A Burnable Book. Bruce Holsinger

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       FOUR

       Cornhull, Ward of Broad Street

      ‘Please put it on my tally, Master Talbot.’ Millicent Fonteyn nodded at the spicerer, willing him to wrap her purchases before his wife came to the shopfront. Between them sat four equal measures of prunes, almonds, currants, and dates. ‘Oh, and a measure of the apricots,’ she said, unable to stop herself.

      George Lawler reached for the jar, shook his head as he tonged them out. He twined the lot together. ‘Last time, Mistress Fonteyn.’

      ‘You’re kind, Master Lawler. We’ll settle after Easter, if that suits. Now—’

      ‘Oh, that suits us fine, m’lady, just fine.’ Jane Lawler pushed through the alley door. She was a spindly woman, with dark brows set close and a small nose she fingered at will. ‘Fine to settle after Michaelmas, fine to settle after All Saints, and, by Loy’s bones, it’ll be fine to settle after Easter. Why, it’s only coin, isn’t that right, Georgie? And if we lose it all, why, we’ll get the Worshipful Company of Grocers to provide out of the common money, aye?’

      Lawler sheepishly handed Millicent the bundle.

      ‘Why, that’s it, George!’ his wife went on. ‘Let’s pack up some raisins for her ladyship. Saffron, too, cypress root, nutmeg – why, let’s crate it all for the virtuous madam and have done with our livelihood.’

      Millicent, shamefaced, turned to leave, Mistress Lawler tagging her heels. ‘After Easter, she says. After Easter!’

      Millicent was on the street.

      ‘As if the Resurrection of our Lord’ll be enough to put a single farthing in her graspy little palm.’ Millicent took a sharp right out of the shop, her shoulders stooped with humiliation. ‘You walk ’neath this eave to pay your debt, Millicent Fonteyn, nor never walk ’neath it again, nor any grocer’s eave of Cornhull!’

      Londoners turned their heads, cruel questions in their glances. Millicent kicked through a cluster of hens by the well before St Benet Fink, fluff and feathers scattering with her haste. She stopped on Broad Street, calming herself with her back on the rough wood of a horsepost. The damp air settled around her, drawing the moisture from her skin. By the time she pushed herself off the post her dress was soaked through, with dark stains at her middle and beneath her arms.

      Millicent’s house fronted the longest row of tailors’ shops in London. For two years now the Cornhull house had been hers, the annual lease financed by Sir Humphrey’s lust and largesse, and the dwelling had matched her aspirations in every detail: a keyed door, two floors, a glazed window at the front. She loved the walk along West Cheap and through the Poultry, her back to St Paul’s as she strolled along the widest street in London, with its double gutters and raked pavers. A singlewoman without profession, kept by a wealthy man for his weekly dalliances. There were far worse fates for the elder daughter of a Southwark maudlyn.

      Or so she had once thought. Two pounds five was the happy sum she had possessed on the day of Sir Humphrey ap-Roger’s death. Now it was nearly gone, with no provision made in the knight’s will for her keep. His homely widow had got every penny of his fortune and every hand’s width of his lands, leaving nothing to keep the woman he had truly loved free of penury. Millicent picked a spiced apricot out of the grocer’s package, chewing but not tasting it as she approached her home. She removed the chained key from her neck.

      ‘Why there you are.’

      Millicent tilted her forehead against the door, sighed, then put on her best smile as she turned. Denise Haveryng, proprietress of her own late husband’s thriving shop and a boastful freewoman of the city, wandered over with a tray of flans. ‘Dame Haveryng.’

      ‘You’ve been to Lawler’s, I see.’ She inspected the opened package in Millicent’s hands, clearly disapproving of the indulgence. The weeds on this widow were dark only in colour: gauze sleeves flounced at her wrists, a belted sash with a leather buckle that almost glistened at her waist, and the damask lappet on her brow beneath a short-coned hat would not have looked out of place on an earl’s wife.

      Millicent, though not hungry, reached for a flancake.

      ‘You’ve had visitors,’ Dame Haveryng began. ‘Three of them.’

      ‘Ah?’ Millicent opened her door. Denise herded her inside.

      ‘Been like the Whitsunday procession. First there was Master Pratt, third time this month.’

      The house’s owner, clerk to the merchant taylors’ guild, after her for weeks over the lease.

      ‘Very well.’ Millicent removed her hood, once a subtle latticed affair trimmed in silk, now fading and patched.

      ‘And Jacob. To see about back wages, the poor dear.’

      Millicent winced at the reminder. Even her former servants were her creditors now. ‘And the third?’

      ‘Your sister.’

      Millicent froze.

      ‘Takes after you, though dresses a bit downward from your station.’ Denise paused in her glee. ‘Wasn’t aware you had a sister, dear.’

      ‘We – we are not close.’ Their last meeting, nearly two years before, had been a chance encounter on the wharfage, Agnes waiting to board a common wherry, Millicent and Sir Humphrey passing by to hire a private barge. They had exchanged quick smiles; Millicent remembered Agnes’s hand jumping from her side, though she had settled for a furtive nod before turning away.

      Ignoring the flan tray, Millicent pushed Denise from her house and shut the door. Out back she took the stairs two at a time. The door to the rear bedchamber was ajar. She entered to see her sister huddled against the wall, clutching a bolster, wrapped in a coverlet.

      ‘What are you doing in my house, Agnes?’

      Her sister looked dreadful, her skin ashen, her hair a tangled mess. Her eyes would not meet Millicent’s until she had walked over to the bed and sat, the old straw pallet giving beneath her weight. Agnes looked up at her sister, her eyes darkened with sleeplessness and, Millicent thought, fear. ‘I’d nowhere else to go, Mil.’

      ‘Not to our mother’s?’

      ‘Said I’d made my choice, now I’m on my own, like I wanted it.’

      ‘Why do you need anyone’s help?’

      ‘“Though faun escape the falcon’s claws and crochet cut its snare, when father, son, and ghost we sing, of city’s blade beware.”’

      ‘Are you sick, Ag? You’re talking no sense.’

      ‘She gave it me before she died. That’s what she yelled.’

      ‘Our mother has died?’

      ‘“Doovay leebro”, he said to her. “Doovay leebro”, like he was singing.’

      ‘Who СКАЧАТЬ