The Eve of Saint Hyacinth

Chapter Five

The owl’s call was repeated a third time, and on this occasion evoked a response. A second man moved cautiously out of the shadows surrounding the gatehouse and raised a hand in salutation. I wondered if he had seen me, minutes earlier, crossing the road; but as he neither attempted to flush me out nor made any reference that I could hear to my existence, I presumed that he must have been waiting some way down the lane which ran behind the Saracen’s Head and its neighbouring houses.

‘You took long enough,’ the first man hissed accusingly. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’

‘I heard an owl screech twice,’ his companion muttered, ‘but I’ve told you before, you need to be careful in this game. It wasn’t until the third call that I thought it safe to reveal myself. I had no certainty that the friar would have been able to pass on my message.’

They were standing on a level with the hawthorn bush and every word spoken, though whispered, was plainly audible. Then they moved on to the grass and into the lee of the Priory outbuildings, where the darkness was almost impenetrable. But they were now just a few feet away from my hiding place and for a moment or so my whole attention was focused on remaining motionless. By the time I was able to listen again with any degree of concentration I had missed several sentences.

‘You mean you have no positive news for us?’ the man with the sling was asking. I knew it to be him, for he spoke much faster than the other, who was inclined to be slow and ponderous of speech. ‘For God’s sake, Thaddeus, we must have a name, and soon! Time is running out.’

Thaddeus grunted. ‘I can’t do the impossible, Master Arrowsmith, and my informant is himself having difficulties in finding out what you want to know. His source of information is proving mute until another payment is made to him.’

The imprecation which greeted this remark was delivered with such savagery that it made me start, deflecting my mind from trying to remember where, and by whom, I had recently heard the name of Arrowsmith mentioned.

‘Money! Money!’ the Duke’s officer continued. ‘A great man’s life is at risk and all you can do is talk about money! I’ve a good mind to have you arrested. A taste of the rack and thumbscrew would soon persuade you to reveal the identity of your informer.’

There was a snort of derision. ‘So it might, but the news that I’d been taken would drive the others into hiding and you’d never track them down. It would be no use asking me to put a name to any but my own men, for no one knows more than that. You’d have first to discover, then arrest, then put each one in turn to the question before you came to the end of the chain.’

There was a moment’s silence while Master Arrowsmith swallowed his ire. A guard came to the door of the gatehouse and looked casually about him, before stretching his arms and returning inside. Plainly he saw nothing amiss, both the men and myself remaining perfectly still throughout his brief appearance.

‘So, when will you have a name?’ Master Arrowsmith demanded as soon as he judged it safe to resume the conversation.

‘Tomorrow night, if you’ve brought the money with you.’ A faint chinking of coins reached my ears as a purse or pouch was handed over. ‘I promise that by then I’ll have the information you require.’

‘Very well. Where do we meet? Here again?’

‘I’ve told you my rule, never the same place twice running. Do you know Three Cranes Quay, west of the Steelyard? It’s the vintners’ wharf, where the ships from Bordeaux tie up.’

‘Timothy Plummer’ll know it. He was born and bred in London.’

‘Very well. That’s where you’ll find me, but it must be earlier in the evening. I have need to be elsewhere by curfew.’

‘You have other business?’ The hissing voice was ragged with suspicion.

‘Aye. I’ve a woman in London who’s deserving of my attention now and then. It’s precious little I see of her in the normal way of things, but tomorrow night I’ve given my word to visit her. She means enough to me to take a chance or two.’

‘Chance?’ Once again the man Arrowsmith’s tone had an edge of panic to it.

‘It stands to reason there’s more risk when it’s light than when it’s dark, but the meeting will be brief. One name, that’s all you want and, once given, we can go our separate ways. All the same, it might be better to send a two-armed man in case of any trouble. A right-handed man who can only use his left is at a severe disadvantage in a dangerous situation.’

‘Fine talking!’ the other snarled angrily. ‘Whom am I to trust? Tell me that! There’s Timothy Plummer, but he’s too valuable to imperil his hide.’

I heard the second man’s impatient shifting of feet. ‘You can’t suspect every member of the Duke’s household, surely! It doesn’t make sense!’

‘Until I get a name I do, and so does Master Plummer. All right. Perhaps there is just one other I’d trust, but he’s too young and too green. No, no! You’ll have to put up with me. I’ll be with you again tomorrow evening. What o’clock?’

‘Just after Compline. There’s a warehouse lying empty near the right-hand corner of the quay as you face the river. Left if you’re looking inland towards the Vintry. I’ll force the side door and leave it unlatched. Now I must be off. It makes me nervous standing out in the open for too long.’

‘You’re sure you’ll have the name for me tomorrow?’

‘This should smooth out all difficulties.’ Once more I heard the chink of coins. ‘God be with you, Master Arrowsmith.’

