The Invention of Fire

SIX

‘Mar— Elizabeth? Now, Elizabeth?’

The woman sighed. She could almost smell his dread, hear it in his tentative voice. Fear repulsed her. ‘Yes, Antony. Now.’

The false name came easily to her, and it seemed to give him some measure of confidence. He stood slowly, brushed at his too-tight doublet with those giant hands, and went to see the keeper in the front room. She heard the soft tink of coins, a satisfied ‘Very well, good sir’ from the keeper’s wife, then he reappeared in the low doorway.

She looked at his feet. Stop shuffling, said her frown. He lifted them, straightened that labourer’s spine. She gave him an approving smile as he sat.

‘And the horses?’ she said, tightening her plait and tucking it back in place beneath her hood. A strand still teased her cheek. She pushed it to and caught him watching her. She felt herself blush.

He nodded stiffly, oblivious to her discomfort, his own neck reddened from the restriction of the high collar. ‘A few moments. ‘Nother company’s just arrived, so stablers’re quite busy at the moment.’

She stifled another sigh. Much work to accomplish here, though the long journey north to Durham would give them plenteous time. St Cuthbert’s bones were hardly planning to get up and walk away.

She coughed into a balled hand. The back chamber was stuffy, close, full of smoke. Gentlefolks’ room, the keeper proudly called it, though she had stolen more than one envious look at the airy common hall up front, where a dozen or so lower travellers in their company, man and woman alike, relaxed and drank from the inn’s stock of dark, river-cooled ale. She sipped at warm wine, washing down the pigeon pies and greens, wondering if she would ever truly satisfy her hunger after such long privation. She closed her eyes, felt herself shudder in the stiff chair, let the images take her for a moment, as they daily would do. The filth, the fire, the smoke and death. A clearing in the woods, the strange crack of the guns.

When she looked up she saw him staring down at his food. She was happy to see him eating slowly, as she had instructed, but as she watched his bearded jaw work at the supper other considerations afflicted her. Where would their next meal come from? Should they stay the night here, with this new company of pilgrims, or push on along toward the next town, trusting their luck to find another inn before nightfall? On this main road, just three days north of London, there should be many choices. Yet not any inn would do, not for a couple in their situation. They – she – had to choose carefully, with a mind to appearances. The appearance of appearances.

She was preparing to push her chair out and find the privy when a clamour sounded from out front. Calls from the yardboys, loud neighs from a struggling horse. Another few shouts, then the inn’s street door slammed open. Their view from the back was blocked by a half-wall, but they could hear men’s businesslike voices from up front.

She grasped his arm, fixed him with a stare. Was it over already? ‘Steady now, Antony.’

‘Aye,’ he said, barely a whisper. He placed a hand on hers. She didn’t flinch at his touch, as she had at first. I am your wife, she silently assured him, and herself.

The alewife appeared in the doorway. ‘A nuncius, from down Westminster,’ she said, a finger aside her nose. She bent slightly toward them. ‘They pull in here, smelling like a wet dog, demanding our best, but then they’re always off eft soon. We’ll have him off your ear quicker’n a pig eats a corn.’

Her shoulders tightened as the alewife left, and her gut flipped. A royal messenger. Westminster, London, soldiers, and she saw it all again, heard and smelled the death.

In the front room the nuncius exchanged low words with the keeper, who sounded concerned, though about what she could not discern. She heard the muffled slap of a purse changing hands. The keeper approached their table, his face showing distaste.

‘With your pardon, mistress, and yours, gentle sir, this king’s man would like a word,’ he said. He ducked out, visibly relieved his part of the business was done. The messenger replaced him in the doorway. A short, hard man, his skin swarthy with the sun. There was a scar beneath his chin, a thin line of whitened flesh that disappeared into a loose shirt of dun wool, stained and flattened by the narrow saddlebags flung over his shoulders. These were affixed with the badge of King Richard, the white hart on a field of faded blue. His eyes, deep set and impassive, swept past her own as he turned to the man across from her.

Yes, we are done, she thought, her pulse a low throb in her ears. The nuncius started to speak. ‘Good sir, if you will—’

‘What is the meaning of this intrusion?’

‘Antony!’ she said, pressing his arm, though instantly regretting it. He had done well to question the messenger, to demand an explanation in that gentleman’s tone.

The nuncius loomed over their table in the small chamber. ‘My horse has gone lame,’ he said flatly. ‘A mile south of here.’

‘Oh?’ she said, taking on the same superior tone. ‘And what of it?’

‘The gentleman here – his is the best horse in the stable.’

‘Not the least surprised,’ said the horse’s rider with a proud nod. ‘Strong fellow, isn’t he?’

‘I will be commandeering him,’ said the nuncius, no hesitation or apology in his tone. ‘I have a full day’s ride to the next post, and the need for a swift mount.’

She felt her chest loosen. ‘There are no other horses suitable to your needs?’

