To Obey and Serve

by V L Perry

  Lent crawled by, even more slowly than usual, it seemed. Unlike March, in which every day was the same—dull, chilly and wet—no two days in April were alike. The grass might be sparkling soft green under a sea-blue sky one day, and be dulled under cloudy grey shadows the next; the winds might whip cold rain against the windows, canceling the day’s hunting party, only to become a warm, caressing breeze later in the afternoon. Everyone—farmers, poets, painters, hunters, courtiers huddled too long in the same smoky furs all winter—liked April, welcomed it.

  I did not trust it. For witches, the autumn with its lengthening nights is the season of rebirth, and spring the season of death. But then, even the Church entwined life and death: celebrating Christ’s birth in the dead of winter and His crucifixion at time of new birth. Kratzer had explained once that no one could know precisely when Christ was born, and so the Church chose a symbolic feast day to turn the pagans from their winter festivals. Rome was sacked in the merry month of May, and the warm weather that saw the return of green growing things also sprouted revolution in the countrysides of Europe. For me spring would ever be the season of death.

  The court moved to Westminster.

  When the weather looked as though it might finally settle down, the Lady declared that each of us should have a holiday. In groups of six we were allowed to walk about the city, and see such things as we liked. The day after Passion Sunday, Jane and I had our turn to go out with Ann Saville, Grace and Madge. The Lady gave us a shilling apiece and bid us return by the evening curfew, and not to go beyond the City wall.

  The day was warm, and we had not yet dragged out the heavy chests containing the gowns of lighter material. “Better to go next week, when we can eat what we like,” Ann Saville grumbled. She was as excited as any of us, for I knew she hoped to fine a piece of finery to wear for her wedding to Baron Berkeley later this month, but must needs hide it behind pretend complaints.

  London, like most cities I knew, was a jumble of streets laid down over animal paths, scattered in every direction. Seventy thousand souls packed into a city smaller than Vienna, Munich, or Linz, all less populated. Even the Romans had not been able to bring lasting order to it.

  At this time of the year the thawing river stank of the winter’s garbage and wet vegetation, though we grew used to it after a short time outdoors. The warmish breeze carried a hint of springtime green underneath the smell of burning peat from the houses in town. Gulls squawked and circled the dock where a small boat awaited us, just big enough to seat the six of us and the two yeomen who would serve as our escort. The whole day was ours; what to do first?

  “Let’s go to the Tower first, to see the menagerie,” Grace said. At such times her air of being Lady Parker fell away, and it was easier to remember that she was only eighteen, little more than a child. But all of us had the same secret wish, and so the barge slipped downstream from Westminster to the Tower, the oars barely dipping into the clear-brown water.

  The Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edward Walsingham, admitted us through the Lion Tower gate. He was a short, wiry little man with fiercely drawn-together brows who nodded continually and spoke as though addressing a large audience, obviously proud of his work. For threepence apiece he took us first to the lions, without asking; probably everyone wanted to see them straightaway.

  All my life I’d heard how strong they were, how terrifying their roar and majestic their bearing, so that my first view of one was rather disappointing. It was far smaller than I had imagined, a ragged creature with a dust-colored coat that paced dully behind its bars. This pitiful beast resembled the heraldic lions on arms and tapestries as much as a sparrow resembled a peacock. But after a time I saw how its muscles flowed smoothly under its skin like a stream flowing over rocks, how its eyes were like amber brooches and its red mane was truly magnificent, if a bit patchy.

  “What is its name?” I asked.

  “We call this one Henry,” Walsingham replied proudly. “We always keep a lion named for the king of England. This beast’s life is joined to His Majesty’s. If any harm were to befall either of them, God forbid, the other would take the harm onto himself. The lion that was kept for His Majesty’s late father the king died only a few days before the king himself did.”

  “You must take good care of this one,” said Jane.

  “What does it eat?” Grace asked.

