A Burnable Book: A Novel Part 14

For only now do I see how much greater Sarah's burden was than my own, and what Simon's survival must have cost her. Only now do I see that her turn to G.o.d that night was done out of desperation, not spite or unthinking preference for one child over another. That her prayer for Simon's life was in part a prayer for me, for our family, for the survival of the male heir by which every man judges his worth and ensures his legacy. That in that darkest of places she remained the most loyal of wives, even to the extent of praying to G.o.d, in the only way she knew how, for the survival of her husband's name. That Sarah Gower, unlike her husband, never asked for a child's death.

Now, with her son back in our home and so many past roads converging, I found myself burning to speak to that s.h.i.+mmering woman in the window one last time, and ask for her forgiveness. Not for the way I treated her all those years. Sarah, in her stolid goodness, would not need to be asked for that measure of grace. I had seen it in her eyes as she pa.s.sed, and knew it was mine to take with me to the grave.

The forgiveness I sought was on behalf not of Sarah, but of Simon. For half a lifetime I had blamed my son for the extinguis.h.i.+ng of his sister's life, and for the slow moral decay of my own. All his life Simon Gower had carried that heavy load I had laid on his narrow shoulders so many years ago: the impossible burden of the unchosen child.

Try to love him, John. Just try. I felt the womanly pressure of Sarah's last words, the charge they gave me to live up to some modest ideal. Just try. That, at least, I could do.

Word from James Tewburn arrived from the Guildhall. There was now definitive news on my property matter, and he hoped to deliver it in person. I called for Simon, thinking to bring him along, but he had already left the house. By noon I was on Basinghall Street, then in Guildhall Yard, which was busier than usual that day.

There was a long board bench along the pavers outside Strode's chambers. On it sat a typical collection of Londoners seeking attention: three starved-looking children, their clearly drunk guardian giving them the occasional head slap; a short row of bored apprentices over on legal business from Westminster or the inns, their robes hiked up to their knees to gather air; a young man tapping his foot, likely a ward nearing his majority; and a hollow-eyed man in faded hose clutching a sheaf of doc.u.ments. All had business with the common serjeant's office, and all had arrived before me.

Ignoring the glares, I leaned in. Four of the common clerk's scribes filled the cramped s.p.a.ce, busily filling ledgers and rolls with the city's affairs. Though employed by the Guildhall, these were also scribblers for hire, young fellows with good eyes, men you could rely on to copy out a quire or a book when you needed a quick and steady hand. I had commissioned their services more than once in recent years, so my face was well known around these inky precincts. 'Is Tewburn about?'

The nearest clerk shook his head. 'Been summoned to Westminster.' He turned. 'Chancery, Pinkhurst?' he called to one of his counterparts.

'Chancery, right,' the man called back. 'Expect him back at two or thereabouts. But you'll catch him before then at the Pin-and-Wheel.' Sometimes it seemed that London's clerks and lawmen spent half their lives in taverns.

At Cat Street the way narrowed and bent to such an extent that even an experienced Londoner might find himself lost, though I never minded this part of the city. Nowhere else were so many trades practised, so many goods sold and resold with such spirited rivalry. Silks of Lyon, hanging from poles of polished elm jutting out over the close lane; olives of al-Andalus, displayed in shortened barrels and scooped out with great pomp by a shopkeeper's girl; cinnamon and cloves from who knew where, filling the air with exotic scents and all available at a stone's throw from the knit hose and rough leather work-gloves crafted across the river in Southwark.

Outside a leatherworker's shop, as I stooped to examine a row of tooled belts, I saw Ralph Strode coming up Cat Street from the church of St Lawrence. With him was Sir Michael de la Pole. James Tewburn walked behind them, and as I watched the trio approaching I wondered what would bring the chancellor to these precincts. The baron's finger was aimed at Strode's wide chest as they walked, thrusting sidewards to reinforce his points. All three appeared agitated, Tewburn's face in particular clouded, the corners of his mouth pulled back in what looked almost like physical pain. Not wanting to get caught eavesdropping, and with nowhere to conceal myself, I stepped from behind the display.

