A Burnable Book. Bruce Holsinger

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СКАЧАТЬ I was avoiding him.

      ‘Lurking at the fringes, I see,’ Pinchbeak said to me, and I smiled at the ribbing. My ambivalent ties to the legal world were a matter of occasional amusement to Pinchbeak, newly a member of the Order of the Coif, one of the most powerful lawmen in the realm and now a royal nod away from appointment to justice of the King’s Bench.

      ‘You are one to talk.’ I gestured across the lane at the last of the crowd straggling into the hall. ‘Late, as always.’

      ‘Ah, but I have the excuse of a wound,’ he said, though something in his eyes belied his easy manner. A compact and wiry man, Pinchbeak had taken an arrow in his left thigh at Poitiers yet stood and fought for hours after, an incident that had rendered him both lame and legendary. When he gave the gold and ascended to serjeant not a soul in the realm begrudged him the honour. Yet his face that evening was troubled, and he seemed about to say something more when a small group of other serjeants-at-law surrounded him, hustling him gaily into the throng.

      Chaucer watched him go in, then turned to me, his face lined with concern. ‘Nothing?’

      ‘Not really.’

      ‘What did Swynford say?’

      ‘Very little,’ I said, deciding to mention nothing about the book’s theft, nor about Swynford’s peculiar suggestion regarding its prophetic nature. I needed to learn more first, and I was not in the business of giving away information, even to an intimate friend. ‘She doesn’t have it, if that’s what you want to know. She’ll do some discreet asking around.’

      ‘I see,’ said Chaucer, looking at me dubiously.

      ‘I’ve only started searching, Geoffrey,’ I said, wanting to give him something. ‘London is a big place. A book could be anywhere.’

      He gave me a tense nod.

      ‘Just one question.’ I pulled him out of the human flow. His eyes darted to the hall door, then back to the lane as I leaned into him, my mouth inches from his ear. ‘What do you think this book is, my friend? What do you know about it that you haven’t told me?’

      I felt his breath on my cheek. ‘Less every day, it seems.’

      ‘And you’re aware you’re not the only one looking for it?’

      ‘I suspect not,’ he said. ‘But I need you to find it first, John.’

      I backed away, found his eyes. ‘You know me, know my skills. If it’s there to be found I’ll find it.’

      His shoulders rose slightly, and he grasped my arm before turning for the feast. We parted at the arched doorway into the great hall, where hundreds of lawmen were already at table, ladling soup, picking flesh from lavish trays of sauced cod and porpoise. At the front of the space stood the pageant wagon, covered in a cloth that obscured everything but the wheels. As I found a seat the men around a far table lifted their glasses in song. The crowd joined in, the din rising to the rafters and the darkened spaces high above.

       Twice two full quarts we lawyers need,

       To fill a legal jug.

       With one, we’re gay, with two, we teach,

       With three, we prophesy.

       And four good quarts it takes to bind

       Legal senses, legal tongues,

       A lawyer’s hands and mind.

      Cups and flagons clashed on the last word, drink sloshed, the sobriety of Lent set aside for an evening. The clamour stirred a familiar longing. Though I had spent two formative years at the Temple, my father had not allowed me to remain in the profession. For an esquire’s son the practical application of law was regarded in those days as a rather low trade. Had I been born ten years later I might well have been sitting that night with Pinchbeak and the serjeants instead of on that crowded bench, shrouded in ignorance.

      The line of nervous apprentices formed for the tap. As the first hopeful presented himself, the presiding master leaned forward and plucked at his gown, the mark of unsuitability. The young man turned away, his eyes already moist at the prospect of another year before his next chance at admittance. Other unlucky souls followed him out over the next little while until the successful class stood at the front of the hall to great applause. A few pompous speeches, then, with cake and ale served out, the main event began.

      Up stood Stephen FitzWilliams, master of the utter barristers. Delighting in his role, he pushed himself on to the pageant wagon, his legs swinging freely between the wheels, his gown hanging loosely on a gaunt frame. He spread his hands above his head, gathering silence.

      ‘Gentlemen of the law,’ he intoned. ‘I bid you fair evening, and good fare made of our moot!’

      ‘Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!’ the crowd replied.

      ‘As your new-appointed liege, your sovereign, your emperor and king—’

      Someone threw a fish spine.

      ‘Leave that off!’ He loudly cleared his throat. ‘It has fallen to me to determine our evening’s weighty matter, to be mooted before you.’

      ‘Huzzah!’

      ‘Last year on a similar occasion we mooted some obscure clauses of the Statute of Merton, did we not?’

      ‘We did!’

      ‘Our disputations involved the writ of redisseisin. In the Latin of our beloved Parliament, Et inde convicti fuerint et cetera et cetera. Which is glossed, in our Frenchy cant, Ceo serra entendu en le breve de redisseisin vous vous cadew hahoo haloo and thus and so. Shall we revisit this well-trodden ground, as dry as pestled bone?’

      ‘Nay!’

      ‘Perhaps we should dabble in the assize of novel disseisin.’

      ‘Nay!’

      ‘In default of a tenant en le taile?’

      ‘Nay!’

      ‘In the wrongful appropriation by a tortious patron?’

      ‘Nay!’

      ‘In theft?’

      ‘Nay!’

      ‘In misprision?’

      ‘Nay!’

      ‘In the law of bankruptcy?’

      ‘Nay!’

      ‘Well then, you leave me no choice!’ A master of delivery, FitzWilliams had brought me and everyone else in the great hall to the edges of our seats.

      ‘Our subject for this year’s moots shall be a matter of universal and urgent concern.’ He leaned forward, an air of suspense in his thrown whisper. ‘Methinks the matter of our March moot, my matriculating СКАЧАТЬ