to buy away our cartulary, or extort a measure of gold, I suppose?”

  “No, Reverend Father,” I said. “It is city business that concerns me.”

  “City business. So you are here to see the alderman of Portsoken Ward, not the prior of Holy Trinity.”

  “Correct.”

  “By whose warrant?”

  “Father?”

  “By whose warrant are you here?” He lifted his chin. “For you are not a freeman of London, Gower, nor even a resident of the city. You are a Southwark man, as Southwark as those maudlyns coining away their queynts in Rose Alley. As prior I serve my house and my order. As alderman I serve the men and women of my ward, and his lordship the mayor. What I do not serve in either capacity is the disordered population of Southwark. Move to London, purchase your freedom of the city, and buy a house in my ward, Gower. There are fine tenements just without Aldgate, and along the ditch above the Tower postern. Or you might pitch a tent in the green and live with the soldiers. Until then I’ll have no doings with you.”

  The prior stopped in the street. His left foot had found a mud clod, which he kicked to the gutter. His eyes gleamed with righteousness as he looked at me, tensed to turn away.

  “A pleasing homily, Reverend Father,” I said quickly. “Would that a scrivener were hard by, inking it on a bill. I’d happily hang it up on the gate of Winchester Palace, for every Southwark man to see and admire.” The bishop of Winchester, a neighbor of mine across the river and recently become an ally, was fiercely proud of his Southwark domain, claiming that our growing suburb embodied the future of London.

  The prior scoffed unconvincingly. “I am not afraid of Wykeham. The bishop has larger things to concern himself with than the doings of a house such as ours.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “Though the doings of its leader could bear some episcopal probing, don’t you think?”

  His lip quivered. “Whatever do you mean?”

  As we delayed there in the street I told him. It was a piece of information I had held on Rysyng for nearly a year, waiting for the right moment to use it. A
series of liaisons with the daughter of a fellow alderman, the young woman put away to birth the prior’s child—and much worse, the purchase of a position for her in a sister house under the sworn pretense of virginity. The child was now a ward of the city of London, under the care of a Cheapside chandler.

  “A whisper to the bishop, and you will be expelled from the order, lose your office and your livings.”

  “You wouldn’t—you wouldn’t dare.”

  “Oh, but I would, Reverend Father. I would, and with no small pleasure.”

  His face reddened, his jaw shook, his head acting like an abscess about to burst. Then his eyes closed, and something resembling peace settled into his features. It is often like that at these moments, as men confront their hidden lives anew in this quick and brutal form of confession I offer. With acceptance and submission, relief displaces fear.

  “What do you want?” he finally said, resuming his walk along the walls. We were nearing Bishopsgate, our paces slowing.

  “The last court session, at the Guildhall.”

  “What about it?”

  “You and several others seemed quite intent on hearing out Peter Norris. He had something to tell the court.”

  “So he claimed.”

  “Why wasn’t he permitted to speak?”

  “The mayor was convinced he was lying. Trying to purchase his freedom with a convenient bit of deceit.”

  “You didn’t believe him either? Norris, that is?”

  His eyes shot toward me, then away. He turned, and we started our walk back toward the court and the priory. “None of the aldermen know what to believe.”

  “He claimed to have the name of a witness.”

  “Yes.”

  “To the dumping in the Walbrook.”