Paid more pennies for them both to climb to the top of the spireless tower of St. Paul’s. Where he could look over and around the whole city laid out as if upon a living chart. From there, highest place on Ludgate Hill, able to look down upon the clusters of the other two chief hills—Cornhill and Tower Hill. Could see the way he had come, halfway toward Canterbury it seemed, and the south bank of the river and the river frothing white as it went beneath the Bridge.
In one turning able to encompass the city within the line of the Wall. More than two miles of wall and the raw wound of the ditch without.
Descended partway and paid another penny to give a tug to the bell. While his cousin went ahead to wait for him in the cathedral, pleading an aversion to noise. And therefore Ralegh gave it a memorable tug with all his strength to rattle eyeteeth for a mile around.
Permitted upon descending, a swift craning look at the shadowed grandeur of the cathedral, with its sculptured tombs for illustrious men. His cousin, with an annoying, all-knowing smirk, taking him by the arm for a turn up and down the wide center nave. To enjoy no hush, no signs of awe and piety, but such a clamor as it might as well have been an exchange, a Whitsun fair, a shambles and marketplace, and all in one. Up and back again, slow, shouldering and elbowing their way, upon what might have been, except for absence of horses and carts, as busy a street as is in London. Criers selling anything and everything. And amid such a collection of rogues and vagabonds and candy fellows, tricked out to look gentlemen born and bred, the lawyers in their various gowns cracking jokes and walnuts, spitting seeds and contempt for their clients; all this in the aisle called Paul’s Walk.…
“Be they Jews and money changers?” Ralegh asked.
His grand kinsman laughed.
“There are no Jews in London now. And if they are here, you shall never guess it, for they will spend more time in devotions than the monks ever did and will swear upon the wounds of Our Savior one hundred times a day.”
Adding: “Now you may consider yourself christened for London. And if any man should ask you who you are and what is your business here, why you may tell him you are an honorable member of the Company of Paul Walkers.”
Soon a brisk turn, all too hasty, among the outer courts and buildings and the churchyard. Where, more than by anything within the cathedral, he was struck silent by the row of booksellers. So many printed books all in one place, and all for sale if a man had the price in his purse.
After that he was led, a hard trot on foot now, racing against the bells of the hour, through Newgate and beyond the walls. Passing the gatehouse of Newgate, where from the prison, asquirm and crowded together like salt herring in a barrel, the prisoners at windows cried out. A profane choir, begging for alms and food.
To his question, his cousin stopped long enough to smile and reply.
“Why, lad, it is a wonderful place! It is a prison common to all men, open and free for all.”
“Free?”
“Any man alive is free to walk in, be he ever so humble, and free to beg out of Newgate till he starve to death or die from fever.”
Then went westward on Holborn, crossing the River Fleet, going past palaces and churches his cousin did not name and inns he did not have to, for Ralegh could, like any fellow without even his alphabet, know them by their signs—Red Lion, Blue Boar, Dolphin, Pelican, Three Ravens, White Fox.…
Turned north along Gray’s Inn Lane to enter at the gate and into a bricky pink-red court, ringed round with a steep-roofed building and the walls a wealth of windows, multiplied into innumerable small panes, so as to glitter even in faint light. To dine, then, in the new-built hall, built since his own birth, of Gray’s Inn in the company of gentlemen and scholars and in the presence of judges and great men who sat among the Benchers.
Had to take off his boots for a pair of his cousin’s mules—soft and light but not a fit; must curl up his toes to walk—and to borrow a plain gown as well. They were strict in observance of the sumptuary rules.
The hall was half of silver from abundance of plate and cups. After the ceremonial sitting and the saying of the grace, he whispered to his cousin that here was enough silver to sink a fleet.
“You may have it all, every piece. There is a tradition that any who wants to may have our plate for the asking. If he will promise to furnish the necessary glass and the earthenware to replace it.”
“What sort of bargain is that? A man could furnish that for an hundredth part of the value of the plate.”
“True,” his cousin answered, “but there’s more to the bargain. He must keep the Inn so furnished, replacing all that breaks. Who’s rich enough in England to do that?”
Saying little himself. Swallowing hard, though dinner seemed like a banquet feast. Listening to the young gentlemen at table whose wit was more nimble than a Morris dancer’s feet, as swift as the blade of a fencing master. Drinking too much of their good Spanish wines. Though a walk through the quadrangles and in the shade and sun of the garden cleared his head. “We are much celebrated for our walks,” his cousin told him.
“Now then, country cousin,” his kinsman told him. “You have seen all of the chief sights of London, excepting Westminster. Which you may visit as you go on your way toward Oxford.”
