The Invention of Fire

‘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 (#ulink_5f49cfb2-6459-5034-a09f-dfb42d0f9cba)

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.’