A Burnable Book (9 page)

Chapter xi

Basinghaw Street, Ward of Basinghaw

I
n London, if you die of unnatural causes, your corpse will be inspected not by the coroner himself but by his deputy, who gathers witnesses, orders the beadle to summon the jury from around the ward, and performs the inquest at the site of demise. The procedures are well established, and in theory should function smoothly.

Things are somewhat messier in practice. Though he works on behalf of the city, the coroner reports to the king’s chamberlain, not to the mayor—a bureaucratic peculiarity I have found immensely useful over the years. Officials of city and crown can always be stirred against one another, and divided loyalties are to my vocation what a hammer is to a smith’s. Since the last year of Edward’s reign, the commons had been complaining regularly in Parliament about the coroner’s office and the mischief this arcane arrangement could cause. To have a city official unbeholden to the mayor of London? A scandal, and an opportunity.

As usual Thomas Tyle, king’s coroner, was absent when I arrived at his chambers on Wednesday of Easter week. The location spoke of the office’s tenuous relation to the city government: just outside Guildhall Yard but within shouting distance of the mayor’s chambers, and the common serjeant’s, though I had sent a boy ahead to confirm the common serjeant’s absence from the precincts. Seeing me here would raise uncomfortable questions in Ralph Strode’s mind, and I needed him on my side.

Two clerks, facing each other over a double-sided desk. Neither looked up.

“Is Symkok about?”

The one to the left raised his jaw slightly, eyes still on his work. “He’s in there.” The back room, which I’d visited more than once. It was a dark space despite the bright day, the shutters closed nearly to. I found Nicholas Symkok, chief clerk to the subcoroner, hunched over the end of a table, a ledger opened before him. A crooked finger followed a column downward. The curve of his back seemed part of the furniture, a bony arc some carpenter hadn’t thought to trim.

Nick Symkok was my first. It still startles me to think of how natural it all seemed when it began. Just a few years after the great dying, half of London beneath the soil, the city abuzz with news of the Oxford riots. That summer I found myself performing occasional clerical work in the Exchequer under the chancellor’s remembrancer. Though I hardly needed the money, my father had promised my temporary services to the treasurer, to whom he owed a favor.

It was during the Michaelmas audit when one of our counters came to me with a messy sheaf of returns from Warwick’s manors near Coventry. It seemed a sheriff had been drastically undercounting the number of tenants in his hundred, with the resulting decline in revenues from that part of the earl’s demesne. I received permission from the remembrancer to take a discreet trip out to the Midlands to investigate. A careful comparison with the original returns soon showed that nothing was amiss in the earl’s record keeping. The guilty party, I realized, had to be one of our own.

A few days of digging back in Westminster turned up Nicholas Symkok, an auditor responsible for the embezzlement of nearly twenty pounds from the king’s treasury over the last several years. Not only that, but Symkok had been using these enormous sums to purchase the flesh of the boy choristers singing for a prominent chantry attached to St. Paul’s.

When I confronted Symkok he melted in front of me, begging me to say nothing to the chancellor or the remembrancers—asking me to save his life. I agreed, on one condition. Symkok, I told him, would hereafter provide me any and all unusual information that came across his desk: the shady business of earls, the questionable holdings of barons, the conniving of knights. He was to digest all of it, slipping me anything of possible interest. I paid him, though just enough to keep him dangling on my hook. For several years after I left the Exchequer, Symkok was my main conduit, giving me my first clear look at the private lives of the lords of the realm.

Those years taught me much about the peculiar arts of
chantage,
and it was from the steady flow of copied documents in Symkok’s hand that my small reserve of knowledge gradually expanded to encompass the vast store of information it would become. The arrangement seemed to crush Symkok, though, and he was never the same man. His ambitions stifled, he had spent the last twenty years floating through a series of clerical positions in the London and Westminster bureaucracies, all of them happily useful to my own purposes, if not to his career. At present he worked for the coroner of London, counting corpses.

I watched him until he felt my presence. He turned slowly on his bench. His eyes widened. “Gower.”

“Hello, Nick.”

“What brings you here?”

“Death, of course.”

“Whose?”

“A girl’s.”

“Lots of dead girls in London.”

“Not like this one.”

“What’s her name?”