He looked aside. ‘Others suitable? I would think so. But speedy, strong? No, mistress. And I’ve patents in my pouch that need handing off.’ He fingered the leather bags yoking his chest and shoulders. ‘I’ll take your horse now.’

‘If you must.’ She nodded tightly. ‘We will be compensated?’

‘Aye, and most generously.’ He opened his palm. On it sat ten – no, twelve nobles. A decent sum for a pressed horse, though the stallion would easily fetch fifteen at one of the larger markets. But she saw no need to quibble, and draw more attention.

She looked across the table. Take them, Antony. But he sat there like a lump, his mouth half-open, his gaze wide and fixed on the coins. Beneath the table she pressed his foot with her own, then watched as he closed his mouth and gave the nuncius a curt nod. He held out a hand, and the royal messenger let the nobles slip from his palm. Probably a greater sum than Robert Faulk has ever held, she mused.

‘Will that be all?’ she asked the messenger, feeling incautious.

‘It will. And the king’s thanks.’ King Richard’s messenger turned on his heel, leaving the inn by the yard door.

The keeper reappeared. ‘Apologies, good gentles.’ He rubbed his palms. ‘No choice, really, not when it comes to one of those Westminster riders.’

She tried to mask her worry. ‘You have a replacement you will sell us?’

‘I do indeed, mistress. Fine mare. Chestnut, four years, broke her myself. Name’s Nellie.’

His eyes had misted, and she could see what the transaction would cost him. Men and their horses. She gave him as kind a look as she could manage. ‘You have clearly been a good master to her. Nellie will be well taken care of, and you may depend on her safe return upon our own from Durham. We shall purchase you a relic of Cuthbert for your troubles.’

The keeper’s eyes widened over a spreading grin. He made a silent bow.

Later, as they prepared for sleep, Robert dawdled outside the door while Margery undressed and nestled in the wide bed. When it was his turn she silently watched him in the candlelight. He had removed his low shoes, which stood toes down against the door wall. His doublet lay loosely over a bench, covered by the fine cotte-hardie of dyed wool he had stolen from a drying fence during their flight. He was bare-chested now, a silent width in the dim light. He went to his knees. She saw a last flash of his face as he bent to the candle, his lips gathering wind then ending the flame.

She lay back on the raised pallet. This, a luxurious breadth of down and heather more fit for a lady’s chambers than a country inn, gave softly beneath her spine as she stretched the day’s travels away, though her eyes would not close.

He spoke from the floor. ‘Keeper’s not like to see that pretty mare again, or I’m the poxed Duke of Ireland.’ He grunted, adjusting his lanky frame to the lumps of his travel blanket, his makeshift bed atop the rushes.

She smiled at the low ceiling. ‘Aye,’ she said, and nothing more. Soon the rhythm of his breath slowed with the coming of sleep.

It was their sixth night together. She appreciated that he never snored. Not like her dead husband, curse his bones, who’d whistled and wheezed through every pore in his flesh. It wasn’t for snoring that Walter Peveril deserved the death he got, though these quiet nights were a blessing in themselves, despite the pressing peril of their flight.

Margery Peveril spoke into the gathering dark, thinking of the north, the stretch of the marches, the man on the floor. ‘We’ll sell the mare in Glasgow,’ she whispered to the night.

SEVEN

From the great doors the massive hall of Westminster Palace stretched languidly to the east, with partitions of varying heights separating the courts: Chancery, the Exchequer, King’s Bench. England had a leaking hulk for a ship of state, defeating the efforts of the palace’s small army of servants to maintain and improve its fabric. Despite the hall’s condition one could tell at a glance that the opening of that year’s Parliament was nearly upon us. Three glazers worked at a few broken windows overhead, limners touched up wall paintings here and there, and a team of masons trowelled mortar over gaps and holes in the stone.

The eve of Michaelmas found me in Westminster before the chambers of Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk and the lord chancellor. As Strode had told me at St Bart’s churchyard on that first morning, the chancellor was resisting all inquiries from the Guildhall concerning the murders, claiming they were no business of his or of his office. Yet the use of guns made the killings undeniably the business of the crown, a point I intended to press regardless of the chancellor’s reluctance.

Edmund Rune, the earl’s secretary and chief steward of his sprawling household, stood within the low passage leading to the chancellor’s chambers, expecting me. Rune was a new addition to Michael de la Pole’s familia, his predecessor Edward More having died earlier that year. Where More’s reliable and steady manner had mirrored the best qualities of the earl himself, Rune was known as a gossip and a backbiter. The chancellor, it was widely agreed, could have chosen better.

Rune had a protective air about him that morning, his eyes hanging open over a brown beard, his large frame angled toward me as I approached. ‘Go gently with him, Gower. He’s feeling it from all sides these days. None of your coiney cant.’