'Gower!' Strode called, suddenly all cheer. The chancellor's manner had also transformed, and after my bow arms were grasped all around. Tewburn, said Strode, had good news.

The clerk turned to me with a forced smile. 'Only this morning, Master Gower, I secured the writ of pone necessary to move your property matter into Common Pleas.'

'I'm pleased to hear it,' I said. 'Thank you, James, for taking care of it so quickly.'

'I'd wager your adversary will drop the matter soon.'

'Let's hope so,' I said.

The clerk bowed. Strode dismissed him. Tewburn's face fell again as he turned for the Guildhall, giving the impression of an unresolved conflict. Strode watched Tewburn's back until the man disappeared. 'A peculiar one, our Tewburn,' he said distantly. 'Deficit ambobus qui vult servire duobus.'

'Surely he regards you as his primary master, Ralph,' said the baron.

'Perhaps,' said Strode, his face clouded. 'In any case ...'

'Yes,' said the chancellor with a brisk tone. 'Thanks as always for your counsel, Ralph.'

'At your pleasure, your lords.h.i.+p.'

The baron turned to me, his brow arched. 'I understand your son is back from Italy, Gower. He sounds like a promising young man.'

'Thank you, my lord,' I said, wondering how such information could have reached the chancellor so quickly. The Baron de la Pole was by reputation and action a fiercely independent man, one who had earned the friends.h.i.+p of old King Edward and now spoke for the House of Lords with persuasion and quiet force. It was he who had arranged King Richard's marriage to Anne of Bohemia several years before, and though he came from a lesser family than most of those in his circle, there was no one in the realm who commanded more respect. I decided to be direct. 'You know, my lord, he is eager to find a position in the government perhaps too eager, given that he's just returned.'

'Do send him my way, will you?' said the baron. 'With all the ruckus over levies it would be good to have some steadier hands among the ledgers. The court of Chancery has never been busier.'

I bowed. 'Simon would be delighted to serve in any capacity, my lord. He'll call at your chambers tomorrow.'

The chancellor said his farewells. We watched as two of the baron's guards, who had been shadowing their master as he walked along Cat Street, converged on the chancellor in the middle of the lane and proceeded with him toward the river.

'Simon is back in England?' Strode asked when the baron had left us. 'When did he return?'

'Not a week ago,' I said, still wanting to know the purpose of his colloquy with de la Pole.

Strode glanced down the street. 'The Bent Plough, if you aren't pressed for time, John?'

'If I'm not pressed?'

'Be good to have a sip,' he said. 'Hear your news, your latest connivings.'

Ralph Strode was hardly one to spend the middle of a workday in idle chat. Yet he seemed eager to speak, though I would have to tread lightly. I gestured back toward St Lawrence. 'The chapel would be fine, if you wouldn't mind.' Strode used the chapel of St Eustachius within the church as a secondary chambers of sorts, conducting all kinds of business from the dim s.p.a.ce. If we went to the tavern, as he had suggested, I would get nothing else done that afternoon.

'So be it.' His heavy arm wrapped my shoulders and we made our way into the church. The nave was mostly empty, though the clink of silver from up ahead suggested some lingering business. In the Eustachius chapel I half-sat on one of the misericords, a row of narrow seats that had been moved to the side after their replacement some months ago. Eight of the displaced wooden chairs, grouped in two rows of four, rested vertically along the chapel's north wall, their underseats carved with scenes of rural life: a wife wielding the distaff against her cowering husband, a rotund fellow at the hurdy-gurdy, a ploughman sodomizing a goat.

'You look troubled, John,' he said with no preface.

'Simon's return has me a bit thrown off, I suppose.'

'Not a pure source of joy?'

