London (69 page)

From her first husband she had inherited the George tavern in Southwark which for fifteen years now she had run herself. She was a member of the Brewers Guild.

Such arrangements were not uncommon in London. Widows often had to continue the family business; many a little backstreet brewhouse was run by a woman. There were women members of several guilds and many female apprentices in the crafts where weaving or sewing was involved. Normally, if a widow married a man with a different trade, she was supposed to give up her own. But Dame Barnikel had announced she would continue – and none of the brewers had dared to argue.

Amy took no interest in the business; she preferred to help in the house; and if her mother suggested she try a craft of her own, she would quietly shake her head and say: “I just want to get married.” As for Carpenter – every time Dame Barnikel saw the little craftsman with his bandy legs, his head too big for his body, his large round face and solemn eyes, she would mutter: “Dear God he’s dull.” Which was exactly, she guessed, why Amy liked him.

“You’d do much better with young Ducket,” she said. She had taken a liking to her husband’s apprentice. He might be a funny-looking fellow and a foundling, but she admired his cheerful spirit. The girl seemed to like him too, but so far had not turned her gaze from the gloomy craftsman. “Anyway,” she concluded, “the real problem is much worse than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can’t you see, girl? The poor fellow’s moonstruck. He’s not right in the head. You’d be a laughing stock.”

At which poor Amy burst into tears and fled from the room, while Dame Barnikel tried to decide whether she had actually meant what she had said or not.

James Bull, at the age of eighteen, was a credit to his race. Tall, sturdy, fair-haired, broad-faced, his Saxon ancestors would have recognized him as one of their own immediately. In all his dealings, his staring blue eyes told you at once that he was absolutely honest. Not only did he never break his word, he never even thought of doing so. Indeed, if any adjective in the English language summed him up it was: forthright.

In the modest ironmonger’s business which the family still ran, everybody swore by him. His parents relied upon him, his young brothers and sisters all looked up to him; and if, for three generations, the business had never produced more than enough to feed the family, they all felt confident that James would lead them to greater things. “Everybody trusts him,” his mother would explain with legitimate pride.

Even so, his parents had some misgivings about his plan to visit his cousin Gilbert Bull. It was over eighty years since the family of ironmongers had encountered the rich Bulls of Bocton, and humiliation seemed likely. James’s plan to transform the family fortunes might excite his brothers and sisters, but his mild-mannered father was not so sure.

James, however, was confident. “He can’t possibly mind,” he told his father, “when he sees that I’m honest.”

And so it was, on a bright spring morning, that he set out for the big house on London Bridge.

As Gilbert Bull made his way back from Westminster he felt a sense of heaviness.

The long reign of Edward III was drawing to its close, and, sadly, it was not a dignified ending. Where were the triumphs of yesteryear? All whittled away. The French had once again managed to claw back nearly all the territory the Black Prince had won. The most recent English campaign had been an expensive waste of time and the Black Prince himself, having fallen sick on campaign, had died a broken man in England that very summer. As for the old king, in his dotage now, he had taken up with a young mistress, Alice Perrers, who in the manner of such women had infuriated the judges by interfering with their work and the merchants by spending their tax money on herself.

But worst of all, for Bull at least, was the Parliament which had just ended.

The practice of calling parliaments, used so cunningly by Edward I, had become more or less an institution during the long reign of his grandson Edward III. It had also become customary for these great assemblies to split into three parts. The clergy would hold their own convocation in one place; the king and his extended council of barons, the Parliament proper, would usually meet in the Painted Chamber of Westminster Palace; and the knights of the shires and burghers, rather patronizingly called the Commons, would gather until sent for in the octagonal Chapter House of Westminster Abbey.

The Commons had also subtly changed. The previous century, the burghers from the towns had only been summoned there occasionally, when needed; but now they were a regular fixture. At least seventy-five boroughs usually sent men, who sometimes outnumbered the knights. London generally sent four, Southwark another two. And in recent years, a further sophistication had evolved: it was expensive to send a man to Westminster, where he might have to stay for weeks. So some boroughs began deputing London merchants to represent them. “After all,” they could truthfully say, “these fellows are merchants. They know what we want.” Many a borough, therefore, instead of its own timid provincials, was represented by a London man. Rich men; men with connections amongst the nobility; men with centuries of London independence behind them. Men like Gilbert Bull. That year he had represented a borough in the West Country.

