Bartholomew Fair

by Ann Swinfen

  ‘Aye. He was one of those who fought at Sluys. It’s no matter. I shall probably remember when I least expect it.’

  When we had finished our wine and marchpane, Ambrose said he would treat us to a wherry, to save us the walk home. We hailed a tilt boat at Temple Stairs and were swiftly rowed on an ebb tide down to Queenhithe, a short walk from the Lopez house in Wood Street.

  In the middle of that night I woke suddenly, remembering where I had seen those men before. They were soldiers, but not from Sluys. They had been on the Portuguese expedition. None were men I had known closely or physicked, indeed I believed they were amongst the heartier ones who had been chosen to sail with Drake on the mission to the Azores, a trick of that lying pirate to take all our provisions and sail straight back to Plymouth. These men had not been amongst the sick and dying I had cared for on the return journey. But they would have known me, one of the small group of Portuguese gentlemen, and also one of the few physicians on the expedition. Was it merely for that reason they had stared at me? I shivered, despite the warmth of the night. There had been something else in their look, a kind of desperate intensity.

  The next morning, Bartholomew Eve, dawned with a promising brightness in the sky. The last of the storm clouds had quite blown away and any lingering dampness in Smithfield would have been dried out. On the other hand, it would probably become very hot amongst the crowds at the Fair by the middle of the day. We planned to go early, to watch the opening by the Lord Mayor, then stroll about the Fair and attend the puppet show. We would take some refreshment (not pig, if I could help it) and return no later than the middle of the day. That, at least, was our intention. But matters were brewing that would change everything.

  Ambrose had spent the night in his parents’ house, and the three of us met to break our fast before the rest of the family was stirring. Sara and the younger children would follow us later. Ruy, naturally, had more important matters to occupy him. He had mentioned the previous evening that he would be riding out to Eton to attend on Dom Antonio. I wondered whether he peppered his treatments with demands for the return of the gold he had loaned the would-be king of Portugal.

  We set out promptly after a hasty meal of bread, cheese and ale, and made our way as before to Newgate. There was no sign of the chestnut seller, so I assumed he had already bought his licence and found a suitable pitch on the fairground, ready for the opening of the Fair. Crowds were already gathering here, awaiting the first stage of the morning’s events. I suppose we had been standing some half an hour, and more people had crowded in behind us, though we had retained our places at the front, near the entrance to Newgate prison, when a shout from further back on Newgate Street alerted us to the arrival of the Lord Mayor.

  A way was cleared along the street by uniformed City servants dressed in scarlet trimmed with gold braid, each bearing a sharp and wicked looking halberd. They formed up, lining the two sides of the street, tilting their halberds to form crosses, preventing anyone from slipping through. Then we heard the clatter of hooves and wheels on the cobbles as the Lord Mayor’s open coach approached and drew to a halt in front of the prison. But for the halberdiers, I could have reached out and touched it, and a splendid affair it was – carved into the semblance of rearing dragons on either side, with a near life-size gilded wooden figure of St George brandishing his spear upright in front of the liveried servants perched on the rear foot-board of the coach.

  The Lord Mayor himself was clad in an immense scarlet robe of velvet, heavily embroidered with gold thread, which must have been almost unbearably hot on this August day. On his head was a black velvet hat with white exotic plumes pinned in place with pearls the size of my thumbnail. The embroidery on the robe depicted the arms of London, the Tudor rose, and images of the Thames and the City, all intertwined with rose leaves and briars. About his neck the interlinked gold chain looked as though it weighed as much as a small child. The current mayor was Richard Martin, himself a goldsmith, so perhaps he had fashioned the chain with his own hands. Or perhaps it was passed down from one incumbent of the office to another. I did not know. When we had left London in the spring, the Lord Mayor then had been Martin Calthorp of the Drapers’ Company, but he had died shortly afterwards and Richard Martin had assumed the office early. He looked stern and somewhat haughty, an effect marred by the beads of perspiration gathering on his brow.