Strode knew nothing about the accidental death on the wharf. 'For the last two years he's been working in the White Company. The clerk of a mercenary, blood for hire. Not the career I would have chosen for him.'

'I had understood that his position with Hawkwood was more in the clerical line.'

I leaned against the cool wooden back of the misericord. 'Sir John hires out his troops to anyone. His last client before Florence was Clement of Avignon, when he bought himself a papacy. The man led the slaughter of an entire village in the Romagna. To imagine Simon notarizing and sealing bills for such an alliance of convenience not a settling thought.'

'I speak from experience when I say that the servants of great bureaucracies rarely have an effect on their policies. Don't be too hard on him, John.'

'I've already been too soft. When I saw him standing in my hall I wanted to strangle him.' I shook my head. 'To return from Tuscany with no message ahead, no warning?'

'"For youth," as our good friend writes, "shall have neither guide nor straight line".'

'"Nor old age dewed grapes to pluck from the vine",' I replied, completing Chaucer's couplet.

Strode chuckled and sat back. It was time to broach the other subject. 'You know, Ralph, may I draw on your knowledge for a moment? I need the ear of an Oxford master.' Before moving to London and taking up his current office, Strode had enjoyed a long career as a theology fellow at Merton, where his connections were still quite deep.

'You flatter me, John,' he said, looking amused.

'There's a certain author I need to know more about, an ancient writer,' I said. 'You know I'm not boasting when I tell you I'm pretty well read in the authorities. But this man is an utter mystery. I've never heard of him.'

Strode s.h.i.+fted on the misericord. 'What author?'

I watched Strode's eyes. 'His name is Lollius.'

He blinked.

'The name means something to you?'

Strode toyed with a loose b.u.t.ton, his jowls working a tooth. 'You're testing me, I can see it in your eyes. Yet I know you well enough to take no offence. So I'll take your test, then you'll tell me whether I've pa.s.sed it.'

Pleased at the frank reaction, I grasped his near arm. 'You just did, Ralph.'

'Good, then.' He cleared his throat. 'When we met at Westminster, I mentioned a murder. A girl, slain in the Moorfields.'

'I remember.'

'What she took from La Neyte, it's said, was a book. This book contains a number of prophecies written by this Lollius. Twelve of them foretell the deaths of our past kings.'

'And the thirteenth,' I added, 'the death of King Richard.'

Strode studied me. 'You are well informed.'

'Braybrooke.' This prompted a brisk nod. 'The bishop is confounded, has no more idea about Lollius than I do. Without having seen the work I can't speak to its accuracy, of course but I have my suspicions.' I lowered my voice. 'From all I have heard, this Liber de Mortibus Regum Anglorum must be a forgery.'

He frowned. 'A forgery?'

'To write a prophecy about times already past is hardly a challenge,' I said. 'What would prevent a living man from tracing back through our chronicles the means of these royal deaths, and "prophesying" accordingly?'

Strode nodded slowly. 'Then simply writing a new prophecy about King Richard.'

'What better way to trouble the realm than to predict the manner and means and even time of its sovereign's death?'

Strode's eyes caught flecks of candlelight from the chapel's altar. 'I have thought about the name "Lollius" a good deal myself. Is there a taste for Lollius's work in Wycliffe's circles, among these Lollers?'

'Braybrooke thinks so.'

'I'm not surprised, though I've heard nothing of it from my former colleagues in Oxford.'

'I can't help but think I might have better luck than Braybrooke's men in identifying this Lollius. But I need an excellent library, Ralph. A library with the ah, the muscle to bear up under the inquiries of a dogged man.' I thought of Chaucer's account of the Visconti library, the immense holdings that had furnished him with the Italian writings that inspired so much of his current making. 'The problem is, there's little time, and I can't go abroad.'

Strode, always up for an intellectual challenge, adjusted his bulk and sat forward. 'There are libraries aplenty in Oxford, Gower, of more variety than even the great monkish collections at Bury or St Albans. In fact, now that I think on it, there may be a collection of books in Oxford uniquely suited to your purpose.'

