A Burnable Book. Bruce Holsinger

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      ‘Here, sir,’ she said, offering it to me. The original, or so her husband claimed, had been sent under the king’s own signet, a sign of Richard’s increasing tendency to bypass set procedures in the administration of the realm. I read the hurried copy carefully, scanning for that useful detail. The king to Sir Richard de Brompton, greeting. I command you to do full right without delay … A knight of Shropshire, a mercer of Shrewsbury, and a debt of nearly two hundred pounds. Yet I knew Brompton, a notorious debtor I’d had occasion to pluck a few years before. This was nothing new.

      I shook my head. ‘Sorry.’

      She looked at me, a promise in her moist eyes. ‘Not even a shilling, Master Gower?’

      I suppressed a shudder. ‘Nor a farthing, I’m afraid. But do tell your husband to be on the lookout for this sort of thing. You never can tell what might rise to the top. He knows how to reach me.’

      She mumbled something, tightened her bonnet, then slunk off toward the palace with her maidservant. I followed them at a discreet distance and watched as they merged into the crowd around the south doors.

      In the great hall I looked about for Ralph Strode, my second appointment in Westminster that morning, but when I reached our meeting place before Common Pleas at the north end a sudden silence swept the chamber. King Richard, in from Eltham Palace for the day, showing himself off. I went to my knee like every other man in the massive space, watching as the king came to the centre of the hall, paused with a practised deliberation, then gestured for all to rise and go about their business, though as always in his presence the talk was subdued. He wore long robes cut in the French fashion, a wide collar squeezing his thin neck. His fair hair, shoulder length and uncovered, swept from side to side as he spoke to his minions and those seeking a word. The king’s impromptu entries into Westminster Hall were of a piece with his increasing love of ceremony, these portentous shows of authority that brought him in ritual touch with his subjects as often as he liked. If he caught your eye on one of these occasions you took a knee, no questions asked.

      Yet there was a strange gentleness in the young king’s bearing, a warmth of gesture and look I had never felt from his father, whose princely arrogance had surpassed even Gaunt’s among old King Edward’s sons. Though barely into his nineteenth year, this man had real reverence for the crown and its regal history, in ample evidence around the space. King Richard had recently commissioned statues of England’s past kings to be installed around the hall, with his own likeness culminating the series. The Confessor already stood in splendour against the south wall, his robes and crown gilded luxuriously, and a limner at work on his feet.

      I leaned unobtrusively against one of the hall’s great pillars, watching the king, when his head turned in my direction. His eyes found mine, and sparkled with what looked like affection. It took me aback: since his coronation I’d had perhaps three brief interactions with the king, none of them remarkable in any way. Surprised by this sliver of royal attention, I went to my knee and held the pose until King Richard released me with a slight, boyish smile and a swivel of his chin. It was a moment of genuine connection I would hold in my mind in the weeks ahead, as I learned of our intertwined fates.

      ‘Quite a mess up there.’ Ralph Strode had come up behind me. He grasped my arm. We gazed together into the vaults, the moist flakes of sawdust descending in thin streams, stirred up by work on a platform high above. For years there had been talk of an entire new roof, though for now all was timber and shingle, the ceiling playing a constant game of catch-up against rain and birds, bats and wind.

      King Richard left the hall, the accustomed din rising again in his wake. As I turned to walk with Strode I was struck by his appearance. The common serjeant’s skin was deeply veined, his eyes rheumy, his skin puffy and pink. He barked a wheezing cough into his sleeve.

      ‘You’re the busiest man in London, Ralph. I appreciate the time.’

      He shook his head. ‘For you I’d renegotiate the date of Easter with the Greeks!’

      We strolled along the booths as I told him why I was there. For months I had been tangled up over my lands east of Southwark. A wealthy merchant, building a house on a neighbouring lot, had sued for ownership, claiming that certain acreage fell within the boundaries of his property. Though the case hardly threatened my livelihood, it was requiring more of my time than it deserved, and I could find nothing to use against the man. Strode had just the sort of urban pull to finesse a transfer of jurisdiction from the bishop’s court across the river. He was one of the few men in London’s upper bureaucracy I could honestly call a friend, and he owed me a stack of favours as high as the north tower. ‘The short of it, Ralph, is that I want to get this moved to Westminster, into Common Pleas.’

      ‘You’ll need a writ of pone, then,’ Strode said.

      ‘There may be some complications.’

      He asked about the deeds, security, documentation, clarifying several matters. At the end he shook his head dismissively. ‘None of this should present a problem for writ of pone. I’ll put James Tewburn on it when I get back to the Guildhall.’

      I inclined my head. ‘You’re a big gem, Ralph.’

      ‘Believe me, it will be my most pleasant task of the week, and if I can use it to avoid other entanglements …’ His stride stiffened a bit, a hint of trouble in his eyes. ‘Especially this Bethlem mess.’

      ‘Oh?’ He was turned away and didn’t see my reaction.

      ‘The killing up there,’ he went on. ‘Quite a foul business.’

      ‘So I understand.’

      ‘Didn’t help to have the whole thing played by those student hoodlums the other night. For days I’ve heard clusters of barristers bragging on the affair: the first moot ever busted up by the serjeants! The mayor’s courts at the Guildhall are buzzing with it, then I come out here and the murder and its mooting are the talk of Westminster.’

      There did seem to be a certain thickness in the air, several animated conversations nearby clearly occupied with more than the usual legal matter. Michael de la Pole, whom I had last seen at La Neyte, stood in the middle of one of them. The chancellor gave me a slight nod when I caught his eye. ‘Has the killer been apprehended?’ I asked Strode.

      ‘No, nor the victim’s identity discovered. No name, no associates, no claimant to her body.’ His voice lowered to a near-whisper. ‘She was last seen alive at La Neyte. Now it’s rumoured she was an agent of Valois.’

      ‘A spy? Here in England?’ I thought back to that moment with Tugg at Newgate, which was supposedly filled with French spies.

      ‘So it seems.’

      ‘Why do they think she’s French?’

      He shrugged. ‘Her clothing, for one. And those who heard her speak claimed her accent smacked of Provence. Avignon, perhaps.’ A word with grim associations: the schism of the church, a holy empire divided against itself, and France’s ally against the true pope in Rome.

      Our circles had brought us through each arcade twice, and we now approached the opened doors to the north porch, looking out on the yard. Strode gazed across the line of tents pitched along the hedges. ‘War’s coming, John. You can see it in the king’s face. All this business with the Scots, the truce nearly at an end.’ The royal delegation had recently left for negotiations to extend the peace, though no one expected anything to come of them. СКАЧАТЬ