Fair Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  The streets were mostly empty though a few folk wandered, as I did. One elderly man was sluicing down the gutters outside his shop. I knew him vaguely. He was famed as the best goldsmith in the city and kept his premises clean for rich customers. The shit he washed away collected in cold heaps further down the street, where the raykers would eventually clear it. His window, the shutters let down on chains to form the counter, was wide and above it was painted his guild’s arms. It was the road of the goldsmiths and fine workers in silver and pewter, the rich quarter leading to Cheapside’s markets. I turned the corner where the streets narrowed and cobbles gave way to beaten earth, walking on until my calf muscles ached. Leather Lane, Fletchers Alley, on down to Coopers Street and from there to the river and the wharfs. I went up again by the bath houses and entered the darker streets under the arch of the old broken aqueduct.

  Two whores leaned against the doorway of the Chandler’s Tavern but they took me for a lady and sniffed down at their bare feet and ragged hems as I passed. The inn was open but the singing had long finished and I knew old Alan Pomfrey would be inside alone, polishing his bar, spreading sawdust and watering down his ale.

  I walked up to the next rise where the two wider roads intersected, one running up, the other down, with St. Mark’s Holy Church and its beautiful wooden spire between them guarding the old crossing of the ways. I took the down and followed it back towards the river, approaching London Bridge. With the reek of the Thames salty in my nostrils, I reached my old house and its barred doorway. I used the stolen cross, and I broke through the barricade and smashed the lock. Then I pushed open the lopsided door from its rust damaged hinges and went indoors. I was home again.

  It was damp and the rats were nesting in every corner. I swept and cleaned as I had not done for months and I even climbed into the rafters and tied up the wandering thatch. I chased out spiders and beetles. I made up a bed from the fallen rushes although I knew it was flea infested, and I tucked it all up with my own two bed covers from the forest house and a blanket that I’d stolen from the convent.

  I put out five big pans to catch rain water since the water barrel was smashed in and I hung the convent’s cross beside them. I hoped it might deter the sheriff should he remember the house had been commandeered. Then I crawled upstairs, lay down on my comfy new bed, curled up with the daylight dancing through the ripped velum, and fell asleep.

  It was some hours later and the bustle in the street outside was at its busiest when I woke with something pricking my side. I shifted, pushing away the straw that could sometimes be sharp and was penetrating my clothes, but the discomfort continued and jabbed at me wherever I moved. I suspected cockroaches and rolled over but the thorn pricked my other side. With a yawn and an unwilling stretch, I sat up, rummaging for whatever was so persistent. My hand touched something warm and hard and I pulled it out. It was the little coiled serpent that ate its own tail.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  For two days I tried to return to Molly. It was not fear, nor even for simple escape. I wanted to see Thomas Cambio. He was the only person I now believed I could trust, and I needed answers. I wanted someone prepared to explain without speaking in riddles. I called to him and I practised the same rituals he’d taught me for entering Tilda’s world, but nothing happened. I didn’t have the granules he’d given me, the most essential ingredient. Besides, Thomas had taught me how to get back to the medieval, but he’d never told me how to get back to Molly. The secret was keeping the door between worlds open he said, but I didn’t know how to swing in reverse. I sat with the little snake in the palm of my hand and wondered how I could have left out such an essential equation.

  “Vespasian’s a man of great power,” Thomas had told me that night, “and power is always amoral. I’ve some power myself of course. I know I’m not above suspicion. But I’ve journeyed a long way through time and space, and now I’m here to educate and protect you.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  I had been emerging from the intoxication of an evening with my cosy counsellor when she drank Earl Grey tea and I drank God knows how many glasses of an average vintage. Coffee with Thomas sobered me slowly and that helped. I was able to accept what would otherwise have seemed too absurd. “Because that is what I do,” said Thomas. “I help whoever’s in need, and you, my dear young lady, have a need that supersedes any other.”

  University professor material, wise eyed and silver haired with a wide smiling mouth, but discussing magic as if it was a recipe for porridge. “You’re telling me that you’re a time traveller?” I said. “A sort of cosmic angel?”

  “Oh dear me no,” said Thomas. “In fact, in many ways I’m just an ordinary man who lives in the here and now. Just down the road in fact, though I don’t believe in coincidences – there is no such thing of course – and where I live was surely arranged by other powers. But I discovered when I was quite young that I had a strange gift. I’ve developed it over the years and now I use it to delight myself, and to help others. That seems far more satisfying than just helping oneself, you know.”

  Now I sat on my straw bed and stared at the carving and at the dust in the corners and the rip in the window and the broken shutters and remembered every word of a conversation that would not take place for a thousand years.

  “But you know Vespasian. You say you’ve met him,” I’d answered.

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Thomas. “He’s a remarkable personality and I imagine anyone journeying back to that particular era would end up meeting him. He’s the hub, you might say.”

  “Please, please tell me about him.” I was scrunched up in the chair with my head beginning to hurt and all around me floated the milky rainbows that Thomas had produced from his walking stick.

  “Drink your coffee,” suggested Thomas. “It’ll clear your head and take away the nausea.”