“Medusa? Persephone?” I said wryly.

“Name unknown, then?”

“To me it is.”

“And when did she die?”

“A week ago, perhaps more.”

“How?”

“Clubbed, or stabbed,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

“Murder, then.”

“Yes.”

“Where did she die?”

“The Moorfields.”

It was as if a flame blew out in his eyes. His face went flat, expressionless.

“She was killed in the Moorfields, two weeks ago or more,” I repeated. “I take it you know the circumstances?”

Symkok looked down at the ledger, his jaw rigid. “Can’t help you, Gower. Not on this one.”

A dog barked from Guildhall gate, a muffled sound that carried through the outer room. I let the silence linger. “But I think you can, Nick.”

He shifted on his bench. A vacant stare toward the shutters, and finally that reliable nod. From a cupboard at his feet he removed a wooden box and placed it on the table, then reached inside and withdrew a heavy roll. He spread it across the surface, the worn wooden handles gleaming with the polish of many hands, until he found the entry in question.

“Be quick about it.” He left the room, with the coroner’s roll opened on the table. In this document would be transcribed the original report, which was written out at the scene of the inquest. The roll, then, was the official copy of all the coroner’s investigations of unnatural deaths in London during the term of his appointment. A rich and morbid archive, I had found over the years. I read the inquest report.

Friday the eve of Lady Day, a
o
8 Richard II, it happened that a certain woman, name unknown, lay dead of a death other than her rightful death beside a certain low wood building in the Moorfields, in the rent of the holy priory of St. Bethlem. On hearing this, the coroner and the sheriffs proceeded thither, and having summoned good men of various wards—viz. James Barkelay, Will Wenters, Ralph Turk, Thomas de Redeford, mercer, Simon de Saint Johan of Cornhull, draper, Laurence Sely, Simon Pulham, skinner, John Lemman &c.—they diligently inquired how it happened. The jurors say that on some unknown day before said Friday said woman was beaten in the face and struck on the head and bloodied, feloniously murdered by an unknown assailant. When asked who found the dead body, they say a certain Adam de Hoyne, carter, did raise the hue and cry upon discovering the lady in her natural state. Upon inquiring further they did learn that no witnesses were found to be present at the said woman’s death, nor did they find that anyone about knew her name, nor her station, nor her land of origin.

The corpse viewed &c.

Clothing appraised at 2s.

The surrounding inquests contained nothing out of the ordinary. I read the report again, memorizing certain details. The body had been discovered some days after the murder, it appeared. The woman had been beaten, her death apparently caused by a blow to the skull. She had been found “in her natural state,” or unclothed. No witnesses, no identifying belongings. The appraisal of her clothing was high, though not unusually so.

In the outer chamber Symkok was conferring with his fellow clerks. When I emerged he gestured me outside. We reached the middle of Cat Street before he opened his mouth. “So?”

“Seems simple enough,” I said.

“Murder usually is, in my experience.”

“Tyle himself held the inquest?”

He nodded.

“Bit unusual.”

Symkok shrugged. “Though not unprecedented. When an earl dies on us, or a knight—”

“A nameless girl, stripped to the smooth? Hardly an earl, Nick.”

He wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“Tell me, Nick.”

He straightened his back, his chin high. “Nothing more to tell, Gower.”

We stood for a time, Symkok squirming in his discomfort.

“Do some digging, then,” I quietly said. A cart passed behind him, a low groan from its wheels. “I need to know why Tyle took this one. Who told him to do the inquest himself rather than fob it off, like he usually does? And what did he find?”

He swallowed, his lined neck rippling with the effort.

“Be discreet about it, Nick.”

He swallowed again. “Always am, Gower, at least where you’re concerned.”

I left him there, gnawing at his past.

B
ack at St. Mary Overey a letter awaited me in the hall. I took it up from the tray where Will Cooper would leave all my correspondence, expecting a bill from a local merchant, or a report from the bailiff of one of my estates. I was surprised at the letter’s weight until I turned it over and saw the heavy seal. The wax bore the impress of Robert Braybrooke, bishop of London.