'At Merton?'

'No indeed,' Strode said. 'The library I'm thinking about is in an outbuilding behind the Durham grange. A roomful of trunks and crates. I know little about the collection beyond the fact of its existence. Yet I do know its keeper. A cantankerous old man, but we are on friendly terms, and I'd be happy to write you a letter of introduction. The man in Oxford you'll want to see is Peter de Quincey.'

'And he'll admit me, even though I'm not a monk?' Durham was a small Benedictine college, and the order was jealous of its privileges.

Strode shook his jowls. 'Quincey is a lay brother to the order. His late master was Richard Angervyle de Bury.'

'Bishop of Durham?'

'And a great lover of books. You'll have read his Philobiblon, of course.'

I gave a chagrined frown, feeling ignorant as I often did in Strode's presence. 'I haven't, though the t.i.tle intrigues me. Do you own it?'

'I do,' said Strode. 'I'll have my copy sent round to St Mary's in short order. As for the collection, well.' He looked up at the vaults, as if searching the ceiling for the appropriately lofty words. 'The most mysterious collection of books in England, some say, though I've never plumbed it. Few in Oxford have, though it's the subject of endless speculation.'

'And Angervyle himself?' I asked.

'He was quite the figure: Clerk of the Privy Seal, a noted emissary at Avignon before this disastrous break with Rome. Peter de Quincey was his most trusted clerk. He's an old man now, though with a letter from me he should give you a friendly hearing, despite the whiff of suspicion in the Oxford air these days.'

This took us to the subject of rising heresy, and the disturbing news out of Oxford. Strode had mixed feelings on the matter of Wycliffe's emergent sect. 'The condemnation of Wycliffe before his death has divided my colleagues on the faculties of logic and theology,' he said, getting to his feet. 'Every syllogism is now pa.r.s.ed for heretical content. The old freedoms are being threatened.'

He led me out of St Lawrence and on to the street. 'The effect is chilling, Gower. You have to wonder how long it will be before the same scrutiny comes to the inns, and infects how we teach the very laws of England.'

'It surely won't come to that,' I said, considering this dire possibility. I struggled to match his pace. 'Would you recommend against this visit to Oxford, then? This Lollius could be anyone.'

'One has to start somewhere,' said Strode. 'Take our students, who must entertain absurdities of the most outrageous sort when they're first learning to theologize. "Suppose G.o.d revealed Christ not to be His Son. What then would be the authority of the sacrament?" "Suppose it were discovered that the faculty of intellection resides in the stomach. Could a hungry man think well?" Such inquiries aren't threatening. They merely pretend to question our beliefs precisely in order to strengthen them. Consider the nature of the irrelevant proposition. Such a proposition must be greeted with scepticism, and yet we cannot discard it entirely, can we?'

I hesitated, not sure where Strode was taking me. 'I suppose not.'

'Suppositions are exactly the point in the case of an irrelevant proposition. If the proposition proves useless, we simply ignore it. If, on the other hand, it proves itself worthy to think with, why, we should do everything we can to exploit its use. There's hardly heresy in that.' We had reached the porch at the Guildhall, where Strode indicated that he would leave me for an appointment with the mayor. 'It's a lesson,' he said, 'we would all do well to remember. In dialectic, even what seem the most irrelevant propositions can lead us to the truth.'

'Or truths,' I muttered, feeling glum.

Strode paused on the first step, towering over me. 'Tell that to Braybrooke, Gower. The Bishop of London should cultivate a taste for tolerance to match his enthusiasm for gardening.' He took the shallow steps in one move, his long robes fluttering in his wake.

Back through Guildhall Yard. A flash of colour before the eastern gate, and a few scattered laughs. On approaching I saw the cause: a bit of street theatre of the sort often seen in the city's larger gathering places. With Strode's concerns still preoccupying me, I paused, distractedly, to watch.

