A Burnable Book. Bruce Holsinger
by his people, such whisperings were soon quieted, his small, dark wonder of a wife accepted into the circles of Castilian ladies gathered on occasion at court.
Soon a daughter arrived. She was, like her mother, dark and small. She captivated her parents. The knight, of course, wanted a son. The wife was still young, and though the years went by with no further issue, there was little doubt that God would someday reward them.
It came to pass, when the daughter was approaching her seventh year, that the knight was summoned by his lord to battle. Not a minor border skirmish, but a major campaign in a larger war that threatened to conscript every able-bodied man from the Pyrenees to the port of Cádiz. You will know of this war: of Pedro the Cruel and Enrique de Trastámara, of brothers divided against themselves. When Pedro called, our knight gathered the might of his men, leaving only a small garrison behind.
Word soon came of a bloody battle in Nájera, a battle in which King Pedro won back the crown of Castile from his bastard brother. Though this victory was to be short-lived, the tidings brought considerable joy to the castle and town, despite the additional news that the lord’s return would be delayed many months as King Pedro led his army to further battles against the lingering enemies of the crown. In her knight’s long absence the lady saw to the needs of his property and people, with an added touch of feminine grace that delighted those around her.
On the Day of St Dominic, as the lady and her daughter strolled in the castle’s herb garden, the scents of rosemary and lavender mingling in the hot calm of an August afternoon, a blotch on the northern hills caught the little girl’s eye. She squinted against the sun.
Dust, yet not from a storm. The road from Burgos was dry, and any single horse would kick up a mass of saffron powder that might linger for hours.
The cloud she saw now filled the horizon. Forty horses, perhaps fifty. She tugged at her mother’s dress. They gazed together at the approaching force, their hearts lifting against a darkening sky.
The Day of St Dominic. The day the strangers came.
Rose Alley, Southwark
The Pricking Bishop. Edgar Rykener shook his head at the painted sign, amazed that the Bishop of Winchester allowed such pictures in his liberties. Lord Protector of Whores, they called him up on Gropecunt Lane, defending his right to run as many houses as he pleased across the river in Southwark while the hard-working maudlyns of London got constantly harassed by the law. Joan Rugg would go on about it for half a day. Unlike Gropecunt Lane, the stews of Southwark embraced their natural filth, the half-pipe gutters stopped up with brackish water of a murky green, the conduits to the river long forgotten by the bishop’s underworked ditchers. Wobbly shacks had been built out into the streets to claim space for shops, while the oblong fishponds at the western end walled off the great houses on the riverbanks beyond. No sweepers or rakers to maintain the streets, nor regular dung carts to haul away the most offensive waste.
On the Bishop’s front steps sat a withered old maudlyn, barely there beneath her shift and smock. St Cath was her name, Edgar recalled, still alive after half a century on her back. A dozen cats wandered in and out of the half-opened door, pressing against St Cath’s side or darting past while she ignored them.
‘Is Bess about?’ Edgar asked her. The old woman said nothing. ‘Bess Waller, be she about?’
St Cath shifted against the step. ‘Bess Waller,’ she said, as if speaking the name of a stranger. Her face, crossed by a thousand lines, registered no emotion.
Edgar tapped his foot.
St Cath spat. ‘The matter of it?’
‘Not your concern.’
‘Nor be Bess Waller none of yours.’
Edgar stood on his toes and peered into the doorway.
‘Not a peek more,’ said the woman, pushing away one of the cats and struggling to stand, ‘but you proffer your pennies like the fine gentlemen of the parish.’
He snorted. ‘For the love of St Thomas, woman, all I’m about here is looking out for Bess’s daughter.’
‘Millicent?’ she said quickly. ‘Hunting Millicent Fonteyn in the stews?’ St Cath shook her bent frame and wheezed, wagged her small head. ‘Won’t find that knight’s trull in Southwark. Best look up Cornhull for Millicent. Duchess Millicent by now, for all we knows over here.’
Edgar thought over the woman’s response. Something about it didn’t sit right. ‘It’s not Millicent I’m about. It’s Agnes.’
‘Agnes?’
Not this again. ‘Yes, Agnes, you withered hag, sometime maud of the Bishop. Is Agnes Fonteyn about, or’d your witchcraft turn her into one of these cats?’
St Cath glared at her. ‘Agnes hasn’t been about since Epiphany time.’
‘That’s right.’ Bess Waller, bawd of the Pricking Bishop, leaned against the doorsill looking Edgar over. Despite two daughters and years of swyving, Bess had angles to her face that could only be boasted by the mother of Agnes Fonteyn; also the same lithe form, the same golden hair still radiant as she neared fifty. ‘You’re El—Edgar Rykener, are you not?’
‘I am,’ said Edgar. They’d met last year, soon after Agnes had left the Southwark stews and joined Joan Rugg’s crew in Cheap Ward. Bess Waller had come after her younger daughter with a club while the bawd was away, trying to beat Agnes back to the Bishop, pleading the strength of family and roots. But Agnes had stuck to Gropecunt Lane, and now she was pure London.
‘As I was telling your lovely serjeant-of-the-gate here, I need to have a word with Agnes. She about?’
‘She’s not,’ said Bess. ‘We miss her round the stews though, that right, St Cath?’
The old woman nodded. ‘Miss her all right.’
‘Agnes had the cock lining up at the door,’ said Bess. ‘Something in the sweet air off her, that way she got with her head. That toss, you know?’ She mimicked it perfectly. ‘And always had since she’s a girl. Sweet piece of sweetmeats, that one. Still sucking it off up Cheapside?’
Edgar rested a foot on the step, stretched his tired thighs. ‘Our bawd’s Joan Rugg.’
‘Joan Rugg!’ Bess cackled. ‘Taught that fat hen everything she knows about the cock. How to fondle it like one of St Cath’s kittens here, how to clamp it atween her thighs for the while of a paternoster. The gentle cock’s your false idol, Joan, I tell her, and treating it right will bring you all the riches you can want. A fast learner, by St Bride. Just like Agnes.’
And what a homily to motherhood Agnes had in you, Edgar thought. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Not a sight of her, then?’
Bess wiped her nose. ‘Why you seeking out my Agnes?’
‘Had some little business to pestle with her.’
‘Business.’
‘Thought she might’ve stepped over the river. If not, then …’
‘Then …?’ Bess raised her eyebrows.
Edgar took a step back, his gaze moving up the façade to the second-storey windows, one of them wedged open. A giggle, a slap, a moan.
Bess clucked. ‘Best you be off, pretty boy. Got some gentlemen coming by next bell. Don’t want my jakes inconvenienced.’
‘I’m thinking the same,’ said Edgar, also thinking there was more going on here than Bess