‘A peculiar request,’ I said, and an unnecessary one; I felt nothing but respect and admiration for Michael de la Pole, who had always treated me fairly. Yet for other, more powerful men, old King Edward’s most trusted counsellor had lately become an object of passionate resentment, even outright contempt, despite the man’s long service to the crown. The young king’s capricious favours had placed the earl in a precarious position with respect to several of the lords, who would be assembling in Westminster soon for Parliament.

‘Surely these rumours of the earl’s impeachment are false, Rune,’ I said. ‘Lordly gossip, nothing more.’

My tone had been light, meant to reassure. The look Rune gave me beneath his brown curls suggested any levity would be out of place. ‘The coming weeks will be crucial for his lordship. We are doing everything we can to hold off the spite from the Commons and the Lords alike, but I fear we may be too late. All rides on the king.’

He led me down the passage to the chancellor’s chambers, a set of rooms tucked within the southeastern sprawl of the palace, not far from the Painted Chamber. The chancellor sat not at his study desk but in his receiving room, a low-ceilinged and intimate space long regarded as the hidden heart of Westminster, though its walls were all Yorkshire, washed brightly with rural scenes inspired by the streets and saints of the earl’s native shire.

An old man already, Michael de la Pole seemed to have aged several years since I last saw him a few months before. Eye pockets smudged with fatigue, a neck carelessly shaved, cheeks bowed in above a jaw that had lost its confident jut and now trembled with a creeping palsy that had been coming on over the last two years. Not a broken man, not yet, though I believe he saw his defeat before him, drawn more sharply with each passing day.

‘I trust your lordship is well?’ I said, feigning ignorance of his distress.

‘The wolves are gathering round, Gower,’ he said brusquely, waving at me to be seated. ‘You know it as well as I do. So let’s slice through the politique.’

‘My lord?’

His look hardened. ‘What do you want, Gower?’

The abruptness of the question startled me. My voice betrayed it. ‘You – your lordship may have heard of an incident in the city,’ I said, with an unfamiliar stammer. ‘A rather grim discovery.’

‘In the sewers,’ said the earl.

‘Yes, my lord. Sixteen men, murdered, tossed in the ditch.’

‘Brembre may have said something about it, yes.’

‘You’ve spoken directly to the mayor, then?’

‘Just once,’ he said flatly.

‘Did he ask for your assistance?’

‘He did, at first, and as I told him, London deaths are London’s concern, not Westminster’s. I have enough to do keeping the lords at bay this season without meddling in the business of gongfarmers.’

‘I understand, my lord,’ I said, recalling Strode’s recollection of the mayor’s exchange with the earl, whose manner was putting me off at the moment. I knew the chancellor as a man of compassion and good judgment. Surely sixteen unexplained deaths beneath the streets of London should be arousing solicitude, not this show of lordly derision.

‘What concerns me, my lord – or rather what concerns the Guildhall, and I am here on the city’s behalf – is not simply the murders.’

‘Oh?’

‘What is of most concern is the unknown identity of these men, their nameless anonymity. Particularly the manner of their deaths.’

His brow edged up. ‘And how did they die, Gower?’

I hesitated. ‘They had been shot, my lord. Though not with arrows or bolts.’

Silence.

‘With guns, my lord.’

‘Guns,’ he said.

‘Guns.’

‘Cannon?’ said Rune, leaning in.

I shook my head. ‘Something smaller, as the corpses were largely intact, drilled through with small shot. Nothing much larger than a child’s thumb ball.’ My fingers brushed my thumb, recalling the heft of that first iron ball removed from one of the bodies, its killing weight.

The earl looked to the side. ‘Quite interesting.’

I waited, then said, ‘It is that, my lord.’

He glanced up at Rune, uneasily this time, then back at me. ‘Let me repeat my first question, Gower. What do you want?’

Once again I felt taken aback by the chancellor’s abrupt and peremptory tone, as if I were being impertinent with the questions I asked him, my presence a nuisance. ‘An answer, your lordship.’

‘To what question?’

‘Where did the killer or killers of these men procure these guns?’

‘Explain yourself.’

‘The city maintains no such handgonnes, as they are known. Nor are they in the possession of the church, and a hunter would hardly choose such instruments of war to bring down a hart. The only store of light artillery anywhere in or around London – if indeed a store exists at all – must lie within the Tower.’

Rune stepped out from behind me. I snapped my mouth shut and looked up at his protective sneer. ‘What are you implying, Gower? That the lord chancellor of England ordered the execution of sixteen unnamed men and had them thrown down a London privy?’

I showed him my palms, lowered my chin. ‘Nothing of the sort.’ I looked back at the earl. ‘Forgive me if I sound accusatory, my lord.’

De la Pole waved a hand.

‘I am merely suggesting that the weapons that took these men’s lives must have originated from within the royal army. As for who wielded them, and why – those are separate questions, and I am at a loss even to speculate at this point. But the guns strike me as a singular piece of evidence. I should be surprised if they don’t lead us to the source of this horrific violence.’

‘Westminster does not investigate common killings,’ said Rune. ‘That is the work of sheriffs, justices, and constables, not chancellors and kings.’