The mimes were performing a play about the first King Edward. Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots. The company had reached the deathbed scene, performed with the king prostrate on a mat, his lords gathered round. The speaker stepped to the front to interpret the scene for the crowd.

'As he lingers his last, with lords all about, By six-less-two swords he shall say as he dies, "My heart you must heft toward heaven on earth, To Jerusalem journey, joy to enjoin, And my bones against Bruce to be borne into war, My gravestone to graveth: Leave Gaveston gone."'

The mime playing Longshanks put a hand to his forehead, chortled out a last breath, and expired, to the warm applause of the circle of Londoners gathered around the actors. He leapt to his feet, the mimes collected small coins in their caps, and the scene broke up as quickly as it had gathered, the company heading for St Paul's or the bridge with the heat of the day.

My own skin had gone cold. By six-less-two swords he shall say as he dies. Seven of swords, sovereign of swords, prince of plums, three of thistles and now six-less-two swords, another numbered symbol echoing with the voice of the De Mortibus prophecies. Even this rough street spectacle of Longshanks's death had drawn its language from the book, which now seemed to be everywhere I turned. A street preacher, the bishop and his friars, the common serjeant, and now the mimes of London, all speaking the morbid idiom of Lollius, the whisper of kingly deaths on their lips.

It was at that moment that I started imagining the prophecies as a kind of pestilence, raising boils on the vulnerable body of the realm. Despite the laughter of these Londoners, the image stayed with me the rest of that day, as the book spread its ill portents through the city and the realm.

Men of our time have a peculiar fascination with a form of story. It is the story of raptus, of ravir, of raviss.e.m.e.nt. It has various names, in the Moorish tongue the muwashshah, in Spanish the serranilla, most commonly in French the pastourelle.

A simple story, always the same. A young shepherdess strolls in a field or on a road. A knight on horseback swoops in and seeks to seduce her, beguiling her with poems, or clever words, or promises of fame. She resists his advances, resists yet more, until eventually his desire goads him to force himself upon her, destroying her virtue. There are variations here and there: the shepherdess is carried off by an evil knight or a murderous giant, so her gallant rescuer saves her life even as he sullies her flesh. Often there is a rival involved, and one knight must defeat another to win the lady.

Yet however the matter falls out, the young lady remains silent about her rape, her tongue as useless as Philomel's after it was severed by Tereus. So acceptable a part of lovemaking is this vile act that even Father Andreas, in his Art of Courtly Love, enjoins n.o.ble men to delight in it without thought: 'Remember to praise them lavishly,' he writes, 'and should you find a suitable spot you should not delay in taking what you seek, gaining it by rough embraces.'

Yet where is the woman's sovereignty, her choice in the matter? The woman never writes her own story. She is rather like the lion in Aesop's little fable, who sees a painting of another lion being strangled by a man. But who paints the lion? Tell me, who?

He who paints the lion claims to know the lion, and with his brush he may colour whatever lies he wishes. The power of the teller, you see, is inestimable.

And so it is with women in these pastourelles, these tales of rural virgins who know not their own desire well enough to keep from resisting the rapes they must suffer with all the inevitability of death. I have heard them in the langue d'oil, I have heard them in the langue d'oc, in the tongue of Juan Ruiz, in the tongue of Dante, and translated from the tongue of the Jews. In every human language, it seems, men have depicted the joys of ravishment, and never with consequence for the ravisher. Just one time I would like to hear a version with a righteous end, one in which the perpetrator- -I flee my matter.

One morning, as the girl sat with her mother in their bedchamber, learning to pin out a broad st.i.tch on her frame, there came a pounding at the outer door. They heard voices, then one of the servingwomen entered.

'The prince requests an audience, my lady.'

'Very well.' The lady gathered her embroidery and placed it in a basket. 'I shall receive him in the salon.'