The Eve of Saint Hyacinth

Chapter Four

It was a Monday morning, late in June, when I crossed the Tyburn and entered Westminster. I held tightly to the shoulder-straps of my pack, for I knew the suburb’s reputation as a breeding ground for thieves and pickpockets. These men and women, so it was said, would snatch anything, even the hood from your head or the cloak from your back, and then make their escape through Westminster Gate. Indeed, although I myself was never molested in such a fashion I have seen the footpads at work, so light-fingered, so agile, so swift in their approach and retreat that the unfortunate victim stood no chance of raising the hue and cry before the thief had vanished, seemingly off the face of the earth.

I have not seen Westminster now for many a long day, but my children assure me that its sprawl of houses and shops grows greater with every passing year and surely must be half as big again as when I last set foot within its walls. All I can say in reply is that I have no wish to pay a visit. Even more than a quarter of a century ago Westminster was nearly as crowded and as noisy as London itself. The streets were full of people selling their wares; and as a large proportion of them were Flemings, the cries of ‘Buy! Buy! Buy! What do you lack? What’ll you buy?’ grated harshly on the ears.

That particular morning, by the time I reached the Clock House, whose great bell rang out the fleeting hours, I had been physically accosted at least three times and lost count of all the other exhortations. I had been importuned to buy a pair of spectacles, a hat, hose, shoes, gloves, pins, a belt, a crucifix made from a splinter of the One True Cross and a fly entombed in a lump of amber. It was on this sort of occasion that my height and girth stood me in good stead, for I was able to deter the would-be vendors simply by saying ‘No’ and drawing myself up to my full six feet. People of lesser stature were not so fortunate and I saw one small man pinned against a wall by two Flemings, who refused to release him until he had purchased a silver necklace. And this right under the noses of half a dozen of the King’s sergeants, magnificently self-important in their striped gowns and silken hoods, just emerging from the law courts in Westminster Hall. The incident reminded me of a man I had once rescued in similar circumstances: Timothy Plummer.

Westminster did hold one great attraction for me, however, and that was the cook-shops close by one of its gates. Set out on trestle tables was an abundance of food – loaves, cakes, pasties, meat pies, steaming-hot ribs of beef and several delicacies new to me, including porpoise tongues – while a nearby vintner’s provided a variety of wines and beakers of hot ale, spiced with pepper. As it was close on dinnertime, I stopped and bought two of the biggest meat pies I could find which, together with a bottle of Rhenish wine, I carried to the shade of some trees where I sat down on the grass to eat and drink my fill.

It was pleasantly warm, but with sufficient breeze to make me glad of my leather jerkin and its lining of scarlet. Clouds sailed majestically across the early summer sky and, once, the transparent sheen of a dragonfly skimmed across my line of vision as it returned to its haunts by the river. A jongleur was singing in a sweet, high voice, entertaining a group of fellow diners. Having finished my meal, but not yet ready to resume the final stage of my journey, I leaned against the trunk of one of the trees and closed my eyes, first ascertaining that the strap of my pack was securely looped around my left wrist and that my cudgel lay within easy reach of my other hand. After a moment or two the voice of the jongleur faded and I slept …

I was awakened by the sound of shouting.

‘Clear the way! Out of the way there! Make way! Make way!’

I heard the tramp of feet and the jingle of harness. Opening my eyes, I was unsurprised to see the procession of some great lord coming from the royal palace on the return journey to London. It was only when I had gathered my wits together and banished the cobwebs from my brain that I recognized the retainers’ livery of blue and murrey and the banners held by the standard bearers: two displaying the emblem of the White Boar and one that of the Red Bull, both badges of the Duke of Gloucester. And there, sure enough, the still, calm centre of all this hubbub, was the young man whose birthday I shared and to whom, in the past, I had rendered two personal services. He was mounted on a richly caparisoned bay horse, the strong, mobile face partially concealed, as it so often was, by the long dark hair which swung to his shoulders. All around him the other riders laughed and joked and talked, but apart from the turn of his head and an occasional smile, Richard of Gloucester contributed nothing to the general conversation. He seemed, from the little I could see of him, preoccupied; shut in on himself and alone with his thoughts.

Riding a few paces behind him, but pressing close enough for his horse’s head to be on a level with the bay’s swishing tail, was another young man of roughly the Duke’s own age, strongly built and sandy-haired, whose eyes constantly and somewhat nervously, or so I thought, scanned the crowds. His face, which I guessed would normally be of a high complexion, was rather pale and his lips compressed as if in pain. Then I saw the reason. He was controlling his mettlesome grey mare with only one hand, his left, while his right arm, from wrist to elbow, rested in a blue silk sling. The bones of his forearm had obviously sustained a fracture not yet mended, which, judging by his expression of suffering, was of fairly recent date.

