by Ann Swinfen
A few good men had reopened the hospital, pleading for funds and medical services from any who would support it. It must have been a hard task and often thankless, but at length even the Privy Council had seen the advantage of providing help for those who could not afford the attentions of a private physician. Nowadays the hospital was organised and staffed on a permanent basis, although funds were always short. And the racket from Smithfield could still be heard in the wards on market days.
Along with the other sightseers, we picked our way through the crowds of workmen, who must have been mightily annoyed by us. From time to time one of them would shout at us to get out of the way. One fellow dropped a plank so close to Ambrose that he jumped back in alarm as the dust spattered his fine hose. I did not think it was entirely an accident. His finery might well have been seen as a provocation to these workmen, many of them in nothing but tunics of rough sacking, their legs and feet bare. In the summer heat and labouring hard, they would be warm enough, but what of the cold, when winter came? The weather-wise were forecasting a bitter winter to follow this hot summer, commenting on the thick clusters of berries and hips already beginning to form on the City’s trees and bushes.
‘God’s provision for the birds,’ they said. ‘Sure sign of a bad winter.’
I could not but pity any man in a sacking tunic and no hose if they were to be proved right.
‘Look,’ said Anne, ‘they are building the booths in the Cloth Fair.’
I followed her pointing finger and we began to walk toward the most important part of the Fair.
‘Bartholomew Fair started originally simply as a cloth fair, did it not?’ Anne said.
‘Aye.’ Ambrose nodded. ‘It’s one of the specialist fairs found all over Europe. Our father has had dealings with the spice fairs. There are wine fairs and beer fairs and cheese fairs and fairs for gold and silver work, but the great annual cloth fair in London is based on the importance of our fine English wool and woollen cloth, so the cloth merchants, and the Drapers’ Company of London, still hold the most important place in the fairground.’
‘But it has grown and changed over time,’ I said. ‘The people of London wanted more from their fair than cloth. So that is why the Fair now sells goods of every sort and serves as much for entertainment as for buying and selling.’
‘It is the same in other countries,’ Ambrose said. ‘I was sent by our grandfather to the Frankfurt fair last year, and everything you can imagine was on sale there, including cloth from England. Just as foreign cloth merchants also come here with their goods – silks and damasks from Arab lands, French tapestries, even cotton cloth from North Africa. In Frankfurt there were musicians and jugglers and fortune-tellers too, just as we have here.’
‘I have heard that these foreign traders pay a heavy tax,’ Anne said, as we reached the most favoured area of the fairground, ‘yet they occupy booths on the very fringes of the Cloth Fair.
The double street of the Cloth Fair, the area set aside for the cloth merchants, ran along one side of the church, on slightly higher ground than the muddy area of Smithfield, and here men were at work erecting the elegant booths. The best places were still reserved for our English merchants, although it must be said that even the booths for the foreigners were handsome affairs.
‘Indeed,’ Ambrose said with a grin. ‘Our merchants want all the advantages for Londoners. I am certain they pay a high tax when they go to Frankfurt.’
‘The booths are like little shops themselves!’ Anne exclaimed in delight. ‘They even have more than one room. I never noticed that before.’
Ambrose nodded. ‘A drop down counter at the front, like the shops in Cheapside, to display their general goods, then the main shop in the front room, with shelves for the rest of the stock. Or in other shops, barrels, I suppose, for other sorts of goods. But here, shelves for the bolts of cloth.’
‘And the room at the back?’ she asked.
‘For more expensive items, I’d wager, and the cash box, and a cot for the watchman who stays in the booth overnight.’
‘People live here?’
‘Just for the duration of the Fair. A merchant could not pack up his goods and move them away every night, could he? Nor would he dare leave them unguarded. One of his trusted journeymen will stay to guard them.’
‘I suppose that is very true. So – men will be sleeping here tonight?’
‘It would seem so,’ I said. ‘They cannot wait until tomorrow to set out their goods. All must be ready when the Lord Mayor opens the Fair in the morning.’
