The Invention of Fire. Bruce Holsinger

      The gates of London are so many mouths of hell, Chaucer once observed, swallowing the sinful by the dozen, commingling them in the rich urban gruel of waste, crime, lust, and vice that flows down every lane. Yet each gate possesses a character and history uniquely its own: its own guards, residents, and prisoners, its own parish obligations, the particular customs and rituals that define every entrance to the inner wards as a small world unto itself. To know the gates of London is to know the truest pathways to the city’s soul.

      In those middle years of King Richard’s reign the city gates were all connected by a series of towers, sentry walks, and repair scaffolds that together traced a wandering crescent around the lofty stone walls and provided the most efficient means of getting from gate to gate. You couldn’t stroll along the inner wall down below given all the clearing and destruction, while skirting the outer circumference would land you in waste ditches and subject you to the streams of refuse and trash – some foul, some quite dangerous – hurled from above.

      On that windy day following the examination in St Bart’s churchyard I had determined to visit every gate in turn, worming beaks with coins as I went. If sixteen men could die in London, and not one of them be known to Ralph Strode, to the mayor and his men, to the king’s coroner and his, nor even to one of the dozen freemen of the city gathered for the inquest, they must have come from outside the walls. London is a large place though not exceedingly large, and to conceive of so many Londoners unrecognized and unsought by loved ones seemed an impossibility. Somewhere along the walls was a guard or a warden who had seen something, or knew someone who had.

      My day would begin at Aldgate, where the walls separated the parish of St Katharine Cree from St Botolph-without, and end at Ludgate, where Peter Norris slumped in the pillory, claiming knowledge of a witness. I left Southwark early in the day to cross the bridge, angling from the bankside up to Aldgate Street, which I took to the edge of town. A stiff September wind burned at my eyes, creating especially fierce gusts along the broadening way before the gate, where thousands of colourful shapes whorled in a circling gale. A dozen children jumped about beneath them. The dancing shapes were cloth, I realized as I reached out to pluck one from the air. A sack of fabric scraps, spilled before some tailor’s shop and now dancing with the winds. Then a stiffer gust, and the spiral of colour was gone as quickly as it had arisen, the children chasing the shapes away to the west. Another beautiful, meaningless thing I would never see again.

      Unlike the high and ugly bulk of Aldgate, which loomed above me now, a begrimed surface of stone and stupidity that seemed to attract more featherbrained schemes for enlargement and improvement than its brothers. As a result Aldgate had suffered its share of minor collapses over the years, as the collective folly of builders and masons led to ever more perilous attempts to reshape the fabric. A broad length of sailcloth hung down to cover a pitted scar in the stonework on the north tower, while above a crane arm jutted awkwardly from a high opening, its purpose to pulley stones to the upper reaches, though it looked to have gone unused for months.

      Halfway up, where one set of stairs forked to the gate’s north tower, the other to a set of apartments in the south, I had to pause, scarcely believing my ears.

      ‘Sell this one – no, this one, and leave the others for Philippa to barter away. She’s hardly in a position to object. Perhaps her slutting sister can help her.’

      A familiar voice, though tightened with uncommon anger. Reversing direction, I climbed up the right stair and made my way along the groaning walkway to an unassuming door, the main entrance to the series of rooms making up the small apartment atop the gate. For twelve years the house in the south tower had been the home of Geoffrey Chaucer, my oldest friend, though I thought he had left London some weeks before.

      The door stood open, wedged with a chipped brick, and in the front chamber Chaucer was stooped over, tussling with an array of silver trinkets and goblets spilling out of a wood box. Crates, a stack of trunks, rolls of twine: the modest house was in a tremendous disarray, made all the more dire by the continual gusts blowing in from the door and scattering dust and invading leaves about the rooms. Despite the piles of belongings the place felt empty and bare, the only light coming from narrow slits low along the walls.

      I stepped inside, further darkening the place. Chaucer turned. His scowl softened at the sight of me. A sad smile, and he tilted his head. ‘Mon ami,’ he said, coming to his full height. We embraced in the middle of the low space, surrounded by the detritus of his Aldgate life. Two servants brought in pieces of furniture from the back room, set them on the floor, returned for a next load.

      We held each other at arm’s length. I searched his eyes. ‘You’re in London.’ A statement, also a question.

      ‘I am not.’ He went to the door, peered out. He turned back to me. ‘At least as far as Philippa is concerned. If you see her, you never saw me, yes?’

      ‘Fine fine,’ I said, amused, though also a bit melancholy about Chaucer’s continuing estrangement from a woman I admired so deeply. ‘You’re packing up then?’

      ‘I must surrender the apartment and Aldgate altogether.’ He said it with a careless air that I could tell was put on. ‘You haven’t heard? The common council wants me out. It seems that Richard Forster will take up residence here in a few weeks. Everything must go, to be sold or carted out to Greenwich.’ A village several miles from the city, and site of Chaucer’s new residence while performing his duties as justice of the peace in Kent. ‘Books, plate, books, furniture, books – oh, and also the books.’

      Chaucer’s small apartment above Aldgate had once been stuffed with volumes. The four locked trunks along the far wall must have held dozens of manuscripts between them. It struck me how many times I had visited the Aldgate house over the years, for poetical