The Clerkenwell Tales

by Peter Ackroyd

  Anne had been present at the ceremony in the guild’s hall. When her husband had been asked, according to custom, whether his apprentice was of good growth and stature, and whether he had any disfigurement of the body, she looked at Janekin with curiosity. He was not disfigured at all; he was slender and graceful, already taller than her husband. She had been married to Radulf for two years, in a union properly conceived for purposes of trade. Her father had been a haberdasher, also, with a substantial shop in Old Jewry; she was an only child and, on his death, she had inherited the business entire. It was now only lent to Radulf Strago for the duration of his life; when his soul changed house, she would be a wealthy widow indeed. In the meantime she was disgusted by her duties concerning the merchant’s cod – his coillons, his bollocks, his yard, his testicles, call it what she would in her disgust – and she prayed God for an ending. She devoutly wished her husband to die.

  Janekin was Radulf’s only apprentice. The guild had asked him to employ at least one other, but the merchant insisted that he had been made feeble by life and had not the strength to raise two. Anne Strago supported this plea, adding only that two boys in one house would never accord. “There are three things full hard to be known which way they will go,” she had said. “The first is of a bird sitting on a bough. The second is of a vessel in the sea. The third is the way of a young man.” With remarks such as these she had already acquired a reputation for wisdom among her neighbours.

  So Janekin lived in a household where there was little restraining hand. Contrary to oath he played at hazard with other apprentices in the ward, and engaged in a violent game known to them as “breaking doors with our heads.” He had also participated in the frequent struggles between the competing groups of tradesmen and merchants. The cobblers and cordwainers, for example, fought each other over the right to mend shoes; the grocers and fishmongers pitched against each other in running street fights. After one such fight Janekin returned with a broken head. Anne bathed it for him, and anointed the wound with an ointment made out of sparrow grease. “What sharp shower of arrows reached you, fool?” she asked him.

  “From the butchers of the Chepe. They made a great roistering.”

  “And you did not? What woman would love such a wretch as you?”

  “They say, mistress, that pity runs swiftest in a gentle heart.”

  “But I have no gentle heart. I have no heart at all.”

  “Then fortune is my foe.”

  “Why so?”

  “I had looked to you for – for grace.”

  “Grace, wretch? Or favour?”

  “Greedy are the godless. I want all.”

  “Who taught you courtesy?”

  “A lighthouse hermit.”

  She laughed at this, and soon an understanding was reached between them. They could do nothing in the presence of the little haberdasher but, when he was gone for a day or even for an hour, they played the devil’s game.

  After their first lovemaking Anne Strago had sighed and complained that Radulf did not keep her in her proper estate. “Other women,” she said, “go gayer than I.”

  “Fine gear will come your way.”

  “From you? You have no more of money than a friar has of hair.”

  “When the will is strong, there is a way.”

  The fate of Radulf Strago was then determined.

  Janekin had buckled his shoes and now, on this spring dawn, he came down the stairs with an ivory box in his hand. “What is this,” he asked, “left with the woollen caps in the solar?”

  “What do you think? A comb case.” Radulf Strago walked over to his apprentice, and opened it upon his palm. “Here are your ivories. Your scissors. Your ear-pickers and all your other knacks.”

  There was suddenly a loud explosion, which sent Radulf and Janekin flying across the open counter. It had come from the other side of the street, where a hermit’s oratory stood. The hermit himself had died some three months before, and the adjacent parishes were arguing over the appointment of his successor; but the oratory had remained a well-known place of prayer on behalf of those who had departed into purgatory. The loud explosion sent people shrieking into the street. The walls of the oratory had been blown out, and its thatched roof demolished. Radulf could not rise to his feet, and he lay among the hats and purses as wisps of straw floated through the air.

  Janekin had roused himself, and was brushing the dust off his taffeta jacket when he thought he saw a tall figure running towards the city. He was too shaken to raise the hue and cry. Instead he helped to support Radulf as he struggled upright, murmuring, “Christ and His tree save us!” All those around them were shrieking “Fire!” Some were wrapped in cloaks, some had quickly pulled on hose and jacket, while others were already dressed for the day’s work. They clustered around the smouldering oratory, where a wooden image of the Virgin lay in fragments among the blackened stones. The air smelled of sulphur, as if the smoke of hell itself had ascended into the outer world. Radulf walked unsteadily towards the ruin, and noticed traces of dark powder on the earth floor. “They have used Greek fire,” he said to no one in particular.

  But who would wish to destroy a place of prayer, a corner of London where the souls of those in purgatorial fire were perpetually remembered? It was for the living as well as for the dead. The chantry priest of St. Dionysius the Martyr, a small church in a nearby side street, had claimed that anyone who prayed in the oratory all night would be rewarded with ten years’ release from purgatory. Who would violate such a place with fire and gunpowder?

  Two brothers hospitallers had come running from the gate of St. John, and begun howling that the nun of Clerkenwell had prophesied this. The merchant glanced at them with contempt, and in that instant he glimpsed something daubed upon a wall beside the oratory. It was some crude device, depicted in white lead paste. On peering closer at it, he saw circles linked one with another. His head ached, and he felt himself falling forward.

  He was woken by the strong scent of vinegar in his nostrils. He opened his eyes, and found himself gazing at his wife. “Have you closed the shop?” he asked her.

  “Janekin has bolted it and locked it. All is as safe as could be.”

  “Did you hear the din? The oratory has gone.” She nodded. “Today is Friday. Friday is a hard day. An unfortunate day. An Egyptian day. It was on a Friday that I bought that false silver.”