  “Well, lady, I’ll tell you an interesting story: this fellow here eats meat and bread, more in a day than you ladies could eat together in a week. Sometimes, if people can’t pay the admission fee, they bring a dog or a cat instead, and we feed them those as well. But once we threw in a spaniel, and instead of eating it, this Henry here took an affection to it, and wouldn’t suffer anyone to come in and take it away. That spaniel was his constant companion ‘til the day it died of old age, and ever since then he’s torn apart every other dog we’ve put in to replace it.” Walsingham sighed. “So now he just paces all day.”

  “Does he have a mate?” Jane asked.

  “We’ve tried that, but we have to keep the lionesses with the others, since he killed the last one we put in there. So we’re likely to have no more cubs from this one.”

  The other lions, five in all, were smaller; the king received them as gifts from fellow monarchs, none of whom were very imaginative. The two lionesses did not have manes, though their bearing was equally majestic. Sir Edward told us how lion cubs were always born dead before the father lion breathes life into them, how lions could tell whether a woman is a virgin. The other three shrieked and nudged each other at that, though Jane couldn’t take her eyes off the beast, tuning her head to follow it from one side of the cell to the other and back again.

  There was also a tiger, all bright rippling grace (though not red-and-white-striped as we had heard), and an elephant, a huge strong creature two hundred years old that drank nothing but wine. The bears were the same kind seen all over London, dancing on tethers in the streets or chained in the baiting arenas to fight the dogs. Here too were the strange monkeys from the New World; many nobles and foreign ambassadors went to the trouble and expense of procuring them for the queen as gifts. She always accepted them with such gracious thanks that they never guessed how she hated their screech and stink.

  Walsingham talked of other creatures not yet in the Tower that he hoped to get one day: a gryphon, half eagle and half lion, big enough to pick up an elephant and fly with it to great heights, dropping it to smash on the ground before eating it; ippocanes from Egypt, fearsome half-man and half-horse animals that lurk in the rivers and snatch men when they come to drink; an armored rhinoceros; dragons from Wales. He seemed to have a preference for ugly, ungainly beasts. I wondered that he did not seem nearly as eager to get a unicorn, whose horn has great powers of protection, or the talking birds with feathers bright and varicolored as jewels.

  We saw the armory, and the Jewel House, the Regalia sleeping in the cool dimness of the White Tower, and the underground labyrinth of chambers where great casks of wine were stored (and where Richard III’s poor little nephews had met their death). By the time we emerged, the April sunshine seemed as foreign to my eyes as the exotic animals. I shuddered, even in the warmth, and saw Jane and Grace do the same. What would it be like to enter these walls knowing you’d never come out again? Even the windowed turret chambers reserved for high-ranking prisoners like the Duke of Buckingham were grimly foreboding, with only a single cross of iron bars on the window slits.

  Where to go next? There were the inmates at Bedlam, the baitings at the Bear Gardens, the great cathedral of St. Paul’s which thrust its spire up into the bright spring sky, so close it seemed we could touch it.

  At Madge’s urging we turned toward the Bridge. Madge was always most excited about food; I wondered that she was not plumper than she was. In truth we were all as hungry for pies and ales as for the reminder they would give that we were alive and at liberty.

  The shops on London Bridge are amazing to behold. Here was som
ething quite different from the market-square of Aldington, or even the Graben in Vienna. There the shops owned by Jews—who sold jewelry, rich fabric, braid and trimmings for gowns—were closed during Holy Week; even the loss of their profit did not make it worth the risks, for too many Christians worked themselves into a frenzy of piety, and the result was often ruined goods, smashed stalls, and broken heads. But here in England, all kinds of folk crowded the narrow lane between the rows of shops—there was scarce enough room for two women to stand side by side with their arms outstretched.

  Poor laborers jostled among rich merchants, even blackamoors in satin and velvet, dwarves in jangling costume with bells. Fat, thin, young, old, beautiful or pockmarked, weighed down with small children, swaggering free through the crowded street—I marveled that the English, who keep mainly to themselves on their small island, should make up such a parti-colored lot as this.

