The Invention of Fire

Robert Langdon, the parson of St Giles Cripplegate, a respected clergyman, buying entrance to the city for a crew of Welshmen. How extraordinarily odd. Purchasing their deaths, too? But whatever for?

‘What can you tell me, Will, about Father Robert’s motivation? Did you learn the origin of his entanglement with these Welshmen?’

‘Aye,’ he said, with a slight smile. ‘There was another man with them. Not a Welshman but a Londoner, I’d warrant, hanging back with Father.’ His reluctance was now gone, as if he’d been waiting for the chance to spill. ‘They were standing just nigh the ditch. The first of the Welshmen were passing through the lodge. The other fellow, he was getting directions from Father.’

‘Directions to where?’

‘To a tenement-house off Thames Street, Queenhithe Ward. To a house in the parish rents of St Giles. I know it, as I ran an errand there for the curate only last month.’

‘Could you take me to it?’

‘Aye, but—’

‘Now.’

We passed down Ironmongers Lane and over Cheapside, soon reaching Thames Street and the quayside, where Cheddar turned east into Queenhithe Ward. This low way hard by the river smelled eternally of fish, which were cleaned right on the quays, strings of filth laid bare to the sun and washed away only at the end of the day, with the fresh catch hauled off by the fishmongers for sale in the markets. We paused at one point to allow a dungboat to take a load from three waiting carts. The gongfarmers shovelled the slop on board as a water bailiff watched primly from his skiff thirty feet off the quay, eager for a violation and a bribe.

Once the carts had cleared the quay we made our way another hundred feet. Cheddar angled up a crooked street leading north from the bank. He stopped in front of a house towering high over the narrow way. Few windows interrupted the flat surface of the outer wall, which was traversed by diagonal timbers cracked in several places. The door, opened to the street and splintered along one side, hung loosely from leather hinges. It gave onto a low front room, empty but for an octagonal standing table shoved against the far wall. The rushes, rotted and broken, covered only a portion of the splintered floor. The back room was in no better shape, nor was the kitchen, a sunken space shared with the two upper floors. Here several of the larger hearthstones had been removed. Two dented pans hung off hooks on the east wall, the whole of which leaned slightly forward, threatening to collapse inward.

The rear of the building shared a rectangular courtyard with four similar tenements, though the structure seemed in much worse shape than the others. An uncovered staircase climbed up the house’s back face. I took the steps gingerly, testing the next before leaving the last. The top two floors resembled the first in their condition, though unlike the lower part of the house, these storeys showed evidence of recent habitation: sleeping pallets, several torn or soiled garments, a clay jug and a piss pot, a moulded hunk of bread.

Sixteen Welshmen, sharing two floors. Not unthinkable in this section of the city, where the tenements clustered densely above and below Thames Street.

Cheddar’s attention was directed out the sole window onto the narrower lane. ‘Where are they now, do you suppose?’ I asked him.

He shook his head. ‘It’s what I was trying to tell you, before you rushed us down here.’ His palms faced outward, putting his silence on me. ‘Father Robert said it to the other man. I heard it plain from the porch. “Four days,” he said. “Four days they can stay, then they must be moved. After that they are the Guildhall’s problem.” Been more than four days, sure, and no one the wiser. As to where they are now? Couldn’t say. Nor, I suspect, could Father Robert.’

Though I could, or so I believed. The Welshmen brought into the city by the parson of St Giles were now feeding the worms of St Bart’s, after an ugly sacrifice of their corpses at the shrine of St Dung. A terrible end to sixteen unknown lives.

There was one part of Cheddar’s story that lodged in my throat like a half-swallowed bone.

The Guildhall’s problem.

Yet it was the Guildhall, in the person of Ralph Strode, that had set me off on this strange pursuit in the first place, despite the mayor’s reluctance to have the matter plumbed. I did not think for a moment that my friend was involved in the deaths of these men. Yet to imagine the mayor, or perhaps an alderman or two, concealing or even sanctioning these foul murders, then keeping the information from Strode – and Welshmen? England was not at war with Wales, any more than London was at war with York.

A city divided against itself, a realm churning with eternal crisis: rich bulges of opportunity for a man who does what I do. Yet London was growing increasingly strange to me, as if our ages and habits, flowing as one for so many years, were slowly parting around a rising isle in the stream. Looking back on that autumn, I liken my own sense of things to the steadily deteriorating condition of my eyes. On a bad day, when I looked at a line of trees, I would perceive it as a fluctuating plane, wobbling blurs of light and dark. If in the light I saw the promise of knowledge and resolution, the dark yielded a flat nothingness, or a foreign and shapeless world.

SIX (#ulink_e9fe5802-c86b-59c2-9f18-a0992cc178b9)

‘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.