  The colours kept swirling. “How do you know I’ve a headache and feel sick?” I’d asked, obediently sipping the coffee.

  “Oh, no magic about that,” smiled Thomas. “I’m afraid inebriation usually has that affect. Besides, you were looking quite pale. Now I believe things are warming up.”

  The room had been cold, left empty all day with a frosty autumn wind outside. Now the sun was shining inside although it was past midnight and I was beginning to feel wide awake and very comfortable indeed. “Yes, you certainly have a remarkable walking stick. Is it your magician’s wand?”

  He laughed. “No, I’m afraid not. I’m just creating a disturbance in the veils to help calm the atmosphere. Now, shall we begin with the explanations?” He leaned forwards. “You were asking about Vespasian? And a few other things need to be explained, I imagine.”

  I wanted that sort of help again. If I couldn’t go to him, then it was possible that he might come to me. As an experienced time journeyer, he could manipulate his travels where I could not. But I’d never asked him if he kept the same appearance in different places. Few would recognise Molly as Tilda. Thomas Cambio might be equally disguised.

  So I got up and put the little snake on the old chest under the window. It seemed to settle, coiling tighter, basking in the pale sunshine. I left it there. If it refused to leave me, then I would ignore it.

  For two days I rearranged my life back into London routine. I went to the market and I stole. Tilda felt a strange complacency, a renewal of identity as she returned to the old life. She stole food and a slim purse from a fat housewife. With the few pennies I bought a hen, a new lock for the door and a new pair of shoes. I went to see Jack Saddler and made some excuses and told some lies. “I’ll stay just a little while,” said Tilda, “until I decide where to go. Back to the village where I was born perhaps. Then the house is all yours again. The sheriff doesn’t seem to be interested.”

  “Don’t you worry, miss,” said Jack. “You keep warm and look after yourself. Tell me when you reckon on leaving and I’ll be off to the sheriff myself and ask for occupancy. Meantime, come Sunday after church. We
set a good dinner, Sundays.”

  It was him I bought the shoes from. He wasn’t a cobbler but he was a fine leather worker and he made the shoes for all his own family and half the street too. They were black and soft like gloves, and Tilda was proud to own them. They peeped out from the fifthly hem of my tunic and gleamed like little silk slippers.

  So I had a good Sunday lunch of peas pottage and sardines in oatmeal, with spiced ale and endless talk about the state of the nation and King John’s latest scandals. In an effort to reclaim the French lands he’d lost in battle to the wretched Philip, he’d taken hostages and now, against all the laws of chivalry and Christian decency, they were treated appallingly, poor souls. One seven year old child had been hanged. Another young man died after being castrated, without recourse to either medicine or the clergy. It was also common knowledge, so they said, that some years back the king had starved his own nephew to death. Tumour, of course, was all we had, and rumour wove gruesome stories.

  “He’s fond of mutilations and castrations, is our good gentle king,” said Jack through his mouthful of peas.

  “No good criticising the nobility,” said his wife. “Gets you nowhere except into the dungeons, mighty quick.”

  “No one can’t hear me in me own house,” said Jack. “I doubt the king’s too fond of London city. Knows we’re an independent lot. And what about Vespasian, Tilda? Never did understand why you all moved so sudden. The sheriff never knew you was all thieving, you know.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” I muttered.

  “Except for poor Isabel,” said Agatha.

  “Well, we’re careful not to hunt the king’s deer,” I said quickly. “There’s plenty to eat without risking the gibbet.”

  “Castration’s the latest fashion,” muttered Jack. “Castration for poaching too. Lose your privates for a few morsels to quiet a starving belly, I’ve not heard naught more wicked. Now, talking about the gibbet, there’s a new body in the square. Red Ralf, most feared highway robber on the Fosse Way, they reckon. All his guts is hanging out and spoils the fruit for a half mile around. But they didn’t dare castrate the bugger.”

  I clamped my mouth shut. Jack was discussing the consequence of law and order, but it brought images of Muriel Bunting hanging upside down in the little church in my West Country village, with her skirts around her neck and her entrails on the mosaics. Thinking of Muriel would bring back memories of Sammie and I had to avoid that if I could. Agatha wanted me to stay the night but their room was already well crowded and the youngest child Mabel was a brat who picked her nose and wiped it on my skirts if she could squeeze close enough. So I said thank you but no thanks to Agatha though I took the jug of ale she offered me and the remains of the pottage for tomorrow’s break-fast.

  I walked home slowly, little more than a few steps around the corner but long enough to feel the delicious bite of frost in the wind and enjoy the moonshine on my forehead. It was five nights since the new moon and already its silver crescent was bright as a Saracen’s knife through the scud of clouds.

  That night, warm in my straw bed with the rats scuffling overhead in the thatch, I dreamed. It was the night of October the twenty second. I dreamed of Thomas Cambio. I could not see his face but I saw his long slim hands and heard his voice. “It is the symbol of infinity,” he said, “and is not an evil sign.”

  “I know that,” I whispered. “I was told. But why does it haunt me? How can it cling to me, however hard I try to distance myself?”

  “You could try and burn it,” said Thomas, “but fire and alchemy make a powerful combination.”

