A Burnable Book

St Cath glared at her. ‘Agnes hasn’t been about since Epiphany time.’

‘That’s right.’ Bess Waller, bawd of the Pricking Bishop, leaned against the doorsill looking Edgar over. Despite two daughters and years of swyving, Bess had angles to her face that could only be boasted by the mother of Agnes Fonteyn; also the same lithe form, the same golden hair still radiant as she neared fifty. ‘You’re El—Edgar Rykener, are you not?’

‘I am,’ said Edgar. They’d met last year, soon after Agnes had left the Southwark stews and joined Joan Rugg’s crew in Cheap Ward. Bess Waller had come after her younger daughter with a club while the bawd was away, trying to beat Agnes back to the Bishop, pleading the strength of family and roots. But Agnes had stuck to Gropecunt Lane, and now she was pure London.

‘As I was telling your lovely serjeant-of-the-gate here, I need to have a word with Agnes. She about?’

‘She’s not,’ said Bess. ‘We miss her round the stews though, that right, St Cath?’

The old woman nodded. ‘Miss her all right.’

‘Agnes had the cock lining up at the door,’ said Bess. ‘Something in the sweet air off her, that way she got with her head. That toss, you know?’ She mimicked it perfectly. ‘And always had since she’s a girl. Sweet piece of sweetmeats, that one. Still sucking it off up Cheapside?’

Edgar rested a foot on the step, stretched his tired thighs. ‘Our bawd’s Joan Rugg.’

‘Joan Rugg!’ Bess cackled. ‘Taught that fat hen everything she knows about the cock. How to fondle it like one of St Cath’s kittens here, how to clamp it atween her thighs for the while of a paternoster. The gentle cock’s your false idol, Joan, I tell her, and treating it right will bring you all the riches you can want. A fast learner, by St Bride. Just like Agnes.’

And what a homily to motherhood Agnes had in you, Edgar thought. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Not a sight of her, then?’

Bess wiped her nose. ‘Why you seeking out my Agnes?’

‘Had some little business to pestle with her.’

‘Business.’

‘Thought she might’ve stepped over the river. If not, then …’

‘Then …?’ Bess raised her eyebrows.

Edgar took a step back, his gaze moving up the façade to the second-storey windows, one of them wedged open. A giggle, a slap, a moan.

Bess clucked. ‘Best you be off, pretty boy. Got some gentlemen coming by next bell. Don’t want my jakes inconvenienced.’

‘I’m thinking the same,’ said Edgar, also thinking there was more going on here than Bess Waller would reveal. He gave the bawd a meaningful look. ‘You tell Agnes her Edgar come by, though.’

‘Sure sure,’ said Bess. ‘Though could be Easter, could be All Souls all I know. But I’ll tell her you were by. You give Joanie a Jesu palm on the arse from her Bess, hear?’

Edgar turned and walked down Rose Alley to the bankside. There he paused and looked back at the Pricking Bishop. Bess Waller’s arms were in the air, her face beet-red as she let St Cath have it, for what he didn’t know.

On the bridge he purchased a farthingloaf and pinched off pieces of coarse bread, washing them down with some warmed beer. As he crossed the Thames he thought of the peculiar twinge of suspicion he’d felt on first telling St Cath why he was there. What was it about the old woman’s words that had unsettled him?

Millicent.

Bess Waller’s older daughter, Millicent Fonteyn, lived in a decent house along Cornhull, had some money and wanted more. She’d had nothing to do with her mother nor her sister for a long time. While Agnes had only recently left her mother’s stewhouse for the streets of London, Millicent Fonteyn was no more than a distant memory on Rose Alley. Yet the moment Edgar had asked St Cath whether Bess Waller’s daughter was about, the old woman had responded swift as you please.

Millicent? Hunting Millicent Fonteyn in the stews?

Which meant what? Which meant St Cath, flustered at Edgar’s prodding, was covering for Agnes. He nodded, sure of it now. Agnes has been at the Pricking Bishop, he thought; may be there still, the little tart. And who, he wondered for the hundredth time, was that poor dead girl on the moor?

NINE (#ulink_0e4cb4b5-b6ac-5ea3-bc50-76fde98e554c)

Westminster

Two appointments set for that morning, the first with the wife of a disgruntled notary to the king’s secretary with a copy of a royal writ to sell. We met in an alley above the stone wharf. She had brought a maidservant along for appearance’s sake, and perhaps to impress me. As the servant dawdled at the end of the alley she sidled up close, wanting to flirt. She was an attractive woman, with soft curls peeking from beneath a loosened bonnet, full lips, cheeks pinched a bright pink, and I felt an unfamiliar stir that I promptly pushed aside.

‘The writ?’ I finally said, taking a small step back.