The head of the procession passed beneath the gate and was lost to view, amidst the ringing cheers and encouraging shouts of the populace at large, with whom the Duke of Gloucester was a general favourite. People never forgot that he had stood loyally by his eldest brother throughout all the vicissitudes of King Edward’s reign, unlike his other brother, George of Clarence, who trimmed his sails to suit every prevailing wind.

Once Prince Richard was out of sight the onlookers, who had crowded the edges of the highway for a closer inspection, began to disperse, indifferent to the tail-end of his retinue. But from my vantage point under the trees, and because I am insatiably curious about everyone, I continued to watch – and was rewarded by the sight of a small, familiar figure, last seen almost two years ago in Exeter, but recalled to mind only that very morning, bringing up the rear and riding a solid brown cob.

Timothy Plummer seemed to have grown in stature. Not physically, but in the way he held himself, in the little air of self-importance which hung about him and suggested that he was now of far greater consequence than he had once been in the Duke of Gloucester’s household. He, too, like the youth I had noted, constantly looked about him, glancing to left and right in a perpetual surveillance of the crowds. But whether he was watching them or wanted to be noticed by them I was uncertain.

It occurred to me suddenly that I had no wish to renew my acquaintance with Master Plummer. On the last occasion we had met I had become embroiled, much against my will, in an adventure which had placed me in great personal danger. I made to duck my head, but before I could do so our eyes met and held for a second. I looked away quickly. It was too late, however. I had seen his start of recognition.

I decided to sleep off my dinner for a while longer, thus allowing the Duke and his retainers plenty of time to put the city walls between us. But although I closed my eyes again, sleep eluded me and so, in the end, I returned to the market and purchased several items to replenish my pack. It was almost noon and I knew that if I were to find a decent lodging for the night I should set forth without further delay. Having, therefore, attended Mass at the church of Saint Margaret, I left Westminster shortly after noon. The day had grown even warmer and I was grateful for the shade cast by the houses and trees which bordered the highway. The press of traffic passing between London and the royal palace was always heavy, but with the invasion of France imminent, it was even greater than usual. Liveried messengers from the various noble households galloped by in both directions, scattering the earth from beneath their horses’ hooves, their features set in lines of rigid disdain for us lesser mortals. Two wagons, piled high with armour, trundled past and at the local smithy there was a queue of horses waiting to be re-shod.

I reached the Chère Reine Cross, where both river and road begin to veer in an easterly direction, and paused, as I had done in the past, to gaze upon that memorial of soaring, flowering stone: that monument to undying love, raised by the first Edward in memory of his first queen, Eleanor of Castile. When she died he had written, ‘My harp has turned to mourning. In life, I loved her dearly, nor can I cease to love her in death.’ Recalling those words, once quoted to me by someone whose name I now forget as representing the summit of human affection, I felt a pang of something very like envy. Never in my twenty-two years had I experienced any emotion so profound. (It did not occur to me that I was still young. Youth and arrogance are necessary bedfellows, or else how would we all survive that most difficult of times?)

Half a dozen crows, beating the air with the black, sweeping strokes of their wings, caused me to look upwards, then follow their flight with my eyes as they disappeared inland across the open meadows. And it was thus, as I dropped my glance once again, that I saw Timothy Plummer deep in earnest conversation with a man at the foot of the Chère Reine Cross. Nearby a small urchin held the reins of the brown cob and walked the animal slowly up and down. After a moment or two I could make out that the second man was a friar, a Dominican judging by his rusty and shabby black robe. Both were staring at the ground and the friar seemed to be drawing a diagram in the dirt with his staff. Timothy Plummer was nodding.

As I watched, a third man rode up on a grey mare and dismounted awkwardly, on account of the fact that he enjoyed the use of only one arm. The other reposed in a blue silk sling and I immediately recognized the sturdily built, sandy-haired young man who had been riding in the Duke of Gloucester’s procession half an hour earlier. Having summoned another urchin to hold his horse, he joined Timothy Plummer and the friar, his head bent anxiously towards theirs. Within moments, however, the friar shrugged his shoulders, spread deprecating hands and then moved on in the direction of Westminster. It was obvious that whatever information he had had to impart was now at an end; and although the younger man ran after him, catching at his sleeve and patently asking a question, the friar had no more to tell, for he shook his head vigorously and moved away with a determined gait. The sandy-haired man and Master Plummer remained a few moments longer, talking to one another, before they both remounted their horses and trotted off along the Strand.