  As the coach drew up outside the entrance to the prison, the doors were opened by two prison guards and the governor of the prison stepped out. He too was grandly dressed in a long dark blue velvet robe and he too wore a heavy gold chain, though not so fine a one as the Lord Mayor’s. He was followed by a servant bearing a silver tray, on which stood two heavily embossed silver cups and a flask, which I knew would contain sack. With great ceremony, the governor poured sack into the cups and handed one to the Lord Mayor, who stood up in the coach. The two men pledged each other and drank down the sack with a flourish.

  No one had ever told me why this particular bit of the ceremony took place. It seemed very strange that the governor of a prison should have a part in it. What had that to do with a cloth fair, originally held for the benefit of London’s cloth merchants? Nevertheless, the drinking of the cup of sack at the door of Newgate Prison took place every year. It always had been done, and always would be done in the future.

  The two gentlemen finished their drinks, exchanged a few words which we could not hear, then the prison governor stepped back and the mayor resumed his seat. The driver of the coach gathered up his reins and clucked to the horses, who moved off through the City gate. Along with the rest of the crowd, we followed.

  After we had left Smithfield the previous day, the rest of the Fair had been assembled, so that it now seemed almost a permanent part of the City, with streets of shops displaying the signs of their trades and their goods laid out on counters, taverns surrounded by tables and stools, roast pigs on spits turned by ragged scullions, tents with billboards announcing the pleasures to be found within – freak shows, astrologers, quack doctors. In the distance I saw a fountain of coloured balls rising into the air above the roofs of the stalls, where some juggler was practising his art. There were the shrieks of monkeys and parrots and other exotic creatures – ‘See the wonders of the New World, only a ha’penny’. As we passed one of the larger tents, I smelled an unmistakable musky smell and heard a rumbling growl which I recognised. A bear. Would there be bear baiting? It seemed a dangerous thing, in the midst of the Fair.

  We washed up at last near the gatehouse of the hospital, and there was Peter, with a lively young girl clutching his arm. He looked both pleased and self-conscious. Just beyond him was a platform which had not been there when we had left yesterday, on which there were several handsome cushioned chairs. This was where the Lord Mayor would sit to declare the Fair open and watch the first entertainment of the day.

  ‘You have found us, then,’ Peter said as we reached him. ‘It was wise of Kit to suggest the one fixed point in all this hurly-burly.’

  Peter already knew Anne Lopez, but I introduced Ambrose and the two men bowed formally.

  ‘This is Mistress Helen Winger,’ Peter said, colouring a little. ‘You will know her father, Kit. Master Winger, head apothecary at Barts.’

  ‘Indeed.’ I bowed. ‘I am delighted to meet you, Mistress Winger.’

  On such occasions I could not help but reflect inwardly on the oddity of my position, as seemingly one of the gentlemen in the party, instead of one of the maidens.

  ‘I understood from Kit that you would be bringing a lady, Master Lopez,’ Peter said, looking about for the other member of our party.

  ‘She will join us in a little while,’ Ambrose explained. ‘She thought it would be too hot and crowded at the opening. Mistress Hawes will be here about nine o’ the clock, coming in her father’s coach.’

  I saw that he could not forebear a little boasting, that the lady with whom he was walking out belonged to a family which possessed their own coach.


  ‘Look,’ said Anne, ‘the Lord Mayor is here now.’

  The mayor’s coach had taken him to a side door of the hospital, where he would have been received by the governors and superintendent. All now climbed on to the platform and arranged themselves on the chairs.

  Robert Martin’s speech was mercifully brief, then he took up a large silver bell and rang it, to signal the opening. At once a group of wrestlers ran on to the cleared space before the platform. The Fair always opened with a display of wrestling before the Lord Mayor. Whether it was a sport enjoyed by every Lord Mayor, who can tell? I believe there is said to be some skill in it, but it has always seemed to me like men grunting and heaving more like wild animals than civilised human beings. In was not unknown for them to do each other serious injury. Even a dislocated shoulder was bad enough, but sometimes a man’s back or neck might be broken. As a physician dedicated to the care and healing of the human body, I was revolted by such barbarity.