‘And with you, Thaddeus Morgan.’

The whispering stopped. A shadow detached itself from the deeper blackness by the Priory wall, crossed the grass with a light, cat-like tread and melted into one of the alleyways on the opposite side of the road. Moments later, a second shadow, moving with equal stealth, took the road to the Leadenhall granary and the heart of the city, presumably returning by devious ways to Baynard’s Castle. Although beginning to suffer cramp in legs and feet from crouching behind the brake of hawthorn for so long, I gritted my teeth and forced myself to wait for several minutes before making any attempt to rise. I wanted to give both conspirators time to get clear away.

I was just about to stretch my left leg, which had borne the brunt of my weight, when I was arrested in mid-movement by the cautious emergence of a third shadow from the shelter of a buttress supporting the orchard wall. The figure advanced to the edge of the grass and glanced furtively in both directions, before also taking the Leadenhall road, in the wake of Master Arrowsmith. Who was this man? And what was he doing there? Was he an innocent eavesdropper like myself? Someone else who could not sleep and had braved the night air? Or had he followed Master Arrowsmith from Baynard’s Castle with the fixed intention of spying on him and overhearing his conversation with the man named Thaddeus Morgan?

If the latter, why had I not noticed his arrival? But on reflection, the answer to that question was simple. My whole attention had been focused upon the two central characters in the drama unfolding before me. If this third man had kept close in to the orchard wall, deep within its shadow, I would not have observed him. If the former, however, he might have witnessed my emergence from the Saracen’s Head and have been aware of my presence. Yet, once Lionel Arrowsmith and Thaddeus Morgan had departed, he had given no indication of knowing that I was there, not by so much as a turn of the head in my direction. Therefore I was more inclined to believe my second theory to be the correct one: that the unknown had tailed the Duke’s man in order to discover where he was going and whom he was meeting.

Not that it was any of my business whatever the answer, I told myself severely. I struggled to my feet, flexed my limbs, picked up the courtyard key from the grass where I had dropped it and returned to the inn. Everything was more or less as I had left it half an hour earlier. The same horse stamped restlessly in his stall, the man on the other side of the kitchen still snored loudly and had now been joined in chorus by the pieman, while the rest of my fellow lodgers were sprawled in various attitudes of abandon on their pallets of flea-ridden straw.

I removed all my clothes except for my shirt and lay down again, but not to sleep. Oblivious now to the noises around me, I turned on my back and stared up at the smoke-blackened beams overhead. A sudden suspicion had taken hold of me and I needed to think. Why had it come to me, a few moments earlier, that Master Arrowsmith’s baptismal name was Lionel? Someone had mentioned it within my hearing in recent weeks and I fixed my eyes on a knot of wood in one of the rafters, forcing myself to concentrate. Then all at once I had it. Millisent Shepherd! She had been speaking of… of… Lady Wardroper’s cousin! That was it! Lady Wardroper, she had told me, had enlisted Lionel Arrowsmith’s help in obtaining a place for her son, Matthew, in the Duke of Gloucester’s household.

So I was right! What I had thought of as my own independent wanderings had really been part of a plan. God’s plan! I had been led from Mistress Gentle in Southampton to Millisent Shepherd to Lady Wardroper and, finally, to the Saracen’s Head. God was using me yet again for His purposes and my resentment rose and flooded over. ‘No, Lord,’ I told Him firmly, ‘not this time. I’ve only just brought two villains to book for You down in Devon. I refuse to be pushed into a second adventure in less than three months. I came to London for my pleasure, not for Yours. Let me alone! Leave me be!’

I suppose I might have known that my arrogant demands would go unheeded. After all, I should, had I deferred to my dead mother’s wishes, even then have been giving glory to God and doing His work as a Benedictine Brother at Glastonbury. Instead, I was free, roaming the countryside, selling my chapman’s wares, pleasing myself. But I succumbed to the conviction that I could set up my puny will against His and that, somehow or other, He would acknowledge what I saw to be the justice of my arguments and cease to trouble me. And so, with a sigh of relief, I turned on my side, snuggled into my straw, ignoring the fleas, and was sound asleep within a couple of minutes.

It had been my intention to spend two nights at the Saracen’s Head; but when, the next morning, the pieman offered to buy my space from me for twice the amount I had paid the landlord’s wife I willingly agreed. I had taken an unreasoning dislike to the tavern and wished to shake its dust from my feet. Indeed, I had made up my mind to quit London altogether and was only too happy to sell my few feet of kitchen floor in order that the pieman’s nephew, who was joining his uncle that day from Norfolk, had somewhere to lay his head until such time as the royal princes, noble lords and all their retinues departed for France, thus relieving the capital of their encroaching presence.