I now entered this thoroughfare myself, passing between the great houses of the nobles and the wealthy merchants, whose gardens and orchards ran down to the wharves lining the river’s edge, and thence into the second half of that same highway which is known as Fleet Street. Long before I reached the bridge which spanned the River Fleet the noises of London reached out to greet me from beyond its walls and its pungent smells wreathed themselves about my nostrils. Once across the bridge I was hemmed in on either side by ale-houses and taverns, some old, some of recent date and yet others still in the course of construction, and all catering for the many pilgrims desirous of visiting Saint Paul’s. For the church housed at that time a wondrous collection of relics, including an arm of Saint Mellitus, a phial of the Virgin’s milk, a lock of Saint Mary Magdalene’s hair, a jewelled reliquary containing the blood of its patron saint, a hand of Saint John the Evangelist, a knife which had belonged to Jesus Himself, used when He helped Joseph in the carpenter’s shop, the head of Saint Ethelbert and fragments of Saint Thomas a Becket’s skull.

As I approached the Lud Gate the noise increased a hundredfold: carts screeching and rattling across the cobbles, bells constantly chiming, summoning the citizens to prayer or to some civic meeting, vendors raucously shouting their wares. I crossed the drawbridge spanning the ditch and walked under the raised portcullis, past two guards stationed there to turn back any lepers foolhardy enough to try to gain entrance. Beyond the gate was a labyrinth of alleyways in which a stranger might easily get lost; but I had been to London before. I turned left into Old Deane’s Lane, right into Paternoster Row and so into the Cheap, the capital’s great market.

By late afternoon, I had sold nearly all that was in my pack and was beginning to think about finding a lodging for the night. It had been my intention to do so the minute I entered the city, but the temptation to make money while I could had proved too strong. For London, because of the forthcoming invasion, was teeming with great lords and their retainers from all parts of the country. Escutcheons hung from the windows of every respectable tavern and alehouse, denoting that their owners were in residence within; and the goodwife who bought some needles and thread from me, and whose husband was host of the Saracen’s Head, near the Ald Gate, said that there wasn’t a decent room to be had anywhere in the city.

‘I tell my man we must make the most of it,’ she added, ‘for in a week or so they’ll all be gone. Rumour has it that the King and his brothers cross to France next week.’

‘Then I must hurry and find myself a bed for the night,’ I observed anxiously, ‘for I dare say the guest halls of every church and priory in the city are crammed full also.’

‘Oh, aye,’ the woman agreed cheerfully. ‘You can be sure of that. It’s not just the great lords’ servants needing somewhere to sleep, but more and more people are crowding into London every day to pander to their needs and make a pretty penny on their own account into the bargain. Even our kitchens and cellars are full each night at present.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘But as I said just now, it can’t last much above another sennight.’

‘Where would you recommend me to go then?’ I inquired.

She pursed her lips, considering. After a moment she tapped me on the arm. ‘Follow me,’ she instructed. ‘I might find you a place in our kitchens, now that I come to think of it. One of our lodgers was leaving this morning. His master was bound for Gravesend today on an advance embassy, or some such thing, to the Duke of Burgundy. And mighty cock-a-hoop Master Jump-up Johnny was about it, too. You’d best come and stake a claim to his space now, before my husband rents it to another traveller.’

I gathered up the remainder of my wares from the wall where I had spread them, pushed them inside my pack along with my clean hose and shirt and shaving gear and indicated to my benefactress that she should proceed without further delay. She led me along Cornhill grain market, past the rows of bread carts whose owners drove them in daily from Stratford-atte-Bowe – and whose loaves, or so my companion informed me, were the same price but a full two ounces heavier than those of the London bakers – and past the Tun upon Cornhill, which flowed with sweet-smelling water, piped in from the Tyburn. On top of this was an iron cage where prostitutes and rioters were incarcerated each night by the Watch for drunken and disorderly behaviour; and set on a wooden platform close at hand were the stocks and pillory, both of which were fully occupied by several sorry-looking knaves, the butt and target of every passerby.

From Cornhill, we passed into Ald Gate Street, where stood the church of Saint Andrew Undershaft, the great maypole towering above it, and so into the shadow of Holy Trinity Priory, the largest and most imposing monastery in the city. South of it, just inside the gate, was the Saracen’s Head. This was teeming with visitors, as the landlord’s wife had warned me, and as we crossed the courtyard I could see that the stables were equally full, every stall occupied.

‘Wait here,’ the woman said, ushering me inside the ale-room, ‘while I seek out my husband. I must make sure he hasn’t let the space while I’ve been gone.’

I stood obediently just inside the door, watching the drinkers who crowded the tables. The great majority of them wore livery and it was easy to recognize the tavern’s regular customers in their drab, everyday tunics and hose, huddled together round two of the benches, muttering resentfully to one another and eyeing the intruders with sullen looks.