  The men bowed. There were eight of them. They would wrestle in pairs until only two were left, and the last pair would fight for the purse of gold the Lord Major held on his knee. The wrestlers were naked from the waist up and wore nothing but tight leather breeches. Their skin gleamed with oil, intended to make them more difficult to grip, and the tussle more exciting to watch. Six of the men withdrew to the edge of the cleared space and the first pair squared up to each other, crouching and circling, watching for a chance to make the first move.

  And so Bartholomew Fair began.

  Chapter Six

  The first wrestler moved in for the attack, hooking his leg around that of his opponent, seeking to throw him, but the second man somehow managed to slither away, and the first nearly lost his balance. They circled again. The crowd leaned in, faces eager, twisted, hoping to see a man hurt or even blood spilt.

  I turned away in disgust. Behind the Lord Mayor’s platform the gateway to Bartholomew Hospital rose in stately dignity, indifferent to this vulgar brawling in front of it. A sharp longing shot through me. Ever since I had started work there, soon after my fourteenth birthday, I had walked heedlessly through that gate very nearly every day, save Sundays and Holy Days, or when I was sent away from London on some task for Sir Francis. And now I could enter no longer. To stand here and feel myself shut out from the place where I had worked in such contentment, earnestly learning the profession of physician, hurt more than I could have believed possible. Until the time of the Fair I had avoided the hospital. Now I longed simply to walk through the door in my physician’s gown, my satchel of medicines over my shoulder, and bid a good morrow to the gatekeeper, an old friend of mine and Rikki’s, who used to spoil my dog with titbits from his own plate.

  For a moment I felt my eyes blurring, but I must not weep. What would my companions think of me? Sir Francis might perhaps find me a place at St Thomas’s Hospital, but it would never be the same as Bartholomew’s, which felt to me like a second home, and where every corridor and ward held memories of my father.

  I must put it behind me. Resolutely I concentrated on the wrestling. While my attention had been elsewhere, one of the men, slighter of build and younger than the other, must have taken a tumble, for his greasy torso was now coated with dust from the ground. That would make it easier for his opponent to grip him. And so it proved. The other man, a thickset, swarthy fellow with a broken nose, who looked as though he had survived many far less disciplined fights than this, suddenly ducked his head into the younger man’s stomach and seized him around the thighs. With a grunt he heaved him over his own back and flung him to the ground, where he landed with the audible snap of a breaking bone.

  The younger man let out a sharp cry and lay winded, then tried to scramble to his feet, only to fall back again. Even from where I stood, I could see that his right leg was broken. His opponent strode about the wrestling ground, his hands clasped above his head in victory. He passed quite close to us, the stench of his sweat and the oil – which I now identified as pig’s grease – making me gag. The hair in his armpits was as black and thick as coiled wire.

  Anne did not look as though she was enjoying this any more than I was, nor did Peter and his young friend. Like me, Peter was probably thinking more about the broken leg than the victory. A couple of hospital servants, who had been standing by in case of such accidents, were lifting the defeated man. Propping him up between them, they helped him hop one-legged to the hospital gateway. It was fortunate, I supposed, that medical help was so close at hand. The beaten wrestler was sweating with pain, but biting his lip to stop himself crying out and adding to his humiliation.

  The next pair of wrestlers walked forward and bowed to the Lord Mayor.

  It was then that my attention was drawn to something I had been half aware of for a few minutes already. From the direction of the entrance to the fairground on the south side of Smithfield, a noise seemed to be growing. Of course there had been a great deal of noise already. The crowds were thick in the fairground and not everyone had stayed to watch the wrestling. Once the Lord Mayor had declared the Fair open, the chief officers of the Drapers’ Company had made their way to the Cloth Fair, with their official yard measure made of silver carried ceremoniously before them. There they would check that every merchant was using a standard yard and not cheating his customers. Now that the Fair was under way, the shopmen could sell their wares, and many people had begun to stroll along the streets of stalls, looking for bargains, or for some fairing to take home as a memento of the Fair. Around the wrestling itself the crowd seethed, cheering and jeering the competitors in turn. Many would have made bets on the outcome of the various bouts.

