by Jason Vail
Stephen wandered down to Northgate Street and up toward the gate. Halfway there, he had to press against a house to get out of the way of a contingent of armed knights and men-at-arms riding four abreast from the gate into town. He recognized the man-at-arms who had seen him at Worcester, and Stephen averted his face and pulled his cap down, fearful he would be recognized. But the fifty-odd horsemen went by without a pointed finger or a shout going up about him.
He paused at the gate, which like South Gate, was filled with traffic that resumed after the riders passed through.
He considered what to do next. Getting into a gaol was often easy enough, although it usually required a bribe of some sort. This was usually monetary, but could involve the provision of food, a strategy Ida had used to see him when he was in one of London’s gaols during his last visit to that city. He fingered his purse. He had deliberately not brought much money with him today, since he had not thought he would need any; there was no sense in carrying around a large amount that might be lost if he was arrested or might generate questions like how a simple peasant as he appeared to be had so much. Getting to question the whore had taken most of what he’d brought with him and what was left was unlikely to be enough to buy his way in.
He resigned himself to having to return to camp for more coin and then slipping back into the town. He wondered if it was possible to get a safe conduct. So far, royalists hadn’t been allowed through the gates.
“Excuse me, young man,” a woman’s voice said behind him. “Would you mind?”
“Mind?” Stephen turned to see who was speaking. She looked like another burgess’ wife, but one less ostentatiously dressed, in sensible green linen overgown, a blue woolen undergown, and a yellow linen blouse. A sensible round hat adorned the top of a head whose hair was rolled up into a bun secured by black and gold netting at the base of her neck. She carried a large basket on one arm.
“You’re blocking the doorway,” the woman said.
“I’m sorry,” Stephen said, hastening to step aside. A glimmer of a notion of an idea began to form in his mind. “Do you need to get in? Into the gaol, I mean.”
“That is my intention,” the woman said.
“Would you mind doing me a favor?”
“Why would I do that?”
“To help a fellow supporter of the king in need.”
“What makes you think I am such a one?”
“A guess. The royalists have rounded up all the king’s best men in town. I understand they are locked up here. You are too well-bred a woman to be visiting some common thief or robber. So, I think you’ve a husband or a son inside whom you’ve come to see.”
“That’s true,” the woman said with a twinkle in her eye. “And I suppose you have a relative in gaol as well?”
“Not exactly. Just someone I need words with.”
“And what is this favor you seek?”
“For you to pretend that I am a servant or employee who has escorted you here in order to see you safe in these uncertain times.”
“And why shouldn’t I leave you on the doorstep now that I am safe here?”
“Perhaps you fear that there may be unsavory characters locked up with the others.”
“The gaoler will not believe that story. This isn’t the first time I’ve been here. I come every day. Otherwise, my husband will have starved to death by now.” It was a common practice for relatives of prisoners to bring them food. Gaolers often skimped on provisions in order to keep for themselves more of their fees for incarcerating a person. “And besides, everyone in town knows who I am and that you’re no servant of the family.”
“I am Madeleine Clenhond,” she said, extending her hand.
“Pleased to meet you, mistress,” Stephen said, extending his own and grasping hers. “Stephen Attebrook.”
He would have withdrawn his hand after they had shaken, but she gripped it just hard enough that he would have had to yank it free.
“You are not a rustic or a laboring man,” Mistress Clenhond said, studying Stephen’s hand and using a common term for a country peasant. “Your nails are too well cared for. A gentleman, I would say. Although it is odd why you are dressed as a common man. Are you a spy for the king’s army?”
“I’m not a spy,” Stephen said, recovering his hand. He had never thought that something as simple as the state of his fingernails might give him away. He looked around to see if anyone had heard her, since they were just outside the gate passage, which was crammed with people bustling in and out.
“But you’re with the king’s army,” she said.
Was there any use denying this? Mistress Clenhond seemed a clever woman. She would see right through any denial. Anyway, it seemed clear her husband was a king’s supporter. He said, “I do not deny it.”
“Then what are you doing here, if not spying?”
“I have private business.”
“What sort of private business could you have with someone held in our gaol? And whom would it be with?”
“A man called Abelard Morecok.”
“Ah. Does he owe you money? Has he cheated you in some way? He is known for his sharp practices.”
“No. I’ve never met him. I am making inquiries for a friend.”
“You won’t be believed if you are caught.”
“I know. Will you give me away?”
“Of course not.” Mistress Clenhond tapped a toe as she crossed her arms through the handle of her basket. “Does Lord Edward know what’s going on in town?”
“I’m sure he has actual spies to keep him informed.”
“Does he know the rebels intend to move the prisoners within the next day or so?”
“Why would they do that?” Stephen asked.
“All the prisoners are being held for ransom. It is not by random chance that they are all wealthy supporters of the king. Now that Lord Edward has checked their move by getting across the river, they fear the loss of those ransoms. They amount to a tidy sum indeed.” The foot tapping stopped. “I would be grateful — all the king’s men in Gloucester would be grateful — if the prisoners could be freed without ransom.”
Stephen tried one more time. “You can’t help me get in?”