Yet he was not glad he had done so. For if historians have called the Parliament of 1376 the Good Parliament, they have done so with hindsight. To those who took part, it was a melancholy affair.

Everybody was angry. The government had lost a war and was looking for money; the Church, which owned a third of England, was already being pressed for contributions by a needy Pope.

Even before the chancellor’s speech, Bull had realized the session would be difficult. It was usual for some members to bring petitions with them, for redress of grievances, but this year everybody seemed to be carrying a scroll of parchment. As they crowded into the Chapter House and sat, tightly packed round the walls, there was an air of expectancy. They took an oath: “Our discussions shall be private, so that every man feels free to speak his mind.” But Bull was still astonished when, as soon as this was done, an ordinary country knight strode to the lectern in the middle and calmly declared: “Gentlemen, the money we voted last time has been squandered. Until we are given a proper accounting, I think it’s time we refused to pay.”

The ailing king, half paralysed by a stroke, had not come to the council chamber, and so it was John of Gaunt who received the Commons men in the council the next day. Normally only two or three of the Commons men stood humbly before the king and barons. Yet this time, not only had they chosen a speaker to represent them, but the entire Commons insisted on standing with him in a solid and threatening phalanx in the Painted Chamber. Worse yet: addressing Gaunt in the formal Norman French that such occasions still required, the Speaker coolly informed him that the Commons was not satisfied with the handling of funds. “In short, some of the king’s friends and ministers have misused them, sire, and we demand that they be brought to account.” Until they were, the Speaker said, the Commons refused even to discuss whether they would grant the king any money at all. It was not a petition. It was a demand. It was an impertinence. It was unthinkable.

But the king was weak and the humble Commons were going to have their day.

They went on for weeks. The Commons accused ministers, who were found guilty and dismissed. They even – ultimate impertinence – had the poor old king’s mistress, who had certainly lined her pockets, sent away. This process of accusation by the Commons at once acquired a name. In Norman French it was
ampeschement
: it meant embarrassment. Spoken in English it became: impeachment.

The Commons got everything they wished. And though John of Gaunt secretly vowed to get even with them, and in particular cursed the London contingent, whom he rightly held responsible, the Parliament finally closed without granting more than half the taxes needed.

So another landmark in English constitutional history was made. Just as London had won her mayor and the barons their charter, now the humble Commons had imposed their Speaker and the practice of impeachment. In this way the first miles down the long road towards a later democracy were paved, not with ideals, but with opportunism and a series of medieval tax revolts.

Yet as he went home on the last day of the Good Parliament, Bull felt nothing but depression. The sight of the old king being savaged by the Commons men had only reminded him of his own mortality. It was also the spirit of the thing he did not like. It was against the proper order of the universe. So he was not in a good temper when he reached his home to find James Bull awaiting him.

Young James was forthright.

“So are you suggesting,” the rich merchant replied, “that if you marry my only daughter and I die, this would ensure my fortune staying in the family? Your name being Bull, that is.”

The honest young man nodded.

“I thought it was a good idea, sir,” he said.

“But what,” Bull enquired, “if I were to have a son? Or do you not think that likely?”

James looked at him with a faintly puzzled expression.

“Well I shouldn’t think it’s likely now, sir, is it?” he said.

There had been three occasions, since Tiffany was born, when Bull had thought he might have an heir. His wife, who was often poorly, had always miscarried. But he still secretly hoped for a son, and it was still, in theory, not too late. He looked at the frank young man with no pleasure, therefore, and paused, gazing out over the Thames for nearly a minute before replying.

“I’m grateful to you for bearing me in mind,” he said quietly. “And should I need you, I will send for you. Good day.”

Some time later, as his family crowded round him to ask how the interview had gone, young James Bull, his honest blue eyes only slightly puzzled, replied:

“I’m not sure. But I think it went rather well.”