‘But where will you sleep tonight?’ the pieman asked me.

‘Somewhere in the open countryside,’ I answered thankfully. In response to his inquisitive stare I continued, ‘I’ve decided to go home to Bristol. I’ll return to London in a month or two, when it’s less crowded.’ And to myself I added, ‘And when it’s too late for whatever purpose God has in mind for me.’

‘Maybe you’re wise,’ the pieman conceded. ‘I’d probably go home today myself, if it weren’t for young Thomas coming to join me.’

I wished him goodbye and good luck, sought out the landlord’s wife to acquaint her with the new arrangement, treated myself to a substantial breakfast in the Saracen’s Head ale-room and then set off to make my way back across London to the New Gate, and so out on to the Holborn road.

Although early, an army of rakers was busy carting away the refuse of the previous day, conveying it to specially prepared pits outside the city walls or to the wharves, where boats were waiting to ferry it out to sea. But it was a losing battle. People were already throwing the night’s excrement out of bedroom windows and sweeping yesterday’s rushes out of doors, along with stinking straw from the many stables. Butchers tipped pails of fresh entrails and animal heads into the central drain, where they were soon joined by stale fish, builders’ rubble and feathers from the poulterers. Traffic, too, clogged the streets. Carts piled high with bread from Stratford-atte-Bowe, with bricks from the outlying villages around the White Chapel and Lime House, with barrels of fresh water from the springs at Paddington, were rumbling through every one of the city gates, soon to be followed by others from further afield. Street vendors and shopkeepers were laying out their stalls for the start of another day’s vigorous trading; a gaggle of boys, laughing and shouting to one another in the last moments of freedom, made for the grammar school at the church of Saint Peter-upon-Cornhill; and sumpter horses, laden with goods, fouled the streets with their droppings. A couple of knaves were being set in the stocks and pillory, while the night’s drunks and bawds and general disturbers of the King’s peace were rattling the bars of their iron cage, shouting to be let out. Barely past the hour of Prime London was none the less fully awake and busy.

It was another pleasant early summer’s day, with sunlight slanting into courtyard and alley, and a light breeze which sent the shadows racing ahead of it in patterns of grey and gold. Perhaps, after all, with so many people crowding the streets, and so anxious to spend their money, I would wait until afternoon before turning my steps in the direction of New Gate and the long road home. A chance to make money was not to be lightly dismissed. Besides, why should I allow God to spoil my plans? Why should I not remain in London for at least another morning?

In this new mood of bravado and defiance I retraced my steps to the Leadenhall, where strangers to the city could rent stalls for the first three days of the week in order to sell their wares. I set out my goods on the trestle table allotted me by the Warden and was soon besieged with buyers. By the time that the bells of Saint Michael and Saint Peter-upon-Cornhill sounded the hour of Tierce-Sext, I had sold most of the contents of my pack and was thinking hungrily of my dinner. I was just about to go in search of sustenance when my eye was caught by a man in the crowd around the stall next to mine: a small man with heavily pock-marked skin whose face was somehow familiar. I stood for a moment or two, cudgelling my brains as to why this should be, then suddenly my memory was jogged. We had met four years ago on my very first visit to London.

‘Philip Lamprey!’ I shouted.

I hardly expected him to hear me over the babel of voices which filled the enclosure, but at the sound of his name his head jerked round and his eyes darted hither and thither until they finally came to rest on me. Almost at once a broad grin split his features and he came towards me with the slightly military gait which was a legacy from his soldiering days.

‘Roger the chapman!’ he exclaimed delightedly. ‘Well I never! Fancy seein’ you again.’

‘I’m surprised you recall me so readily,’ I said, for our acquaintance had been brief.

‘Cor! Anyone’d remember a gert fellow like you. And anyway, you remembered me.’

‘Not immediately,’ I admitted.

‘Ah well,’ he answered, still grinning, ‘I reck’n I’ve changed a bit since you last clapped eyes on me.’

He was right. His meagre frame had fleshed out and was clothed in decent homespun instead of a beggar’s rags. There was an air of prosperity about him which he had previously lacked.

‘Yes,’ I replied slowly. ‘Yes, you have.’

‘I’m a respectable shopkeeper now,’ he confided. ‘Managed to save enough from me begging to rent one o’ them second-hand clothes shops west of the Tun. Tha’s what I’m doin’ ’ere. Lookin’ fer any goods goin’ cheap among you furriners.’ The corners of his eyes creased mockingly. ‘Married again, too. Told you, I think, that me first wife ran off up north with a butcher. Got the marriage annulled by Holy Church. Found a good woman and settled down. Bad times over at last. Which reminds me, I owe you a dinner. Promised you that four year since, when you was charitable enough to treat me at the Bull in Fish Street.’

