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

saw you standing in the way of the pageant, Master Gunter, and I could not refrain from breaking my mind to you as soon as may be. These days be evil, as St. Paul says.” Bogo was not well liked. He was the summoner of the newly made ward of Farringdon Without, which included Smithfield and that part of Clerkenwell encompassing Turnmill Brook and Common Lane, but his reputation was more generally known. He was employed to call citizens to the church courts and to the local assize, although it was suggested that warrants might be destroyed upon the payment of a certain sum. He was known as “the devil’s rattle-bag,” and was shunned. Bogo came so close to the physician now that Gunter could smell his breath; it had the savour of some interior sickness, some cancer. “You have heard that the king fled Carmarthen in the guise of a monk?”

“That is old news, Bogo.”

“A few nobles are with him. I am told it was a piteous sight.”

“Now Richard and Henry parley. We must await the time. But why disturb me with this now, Bogo?”

“It is joined with another matter.” He looked into the physician’s face. “Somebody, Master Gunter, has darked the city.”

“You talk too mistily.”

“Did you know of the giant bishop found at Paul’s two weeks past?”

“Of course.”

“There was a ring found with him, a ring of emerald.” Gunter said nothing. “Upon that ring was the curious device of circles.”

“It is an ancient sign of sacredness. What of it?”

“It is a good sign but it is now in the service of an evil cause. It has been turned to great harm in recent days.”

“How so, master summoner?”

“By the oratory fired in St. John’s Street, a circle was found painted upon the wall. I know it. I have seen it. Where the scrivener lay dead, by the Si quis? door, another circle was to be found. I tell you, Master Gunter, it is a pumice stone to smooth London.”

“Bogo, you are a child. You can imagine the thing that was never thought nor wrought.”

“When I took up one Frowike, on the charge of heresy, I saw in his chamber the book that did prognosticate all this. There are five in one and one in five. The wounds of our Blessed Saviour numbered five, as did the strings upon David’s harp which make up the music of the spheres.”

“This is strange speech, Bogo.”

“I know strange things.”

The physician believed the summoner to be a crafty and subtle man, but not a creature of vain fantasies or imaginings. He suspected, too, that Bogo trod various secret paths and byways to keep pace with news of the city; he knew night walkers and strangers. “Have you seen these circles in other places, Bogo?”

“I have seen the signs everywhere. They are about our death. They chant placebo and dirige.”

“So who are these who are writing down their purpose upon the walls? Heretics such as Frowike?”

“There are bands and affinities in this city who stay concealed, Master Gunter, and who in the broad day pass among us as honest citizens. They use quaint craft. The world is brittle.”

“Not so brittle, I am sure, that you cannot see through it.”

“Then remember, for the passion of God, what I have said. Are you still acquainted with Miles Vavasour?” The physician had cured the sergeant-at-law of a fistula, three years before, and they ate supper with each other on the anniversary of the operation at the sergeant’s lodgings in Scropes Inn. “Make all this known to him. He is a worthy man who will know what to ask and what to tell. Look. Do you see the torches?” There were footsteps coming down the alley. “The pageant is ending. God be with you.”

The summoner slipped away. Instinctively he avoided crowds and torchlight; he might be buffeted or threatened. In fact one of those now entering Sink Court among the group of revellers was a known deceiver and beguiler of the people, John Daw, who had been arrested by Bogo only a few months before. Daw’s offence was to pretend to be mute and deprived of his tongue in order to beg for alms. He used to carry in his hands an iron hook and pincer together with a piece of leather which looked, in shape, like a little part of the tongue; it was edged in silver and had writing around it which spelled out, “This is the tongue of John Daw.” He had made a noise like that of roaring, continually opening and closing his mouth in a manner which cunningly concealed his tongue. The summoner, suspecting him, had followed him to a tenement in Billiter Lane where the same Daw was seen by him to talk easily and fluently to a woman of the house. He appealed him to the beadle, and Daw was taken up; he was sentenced to the pillory, but after this ordeal he had elected to remain in the city. No one knew how he earned the money he possessed, but he always drank in the same low tavern. The summoner had seen him in the light of one of the torches, but had walked quickly away.

Bogo now came out into Old Change, where several bonfires had been lit. They were known as the fires of amity, a custom of Midsummer’s Eve, but they were also designed to purge the infections of the air during the long days of summer. Cresset lamps were placed before each door, lending a strange brilliance to the clustering flowers and branches around the threshold. Tables, with meat and drink, had been set up in the street; already one of them had been knocked over by a party of drunken dancers. That is why Bogo disliked the festival of Midsummer’s Eve; the general spirit of licence threatened his safety.15 A group of women was dancing around one of the fires, singing the song of the prancing pony; some were wearing masks as a token of their liberty,