Geoffrey Ducket liked his master Fleming and the grocery business. Chaucer had persuaded Bull to settle a small amount of money on the boy, which he promised to give him when he had completed his apprenticeship. “Then,” Chaucer explained, “Fleming will either let you take over, or you can start up on your own.”

It was only recently that the ancient Company of Pepperers, who dealt in spices, had merged with a group of general wholesalers who, since they sold in gross quantities, were known as the “grossers”. The new Grocers Guild was large and powerful. They and the Fishmongers vied with the Wool and Cloth Guilds for the city’s greatest offices. But of all its many members, few were more modest than John Fleming.

He had a little stall in the West Cheap, by Honey Lane, though he kept his goods in a storehouse behind the George. Every morning he and Ducket would leave Southwark and push their brightly painted handcart across London Bridge. And when the bell of Mary-le-Bow signalled the end of trading, they would return and Ducket would lock their modest takings in a little strongbox he kept under the floor of the store.

Ducket loved the store. Before long he could go round it with his eyes shut and, opening any sack or box, tell by the smell what it contained. There was the sweet smell of nutmeg, the rich aroma of cinnamon. There were saffron and cloves, sage, rosemary, garlic and thyme. There were hazelnuts and walnuts, chestnuts in season, there was salt from the salt beds on the east coast, dried fruit from Kent. And of course, there were the little sacks of black peppercorns, the most valuable commodity in the grocer’s trade. “All the way from the Orient, by way of Venice,” Fleming would say. “This is the grocer’s gold dust, young Geoffrey Ducket. Purest gold.” And his eyes would take on a faraway look.

Fleming was scrupulous. He would weigh every item with the utmost care on the little scales he kept on the stall. “I’ve never been taken to the Pie-Powder court in my life,” he would say of the little court where the city authorities dealt with complaints in the market each day. He had never sold short measure by so much as a clove.

Once, soon after Ducket’s apprenticeship began, a fellow was found guilty of selling stale fish. He and his master watched as he was led along the Cheap on a horse with two bailiffs carrying a basket of fish behind him. At the end of the Poultry, opposite Cornhill, stood the wooden stocks. A heavy wooden yoke was put across the man’s neck and then, as he stood immobilized, they burned the fish under his nose and left him there for an hour before releasing him. “It doesn’t seem so terrible, does it?” Ducket remarked. But Fleming gazed at him with his thin, sad face and shook his head.

“Think of the shame,” he said. And then, very quietly: “If they’d done that to me, I would have died.”

Ducket soon discovered another peculiarity of his master. Though Fleming did not possess any books of his own, and would anyway have struggled with the Latin or French in which they were all written, he had a fascination with all forms of learning and would seek out those who had it and do his best to engage them in conversation. “Time spent with a man of learning is never wasted,” he would say earnestly. And if Ducket’s godfather Chaucer were mentioned, he would declare: “There’s a distinguished man. Go to see him whenever you can.”

The George was one of over a dozen inns on the main street of Southwark known as the Borough. It lay on the east side near the Tabard. And though the bishop’s brothels were not far away on Bankside, the George, like the other inns, was a respectable house patronized by people coming up to London on business and by pilgrims about to take the ancient Kent road to Rochester and Canterbury. Behind the tavern was a small brewery. Over the main door, as was the custom at most inns, there was a stout pole, seven feet long, on which hung a small bush. Inside was a large hall where, at night, poorer travellers would sleep; around a little courtyard on three floors were chambers for the better off. In the evenings the place was always busy, with trestle tables set up in the hall.

Over the George, Dame Barnikel splendidly presided. In the mornings, she might be seen emerging cheerfully from the little brewery where, like most tavern-keepers, she brewed her own ale. In the evenings she sat by the bar where ale and wine were served. Behind the bar but always within reach was a heavy oak club in case of trouble-makers. On the bar before her, a huge and ancient Toby jug in the shape of an alderman. While she acted as master of ceremonies, Amy helped serve the guests; but Dame Barnikel never allowed Fleming to do anything. “He has his business and I have mine,” she would explain.