Rather unusual, to send a sealed missive across the river when the bishop’s messenger could have said a simple word to my servant. After a moment’s hesitation I broke the wax. The note was short and to the point, and in his chief secretary’s hand. The lord bishop of London requested my presence at Fulham Palace this Monday, at the hour of Tierce, upon his return from a visitation up north. The letter left the subject of the appointment unmentioned. London and I had had our moments, though all of that was far in the past, and I wondered what the bishop could possibly want with me. I thought about it for a while, ticking off a mental list of current complexities but coming up with nothing aside from Katherine Swynford’s brief mention of Braybrooke at La Neyte, and his distress over the book sought by Chaucer.

Whatever its subject, the bishop’s was an invitation I was in no position to decline. In my study I scribbled a reply at the foot of the letter, melted some wax, and left the missive in the tray for Will, who would arrange its delivery for that afternoon. Five days, then I would know more.

Chapter xii

Cutter Lane, Southwark

T
he knife landed in muscle with a wet spit. A second blade quickly followed, nearly touching the first. The carcass swayed, and Gerald Rykener clapped his hands roughly on his tunic. “Have that, Tom.”

The other apprentice stepped up to the line, a blade pressed between his fingers. His wrist bent, his arm rose, and with a flash of metal the knife was buried in the flank just inches from Gerald’s. The second landed a half foot higher on the beef, missing its target. “
Damn
it to queynting hell,” he said, then with a scowl handed Gerald a coin.

Eleanor watched her brother pocket it, and for a moment the simple joy of victory on his face turned him back into the sweet boy she remembered. Then Gerald saw her.

“Ah, by St. George. Swerving again,” he muttered to his companion, his contempt for her undisguised.

The other apprentice looked over to where she stood by the fence. “What do you think, Gerald? Your brother a mare or a gelding?”

“A mare with a cock?” Gerald taunted. “A gelding with a queynt?”

“Either way she-he’s got enough riders to keep him-her filled with oats ’n’ mash till the trumpet sounds, from what I hear.”

“Aye that,” said Gerald, ignoring her as his fellow turned for the barn. Gerald wiped a long crimson smear across his cheek, then from beneath the carcass removed a bucket of blood. He took it to a heated cauldron at the far end of the yard. Gerald was fourteen, yet already moved with a tradesman’s confidence that would have been endearing if he hadn’t turned so foul. His apron was cut small in the style of the craft.
We butchers pride ourselves on leaving our aprons white,
he’d explained in those days when he cared. Now it was stained a brownish red, his loose breeches slimed with gore.

When he returned to the fence she saw the latest bruises had faded. His lip, too, had mostly healed. He was close, so she went for his neck, the line of faded scar tissue running from his jaw to his nape. He knocked her hand back but she reached for his head and felt a new knot. Size of a peach pit. “What’s that about?”

He ducked away. “He swings the mallet around, you know, got those teeth on it. It’s wood, though, so. But Grimes’d never hit me with the metal one. Not ever.”

“Not yet,” she said. “And when he does you’ll be dead as that beef side hanging behind you.” Why Gerald took his master’s part so often she couldn’t reckon, though Nathan Grimes had been his effective father for going on three years, and children could develop peculiar loyalties.

He looked at her purse. She handed him the coins she’d come to deliver. “It’s hardly much. A shilling and five. Keep it somewhere, use it only in your most needful moments. Not for candied gingers on the bridge, now.” She half-turned to go, but something in his eyes held her back. “What is it?” Trying to sound impatient: she needed to be tough with him, tough as he was with her, or he’d never make it to his majority. “What is it, Gerald?”

He snarled and spat in the filthy straw. “No matter. Go away, Edgar.”

As her brother returned to his work Eleanor watched him sadly, marveling at how much the boy had changed. They had been separated since their mother’s death, when Gerald was seven, Eleanor thirteen and starting to discover her second life. A man in body, but in soul a man and a woman both, a predicament that made her wardship a domestic hell: a wife who tormented her with the hardest household labor, a husband who wouldn’t leave her alone once he found out what she was. She had taken to the streets at sixteen. Gerald, though, had seemed to be getting by, floating from guardian to guardian, some good, some bad, yet all carefully regulated by the city, with appearances before the mayor himself once a year. Eleanor managed to see him nearly every month as they grew up. Finally, at his eleventh birthday, the office of the common serjeant arranged for his apprenticeship to a freeman of London and master butcher, and all appeared set.