‘Here, sir,’ she said, offering it to me. The original, or so her husband claimed, had been sent under the king’s own signet, a sign of Richard’s increasing tendency to bypass set procedures in the administration of the realm. I read the hurried copy carefully, scanning for that useful detail. The king to Sir Richard de Brompton, greeting. I command you to do full right without delay … A knight of Shropshire, a mercer of Shrewsbury, and a debt of nearly two hundred pounds. Yet I knew Brompton, a notorious debtor I’d had occasion to pluck a few years before. This was nothing new.

I shook my head. ‘Sorry.’

She looked at me, a promise in her moist eyes. ‘Not even a shilling, Master Gower?’

I suppressed a shudder. ‘Nor a farthing, I’m afraid. But do tell your husband to be on the lookout for this sort of thing. You never can tell what might rise to the top. He knows how to reach me.’

She mumbled something, tightened her bonnet, then slunk off toward the palace with her maidservant. I followed them at a discreet distance and watched as they merged into the crowd around the south doors.

In the great hall I looked about for Ralph Strode, my second appointment in Westminster that morning, but when I reached our meeting place before Common Pleas at the north end a sudden silence swept the chamber. King Richard, in from Eltham Palace for the day, showing himself off. I went to my knee like every other man in the massive space, watching as the king came to the centre of the hall, paused with a practised deliberation, then gestured for all to rise and go about their business, though as always in his presence the talk was subdued. He wore long robes cut in the French fashion, a wide collar squeezing his thin neck. His fair hair, shoulder length and uncovered, swept from side to side as he spoke to his minions and those seeking a word. The king’s impromptu entries into Westminster Hall were of a piece with his increasing love of ceremony, these portentous shows of authority that brought him in ritual touch with his subjects as often as he liked. If he caught your eye on one of these occasions you took a knee, no questions asked.

Yet there was a strange gentleness in the young king’s bearing, a warmth of gesture and look I had never felt from his father, whose princely arrogance had surpassed even Gaunt’s among old King Edward’s sons. Though barely into his nineteenth year, this man had real reverence for the crown and its regal history, in ample evidence around the space. King Richard had recently commissioned statues of England’s past kings to be installed around the hall, with his own likeness culminating the series. The Confessor already stood in splendour against the south wall, his robes and crown gilded luxuriously, and a limner at work on his feet.

I leaned unobtrusively against one of the hall’s great pillars, watching the king, when his head turned in my direction. His eyes found mine, and sparkled with what looked like affection. It took me aback: since his coronation I’d had perhaps three brief interactions with the king, none of them remarkable in any way. Surprised by this sliver of royal attention, I went to my knee and held the pose until King Richard released me with a slight, boyish smile and a swivel of his chin. It was a moment of genuine connection I would hold in my mind in the weeks ahead, as I learned of our intertwined fates.

‘Quite a mess up there.’ Ralph Strode had come up behind me. He grasped my arm. We gazed together into the vaults, the moist flakes of sawdust descending in thin streams, stirred up by work on a platform high above. For years there had been talk of an entire new roof, though for now all was timber and shingle, the ceiling playing a constant game of catch-up against rain and birds, bats and wind.

King Richard left the hall, the accustomed din rising again in his wake. As I turned to walk with Strode I was struck by his appearance. The common serjeant’s skin was deeply veined, his eyes rheumy, his skin puffy and pink. He barked a wheezing cough into his sleeve.

‘You’re the busiest man in London, Ralph. I appreciate the time.’

He shook his head. ‘For you I’d renegotiate the date of Easter with the Greeks!’

We strolled along the booths as I told him why I was there. For months I had been tangled up over my lands east of Southwark. A wealthy merchant, building a house on a neighbouring lot, had sued for ownership, claiming that certain acreage fell within the boundaries of his property. Though the case hardly threatened my livelihood, it was requiring more of my time than it deserved, and I could find nothing to use against the man. Strode had just the sort of urban pull to finesse a transfer of jurisdiction from the bishop’s court across the river. He was one of the few men in London’s upper bureaucracy I could honestly call a friend, and he owed me a stack of favours as high as the north tower. ‘The short of it, Ralph, is that I want to get this moved to Westminster, into Common Pleas.’

‘You’ll need a writ of pone, then,’ Strode said.

‘There may be some complications.’

He asked about the deeds, security, documentation, clarifying several matters. At the end he shook his head dismissively. ‘None of this should present a problem for writ of pone. I’ll put James Tewburn on it when I get back to the Guildhall.’

I inclined my head. ‘You’re a big gem, Ralph.’

‘Believe me, it will be my most pleasant task of the week, and if I can use it to avoid other entanglements …’ His stride stiffened a bit, a hint of trouble in his eyes. ‘Especially this Bethlem mess.’

‘Oh?’ He was turned away and didn’t see my reaction.

‘The killing up there,’ he went on. ‘Quite a foul business.’

‘So I understand.’