  “Hush. Rest.”

  “Monday’s thunder brings the death of women. Friday’s thunder portends the slaughter of a great man. Who will we lose after this? May it be the king himself? The foxes of division are among us.” He had been undressed by his wife. He lay beneath a white cover garnished with golden lambs, moons and stars. “I must go to siege,” he said. “Help me.”

  He had told his wife some weeks before that he had felt a “wambling” in his stomach, but nothing had cured it. He had also experienced an airiness in his head and heels, as if he were walking on moss. He ascribed these symptoms to newly corrupted blood, and had been cupped on several occasions. But the letting only made him more weary. Then he had begun to vomit. His wife encouraged him to try every remedy although she knew that nothing would save him.

  She had gone to the apothecary in Dutch Lane, some way from her parish, and had asked him what poison was needed to kill rats. She had also told him that there was a weasel coming into her yard to eat the hens; this, too, must be destroyed. She had taken away some grains of arsenic in a linen bag, with careful instructions how to use them, and from that evening she had begun to mingle them with the pottage which Radulf always consumed for his supper. She had not told Janekin, fearing that he might blab her secret.

  “Help me,” Radulf said again as he rose impatiently from his bed.

  “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, b
ut 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. What is a bishop without wealth? Episcopus Nullatensis. Bishop of Nowhere. What do they do now, but tremble before the mad nun of Clerkenwell?” They laughed at this. They had all heard how Sister Clarice had been taken before the consistory court, on the grounds that she had uttered false prophecies, but had been immediately released at the insistence of the citizens who had surrounded the court with imprecation and clamour. “These prelates are dumb fools in the realm of hell, dumb hounds that do not bark in time of need.”

  A woman cried out, “They pray to Our Lady of Falsingham. They do reverence to Thomas of Cankerbury!”

  “Their images may do neither good nor evil to men’s souls,” Exmewe said, “but they might warm a man’s cold body if they were set upon a fire. The wax wasted upon their candles would be fit to light poor men and creatures at their work.”

  These were the true men, otherwise known as the faithful, the foreknown or the predestined ones. There were few of them but they were known by many names – in Paris as the apostoli or the innocentes, in Cologne as the men of intelligence, and in Rheims as the humiliati. They believed that their sect had existed since the time of Christ, and that their first leader had been Christ’s brother; they were assured that they were the true followers of the Saviour and that they comprised the invisible church or communion of the saved known as congregacio solum salvandorum. They rejected all the ceremonies and beliefs of the established church, and condemned them as the trappings of the god of this world who is called Lucifer. The pope was a limb of the fiend, as rotten in his sin as a beast in his dung; the prelates and bishops were also perpetual matter for burning in hell. Churches were the castles of Cain.

  They were called the innocentes or the foreknown ones because, as Christ’s true followers, they were absolved from all sin. Each one of them partook of the glory of the Saviour, and their actions were prompted wholly by the spirit of God. They could lie, commit adultery or kill, without remorse. If any one of them robbed a beggar, or caused a death by hanging, he or she had nothing to fear; the soul whose bodily life had been taken would return to its source. The predestined ones could commit sodomy, or lie with any man or woman; they must freely satisfy the promptings of their nature or else they would lose their freedom of spirit. They could deservedly kill any child conceived by their actions, and throw it into the water like any worm, without confession; the child, too, was going back to its source.

  They met in secret, in small conventicles, because of all heretics they were considered to be the most dangerous. Only six months earlier, an order had gone out from the bishop’s court forbidding “congregations, conventicles, assemblies, alliances, confederacies and conspiracies” against Holy Church.

  Their names were known only to one another, and they would often pass in the street without any greeting. The predestined men were so convinced of their sanctity that they eagerly sought for the day of doom. Exmewe had expla
ined to them that the great Antichrist would be an apostate Franciscan friar; he was now twenty and would appear at Jerusalem in the year following. The anointed one, the second Christ at the day of judgement, would be a foreknown one like themselves; he was the Son of Man foretold in the Apocalypse. He had already drunk Christ’s blood and, at his coming, he would free God of his suffering for the creation of the world; he would be known as Christ imperator et deus.

  In the undercroft of the bookseller’s shop, a few months before, Exmewe had discoursed to them of the several signs. “There are many diverse tokens which shall come before that day,” he had told them, “by which we shall fully know that the day is near and not far. Among which signs or tokens Christ proclaims in the Gospel when he says that ‘There shall be signs in the sun, moon, and stars.’ You should understand that Christ speaks not only of wonders that can be seen in these visible planets which are set in our sight, but also of ghostly tokens which are more subtle to understand for the coming of that doom.”

  So in succeeding weeks he spoke of the circles interlinked and the five wounds of London. Just as the blood of a murdered child will cry out unless it is covered, so the blood of Christ is only visible when the painted cloth of the world is removed from it. “We must fix Him upon the tree once more, so that His image shall stretch across creation. Christ suffered five wounds in His mortal death; we must inflict five mortal strokes on five sundry places in the carnal church which is the church of this world. Wherefore five? It is the image of all that exists. The five joys. The five wits. We have the threefold universe, the trine compass of earth, air and sea, but we must add to them time and space which are the angels of God. Therefore, five. It has been revealed to me in words that are a chosen song before God, a lamp to our life, honey to a bitter soul. When the circles of fire are painted upon London, it will be a sure sign that death is within the gate. That the judgement is not long.”