Chaucer leaned over in his saddle. “I have sliced a leaf from your quire, John,” he said. “Our friend Tom Dallid is a debtor of the highest order, with well over ten pounds owed to taverners and tinkers and grocers throughout this part of Kent. And debtors, as we know, make the poorest and most incautious thieves. He has been stealing from his lord for years to pay his creditors, and though he fears the wrath of Gloucester more sharply, he fears the sword of his lord more frequently.”
“Though his lord is on pilgrimage,” I pointed out, concerned about Chaucer’s looseness. “You trust his tongue?”
“I am a king’s justice of the peace, John. I hardly fear the petty resentments of a country reeve.”
His words struck me then as haughty and lax. To trade in sworn secrets, to barter with lies and threats, to buy and sell the best information while knowing its quality and heft: my business is a demanding craft, with little room for the inexperienced or naïve. It requires as much skill and discernment as the delicate embroidery on an archbishop’s cope or the patient smithing of a great sword. To see Chaucer employing it with such lightness was worrying.
The middle of the afternoon, a lowering sun. We had ridden the half of an hour or so from Portbridge manor back roughly to the east, with turns at two crossings, and now reached the top of a narrow wooded valley, a shallow cleft between two rows of hills several miles south of Greenwich. We descended to the point where the road started to skirt the edge of the forest.
Chaucer reined in and dismounted. “The woods this way are thick. We’ll leave these fellows here.”
We tied our horses to some low-hanging branches and entered the woods. The trees around us were alive with the clicking whispers of jays, the impatient whirrings of warblers unhappy with intruders. There was no path leading us from the road, though I noticed some broken branches low along our way. Chaucer seemed to know where he was going, however. The growing dimness as the woods thickened made our progress slow, and we were reaching that time of day when my eyes were at their weakest, now further beset by obtrusive stands of saplings and shrubs, the deceptive play of shadow and light on flashing leaves.
Several minutes of walking brought us to the edge of a clearing, an oval perhaps forty feet by sixty and free of trees, whether by the hand of Lady Nature or man I could not tell. The angle of the sun against the highest limbs cast the area in a single broad shadow waffled in yellow and orange, like some fiery shield borne down from the sky. At the center of the glade were the remains of a large fire, which, judging by the number and spread of the charred logs, must have been quite something to see. The air was soft, only the slightest remaining tinge of ash carried on a gentle breeze that rustled the leaves overhead.
“There,” said Chaucer, pointing across the clearing to the western edge.
I looked and saw nothing.
“Follow me,” he said.
We walked over to the far trees. He reached for the branch of an oak, fingered an incision in the bark. “Just there.”
I leaned forward, taking the wood in hand. “A cut branch?”
“Not cut,” he said, walking farther along the edge of the clearing. “Here is another, and another. John, look at this trunk.”
I joined him before another oak, a wide-trunked variety free of branches along its first ten feet. Two holes a forearm’s length apart marred the grooved bark, the outer layer of which had splintered angrily along the edges of the impressions. Something about the holes looked familiar. I stuck my finger within up to the second knuckle. My fingertip touched what felt like metal. I had to be sure.
“Give me your knife,” I said. Chaucer removed a long knife from his side, holding the blade and presenting the handle. The ivory butt was cool against my palm, the grip firm as I dug and hacked away at the lower hole in the tree. Eventually I had widened it sufficiently to insert the tip of the knife beneath the object lodged at the bottom. A push, a pull, and the object loosened, spilling out of the hole and into my palm.
Chaucer looked down at it. “A lead ball?”
“Iron shot,” I said, confirming this gingerly with my teeth. The ball had retained its shape even in the hardness of the wood. It was identical in every respect—width, weight, and composition—to the balls Thomas Baker had removed from the corpses at St. Bartholomew’s.
“There are more holes here and here.” Chaucer had left my side to continue his inspection. Despite the gloom it was easy to make out the condition of the forest in that quadrant. The whole western edge of the clearing was savaged as if by some high-grazing herd of pigs, feeding on branches instead of roots. It looked like someone had attacked the trees with a dull axe.
