A Burnable Book. Bruce Holsinger

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      On the Bishop’s front steps sat a withered old maudlyn, barely there beneath her shift and smock. St Cath was her name, Edgar recalled, still alive after half a century on her back. A dozen cats wandered in and out of the half-opened door, pressing against St Cath’s side or darting past while she ignored them.

      ‘Is Bess about?’ Edgar asked her. The old woman said nothing. ‘Bess Waller, be she about?’

      St Cath shifted against the step. ‘Bess Waller,’ she said, as if speaking the name of a stranger. Her face, crossed by a thousand lines, registered no emotion.

      Edgar tapped his foot.

      St Cath spat. ‘The matter of it?’

      ‘Not your concern.’

      ‘Nor be Bess Waller none of yours.’

      Edgar stood on his toes and peered into the doorway.

      ‘Not a peek more,’ said the woman, pushing away one of the cats and struggling to stand, ‘but you proffer your pennies like the fine gentlemen of the parish.’

      He snorted. ‘For the love of St Thomas, woman, all I’m about here is looking out for Bess’s daughter.’

      ‘Millicent?’ she said quickly. ‘Hunting Millicent Fonteyn in the stews?’ St Cath shook her bent frame and wheezed, wagged her small head. ‘Won’t find that knight’s trull in Southwark. Best look up Cornhull for Millicent. Duchess Millicent by now, for all we knows over here.’

      Edgar thought over the woman’s response. Something about it didn’t sit right. ‘It’s not Millicent I’m about. It’s Agnes.’

      ‘Agnes?’

      Not this again. ‘Yes, Agnes, you withered hag, sometime maud of the Bishop. Is Agnes Fonteyn about, or’d your witchcraft turn her into one of these cats?’

      St Cath glared at her. ‘Agnes hasn’t been about since Epiphany time.’

      ‘That’s right.’ Bess Waller, bawd of the Pricking Bishop, leaned against the doorsill looking Edgar over. Despite two daughters and years of swyving, Bess had angles to her face that could only be boasted by the mother of Agnes Fonteyn; also the same lithe form, the same golden hair still radiant as she neared fifty. ‘You’re El—Edgar Rykener, are you not?’

      ‘I am,’ said Edgar. They’d met last year, soon after Agnes had left the Southwark stews and joined Joan Rugg’s crew in Cheap Ward. Bess Waller had come after her younger daughter with a club while the bawd was away, trying to beat Agnes back to the Bishop, pleading the strength of family and roots. But Agnes had stuck to Gropecunt Lane, and now she was pure London.

      ‘As I was telling your lovely serjeant-of-the-gate here, I need to have a word with Agnes. She about?’

      ‘She’s not,’ said Bess. ‘We miss her round the stews though, that right, St Cath?’

      The old woman nodded. ‘Miss her all right.’

      ‘Agnes had the cock lining up at the door,’ said Bess. ‘Something in the sweet air off her, that way she got with her head. That toss, you know?’ She mimicked it perfectly. ‘And always had since she’s a girl. Sweet piece of sweetmeats, that one. Still sucking it off up Cheapside?’

      Edgar rested a foot on the step, stretched his tired thighs. ‘Our bawd’s Joan Rugg.’

      ‘Joan Rugg!’ Bess cackled. ‘Taught that fat hen everything she knows about the cock. How to fondle it like one of St Cath’s kittens here, how to clamp it atween her thighs for the while of a paternoster. The gentle cock’s your false idol, Joan, I tell her, and treating it right will bring you all the riches you can want. A fast learner, by St Bride. Just like Agnes.’

      And what a homily to motherhood Agnes had in you, Edgar thought. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Not a sight of her, then?’

      Bess wiped her nose. ‘Why you seeking out my Agnes?’

      ‘Had some little business to pestle with her.’

      ‘Business.’

      ‘Thought she might’ve stepped over the river. If not, then …’

      ‘Then …?’ Bess raised her eyebrows.

      Edgar took a step back, his gaze moving up the façade to the second-storey windows, one of them wedged open. A giggle, a slap, a moan.

      Bess clucked. ‘Best you be off, pretty boy. Got some gentlemen coming by next bell. Don’t want my jakes inconvenienced.’

      ‘I’m thinking the same,’ said Edgar, also thinking there was more going on here than Bess Waller would reveal. He gave the bawd a meaningful look. ‘You tell Agnes her Edgar come by, though.’

      ‘Sure sure,’ said Bess. ‘Though could be Easter, could be All Souls all I know. But I’ll tell her you were by. You give Joanie a Jesu palm on the arse from her Bess, hear?’

      Edgar turned and walked down Rose Alley to the bankside. There he paused and looked back at the Pricking Bishop. Bess Waller’s arms were in the air, her face beet-red as she let St Cath have it, for what he didn’t know.

      On the bridge he purchased a farthingloaf and pinched off pieces of coarse bread, washing them down with some warmed beer. As he crossed the Thames he thought of the peculiar twinge of suspicion he’d felt on first telling St Cath why he was there. What was it about the old woman’s words that had unsettled him?

      Millicent.

      Bess Waller’s older daughter, Millicent Fonteyn, lived in a decent house along Cornhull, had some money and wanted more. She’d had nothing to do with her mother nor her sister for a long time. While Agnes had only recently left her mother’s stewhouse for the streets of London, Millicent Fonteyn was no more than a distant memory on Rose Alley. Yet the moment Edgar had asked St Cath whether Bess Waller’s daughter was about, the old woman had responded swift as you please.

       Millicent? Hunting Millicent Fonteyn in the stews?

      Which meant what? Which meant St Cath, flustered at Edgar’s prodding, was covering for Agnes. He nodded, sure of it now. Agnes has been at the Pricking Bishop, he thought; may be there still, the little tart. And who, he wondered for the hundredth time, was that poor dead girl on the moor?

       NINE

       Westminster

      Two appointments set for that morning, the first with the wife of a disgruntled notary to the king’s secretary with a copy of a royal writ to sell. We met in an alley above the stone wharf. She had brought a maidservant along for appearance’s sake, and perhaps to impress me. As the servant dawdled at the end of the alley she sidled up close, wanting to flirt. She was an attractive woman, with soft curls peeking from beneath a loosened СКАЧАТЬ