I had never given it any thought before, but the Fair was even more like the enchanted town of a fairy tale than I had imagined. Before dusk the place would be populated. Someone must also provide food and drink, although the stalls selling roast pig and ale and other victuals would not be free to serve until tomorrow. Some provision must be made for the dozens of watchmen tonight.
Thinking of this, I glanced over my shoulder to where a temporary street of stalls was growing before my eyes on the open area of Smithfield. Officers of the Fair were bustling about with plans in their hands, sharply directing the erection of the less grand stalls for ordinary traders, making sure that they lay along prescribed lines and were not put up higgledy-piggledy. The traders would each have rented a certain patch of ground and woe betide any man who tried to push his stall to the front or claim a better position than he had paid for.
There was a great deal of shouting and argument going on, most of it fairly good natured, though sometimes tempers flared.
‘You will do as you’re ordered, Nicholas Borecroft,’ one of the officers shouted, his face puce with barely suppressed anger. ‘You know and I know that you have rented the fourth place along the row, not that costlier pitch at the corner. You’ll take down your stall now, or my men will take it down for you, and they’ll not be over careful.’
The said Nicholas Borecroft was a large, fair haired young man with a wide grin and an insolent air. It was clear he knew he was in the wrong, but he set about dismantling his stall with maddening slowness, whistling a tune which I recognised from my days with the soldiers in Portugal, before they became too exhausted to sing or whistle. The song had words of a particularly scurrilous nature, deeply offensive to any man in authority. It was obvious that the officer recognised it too, but there was nothing he could do. You cannot forbid a man whistling, except perhaps in church.
Ambrose and Anne had walked further along the Cloth Fair while I was watching this little drama. The cloth traders’ booths, which belonged to the Fair and were brought out afresh each year, were very fine, stoutly built of oak, with carved uprights and lintels, leather straps for raising and lowering the counters, shingled roofs, and strong locks on the doors. Some of the posts looked as beautiful as ancient church carvings. I wondered how old they really were. Borecroft’s stall, which he probably owned himself, or rented for the time of the Fair, was a ramshackle and tottering framework of cheap unseasoned wood, with canvas for sides and roof, a length of dirty string to support the counter, and a flimsy door any strong shoulder could break down. If Borecroft’s goods were of any value, he would need to keep a sharp watch on them. Probably he would spend the night here himself.
As I began to turn to follow the others along the Cloth Fair, I had an odd sensation that I was being watched. No one seemed to be looking at me from the main fairground, though I scanned it carefully. I turned right round and looked down the Cloth Fair. A little way along, four men were erecting one of the grander booths, under the supervision of an older man, one of the Fair’s senior servants, for the labouring men did not appear to be very skilled at their work. I realised that one of the men had paused, with an end of a timber post in his hands, and was looking directly at me. As I caught his glance, he looked away and said something to his companions. Disconcerted, I began to follow Ambrose and Anne toward the far end of the Cloth Fair and as I passed the group of men, I felt sure they were discussing me. What was more, they
looked somehow familiar.
I paid them no attention, but when I had joined the others, I still felt I was being watched. It sent a prickle down my back. There was sometimes a certain danger in the work I did. In the past I had carried out various secret missions for Sir Francis, but they had mostly been abroad, in the Low Countries, Spain, and Portugal. I had once briefly masqueraded as a tutor in a Catholic household, but these common workmen would have had no place there, nor could they have seen me during the pursuit of the Babington conspirators. I had had an encounter with fishermen on the coast of Sussex, but the night had been dark and I had not been seen clearly, I was sure. Why, then, had these men looked at me so intently, as though they knew who I was? And why did I have a vague sense that I had seen them before? It made me uneasy.
After we had strolled along the Cloth Fair we turned back to the main fairground. Passing the booth where the men had been working, I saw that it was now complete and they had gone. Still, I could not quite rid myself of that uncomfortable sense that they knew me and were watching me.
‘I wish we might buy some gingerbread for Anthony,’ Anne said. ‘It is tiresome to have to wait until tomorrow.’