  Here too the wares were right out in the street, and brightly painted signs competed with shouting vendors to beckon you to stop a moment and consider stuff you’d never given much thought to, but which your heart suddenly craved and yearned for. Small polished mirrors of polished tin or copper, metal shops where rapiers, knives and daggers far outnumbered the cups and plate, beauty shops selling kohl and lead-sticks to outline the eyes, toothpicks soaked in essence of licorice, tweezers, cuticle-sticks, pumice, combs, brushes, and (kept behind the counter, shown only to very important-looking ladies such as ourselves), small ivory boxes of powdered pearls or even gold dust. The perfume stalls choked you with their mix of ambergris, rosecakes and a thousand other scents: pepper, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cubeb, galingale, all mixed into a noxious cloud which made me sneeze as we passed.

  Some shops stocked items of a single material--wood, leather, metal or cloth. Others appeared to be a hugger-mugger scattering of goods, where you might find ladies’ knitted hose heaped beside wax candles or bags of flour. Thin street dogs snarled at one another and were kicked out of the way from time to time by shopkeepers demanding you come over to inspect their wares. They seemed to think this mournful Lenten season a holiday:

  “End of the world, ladies, what’s your pleasure? Best take it now!”

  “You’ll not be needing your gold in heaven!”

  There were shops that sold relics, as well as carved wooden figures of saints and crosses, rosaries, medals, blessed rings, books of hours and good-luck charms. Ann Saville thought it blasphemous, though Grace paid a shilling for a necklace containing a strand of St. Jerome’s hair.

  While we stood waiting for eel pies, I looked at the houses jutting over the edge of the bridge and shuddered. Their back halves were supported only by timbers, making them look as if they might tumble into the river at a strong enough push from a crowd, or even the wind. I could never live here.

  Twenty paces down and across from the pie vendor, I saw it: a shop narrower even than the others, with quills, ink and sand laid out along its tables. I paid a penny for an inch-thick bundle of creamy blank sheets sewn together up one side, and a small silver-handled knife cost threepence, though I bargained it down to two. There was a slim silver goose quill too, but the small coins in my bag were running low. I could always use one of Kratzer’s quills. If I ever saw him again.

  When I came back outside after breathing my fill of the fine paper, fresh parchment and vellum and oiled leather, Jane was waiting for me: “Where did you slip off to?”

  For a moment I had a strange reluctance to show her--though what had I to hide?—and held out my new treasures.

  “What’s that for?” she asked, indicating the pages. They had no cover, and were bound only with flax.

  I wasn’t certain myself. That was probably why I’d had that strange flash of hesitation, a fear she would think me foolish. “I’m to practice copying Vergil.” And I was, though that was not the true reason; I’d simply seen the things and wanted them.

  “Doesn’t Kratzer give you paper? And why didn’t you also get some quills and ink, if you’re to practice on your own?” She handed me a pie, and took a spoon from her belt to eat hers with.

  We cut off the tops of the pies and threw them in the river, then took turns scooping out the hot filling: tender chunks of eel and chopped onions in thick, buttery sauce. Mine sent up a delicious waft of steam; I was almost hungry enough to eat the crust.

  “You can’t,” Grace exclaimed. “You’ll get sick.”

  “Tom eats his crusts sometimes,” Jane said. “Though only when he’s drunk.” I had an odd feeling she’d mentioned him just to watch my expression.

  It turned out the price of ale was more than doubled there on the Bridge, since it had to be carted in every day. We set off for Cheapside instead, where a pint of ale was only a groat, though that did not stop the laborers from drinking their entire day’s wages there.

  The more I saw of London, the more it seemed a smaller, dirtier version of the great European cities:

  At Paul’s Cross, a man in a torn friar’s habit waved his arms and shouted about the End of Days, when the Lamb would return as the Lion to do battle with the seven-headed dragon. I did not think he was a real monk, for he had no tonsure; he might have borrowed the habit for effect. Folk went to and fro about their business, ignoring him, though a few paused to listen for a minute or two.

  I watched as Ann Saville, distracted, drew nearer and nearer a pile of dung in the street, and smiled a bit when she trod wetly in it. Jane gave me a reproachful look as we stopped to let Ann scrape her shoes on a stone, cursing all the while. But then Jane had seen it too, and said nothing.

