The Invention of Fire

‘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.’

‘They are hardly common killings, my lord,’ I said, keeping my eyes on the earl. ‘Over a dozen men, shot through with iron, left to rot beneath—’

‘Rot. Now there’s an apt word, eh, Rune?’ The chancellor looked at his secretary. ‘Rotting bodies, rotting rights, rotting laws.’

‘How have I earned your disfavour, my lord?’ I said. ‘Given all that happened in May of last year, your words to me then …’ I let my voice trail off, asking for a small favour, and a sharper recollection from the earl.

The moment lengthened until finally the chancellor sighed, drummed his fingers on his desk. His jaw shook slightly. ‘What you’ve described, these deaths. A horror, and I will lend you what limited assistance I am able. Yet my authority diminishes by the day. You must be aware of the situation with that young fiend the Duke of Gloucester and the earls. FitzAlan, Beauchamp, even Mowbray is in on this plot. They will rise up to oppose me in the coming Parliament, I’ll be bound, and against Oxford as well.’

‘Though deservedly so, in his case,’ Rune muttered.

The chancellor laughed gruffly at this dismissal of Robert de Vere, the king’s sweet-faced favourite, soon to be created duke if the rumours were true: a title properly reserved for those of royal blood, yet given to this braggart with little thought, and littler wisdom. A further sign of the young king’s disregard for tradition and propriety in his royal appointments.

‘Is it really all as dire as you suggest, my lord?’ I said.

The earl tightened his mouth against the tremors.

‘Imagine yourself standing in the middle of a field, Gower. A field that has been the ground beneath your feet your whole life. You’ve tilled it, sown it, harrowed it, harvested it, repeated the cycle dozens, perhaps hundreds of times in your memory. You know every inch of the place. You’ve dug every furrow, hefted every stone, broken every clod.’

His gaze moved to the stone behind me. ‘Suddenly, without warning, the ground begins to shift. You stumble on unfamiliar rocks, tangle yourself in weeds you thought you had torn out from the root long ago. The soil stirs in places, little patches at first but growing, widening, joining together, and soon the entire field is churning at your feet, surging to your ankles. Then, as you watch, parts of the field begin to fall away. Square feet, square yards, misshapen patches of ground the size of rooms, swallowed by the unforgiving earth. Beneath it all is darkness, a great void, and all that prevents you from pitching into it yourself is the final patch of ground beneath your feet.’

He sat silently for a time, statued in his narrow chair.

‘And now you are powerless to do anything but stand there,’ he said, ‘waiting for that last bit of earth to dissolve, and you with it.’

The chancellor’s bleak vision of his deteriorating position left me rattled. I could scarcely believe it had come to this. For time out of mind Michael de la Pole had been a figure of staunch constancy in the realm, as solid as an oak, or the stone cross on Cornhill.

‘You are the king’s conscience, my lord,’ I said. ‘If conscience is defeated, what shall become of the realm?’

He narrowed his aged eyes, all withered shapes and angles. ‘Conscience, that hidden little worm, mining our souls. King Richard, I am afraid, has lost his worm.’

A harsh laugh escaped Rune’s throat. I looked up at him as he covered it with a shallow cough. ‘You’ll want an avenue to the Tower, then,’ Rune said to me.

At last. ‘Though a twisted alley will be sufficient, my lord, so long as it leads me there by and by.’

‘There is little enough to lose,’ said the earl, gesturing for Rune to take a seat next to me. ‘Edmund, what do you say to our dark friend’s entreaty?’

Rune settled himself on the corner of my bench, elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled as he talked through the delicacies of the Tower and its administration. ‘The place is a labyrinth of competing interests. Lieutenants, captains, treasurers, stewards of the wardrobe, the king’s mint, the armourers and their craft, the chief officers of the guard. Even the masons have their own little principality down there. Many pies, many fingers and arses to lick.’

