The Clerkenwell Tales by Peter Ackroyd (good short books .txt) 📕

“Here. Take this cloak. And tread upon the cushions. Your naked feet should not touch the tiles.”

The house of office was in a yard behind the shop, next to the kitchen and the stables. He walked slowly downstairs, his hand upon Anne’s arm, but he was still very feeble. He stopped on the next landing underneath a woollen tapestry depicting Judith and Holofernes; he felt the ague in his stomach, and sat down upon a large wooden chest. “Friday is the day of the Expulsion and the Deluge, the Betrayal and the Crucifixion. Take me into the yard.”

She assisted him down the last flight and watched him as he walked slowly across to the privy. “May Friday be your own doom day, dear husband. May it be your expulsion and your betrayal.” And then she remembered the scriptures. Let old things pass away.

Radulf Strago sat down carefully on the hole of the siege.4 He could feel his stomach turning in its agony. It was a fire. There was a wooden pipe in the corner, leading to a stone-lined latrine pit beneath the soil, and for a moment it seemed to move as if it were a living thing. He was bathed in a great sweat. “The sun,” he said, “is none the worse for shining on a dunghill. So may it shine on me.” There was a trickle of water in the lead cistern just outside the door, but it seemed in Radulf’s ears like a storm. Blessed is the corpse that the rain rains on. But if I besmear the seat, no one else will come at it. He put out his hand to grasp at the arse-wisps, the pieces of hay and the cut squares of cloth which were piled beside the privy.

Anne Strago found him crouched upon the clay floor with a piece of cotton in his hand; there was a stream still flowing from his buttocks.5 She did not want to touch the body: those days were over. So she ran out into the street, crying, “A death! A death!” Then she came back into the house, and embraced Janekin. “The apprentice no longer has a master,” she told him. “He has a mistress.”

At the subsequent inquest the coroner declared that Radulf Strago had suffered a fit after the oratory had been visited by fire, and had died a death none other than his rightful death; his verdict satisfied the five guardians of the ward, who paid for a trental of Masses to intercede for Radulf’s soul. And what could be more natural and appropriate than that, after a period of mourning, Anne Strago should marry Janekin? She told her neighbours that excessive grief only harmed the soul of the departed, which was considered a wise saying. It was then generally agreed that the business would prosper, as indeed it did. As Anne Strago told Janekin, “Friday is a good day.” There was an ancient belief, however, that murder could never be concealed in London and that it would always find its season to appear.

Chapter Four

The Clerk’s Tale

Five days after the death of Radulf Strago the friar, William Exmewe, could have been seen entering a bookseller’s shop in Paternoster Row; friars were a common sight in this street, since the bookshops sold psalters and hours as well as canons and doctrinals. This particular bookseller devoted himself to prick-song books with their kyries and sequences and, although much of his stock had been cleared in the week of the Passion, he hoped that the Seven Dolours of Our Lady would renew interest in the allelujahs. April was the month, too, when folk longed to go on pilgrimages. He managed a good trade, in all circumstances, and also worked as a scrivener adding new feast days to the holy books.

He was not on the premises, however, when William Exmewe came through the door with his black cloak billowing behind him. Emnot Hallyng, a clerk, entered a few moments later; he wore his hat under his hood and it knocked against the lintel, causing him to step back in surprise. There was a manciple already present; Robert Rafu was testing the strength of the chains, which locked and protected the books, by pulling at them sharply. Then there entered another citizen who, by his dress, was a franklin of rich estate; Garret Barton owned land across the river in Southwark, and was the freeholder of many inns in that neighbourhood for pilgrims and other travellers.

A voice was calling out, “Come down! Come down!” The four men greeted one another with the whispered phrase, “God is here,” before walking down a stone stairway into the undercroft of the bookshop.

They came into a room of octagonal shape, with a stone bench running round its walls; there was a high stone seat in the east of the wall, and a wooden desk in the middle of the chamber. Other men and women were gathered here but the low murmur of voices stopped when William Exmewe crossed over to the eastern seat. His audience settled upon the low stone bench.

“It was a good beginning, Richard Marrow,” he said without any formal exordium.

The carpenter, standing among the others, bowed his head. “It took only a candle and some black powder.”

“Well said, Marrow, well said. Do you not know the verse, We will search out Jerusalem with candles?”

The franklin, Garret Barton, now spoke out. “The oratory was but a pie-crust, made to be broken. Like all the promises of the false friars. All their indulgences and prayers and trentals are deceptions of the devil, invented by the father of lies himself.”

Robert Rafu felt moved to speak. “Prayers cannot help the dead any more than a man’s breath can cause a great ship to sail.”

William Exmewe took up this theme. “The purse-proud prelates and curates pass all their life in dark night. Their sight has been filled with darkness and with smoke, and therefore they are full of tears.