A Burnable Book. Bruce Holsinger

       FIVE

       St Laurence Lane, Ward of Cheap

      Joan Rugg slapped the constable’s wrist. ‘Not so pinchy there!’ she cackled. The constable gave the bawd a hard shake as he led her toward the beadle’s shop, where two men bearing heavy sticks stood to the sides of the door. Joan goosed them in the ribs. ‘Valued jakes of the ward, these ones,’ she teased. ‘My best regulars.’ The men traded denials.

      Eleanor Rykener entered the shop behind them, a heady mix of ash and smelt in the air. An image of St Dunstan hung over the door out to the smithy in back, while wooden shelves at various heights displayed the goldsmith’s newest wares. Gleaming plate, necklaces with inlaid gemstones, silver spoons laid out on silk. On the facing side were objects brought in for repair: a bishop’s crozier, a set of clasps, embossed cabinet panels, a rich man’s wine jug. That jug alone would buy my cock and arse for a year, Eleanor mused. Joan, she could see, was having similar thoughts about the rings.

      Two apprentices tooled a brace of gold plates. For a while, as the constables shuffled their feet, the maudlyns sat and listened to the tap tap tap, the rough joining of common tools and precious metal, until the guildsman came in from the back. Eleanor looked up and into the nose of Richard Bickle, beadle of Cheap Ward and richest goldsmith north of Cheapside. The eyes and ears of the ward, a man who knew everything about anyone worth knowing anything about. Past master of the city’s guild, Bickle was wrapped in a gown of red wool trimmed in sable, his lean face atop a neck chafed by a recent shave. ‘Ladies.’

      ‘Master Bickle,’ said Joan.

      ‘Let’s cut through the elegances.’ Bickle’s voice was clipped, severe. He rubbed his palms. ‘Two of your unspotted virgins been seen, Joan, heading into the Moorfields, coming out all spooked. Now we got a dead lady found not a hundred yards from where they come out the moor.’

      Eleanor toed at a gap in the rushes.

      ‘Hope you’ll see it as we do, Joan. Girl’s killed in one ward, possible witnesses whoring it up in another. City politics be a tricky business.’ He spread a paternal smile. ‘But no need to take this to the Guildhall, yeah? Avoid complications. Wouldn’t want to shut down Gropecunt Lane again, send you and the Blessed Sisters of St Pox down Southwark way for trimming your hoods in budge.’

      ‘Course not,’ said Joan, wagging her head. ‘Who’s the dead girl?’

      Bickle shrugged. ‘Not for the likes of us to know. Some intimate connection to mustard, is all I’m told.’

      ‘French girl then?’

      ‘Looks like to the coroner,’ said Bickle. ‘Some fancy lady taken to the Moorfields, brained in the prime of life, left for the crows. Sad story, but not ours.’

      ‘Right right.’ Joan fingered her chin. ‘And why they pulling your poor knob into this mess, Master Bickle?’

      ‘Pressure from above and beside: the alderman, getting it from the mayor, getting it from the bishop, getting it from the – ah, St Tom only knows. I do as I’m told.’

      Joan turned to Eleanor. ‘What about it, El? Tell the little man what he needs to know.’

      Bickle bristled at little man, but held his peace. He turned to Eleanor. ‘Good then. Firstwise, what were you doing out on the Moorfields that time of day? Bell of five, was it?’

      ‘Thereabouts,’ said Eleanor, in no hurry to help.

      ‘What brought you to the moor? Strange place for a pair of mauds to go a-wandering.’

      She shrugged. ‘Sometimes the men like it, that little shed out there near Bethlem. They can be – free with themselves.’

      ‘Lets them scream for the teat, like the hungry babes they be,’ Joan put in helpfully.

      Bickle’s scowl softened. ‘Haven’t changed a bit, Joan Rugg.’ She gave him a girlish grin. He turned back to Eleanor. ‘So you were heading out that way with some jakes, you and—’

      ‘Mary Potts,’ said Joan.

      ‘You and this Mary Potts, right, taking some fellows out there, was it?’

      Eleanor shook her head. ‘We were looking for somebody.’

      ‘Looking for somebody. And who were you looking for?’

      Eleanor said nothing.

      ‘And who were you looking for then?’

      ‘Tell him, Eleanor,’ said Joan, her voice hardening. ‘You tell him or I will myself, girl.’

      Eleanor hesitated, feeling protective of Agnes.

      He edged closer. ‘This isn’t only about a murder, now. This young lady went and stole something from the very Duke of Lancaster before she got herself killed. A book, is what it was. A valuable book. And from what I seem to be hearing from your pretty little mouth, could be your somebody went and stole it from her, yeah? Went and stole it from that girl, then killed her, yeah?’ Bickle grasped her chin and turned her face to his. There was a plug of mint in his lip, his breath strangely pleasant, though his hands smelled of metal.

      Eleanor tried to shake her head. ‘I know less than nothing about the Duke of Lancaster, nor about some old book.’

      ‘Could be, could be,’ said Bickle. ‘But I suspect your somebody might.’

      ‘I – I couldn’t say naught about that, Master Bickle.’

      ‘You couldn’t say naught.’ He leaned in. ‘A dead lady’s one thing, Edgar.’ He spat her man name in a tone that terrified her, then gripped her forearm. ‘French lady of means dead on the Moorfields, you got the whole city asking questions: constables, subconstables, beadles and aldermen, the coroner and his deputy, all the way up to the king’s household wants to know.’ His grip tightened. ‘But a dead maudlyn? Who’ll give half a mind to that, hmm?’ His gaze swept her face. She saw the flicker of revulsion. ‘Dead swerver like you, floating in the Walbrook with the cats?’

      Swerver. And that’s what I am, like it or not. A man in body, a woman in soul. One day a he, the next a she, a stiff cock for some, a tight arse for others. Provided they could pay, Eleanor would do all and be all for her loyal jakes, and she had plenty who liked taking it and giving it every which way. Sometimes as a man, sometimes as a woman, sometimes as both at once, though that could get complicated. Why, just last week there was this gongfarmer, big-muscled and hairy as you could like, but get him in the stall and he starts to whinny like a gelding. Or a mare, more like, wants to take—

      ‘Speak to the man, El,’ said Joan Rugg. ‘You speak, or I will.’

      As Eleanor sat on the goldsmith’s bench, her own life threatened over the death of a stranger, she felt her fear turn slowly to resentment, then to anger. She knew it wasn’t Agnes who killed that girl on the Moorfields. Yet who’s Agnes Fonteyn to leave such a mess for Joan’s mauds to clean up behind her? A book, the beadle says. A valuable book, stolen from Lancaster. And now Agnes has it. What’s that whore doing with a book? Worse, she’s keeping it to herself, after all I’ve done for her these years, the coin and bed we’ve shared, now here I am on a beadle’s bench, getting this?

      Eleanor’s lips were inches from Bickle’s ear. ‘Agnes,’ she said. ‘Her