“What’s this?” he said, and stepped into the trees. I lost sight of him for a moment. There was a grunt, and he emerged with an arrow in his grasp. He inspected it, then handed it to me. Not a rustic hunter’s shaft but a missile worthy of the royal armory, perfectly fletched, its length smoothed and polished to an impossible gleam. The arrow was tipped in a beveled triangle of iron. I brushed the blade edge along the pad of my thumb. The arrow could have peeled a grape.
“There’s another on the next tree,” said Chaucer, pointing beneath the limbs. “And a bolt run in alongside it, as if someone were targeting the trunk.”
I looked at the opposite end of the clearing, to the east. The trees there were similarly ravaged, and I suspected we would find arrows, bolts, and balls lodged in their trunks and limbs if we cared to look. A glade in the woods, elms, ash, and oaks wounded to east and west—I looked down. In our initial inspection I had failed to notice the ghoulish signs that now shouted to me from the forest floor. This Kentish ground had been touched by little rain for some weeks. Perhaps it was the work of my imagination or a trick of my poor eyes, but on certain leaves there appeared faint traces of dried blood, congealed in the October chill, the marks of heels and heads where bodies had been dragged from the area.
I stepped to the edge of the clearing, my eyes now taking unaccustomed strength from the particular combination of sunlight and dark. At one of end of the clearing there was a stump, chest high and as wide around as a fry pan. The ash tree had been recently felled, I saw as I walked over to it, the wood still green and rough-hewn from the strikes of an axe. Most of the trunk lay on the forest floor, leaving only a stump in the ground. Its uneven top was scorched in a rough line dividing the middle. I rubbed my fingers along the blackened surface and brought them to my nose. Sulfur.
At the other side of the clearing Chaucer had moved to a similar stump, also newly created from the trunk of a felled elm. We each stood behind our respective length of fallen tree. Our eyes met in a heavy silence across the glade.
“There was a battle here,” he said, walking slowly back toward my position. “A skirmish of some kind, with gunners, archers, crossbowmen—”
“Not a battle,” I said, sure of it now. We met in the dead center of the glade. My limbs felt heavy, as if trying to pull me to the soil with the sixteen men who had died here. “A battle is two-sided, with both companies armed and opposed. This was a massacre.”
“And this as well,” said an unfamiliar voice.
My neck prickled. Chaucer froze, his hand halfway to his head.
We turned as one.
Three men, bunched together and emerging from the trees at the north side of the clearing. Not rough country men, of the sort one might expect to find in a remote Kentish wood. These were true soldiers, clad in the well-cut raiment of an elite company serving a high lord: linen tunics, woolen hoods, badged armbands wrapping their sleeves—though the livery was folded under and obscured, hiding any sign of their lord. Military men, battle-hardened and unflinching as they confronted two unarmed strangers in the woods.
The man on the left drew his sword. The one on the right did likewise. The middle soldier had already notched an arrow, its point gleaming in the fading sun. The string was taut and the shaft seated, aimed at my throat. My vision darkened and narrowed to the arrowhead’s l
ethal point, and God’s living earth stood still.
Chapter 24
AN APPRENTICE, HAVING FALLEN from the smithy loft and broken his arm, now sat whimpering on a table edge at the corner of the foundry yard. Hawisia watched from the house door as Stephen helped the surgeon set and splint the limb. The boy leaned into him, his moist, reddened face crumpled in pain. Stephen gently grasped his shoulders and soon enough the work was completed.
“You’re a strong one, Tom,” said Stephen soothingly as the apprentice tried to fill his lungs.
“Not a splintering fracture, as I feel it, and no skin broke.” The surgeon checked his knots before the final wrap. “Four, six weeks and you will be swinging your hammer again, my good fellow.”
The apprentice grimaced at the babying and pushed himself from the table with his uninjured arm.
“Give thanks to our leech, Tom.” Marsh poked the boy in the chest. “Gratitude is ever a finger of God.”
“Aye, Stephen,” said the apprentice. He nodded at the surgeon. “I thank you, Master Dobbes.”