Then, not six months after his apprenticeship began, the city passed the butchery laws, and Gerald’s master moved his shop across the river to Southwark to avoid the fines and fees. There not only butchers but guardians operated on their own authority, with little legal oversight from the town, and no common serjeant to take the orphans’ part. “Never heard no law against a butcher moving shop to Southwark,” Grimes had said when Eleanor confronted him. He turned instantly cruel upon the move across the Thames: Gerald was on his own there, surrounded by meat yet starved for bread, beaten regularly and with no recourse. Eleanor had tried to intervene, but the laws of London, it was said, have no house in Southwark.

Soon enough Gerald was turning into one of them, these Southwark meaters, a nasty bunch of Cutter Lane thugs without guild or code, sneaking rotten flesh into the markets and shops across the river. The Worshipful Company of Butchers, London’s legitimate craft, had been trying for years to quash the flow of bad flesh into the city to no avail, and now that Gerald had been caught up in their illegal trade he, too, was slipping down the path to a hanging. It often seemed to Eleanor that Gerald’s entire self had changed, as if the Holy Ghost had sucked out his soul and the devil had blown in another.

“Best be off,” she said. He shrugged indifferently. From behind her, a whisper of straw. A pig, she thought. Gerald’s back was to her as he scraped at a pile of hardened dung. “May be a stretch before I can get out here again.” She recalled the beadle’s questions, the threats, and thought of Agnes. Two sparrows perched on the side of the stall flitted off. Gerald started to turn. “There’s been some trouble on the lane, and I might have to be—” He faced her now. His eyes widened.

Eleanor’s neck snapped back, her hood wrenched violently downward by an unseen hand. She was spun around into the face of Nathan Grimes, taking in his ale-breath. “Trouble on Gropecunt Lane? For a lovely boy princess like yourself?”

“You let my brother go, now!” Gerald screamed, backing away. “You just let him go, Master Grimes!”

Grimes was a stout, boarlike man, with well-muscled arms that flexed as he held her. “I’ll let it go all right.” With a hard push against her head, he shoved Eleanor to the stall floor. She backed up against the boards, then came to her feet, her breath shallow.

Grimes gestured toward Gerald. “Get inside, boy.” Gerald stayed where he was. Grimes raised a hand. “
Inside,
boy.” Gerald looked at Eleanor. She gave him a reassuring nod. He backed away, pushed open the pen gate, and walked reluctantly toward the house. The butcher leaned over Eleanor, toying with Gerald’s knives.

“I know what you be, Edgar Rykener,” said Grimes, with a small lift of his chin. “No place for swervers in a respectable butcher’s shop, now. Let your brother learn his craft in peace.”

“Peace?” said Eleanor under her breath; then, more loudly, “He getting any peace by
your
hand?”

“Getting fed, isn’t he?” Grimes retorted. “Getting schooled in hogs and calves, learning the way of the blade, got some thatch over his head. More’n you can say for lots of boys his age, in London or not.”

“And getting a mallet to the skull in the bargain.”

Grimes spat in the dirt. “Boy needs to learn respect he wants to be a freeman like me.”

“You took an oath, Master Grimes,” she seethed. “In the mayor’s presence himself you swore to God you’d protect my brother, keep him from harm. Now you’d as lief kill him.”

Grimes lifted a cleaver, fingered its edge. “Never cut up a maudlyn in all my day.” He looked over at the beef carcass. “Can’t imagine there’s much trouble to it, though.” He smiled. “Now get back to London, sweetmeats.”

She edged out of the stall with a final glance at Gerald. He stood in the doorway to the apprentices’ shack, his face so much older than it should have looked. Once she was gone, Grimes would paint it good. The burden of it all settled on her: a murder, a missing friend, a brother liable to be brained at any moment and clearly troubled by something he wouldn’t reveal.

Yet there was one man who might be capable of putting things right for Gerald, Eleanor speculated as she walked up toward the bridge, get him out of all of this. A kind man, from all she’d heard. A man with the authority to remove her brother from his Southwark dungeon and put him with a kinder master in London. As she passed back over the bridge she thought about this man, knowing, at least, where to find him; trusting, for she had to, in his kindness.