The goodwife reappeared at my elbow and instructed me to accompany her to the kitchens. ‘Bring your pack. You’ll need it to stake your place. I’m afraid you won’t have much room, a big fellow like you, but you’ll have to make the best of it. And my husband insists on payment in advance for however long you think you’ll be stopping.’

The heat in the kitchen was intense and I had to dodge the pot-boys and scullions, the maids and the cooks who, sweating profusely, were chopping and basting, boiling and roasting as they strove to prepare the evening supper. For the most part they ignored my presence, merely cursing me liberally when I got in their way. Around all four walls, in between the barrels of food and water, I saw items of personal apparel, which marked the sleeping territory of the night’s lodgers.

My hostess pointed to a space flanked on one side by a barrel of what smelled suspiciously like salted herring and a table where one of the cooks was busy rolling out pastry. ‘There,’ she said. ‘And you can fetch clean straw from the stables before you bed down. Now, note your place and then be off with you, out from under my people’s feet. I don’t want to see you in here again until just before curfew.’

I was loath to leave anything of value, like my pack or my jerkin, so I removed my hood and dropped it on the flagstones. Then I paid my shot for a couple of nights, determined to have found something better by the end of forty-eight hours, and took myself back to the ale-room.

Someone on the other side of the kitchen was snoring so loudly that the whole room seemed to shake with the noise. Added to this, there was an overpowering smell of stale breath and sweating feet, plus the stench of brine and herring. The straw on which I lay had quickly proved to be flea-ridden and all my twitching and scratching failed to deter the little wretches from finding me to be a tasty supper. After two hours I had not managed to sleep a wink, tossing and turning to the great irritation of my nearest neighbour, an itinerant pieman, who had been lured to the capital in the hope of making money before returning to his native Norfolk.

‘But there’s too many other folk as’ve had the same idea,’ he had grumbled as we settled ourselves down for the night. ‘I haven’t made above half what I’d’ve made if I’d stayed at home. Well, good-night, chapman. Pleasant dreams.’

Now, however, close on midnight and woken more than once by my restlessness, his tone was not so conciliatory. ‘For God’s sake, can’t you stop shifting about so?’ he demanded in a sibilant whisper. ‘If you can’t sleep, go outside awhile and walk around.’

‘I shall disturb others if I pace up and down the courtyard,’ I whispered back.

‘I mean right outside. It’ll be cool under the Priory walls. I know, because I was forced to it myself the night before last. I admit that that fellow’s snoring takes some getting used to.’

‘But the courtyard door will be locked,’ I objected.

He raised a hand, ghostly in the darkness, and pointed to the wall. ‘The key’s up there. That big one hanging on a nail beside the bread oven.’ He snuggled down again amongst his straw. ‘And don’t come back until you’re feeling sleepy.’

I rose softly to my feet, pulled on my hose, boots, tunic and jerkin with as little disturbance to my neighbours as possible, reached down the key and let myself out through the kitchen door into the deserted courtyard. A horse shifted and snorted somewhere within the stables and a faint light burned in one of the upstairs rooms, but otherwise all was dark and quiet. Clouds rode high and thin above the huddled roof-tops and there was a hint of rain in the air. The dampness clung about my face.

The outer door was in the north wall and the wards of the lock slid back silently as I turned the key. Once in the street, I was facing the southern boundary of the Priory on the opposite side of the highway. There was no sign of movement from the gatehouse to my right. The guards were no doubt wiling away a long and tedious watch with a game of dice or fivestones. I relocked the courtyard gate from the outside and crossed the road to a patch of grass and bushes, hemmed in on two sides by the Priory outbuildings and on the third by the stretch of city wall running north of Ald Gate. Here I settled myself down, keeping the Saracen’s Head within my line of vision in case, by some highly improbable chance, entrance might be demanded to its courtyard in the middle of the night.

The air was cool and fragrant after the fetid atmosphere of the overcrowded kitchen and the heady scent of honeysuckle wafted from the Priory gardens, teasing my nostrils. I drew back into the deep shadow of a hawthorn bush, clasping my arms about my knees and relishing the blessed silence. An owl hooted suddenly, close at hand, making me jump, but then everything was quiet once more.

The owl hooted again, louder and more insistently. This time something about the cry made me freeze into stillness, every muscle tense with expectation. I was not disappointed. After a few seconds a man padded stealthily into view, coming towards the Ald Gate from the direction of Leadenhall and the city. He paused, glancing around, plainly in the expectation of meeting someone. There was a familiarity about the stocky figure, although I could only see his outline, but it took me a moment or two before I realized what it was. His right arm was visible only to the elbow and lay close in against his side. So would a man appear if he had his forearm in a sling.