The surgeon waved a hand before his face. “You will thank me by keeping yourself out of high places. God save those young bones for another day.”
“Aye.” The apprentice skipped off to join his fellows at the other end of the yard, bravely waving his splint.
Hawisia paid the surgeon, who went out the front through the shop room. “You are good to our boys, Stephen,” she said when they were alone.
A rare kind word. It felt strange coming from her mouth, though it was merited. Stephen’s face hadn’t acknowledged the compliment. He finished gathering up the scraps from the surgeon’s work, then glanced somewhere over Hawisia’s shoulder.
“They miss their master,” he said with a blank stare. “As do I.”
“As do we all,” she said, puzzled by his manner. He looked about to say more; then his mouth snapped shut. His eyes were tired and pouched.
“Stephen—”
“I must be off,” he said, still avoiding her gaze. “We’re short copper. Bradley’s’ve got a lot I can take for a good price.”
“See to it, then,” she said. He turned to walk away. His head was down. His feet dragged along the dirt. One of them caught on a clump of horse dung, and he stumbled forward, graceless and clumsy.
Since Robert’s death and his sentence at the wardmoot Stephen Marsh had become a glummer young man, true. He could be sullen at times, trying to mask the understandable bitterness he felt at being chained to Stone’s in the servile way he was. Yet Hawisia had never seen him go about as he had in recent days, so ragged and careless. Shirts and breeches soiled, face going swart and unwashed from one day to the next, as if he were suffering from some unnamed madness.
It had something to do with these snakes and tubes, of that she was certain. Over the last week she’d observed him several times at his dark work, the forge fired all through the night, tinking at the small serpents, forging iron and pouring bronze into these long rods, thinking he could hide it all from her. She was on the verge of confronting him about it, yet wanted first to understand the nature of his work—and, if she could, discover who was paying him for it.
Once Stephen had left on his errand she walked over to the smithy, where two apprentices were throwing dice. “Clear out of here, the both of you. And give me those dice. Now go shovel the stable.” The apprentices obeyed, and soon she was alone. She hoisted herself on the stool, put her feet on the bench, and got her next look at the top shelf.
Two long rods of iron, with one of Stephen’s snakes affixed to the middle of each. She lifted one gingerly and fingered the serpent. It was hinged. The snake moved at her touch, its gaping mouth reaching for a small pan hammered into the rod. The whole of the thing smelled vaguely of sulfur. She set it down and picked up the next rod. Nearly identical, though with subtle differences in its heft and balance.
She angled one of the rods away from herself and saw the hole at the end. She put her fingertip to it, then brought the finger to her nose. Sulfur again, and her finger was covered in soot. Another smell came back to her then. The scent of saltpetre and sulfur, the damp powder Robert and Stephen had made up in the clay pit to test the strength of their cannon. Her husband had made a jest of it, hadn’t he, ordering the apprentices to line up and piss in the pit. He’d pissed, too, as had Stephen Marsh. Robert even invited Hawisia to come and contribute to the cause.
The finished powder, though, had been no matter for laughter. As Robert warned, once mixed the powder would be as unstable as it was deadly, needing but a single spark to set a house aflame. He’d carried a measure of it out to the yard, poured it into the belly of a bombard, then touched the side of the thing with a coal. A flash, a great crack, then a new and acrid smell came floating across the yard with the smoke. Not the woodsy aroma of a slowly burning fire but a sharper scent.
It was a smell Hawisia remembered well, the very stench coming from the end of these rods. The stink of the devil.
Stephen Marsh was making guns.
“Mistress Stone!”
A man, calling from across the yard. Hawisia hastily replaced the rod and snake, climbed down from the bench, and left the smithy. Mathias Poppe, beadle of Bread Street Ward, stood at the back door to the shop.
“Mistress Stone,” he hailed her as she approached.
“Fair welcome to you, Master Poppe.” She hastily brushed her hands along her dress. The ward official was the owner of a bakeshop in the next parish and a close friend of her late husband’s.