  We threw bread to the inmates at Bedlam, their clawed hands reaching through the bars of their cells and scratching each other out of the way. They stood or lay in their own filth, some chained to walls; for a penny, you could see one being ducked. It was like one of Durer’s scenes of hell, only with a great howl and stench - not a place you could bear to stay for long.

  After that, the others wanted to go the Southwark to see the afternoon bearbaiting, and Jane refused.

  “You go on if you want,” she told us. “I’ll meet you back at the landing, and we can get back to Westminster together from there.”

  “Where will you go?” Grace exclaimed. The yeoman guard looked nervous, but he could not be in two places at once.

  “Tis Holy Week,” she replied. “I would see some of the guild plays.”

  “I’ll go with you, then,” I said. We had talked of the Eastertime plays during one of our afternoons in the gallery, a treasured memory from both our childhoods. The guilds always found ways to liven things up; the cardmaker playing Adam in the Garden, for instance, always had a codpiece the size of a loaf of bread.

  It took me some minutes to figure out that we were not heading toward the landing, but further east to Bishopsgate. “Jane,” I huffed as I strove to keep up with her, winding through the narrow lanes—how did she come to know her way so well? “We’re not to go beyond the Wall.”

  “You don’t have to come,” she replied. I resolved to keep silent, though I would not be the one who paid the toll. If we did not return by the evening curfew, the others would miss us, and our mistress would discover where we’d been. She always discovered everything.

  Sure enough, she handed the gatekeeper a coin for each of us and we made our way across the wall moat, just beginning to gain its full summer stench. It was worse than the river; I counted three dead dogs floating below us in the short time it took to cross. Above us were five melon-like things on spikes, with tufts of hair on top: the parboiled heads of criminals, punishment and warning for those would break the king’s laws. The low sun sent streaks of orange light dancing across the water.

  We headed down the main avenue to Spitalfields. This was where foreigners lived in makeshift hovels, a gathering place for all the humanity that did not belong (or were not welcome) in the City itself. What were we doing here? Once we reached the open area at the edge of the marketplace, we slowed down to look around.


  It was like any country market, only more so. There were bears that lumbered on short, stiff legs, and an Indian that a Spaniard had brought back from the New World. I’d never gotten a chance to see Hawkyns’s Indian, which had been taken back to the New World shortly after I arrived, and died on the long voyage back. This one was a proud, silent creature, with skin like leather and black hair shiny as onyx. It wore skins and feathers, and had bright lines and circles on its face. At times it was said to set up an earthly shrieking, which some said was song and others voices from the devils that possessed it. A man kept it chained to a stake and showed it to the curious for a penny.

  The Gypsies crowded around their cooking fires, their wagons drawn tightly together. They were fairer than the ones in Vienna, though I did not know why that should be: Gypsy folk marry only with their own. Their dress and red kerchiefs were the same, as was the empty look in their eyes. They smelled worse than beasts, for stables are at least kept clean. In the Low Countries they were suspected as spies for the Turks, and had been driven here. Even the Gypsy Acts, which forbade them to come any more into England, had not reduced their numbers--nor had the penalties for begging and witchcraft, their two favorite practices.

  More than anything, I did not want to be here after the gate was shut for the night. If need be, I’d leave her behind. Surely I could find my way back. Surely the gatekeeper would let one of the royal household through without a coin, though who knew what he might want in return.

  Between the filthy rows of tents the dogs barked at us, their thin red flanks crusted with mud. Old women offered to look at our hands and tell what future awaited us. The young women sold beauty potions and charms to hasten the happy future—for who would buy these from an old hag? Englishmen, supposedly, did not touch the Gypsy girls, for fear of falling ill; more likely they feared a curse on their manhoods. And indeed, the girls beckoned to passing women who suffered from harelips, or had bruises on their faces and arms, or who were weighed down with childbearing year after year, and whispered of charms to cure the very thing that tormented them.