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

and an alderman? Who but an under-sheriff of London? Who entered but you, Miles Vavasour? I followed you that night. I saw all.”

Miles Vavasour instinctively put his hand to the dagger beneath his belt.

Thomas Gunter noticed the gesture and immediately became pugnacious. He raised his chin, and for a moment stood on tip-toe. “I have given you language not to your pleasure.”

“I said nothing to you, sir. I pray God make you a good man.”

The sergeant-at-law turned to walk away, but the physician clutched as him. “Tell me, Sir Miles, do you know how to make gunpowder?”

“What?”

“Did you know that its light is so hot that it cannot be quenched with water but only with urine or sand?”

“I hold you to be mad, Thomas Gunter.”

“No. You are the stark fool. I believe that you have caused wild fire in abundance through London. You have fired two churches, and desecrated Paul’s.”

“I have done no such matter!”

“There are two other churches in your sight.”

Miles Vavasour laughed, but there was no laughter in his countenance. “Yours is a vain imagination.”

“I believe that you have met under cover of night with these high men and have machined some plot to bring all into disorder. There are five circles in your litany of death. You are part of some secret coivin.”

“You say on like a child.”

“You must confess, Sir Miles. There is death in the plot.”

“Confess?”

“You must go to Bolingbroke before it is too late to be pitied.”

“Must me no musts.” Miles Vavasour was a tall man, and at the mention of Bolingbroke he seemed to loom over Gunter. “What, leech? Will you be lord? Am I to serve at your behest? You will play bo-peep through a pillory before long. Your trade will not save you. Greater leeches than you have hanged.”

“I have other news of you, Sir Miles, which may change your mind. You have known Rose le Pilcherer. A child.” Vavasour blushed, the colour staining his cheeks, and at once he knew that he had betrayed himself. “You have been seen in a crooked street. In a master street of sin. Turnmill.”

“Kiss the devil’s arse.”

“Dame Alice knows you well. The Wife of Bath believes you to be an old man rotted in sin. Is this not yet vouchsafed to the world?”

“You threaten me, do you?”

“The judges in this hall will commit to prison any person that has been detected in carnal riot with a child.”

“I am hard, Master Gunter. The sun melts the wax on which it shines, but it hardens clay.”

“But then the clay may be broken into pieces. God keep you and serve you, sir.”

Thomas Gunter bowed to the sergeant and walked out of the hall through the exchequer door. He was elated. He had faced down this man and, small though he was, had defeated him in word combat.

Miles Vavasour took out a linen cloth and wiped his face with it; some of the powder with which he had painted his cheeks, for his appearance in court, became smeared upon it. What is the best thing and the worst thing among men? Word is both best and worst. What thing is it that some love and some hate? It is judgement.

Martin left Westminster Hall with a law abridgement tucked under his arm. It was the third day of September, St. Helen’s day, and a procession in the saint’s honour was moving slowly towards the west door of the abbey. Two elderly men were standing upon a pageant wagon drawn by a horse; one held a crucifix, and the other a spade, as a token of the unearthing and finding of the Holy Cross. A young man with them was dressed as St. Helen but, in a most unsaintly fashion, he blew kisses to those assembled along the path. But then he shrank back in alarm. There was a sudden disturbance in the crowd. A group of citizens brought out swords and staffs, and began calling for the nun of Clerkenwell; for the last four days she had been imprisoned in the bishop’s dungeon, according to popular report, and her confinement had incensed a large part of the city. It was somehow associated with the imprisonment of Richard II in the Tower, and some of the crowd now began to shout, “With whom hold you? With King Richard and the true commons!”

Martin watched as two men mounted the pageant wagon and started to drive it towards the crowd. The horse reared up and the wagon was turned upon its side, throwing St. Helen and her entourage upon the pavement. “They are full wild,” Martin said to an apprentice who had come out of the hall to watch the affray.

“Wild men, yes. Vagabonds. They have not a rag to cover their arses. Their mouths are well wet and their sleeves are threadbare.”

“Their force cannot last. They will yield to the king’s peace.”

“Which king?” The apprentice laughed aloud at his own question. “Your man will not hang.”

“Janekin?”

“Miles has hoist himself. If Janekin wrote that letter, then he can read.” Anyone who could prove himself to be literate could plead benefit of clergy before sentence was passed; he would be asked to read a passage from the Bible, commonly known as a “neck verse,” and if his reading was successful he could not be hanged.

“But if he did not write the letter –” Martin hesitated.

“Then he is not in guilt.”

Martin remained at some distance from the commotion, as the men of the watch marched in formation down King’s Street with pikes and guns and pans of fire; they fell upon the “wild men” and quickly dispersed the crowd. Many of those who started the disturbance took to the water, in boats that had been moored by the Thames bank for that purpose, and by nightfall all was quiet.

On the following morning Miles Vavasour visited William Exmewe at St. Bartholomew; they sat in the chapter-house, with the central palm-tree pillar of stone spreading its boughs and branches along the stone ribs of the vault