“A few moments, if you please?”
“Of course, Master Poppe. We’ll speak in the shop.” He turned to follow her within.
“It’s passing good to see Stone’s sitting well, bells and pans and all,” the beadle said as they entered the display room. He asked delicately after her health, the general state of the foundry. Poppe seemed friendly enough, solicitous as usual. He’d been a frequent presence around the shop, a tavern companion of Robert’s, a strong talker about every subject you might name. Yet he was clearly avoiding something, dodging around a topic he seemed reluctant to broach. Hawisia was about to prompt him for his frankness when he got to the matter himself.
“Your Stephen Marsh,” said the beadle, not looking at her. “Is he about?”
“Whatever could you want with Stephen?”
The beadle tongued a lip. “Have a few questions for the fellow, is all.”
“What sort of questions, Master Poppe?”
“In honesty, mistress, I’d rather not say. We’ve had some inquiries from a sheriff from—looking into a—well, into an incident on a tenancy.”
“What sort of an incident?”
“I am more than confident that this business has nothing to do with your Stephen, nor with Stone’s. Yet thoroughness is a virtue in such matters, so I must speak with him, and soon. Is he about?”
“He is not.”
“Might you know where he is?”
“He’s after some copper. Over at Bradley’s, he said.”
“When do you expect him to return?”
“I couldn’t say, Master Poppe.”
“Then perhaps you might answer a question or two for me yourself.”
“Happy to.”
“Was Marsh about the foundry last Wednesday?”
“Last Wednesday,” she said, trying to remember. She shook her head, seeing no reason to be elusive. “He was gone from the foundry that day, Master Poppe. Gone from the city indeed, as he had some business to transact for Stone’s.”
“Up by Ware?”
This surprised her. “Aye, halfway to Ware. Some ingots of tin, from a thrifty peddler he’d heard from. Had a large lot to sell cheap.”
“Some quantity of tin, you say?”
“Aye.”
“And the name of the peddler?”
“That I can’t tell you. You’ll have to ask Stephen.”
“Oh, I’ll ask him, Mistress Stone. Have no concerns on that score.”
&n
bsp; She found his manner prickling. “Pray tell me why Stephen Marsh’s whereabouts that day are of interest to you, Master Poppe. What was this incident, and how does it concern him?”
The beadle traced the tips of his fingers across a sacring bell. “All I can say, mistress, is there’s a bad situation on one of the hundreds up there. A death.”
“A death?”
“Aye,” he said. “Daughter of a tenant farmer by Tewson. Body was found in a small wood up that way, hidden away in the bushes, poor girl. And the way she was killed . . .” He shook his head.
“Surely you cannot think Stephen was involved?”
“What I can and cannot think is beside the matter, Mistress Stone. The fact is, your Stephen was—”
“He is not my Stephen, Master Poppe,” she said, with a pointed formality.
“Excuse the figure, mistress.” He held up a placating hand. “I am simply following my orders. A young woman met an untimely end, a death other than her rightful. When such a thing happens we must cooperate with the sheriffs of the shire, wherever such cooperation may lead us.” His voice softened. “And in this case, dear Hawisia, it has led us direct to Stephen.”
“But how? Why has Stephen Marsh, of all people, been spotted for this?”
Poppe sighed. “That’s the difficulty, you see. He was spied going out by Bishopsgate that morning, alone, by one of the guardsman who knows him by reputation. Then spied again coming back in by bell of four or thereabouts. And there was a merchant company saw a lone rider answering to his description leave the road just east of where the girl met her end. The tenant’s daughter went missing that very afternoon, and hadn’t been seen since. Not until some sheepman’s dog found her two days later, on the Friday it was.”
“The tin peddler, then,” she said. “Find the tin peddler, ask him about Stephen, and this goes away with no one harmed, jailed, or hung.”
Poppe gave an agreeable nod. “We find the fellow, confirm that Stephen was up there for tin, as he said to you he was, then we shouldn’t have any more reason to trouble him over this. You see, mistress?”
The Invention of Fire: A Novel Page 23