  “Now you talk in riddles, like all the others,” I complained. “I wanted you to come because you speak plain. I need answers, not more puzzles.”

  But the dream faded and I woke to a cold morning. It was October the twenty third.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  It was Walter who came to see me. I was out at the time and came home with an armful of stolen food to find him sitting in the kitchen waiting for me. He had picked the lock, something he had always been particularly good at. He was talking to the hen.

  “Her name’s Molly,” said Tilda, putting the bag of barley and the onions and leeks on the table beside the small leafy cabbage and the three turnips.

  “Well, you’re not starving I see,” said Water, nodding to the table. “Vespasian said you wouldn’t be.”

  “You’re not angry with me then?” I offered him an apple.

  “No, of course not. But I don’t want that. It’s stale and soft. We eat far better than that in the forest.” So he was angry, after all. “For God’s sake Tilda, you frightened the life out of us at first. We thought you’d been taken off like Isabel and Richard. I thought you might be dead.”

  “I’m sorry.” I ate the apple.

  “Vespasian said it wasn’t that. He said you were alright, you’d just decided to leave. You’d run away.”

  I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “I really am sorry, but I had to go. I took all my clothes and my blankets. It was pretty easy to see I hadn’t been stolen away in the night.”

  “You should have left a note. A letter.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Tilda. “I can’t write and you can’t read.”

  “Vespasian can read and you can write a little bit, I’ve seen you,” said Walter. “Anyway, then I was worried that you’d gone because of me. It wasn’t, was it? Because I wanted you to marry me? Vespasian said it wasn’t that either.”

  “He was right,” I said. “It wasn’t that.”

  “He said it was because of him,” said Walter, “but he wouldn’t say why. He didn’t ask you to marry him as well, did he?”

  Tilda sniggered. “No, certainly not.” A few explanations went through my head but I wasn’t going to tell the truth. “I can’t talk about it Walter, really. I just had to get away.”

  “It’s to do with what happened in the castle, isn’t it?” he persisted. “When you were gone for an hour and you said you’d been gone for weeks. You said Vespasian tortured you. That’s impossible. But something happened. You’re angry with him, aren’t you?”

  He grabbed my left hand as I picked over the core of the apple, and held it up. The burn marks were fading but the palm was ridged and discoloured. I nodded. “Yes, alright, it is something to do with all that. It’s magic, Walter. I don’t really understand any more than you do. Please don’t let’s talk about it now.” It was strangely pleasurable to see him; old company and friendship in a lonely place.

  We had lunch together and he helped me cook it. I discovered laughter again as he tripped up carrying in one of the pans of rain water from outside and startled the hen. He’d brought me a gift of wine, stolen of course, and it was the weak, sweet yellow English stuff I disliked, but we drank it and laughed even more. He told me the gossip and the tattle from the forest house.

  “Gerald’s puzzled ‘cos Vespasian won’t take him back to visit his grandmother. He won’t let him claim his title either. Gerald’s gone sort of quiet.”

  “Sulking.”

  “Maybe. He seems sort of sad and I think I might feel the same in his boots. Anyway, he doesn’t talk much, especially to Vespasian. But we carry on training, even more now. You know Tilda, this new life, with manners and swords and riding, well I reckon that’s really for Gerald, for when he’s accepted as a baron. He’; need to know all those things. We won’t, but that’s the reason he teaches us whether Vespasian admits it or not.”

  “Perhaps one day you’ll be a great knight,” I said. I felt I owed him some sort of gentle flattery.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Walter. “But I want to be able to defend myself. Who knows, one day I might go and crusade if I can afford it.”

  “Well, at least Vespasian’s a good tutor.” I thought of what else Vespasian had taught. How to steal. And the black arts to an Italian priest.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” said Walter, saying goodnight to me from the straw bundle he made up on the o
ther side of the room. “But I don’t think I want to marry you anymore.”

  I felt ridiculously rejected. “Why? I mean, that’s good, because I don’t want to marry you either. Or anyone else, either. But why?”

  “It sounds soppy now,” muttered Walter into the straw. “But Vespasian talked to me quite a lot after you’d gone. He talked about love. You know Richard used to go on about romance and chivalry. Of course, he thought he was in love with you too, poor Richard. Well Vespasian says that’s all silly. Just part of growing up, he said. He told me a lot about what he calls real love and how it’s different to chivalry and courting and then passion and wanting – well, you know. Though when you’re young you think it’s all the same thing. He helped me understand, man to man. I feel different now. I’m – sort of – grown up.”

  “Good,” I said. It was a conversation I would have liked to overhear. Vespasian’s attitude to sex was something I already wanted to kill him for.

  “You’ve got a strange round wooden thing on the chest over there,” said Walter suddenly. “I don’t remember seeing that here before.”

  “I found it,” I said. “Go to sleep Walter. We can talk in the morning.”

  I wasn’t sure if sleeping with a young man alone in the same room was considered appropriate for a girl my age in medieval days, but it didn’t seem to bother Tilda. She saw Walter as a brother. I curled up and watched the moon rise through the torn window parchment. It was misty white, now a half moon at the end of its first quarter. It was the night of the twenty third of October.