‘I know what you must be thinking, Gower,’ said the earl before I could reply. ‘Shouldn’t the king’s own chancellor have free rein on Tower Hill?’

‘The castle and its appurtenances should be adjuncts of your office, my lord,’ I said. ‘As close as your own arm.’

‘A severed arm, perhaps, and not my own,’ he mused. ‘Often it feels as if the Tower is as distant from Westminster as Jerusalem itself, or the seat of the Great Khan.’

‘There are many good men down there, your lordship,’ Rune allowed. ‘Men with larger interests than their own.’ He turned to me with a smirk. ‘Though not, perhaps, in the armoury.’

‘Who runs it these days?’ I asked. The king’s armoury, though of central importance to the military machinery of the crown, had rarely provoked my interest, and I had no hold on anyone in the king’s wardrobe, under whose jurisdiction the armoury fell.

Rune’s grey eyes flicked briefly toward the earl. ‘William Snell. Armourer to the king.’

I had encountered the name though never met the man. ‘What can you tell me about him?’

‘Little enough,’ the chancellor said slowly, bringing his hands together on his desk. ‘He is a quite remarkable person, our Snell. An exceptional man, of greatest importance to His Highness. King Richard appointed him at the request of his uncle some years ago, before all the factions started tearing at each other’s throats.’

‘Lancaster?’

‘Gloucester. Snell was a man-at-arms in the duke’s household, and he’s been the king’s armourer for going on nine years now.’ Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, was the youngest of the king’s uncles, and one of the most powerful of the lords in the rival faction.

Further questions elicited from Rune and the earl that William Snell was at present charged with the building out and improvement of the king’s artillery. ‘Assembling as many guns as he can down there, more guns than the king’s armoury has seen in all its history,’ said Rune. ‘And not only assembling, but improving, enhancing, inventing, searching for the newest techniques and devices from Burgundy and Milan, the best men to rival their makers. He is also amassing gunpowder sufficient for a year’s siege and a great battle to follow. Why, last week I was given a bill for a quantity of saltpetre so immense that I sent my clerk back to the Exchequer twice in an hour simply to check the numbers.’

‘And he is doing all of this with King Richard’s approval?’ I asked.

The chancellor grimaced. ‘Certainly not with mine, nor, from what I understand, with Lancaster’s.’ John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and in those years the most powerful force in the realm next to King Richard himself. The king’s uncle was abroad in Spain that fall, running a small and ragged kingdom from his base in Ourense, a venture supported by several thousand English and Portuguese troops bought or pressed into a sizeable army. The massive company had sailed from Plymouth two months before, leaving a void in the domestic defences even as the French were massing at Sluys. I had heard no good explanations as to how Gaunt persuaded the king to approve the Castilian venture at such a delicate moment, though the damage was already done.

‘Lancaster’s absence seems to have knocked loose a nail or two,’ said the earl. ‘Snell has convinced himself that his artillery is the most important work in the realm. That London, even England, will stand or fall on the power of these new guns. The man’s self-regard knows no limit, it seems.’

‘Vainglory is the truest engine of our souls, my lord,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ His eyes settled on me. ‘You know, Gower, you would find the Tower a fitting subject for one of your poetical fancies. It sits there like a great maw between the river and the walls, swallowing iron, copper, wood, powder, chewing all of it to a paste then spitting out these strange and barbarous machines, pointing them at the future.’

‘Not an overly indebted future, I hope.’

‘A new subsidy is inevitable, I’m afraid,’ said the chancellor with a heavy sigh. ‘More taxes, more discontent, more force from above.’

‘And more rebellion?’

He blinked. ‘If not from the Commons then from the Lords, I fear.’

He looked at Rune, who nodded my way, signalling the end of our appointment. I rose. The earl’s face sagged as he received my bow then he looked aside, and I left his chambers sour-stomached and perturbed.

Rune walked with me to the great hall. We stood at the end of the passage. A droning bailiff descanted from Common Pleas.