  What I had noticed was a different kind of noise. It sounded like – but surely could not be – marching feet. And yells of alarm. Had the London Trained Bands been turned out to search for some malefactor? There was always trouble at the Fair – cutpurses, theft from the booths, disputes between sellers and buyers, fights and drunken brawls – but it was far too early yet for a response from the militia.

  Ambrose was the only one of our party who had been taking an interest in the wrestling, for he claimed that there was much skill in it, for anyone who understood the moves. I tapped him on the arm now to draw his attention away from the second pair who were just squaring up for their fight.

  ‘Ambrose!’ I said urgently. ‘Listen! What do you think that is?’

  He cocked his head. ‘Many men walking together? Perhaps there is some planned procession? Nothing of concern, I think.’

  He turned back to the wrestling.

  ‘Did you hear it, Peter?’ I asked.

  Peter was talking softly to young Mistress Winger and hardly seemed to notice when I spoke to him. I shrugged. It must be nothing.

  The second bout of wrestling was over even sooner than the first, as was the third. It seemed that in each case a much heavier, more experienced man had been matched against a younger one, less skilled and easily defeated. It was more than likely. Whoever organised the wrestling matches would want the final bouts to be the most impressive, between the strongest contestants. The less experienced men were probably there simply to provide opponents in the early rounds and were expected to lose. I hoped they would be well rewarded, for a badly broken leg – or worse – was a high price to pay for appearing before the Lord Mayor.

  I wandered away from the wrestling and peered over the main concourse of the Fair. The toy man, Nicholas Borecroft, was doing a brisk business, but I saw that the puppeteer’s tent was still tightly laced. I strained my ears for further sounds of marching feet, but I could hear nothing but the usual noise of the crowds, and the hawkers and shopmen shouting, ‘What do ye lack? What do ye lack?’

  By the time I returned to the wrestling, all the competitors had been eliminated but the last two, both large, heavy men, with bulging muscles and ugly, vicious faces. Anne was looking bored. I could see Peter and Mistress Winger walking slowly away in the direction of the Cloth Fair. Only Ambrose was watching the w
restling and even he had a slight twist of disgust to his mouth. I was glad I had not been there to see what had caused it.

  ‘It will be over soon,’ I murmured in Anne’s ear. ‘Then we can enjoy ourselves in the Fair!’

  ‘I do not like the look of those last two men,’ she said with a shudder. ‘I’d not care to encounter them in the street.’

  ‘Nor I.’

  ‘In the last fight – you did not see it – that black-haired man tried to gouge out the eyes of his opponent. It was horrible.’

  ‘It is a filthy sport.’

  Yet irresistibly my eyes were drawn to the wrestling ground. Men in the crowd were still placing bets with each other on the final outcome of the matches.

  ‘I’ll wager you three shillings on Podraig the Irishman,’ I heard from someone behind me. ‘Those Irish giants are a wild breed, nothing can stop them. You saw how he twisted the last lad’s arm behind his back till it burst from his shoulder.’

  So that was why Ambrose had looked so disgusted. That and the attempt at eye gouging.

  ‘Nay, I’ll take your wager and raise you to five shillings,’ said another voice. ‘The Irishman is beginning to tire, He’s winded after the last bout. That great fellow from Cornwall has had time to rest the while. What’s he called? Some uncouth name. Merion? Meredew?’

  ‘I’ll match you. Five shillings on the Irishman.’

  ‘What are those servants doing, Kit?’ Anne asked. ‘Over there.’

  Two men in the Lord Mayor’s livery were pushing a large cage on wheels up to the far side of the platform.

  ‘Rabbits,’ I said.

  ‘Rabbits?’

  ‘When the wrestling is over, they let loose a whole pack of rabbits into the crowd. The young lads try to catch them, to take home to their mothers for the pot. And some lads not so young.’

  ‘They just turn them loose in the crowd?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘It will cause chaos.’