The Invention of Fire. Bruce Holsinger
‘And more rebellion?’
He blinked. ‘If not from the Commons then from the Lords, I fear.’
He looked at Rune, who nodded my way, signalling the end of our appointment. I rose. The earl’s face sagged as he received my bow then he looked aside, and I left his chambers sour-stomached and perturbed.
Rune walked with me to the great hall. We stood at the end of the passage. A droning bailiff descanted from Common Pleas.
I was about to take my leave of the chancellor’s secretary when Rune grasped my elbow, closed in. ‘Snell has isolated himself down there, Gower,’ he said, his breath slightly foul on my cheek. ‘This is more than bureaucratic arrogance. The man thinks himself a kind of god, running the armoury like some new Olympus. And he never comes out. Nor does he respond to letters, and our messengers have been beaten, thrashed, threatened with knives and swords. All we get up here are bills and rumours.’
‘The Tower is less than three miles from where we stand,’ I pointed out. ‘Surely his lordship the earl or any other of the higher lords could take a company down there with orders from King Richard and simply turn the man out.’
‘Surely,’ he responded with a note of disdain, ‘you cannot think we haven’t considered it, plotted it, mapped it all out? The truth is everyone is so terrified of the man, no one wants to confront him – not with Gaunt and our most tactical military men out of the country, and France massing for an invasion. Snell has himself and his guns and his men bulwarked all along the northern walls, practically daring us to come in and uproot him. A dragon, sitting on his hoard. The castle that is supposed to be guarding our city has instead become its greatest vulnerability.’
‘So what do you suggest, Rune?’ I said, hiding my surprise at this show of royal weakness. ‘Should we commission an actual dragon or two to fire the place? Or hire a mercenary army from Italy, perhaps Hawkwood and his company?’
He turned his face to me. It was stony, free of passion. ‘Jest if you wish, Gower. But there is more at risk here than you can possibly know. We need every ally we can maintain to help keep the Tower in line. And on the subject of allies, what of Brembre?’
I answered him cautiously. ‘The mayor is showing some reluctance to pursue the Walbrook murders.’
I watched Rune’s eyes. They narrowed at the edges.
‘That is disturbing news, Gower. Shall I confront him myself?’
Rune could sense my hesitation. Though the chancellor and the mayor were both in the king’s faction, they had very different interests at stake, and I hardly wished to unsettle relations between the two powerful men. Never stir waters that need no stirring, as my father liked to say. ‘Nicholas Brembre is no weak-kneed baron, eager to protect an unspotted reputation,’ I said. ‘Give me time to lift a few leaves, Rune. If I need another hand pushing on this I will let you and the earl know.’
‘Good then,’ he said, looking somewhat mollified. Rune palmed my elbow and shared one last thought. ‘You will be doing the lord chancellor a fair favour if you can find a way to rattle Snell. Pull him from his moorings down there, put things right. Discover who committed this atrocity, Gower, and the extent of Snell’s involvement. It would be a great help at Parliament time should things up here grow … dangerous.’
So there it was. With one finger in a hornet’s nest I was about to shove in an arm, and damn the thousand stings.
Stephen Marsh peered down at the swirled width of mud far below, the very bottom of the wide ditch separating the Iron Gate from the old Well Tower, which stood as the first built sentry to the great complex sprawling to the north and west of him. At Stephen’s insistence his entry to the Tower late that afternoon would be from the east rather than from the heavily trafficked entrance off Tower Street, always crowded with Londoners seeking alms, favour, and news. One of Snell’s men, after meeting him at the stairs below St Katharine’s wharf, had led him up and over this, the narrowest of passages, to the curtain wall, where he now stood alone, waiting for his audience with the king’s armourer. It was a glorious day, crisp and clear, and as he smelled the autumn air his gaze wandered toward the river. At the far end of the ditch, where the moat fosses met the Thames, a brave clutch of morning bathers sprawled on the wide quay, daring the guard to descend and try to take them. Beyond the swimmers two royal balingers stood out on the river, flashing colourful banners from yardarms and mastheads.
‘This way.’
Two new guards, one beckoning for him to follow. They walked north, away from the river, over the walls and through several towers. The whole perimeter bristled with men and spears. The sentryway then took them east before their descent through the Bowyer Tower just down from St Peter ad Vincula, the parish church that lay within the Tower grounds. The guards led him to that end of the wide yard, currently occupied with a hobelar company. Yorkshiremen, judging from the banner held by one of the frontmost riders, and though Stephen had always appreciated the vastness of the Tower, he was surprised to see such a quantity of horses at work among the towers and walls.
The guards left him in the yard and disappeared through a low door in one of the wide, squat buildings set against the inner wall. Marsh turned to watch the light cavalry at their martial labour. Champing and impatient in the mellow sun, the horses were agile, well muscled, light on their feet, their riders showing off for the king’s archers watching from a side rank. As London had armed itself over the preceding months it had pressed whole hosts of brigades from the shires, regional forces brought in to augment the defences of the city and the Tower. A mongrel army, was the talk, with little overall discipline, reliant on these pockets of ferocity and skill to engage an enemy of sprawling numbers and unknown strength.
‘Forward!’ the captain shouted. His board-straight back was to Stephen, his gaze sweeping the company, advancing in three unequal ranks. Four in front, then eight, then twelve. A wedge, as Stephen saw it, the first meant to penetrate the enemy’s ranks, with the subsequent lines pouring in behind. The captain backed his horse as he surveyed the moving lines, barking directions here and there.
‘Marsh.’
Stephen turned to see William Snell standing calmly behind him. He performed a half-bow that was answered by a slight nod from the armourer, who assessed him through narrowed eyes, birdlike and quick. Snell was a short man yet taut and muscled, seemingly compacted from the same iron and rock making up the engines and walls around them. As in the tavern a few nights before he was dressed with little regard to fashion or station, with a laceless and undyed coat thrown over his shoulders and fastened with a belt of twisted wool. The sleeves ended at his elbows in ragged hems, showing strong forearms that ended in thick wrists and fine-boned but coarsened hands.
He caught Stephen looking at his attire. ‘I am a working man, Marsh, like you and your men, not some ink-stained scrivener polishing his arse all day in the chancery. Come along.’
Turning past the church, Snell took him along a path between the edge of the yard and the low buildings against the north wall, which were joined by a cloister-like covered walkway built of rough beams and boards. Once inside the airy passage Snell led them from storeroom to storeroom, pausing at every turn to allow Stephen to marvel at the quantities of arms kept by the privy wardrobe. Whole chambers were given over to infantry armour and helms, all glistening with a pungent grease to ward off moisture and rust. Plated shields were stacked by the dozens from end to end and from floor to ceiling, their straps and braces removed for ease of storage and stuffed in bulging sacks suspended from the beam ceiling. The next room was a forest of whittled wood and low skeins of hempstring for the making of bows. Another consisted entirely of crossbow bolts. These were wrapped by the score in leather and thongs, the bundles stacked to the ceiling in the hundreds. Four, perhaps five thousand bolts, by Stephen’s estimation,