“I doubt that. You haven’t enough for a bribe on your own?”
“I hadn’t considered Morecok would be arrested.”
“So people outside the walls do not know,” Mistress Clenhond said heavily. She grasped Stephen’s arm. “You must let Lord Edward know straightaway!”
Stephen surrendered to the inevitable. “I will. How many men are we talking about?”
“Twenty-one.”
“I suspect it will be helpful to know their names.”
“I can give them to you. Each one is a dear friend of mine and my husband. Well, except for Morecok.”
“I won’t remember them all if you recite them. Are there any bookshops in town?”
There were indeed bookshops in Gloucester, where secular scribes copied books for the church and others who could afford their services, which were expensive.
“There are three,” Mistress Clenhond had said. “They’re all at Saint Mary’s Square.” Stephen did not know it, but she explained that the square was outside the west gate to Saint Peter’s Cathedral. This made sense, since it positioned the booksellers and scribes close to their biggest customers, the abbey and the bishop’s headquarters. Religious houses had so great a demand for books that they couldn’t satisfy the need themselves any longer, but had to hire the services of laymen.
Stephen waited in a tavern for Mistress Clenhond while she took food into the gaol for her husband. When she came out, he followed her to Saint Mary’s Square. This required him to pass the King’s Board, where the same gangsters lounged on the benches. The gangsters didn’t pay Stephen any unwanted attention, and he breathed easier when they were behind him. Mistress Clenhold turned north into Saint Mary’s Lane a good distance beyond the King’s Board, and a bit over a hundred yards later the
y came to the square. Two of the bookshops were open, but one was closed. Mistress Clenhond went to the closed one. She rapped on the door. It took three successive raps before anyone answered, a frightened woman who peered at them through a small panel in the door below the knocker.
“Hello, Mistress Bele,” Mistress Clenhond said to the woman, whose anxiety did not abate when she saw who it was. “Do you mind if I come in?”
“This isn’t a trick?” Mistress Bele asked in a quavering voice.
“It’s no trick, I assure you. But we should get off the street. We could attract attention.”
“We? You’re not alone?”
“I’ve a friend with me.”
Mistress Bele did not seem eager to open the door, but at last, she said, “All right, all right,” and admitted them to the front hallway.
A doorway opened to the side into the shop, where Stephen could see in the dimness, because the shutters were closed, a slanted writing table. If there had been any destruction, it looked as though Mistress Bele had cleaned it up. There were shelves that should have held books but they were bare. It seemed this bookseller doubled as a scribe only, for there was no indication that he built the backs and spines of his books; that was often done by a specialist. Nor were there the usual pots of colored inks and melted gold for decorative leaf.
“What is it, Mistress Clenhond? Do you have word of my Alan?” Mistress Bele asked. “Is he hurt?”
“Master Bele is one of the prisoners at North Gate,” Mistress Clenhond said for Stephen’s benefit. She added for Mistress Bele, “He is well.”
“I see you weren’t looted,” Stephen said to Mistress Bele.
“Me and my boys managed to carry off the books,” she said. “They weren’t interested in the pots and pens.”
“Not much value in them to the common eye,” Mistress Clenhond said.
“Why are you here, mistress, if not to bring word of Alan?” Mistress Bele asked.
“We need a pen, bit of ink and a sheet of parchment,” Mistress Clenhond said. “We won’t be long.”
“You do?” Mistress Bele asked, confused by the request.
“It’s in a good cause,” Mistress Clenhond said.
Stephen sat at the writing desk and laid a parchment sheet on the slanted top. There were no pens or a full inkpot in evidence, but Mistress Bele disappeared into the hall and returned with a righthanded pen and a pot. He fingered the pen and could tell from its color and stiffness that it had come from the left wing of a goose. It was well-seasoned, too. There was probably a supply of more in the back.
He felt a bit self-conscious as he dipped the pen, wiped the tip and poised it over the parchment, careful to make sure the stem rested on the tips of his first and middle fingers, held there by a slight pressure of the thumb, the nib perpendicular to the sheet. Mistress Clenhond probably would have nothing to say about his technique, but Mistress Bele, who lived with a professional scribe, would know an amateur when she saw one.
“The first name, if you please, Mistress Clenhond,” Stephen said.
“Galfridus Clenhond,” she said.
It took longer than you might think to write down twenty-one names, but that was because Stephen wrote slowly, the letters small but well-defined. He chose Carolingian script even though it was hardly used anymore because he found it easier to shape due to its plainness and lack of flourishes which were popular now. He liked it better than all the other scripts he had been required to learn. His former law master, Ademar de Valence, had preferred Book Hand, the usual script for legal documents, and had beaten Stephen once for relying on Carolingian in a letter. He frowned at the memory as he formed a “K” for Karl.
At last, they were finished. Stephen set down the pen and blew on the ink. Then he sprinkled sand on the sheet, let it sit for a few moments, and shook it off.
“That should do it,” Stephen said.
“Who are you?” Mistress Bele asked.