We were passing Nicholas Borecroft’s stall, which was already re-erected, fragile as it was, and I saw that he was laying out his stock.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘a toy man. Perhaps Anthony would prefer a toy, rather than a piece of gingerbread which he will gobble down in no time.’
‘He is far too old for toys these days,’ said Ambrose. ‘He’s a great schoolboy at Winchester now.’
‘They are not all toys for little ones,’ I said. ‘Look, there are musical instruments and skittles. No one is too old for skittles. Or a pipe and drum.’
‘Not a drum,’ Anne said with a laugh. ‘Mama would never forgive us. And it would drive our father mad!’
‘Perhaps not a drum,’ I conceded.
‘Toys and trinkets for every age,’ Nicholas Borecroft called out to us. He had clearly been listening to our conversation. ‘Beads and baubles for lovely ladies too.’
He leered at Anne, holding up a string of cheap wooden beads, such as a girl of three might wear. She laughed.
‘Nay, toy man,’ she said, ‘you may not sell today. You know the rules.’
‘Then you must return tomorrow, fair maiden, and I will make you special price, just for the sight of your lovely eyes.’
I could see Ambrose draw himself up indignantly at this presumption, but Anne merely laughed again.
‘I shall tell my mother to bring the younger children to visit your stall, toy man,’ she said, ‘and you may make your special price for her.’
He bowed, not a mite put out by Ambrose’s glowering looks. ‘I shall be glad to, my lady.’
We walked on, Ambrose muttering indignantly until Anne told him smartly that she was not offended. This was the Fair, where all ranks mingle.
‘The fellow was only doing what all shopmen must do, enticing folk to buy his wares.’
‘He should not have spoken to you so. It was unpardonable insolence.’
‘Come, Ambrose.’ She slipped her hand through his arm. ‘I am not offended, so you must not be. You are grown too grand since you have been working for our grandfather. Forget your royal customers and let us see a little more of the preparations, then have a glass of wine at a respectable inn.’
After this, Ambrose relaxed and began to enjoy himself, like the boy I had known when we first came to London. The crowds were quite thick by now, getting in the way of the workmen and shopkeepers, who were trying to prepare for the opening the following day, some patiently, some less so.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘there is a puppet show. I have not seen one, oh, not for many years.’
‘ “A grand performance by the miniature Commedia dell’Arte”,’ Ambrose read from the billboard propped up against the side of a large tent. ‘Do you suppose they mean the real thing, with Pulcinella and Arlechino and Pantalone and Scarramuccia? I saw the Commedia when I visited Italy in the spring of last year, for Father’s business.’
‘They used to come to Coimbra,’ I said unguardedly, ‘the Italian Commedia dell’Arte travelling troupes.’
They both looked at me in surprise, for I rarely spoke of my childhood in Portugal, for fear I might let something slip.
‘We should come to see them tomorrow,’ I added hastily. ‘To judge whether the puppet master performs the true Commedia.’
‘I have never seen it,’ Anne said.
‘I do not understand how the puppet master can make the movements so real, and speak in so many different voices.’ Ambrose was peeping through a gap in the canvas of the tent.
‘There must be an assistant as well,’ I said. ‘One man could not handle more than one manikin at a time.’
I felt myself suddenly jostled and at once thought of the men who had been watching me. Then my hand went to the purse at my belt. It was as well it did, for I was just in time to snatch it away from a cutpurse.
‘Stop, thief!’ I cried, and Ambrose made a lunge for the fellow, a weasely lad of fifteen or so, but he slipped away through the crowd and was gone before we could catch him.
‘Enough,’ Anne said. ‘We have seen how everything is being prepared. If there are thieves about, we’d best get away from the crowd.’
‘Aye.’ Ambrose linked arms with us both. ‘Let us find that glass of wine you spoke of. You have your purse safe, Kit?’
‘Aye, though the strings are cut.’ I stuffed it down the front of my doublet and as I did so I noticed that my hand was bleeding.
‘The wretch caught me with his knife!’ I sucked the side of my hand. It was not a deep cut, but it smarted.