‘You’ve a better memory than I have,’ I told him, whereupon he drew himself up to his full height and sniffed.

‘I never forgets a debt. C’me on. You look like you’ve sold most of what you got. We’ll go to the Boar’s Head in East Cheap and after, you can come ’ome with me and meet my Jeanne.’

For a moment I hesitated, while a warning voice sounded inside my head. ‘Stay now,’ it said, ‘and you may never get safely away.’ But at the same time another voice whispered, ‘God is not mocked,’ and I heaved a sigh, knowing it to be only too true.

‘Well?’ Philip demanded. ‘You comin’? Never refuse a debt repaid, ol’ friend. It don’t ’appen all that often in this wicked world.’

I laughed and stowed my few remaining items in my pack, which I then humped on to my shoulders. I picked up my cudgel and nodded. ‘Lead the way,’ I invited. ‘I was just thinking about my dinner when I saw you.’

Over a meal of eel pies and brandy tarts, washed down with some of the best ale I have ever tasted, I told Philip Lamprey of my brief marriage and subsequent fatherhood, and of the desire to see London once more, which had led to my present circumstances.

‘Aye,’ he commiserated, ‘you couldn’t’ve picked a worse time to visit than now. But you should’ve known that, cocky, what wiv us bein’ at war again with them Mounseers. And only the Lord Almighty c’n tell why! Fer I don’ know of any cause they’ve given us, do you? But there, it’s not fer the likes of us t’ question. You come ’ome wiv me tonight and my Jeanne’ll make you more than welcome. Then tomorrer, if you’re still set on goin’ ’ome, you can.’

The Lampreys’ second-hand clothes shop was situated in the western reaches of Cornhill and their living quarters were a daub-and-wattle hut at its rear. There was barely sufficient room for the two of them, but neither made anything of that. As Philip had promised, his goodwife made me as welcome as he did himself, and she pressed me to remain for the rest of the day and the coming night. Mistress Lamprey was a little, round, bustling body, with bright-brown eyes and a mop of unruly black curls, imperfectly confined by a kerchief. She had a smile and a cheerful word for all their customers, but what surprised me particularly was her youth. She could not then have been much above eighteen years old, while Philip was certainly past his fortieth birthday. But they seemed to suit each other and to be fonder than many a better-matched couple as regards to age.

I spent the rest of the day helping them with their stall, my own selling skills coming in handy, after which I shared their supper before assisting them to pack up for the night.

‘So,’ Philip asked when we had finished, ‘what’ll we do, then? It won’t be dark for several hours.’ Without waiting for me to furnish him with an answer he continued, ‘There’s a tavern I know of where you c’n get the best Rybole wine you’ve ever drunk in yer life. You’ll be all right, my dearling, won’t you?’ he added, kissing Jeanne ingratiatingly on the cheek. ‘We’ll be back afore curfew.’

‘O’ course I’ll be all right,’ she answered, laughing and giving him a playful push. ‘Get along with you. But don’ come back ’ere drunk.’

‘I’ll see he doesn’t,’ I assured her, grinning. When we were clear of the house, I said, ‘You’ve a treasure there.’

‘Don’ I know it!’ he replied fervently. ‘I told you my luck ’ad turned.’

We set out briskly through a maze of narrow alleyways that had me lost and confused until we finally emerged into Candlewick Street, where the drapers and mercers have their shops and dwellings. The houses there are timber and brick and painted plaster, indicative of their owners’ wealth and standing, but Philip regarded them without envy. He had everything he wanted from life.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked, as we passed several likely looking ale-houses and started down Dowgate Hill.

Philip made no immediate reply. Halfway along, we swung into Elbow Lane and, moments later, having turned the corner which gave it its name, we emerged into Thames Street, still busy and teeming with people. To my left, in the distance, I could see the towers of the Steelyard rising above the surrounding buildings, while opposite lay a network of small streets leading to the wharves, and comprising that part of London known as the Vintry.

‘Where are we going?’ I repeated sharply.

‘A tavern called the Three Tuns,’ Philip answered. ‘Near Three Cranes Quay. I told you, it sells the best Rybole you’re ever likely to come by. C’me on, man! Don’t fall be’ind. It’s full o’ people this time of the evening. We’ll be lucky if we c’n find a seat.’

For a moment my lagging footsteps came to a halt and Philip glanced over his shoulder in surprise and irritation.

‘Come on!’ he reiterated impatiently. ‘B’ Lady, what’s the matter with you? I tell you, this stuff’s special.’

I hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged and quickened my pace. God had caught me in His net again. He had had no intention of allowing me to escape; and I comforted myself with the thought that had I not encountered Philip Lamprey, I should either have remained in, or returned to, London for some other reason. I had as yet no notion what to expect, but I entered the Three Tuns ale-house, reluctantly resigned to my fate.