“Nobody in particular,” Stephen answered. The fact that he appeared to be a rustic from the countryside yet could read and write, skills that were uncommon, made him a man of mystery. But Mistress Bele would have to wait for a solution. He folded up the parchment and turned his back on the women while he slipped the parchment into the top of one stocking and tied it to his thigh with a bit of twine Mistress Bele brought out from the hall.
“Where did you learn to write that way?” Mistress Clenhold asked. This was the question Mistress Bele had implied, and Mistress Clenhold’s curiosity wasn’t going to let Stephen evade an answer.
She would have to be as disappointed, however. It was not a story Stephen liked remembering much less telling.
“You’ll have to wait for another day to find out,” Stephen said.
He said good-bye and left the shop. Mistress Clenhond hurried out as if she meant to go with him, but Stephen was already halfway across Saint Mary’s Square, striding as fast as his long legs could take him and she gave up the pursuit when it became clear she would have to run to catch up, which a woman of her station could never do in public. Now that he was carrying secret messages, he was anxious to get out of town by the swiftest and safest way possible. He already had experience with the deadliness of the lists of men. He had searched for and fought over such a list when he first returned to Ludlow, and he had no wish to do so again.
When he reached Westgate Street, he turned west. If he went out any of the other city gates, he would have to pass back through the town. Even though his intellect told him that the chance of being recognized or even bothered was probably not great if he went that way, he was fearful of taking the chance. The West Gate was closer, and that’s where he would go in hopes that the bridge, the center span pulled up when Lord Edward’s army arrived on Alney Island, had been repaired enough for some traffic to pass over it, given how many people were coming from that direction.
He crossed a wooden bridge over a stream that flowed south into the Severn. Three-hundred yards ahead, up an impossibly straight street, was West Gate. The gate was open. A boy was leading three pack horses within it, but no guards were in view. Stephen’s heart drummed faster at the sight and his pace quickened. Freedom and safety lay just beyond those green painted gate panels. He wished for wings on his feet to carry him away, like a mosaic he had once seen in the remains of a Roman villa in Spain.
He hardly noticed how busy this part of town was. There were many people coming and going, some carrying burdens and baskets, a few leading laden horses. And shops were open, more in fact, than there were in the rest of town. Stephen paid no attention. His vision was fixed on the gate. The distance between him and that gate, which represented freedom and safety diminished rapidly — two hundred yards, one-fifty, one-hundred …
“My word!” a feminine voice cried from slightly behind. “Is it really you, sir?”
Stephen snapped his eyes around from the gate to see who had spoken to him.
She was not more than twenty, and as beautiful as the last time he had seen her, thick brown hair, lively doe’s eyes, sculptured neck.
Her name was Amicia Bromptone. Stephen had saved her husband, Peter, from hanging, and the woman herself from leaping to her death from the walls of Ludlow Castle when she thought Peter was about to die. She was just outside the doorway of a shop, which Stephen recognized as Peter Bromptone’s draper’s shop; the family lived behind and above the shop.
“Not so loud,” Stephen said, stepping up to Amicia, nervous that she had referred loudly to him as “sir.”
“What are you up to, s—” Amicia broke off at Stephen’s alarm.
“What makes you think I’m up to something?”
“Our friends in Ludlow have kept us up on all your doings.”
All his doings? Stephen hoped not.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mistress Bromptone,” Stephen stammered. It would have been a pleasure if Stephen was not so anxious to be away and if she had not called attention to him. He wanted to be invisible, t
o slip through the gate unnoticed like a mouse or a stray cat.
He stepped back to draw away, but Amicia was having none of that. She grasped Stephen’s arm and pulled him toward the doorway, a shockingly familiar gesture, but given that he had once seen through her undergarments while he held her ankles as she dangled upside down from a parapet of Ludlow Castle, perhaps she felt entitled to such intimacy with a man not her husband.
“Do come in, sss— Stephen,” she said, smiling with pleasure that she could address him so. “Peter would love to see you.”
Which was harder, pulling away from a wildly attractive woman or giving in to her? Stephen chose surrender and allowed Amicia to pull him into her house.
Peter was not in his shop, but had just emerged from the hall to the rear as they entered. He was a full head shorter than Stephen’s six feet and willowy, with unruly brown hair and a spray of freckles on his nose.
“Peter!” Amicia exclaimed. “You’ll never guess who’s here!”
It was evident from the shock and surprise on Peter’s face that he would never have guessed, and he gave every indication, although he rapidly tried to restrain his features, that he was not pleased to see Stephen cross his doorstep.
“My lord,” Peter said, ducking his head. “I hope you are well.” His eyes, having taken in Stephen’s rather dilapidated coat, shirt and hose, found some reason to wander into the recesses of his shop.
Stephen was about to reply with an equally empty pleasantness, when the sound of hoofbeats came through the doorway and the open shop window.
Peter gaped at the armed horsemen going by, gulped, and pushed Stephen out of the way. Even though Peter was a much smaller and slighter man than Stephen, he caught Stephen off guard, and dashed into the street.
“Spy!” Peter cried. “There’s a spy for the royalists in my house!” His calls brought prompt shouts of alarm in response and men leaped from their horses and rushed the doorway.