Anne looked at me anxiously. ‘Are you badly hurt, Kit? Should we go straight home?’
‘Nay, it’s nothing. I’ll salve it when we are back. I’d rather have that glass of wine.’
We pushed our way through the crowd, all of it seemingly moving in the opposite direction to us, until we reached the edge of the fairground.
‘I have told Peter we will meet him tomorrow over there,’ I said, nodding toward the gatehouse of the hospital. Stacked up beside it was a great heap of the hurdles which were used on market days to make pens for the beasts. Usually they were stored on the other side of Smithfield. The governors of the hospital would not be pleased to see them there. The Fair made access to the hospital difficult enough without this extra impediment. Some of the patients could barely keep on their feet, while the more serious cases had to be carried in.
‘Can you walk a little further, Anne?’ Ambrose asked, as we reached Pie Corner again. ‘The inns hereabouts are not suitable for a lady, but if we go on toward Chancery Lane and the lawyers’ quarter, there are some respectable houses.’
Ambrose, of course, had spent his two years at one of the Inns of Court, picking up a smattering of the law, which Ruy had thought would be useful to him in business. He would know the area well. We followed his lead away from the Smithfield area, with its smell of beasts and butchery, so long familiar to me. The streets grew pleasanter the further west we went, with fine modern houses, many with large gardens. As the City itself within the old walls grew more and more crowded and dirty and disease ridden, the wealthier merchants were moving out to this area where the air was cleaner and they were closer both to the Palace of Whitehall and the Law Courts at Westminster, where many had mercantile disputes to settle. I wondered whether this was where Ruy was planning to move when he spoke of a better house. A far cry indeed from the crooked houses in Duck Lane where my father and I had our home, and where Ruy and Sara had once lived briefly when they were first married, during the time Ruy himself had served at St Bartholomew’s.
It was no more than a ten minutes’ walk down Old Bailey to the bridge over the Fleet River, which was hardly more than a stinking sewer at this time of year, choked with dead dogs, a yearling pig and other unimaginable refuse. It would need the winter rains to scour it out and wash e
verything down to the Thames and out to sea. On the Fleet Bridge, the figures of Gog and Magog, ancient guardians of London, gazed out of their weather beaten faces, bearded with lichen and coifed with bird droppings. Along Fleet Street, Ambrose led us to a large modern inn, where we sat in a private parlour to be served with a jug of pale gold French wine and plates of marchpane shapes. The wine was almost as good as that I had sometimes drunk in Sir Francis’s office.
‘I must confess,’ Anne said, ‘I am a little tired. Pushing through those crowds was exhausting.’
‘It will be worse tomorrow,’ Ambrose said.
‘Ah, but tomorrow there will be jugglers and magicians and the puppet show! And if we are tired we can sit and eat roast pig. Best Bartholomew pig!’
I kept my thoughts to myself. I had been brought up never to eat pig, and although in recent years I had been moving more and more away from my Marrano heritage, the thought of greasy pork sickened me. If the others wanted to eat the famous Bartholomew pig tomorrow, which would be roasted on spits and served with ale at temporary taverns throughout the Fair, I would need to make my excuses. I reflected that it was strange that the Lopez children had not been reared in the same tradition as I, but their families had lived long in England and were more thoroughly assimilated into English ways and an English diet than I was. Peter Lambert, a thorough Englishman and proud Londoner, would certainly want to eat roast Bartholomew pig.
To divert their thoughts from this, I mentioned the odd incident of the men who had watched me at Smithfield.
‘And you think you know them?’ Ambrose said.
‘I cannot be sure.’ I shrugged. ‘Perhaps they were once patients in the hospital, though why should they all have been there together . . . Unless–’ I paused, frowning.
‘Yes?’ Anne said.
‘Could they have been some of the soldiers returned from the fall of Sluys? Discharged from the army now and working as labourers?’ I shook my head. ‘I cannot remember. William Baker would know.’
‘The one-legged leather worker?’ Anne said.