“I thank you for your kindness.”
“Pray remember me to your family.” He offered his hand. “Now be off to your college and see if they can teach you something.”
But, though he bade his cousin a formal farewell, he did not go on toward Oxford then, not yet. Stayed on in London, pinching his pennies for a fortnight.
To wander the streets of the wards and liberties. To look upon many a decaying tower, palace, and priory. And to peek into churches.
Old John Stow, I would have given a good arm to have your “Annals” and “Survey” then.…
Incredible shining elegance of Goldsmith’s Row. Where merchants could live grander and finer, side by side, than country noblemen. Where master artisans with delicate tools could turn gold from lumps and bars, old coin or broken jewel, into whatever shape or form heart might desire and imagination contrive. And the wonders, not believed until seen, of the plate displayed at the hall of their company.
And many the halls of guilds and companies, grand enough, but all overtopped by Guildhall of the Lord Mayor and all the companies. The hall overseen by the images of the giants said to have fought for London, Gog and Magog, carved from fir. Giants told of in pagan stories, and in Scripture existing after the Flood in the Land of Giants, ruled by King Og of Basan.
These merchants of London are the giants of the present age. Power of their money and trade made them mighty.
It was in that Guildhall that Sir Nicholas Throckmorton stood trial for treason and, mirabilis, was acquitted by a jury of his peers. His defense was eloquent they said. And he walked out free. Then the jury suffered for it.
It may be some expected me to follow that example in ’03. If so, they may have concluded that I lacked the man’s eloquence. I concluded, before I stood trial, Sir Nicholas indeed set a precedent: never again would any jury be foolish enough to acquit a man on a treason charge.
He could not yet see the greatest show of the power of London money, though he walked near Pissing Conduit where it would soon stand, Sir Thomas Gresham’s Royal Exchange. He did see Gresham’s shop on Lombard Street. And he saw the house called Timber House where Whittington lived. And at Mercer’s Hall saw a portrait of Sir Richard with his curious cat; Dick Whittington, runaway prentice boy, who turned back to be Lord Mayor of London four times and a knight. To leave almshouses behind in his name and his name as a legend. Who once at dinner with a King of England calmly set fire to and burned to ashes a bond of sixty thousand pounds which the King owed him.…
Our King James may hope the same from Sir Paul Pindar of Bishopsgate, with whom he will dine. But Pindar is not Dick Whittington. He will have his one for ten and full payment, too.
Saw the markets and the fairs of So
uthwark, and Bartholomew, near Smithfields, where so many martyrs were well done. And the old church there, where bishops had worn full armor under vestments.
Wandered everywhere trying to see it all at once and once and for all.
Toured the Abbey at Westminster and in and out of the hall of the Old Palace, now settling into sleep. But he could not have gone through these more swiftly on horseback. Courts and tombs and such caught his interest not at all. What fired him was the sight of the Queen’s courtiers and a few ladies. All clad in stuffs and colors so fine they would have turned Joseph in his coat as fierce with green-eyed envy as his brothers were.
Ralegh looked with envy too, but kept it hidden from himself. Never thinking, even as he wished, like a maid upon St. Agnes’ Eve, to be one among them.
Saw settlements of strangers from other lands: Cloth Fair, where French and Flemish clothworkers lived and sold their work; Austin Friars, belonging to the Dutch to hold their own services, all but such fanatic radical rogues as Anabaptists and the like; and out in Spitalfields he saw houses of the French and Walloons, silk weavers, with high glazed windows for attics where they worked and cages of birds hanging along the roofs. And bought a singing bird from them. Which he sold to an alewife, later, for half the price he paid.
And he walked the lanes of old Jewry. His cousin was correct. If there were any Jews here, they were well disguised behind common Christian names and every sign of sober Christian piety.
Stood awhile to hear a sermon preached from the stone steps of canopied St. Paul’s Cross. But found more pleasure standing to see a pantomime and a puppet show of London and Nineveh, and two plays, one a crude comedy of puns and farce, the other a corruption of Seneca, all blood and thunder and bombast stuffing, at Shoreditch and Newington Butts.
Oh, and everywhere were minstrels and jugglers, dancers and ropewalkers, musicians and tumblers to do tricks and pass a cap or bowl for coins. Not yet the wonder of a talking horse. But dancing bears and monkeys. And parrots who had learned to say “God bless the Queen,” among other things.
At Newington Butts he tried strength and skill with a longbow and won a wager. Another at Islington, where he walked to see the brick kilns and found plenty of sturdy rogues to bet against. In Finnsbury Fields increased his earnings by wagering with gentler folk at the archery butts. And looked on the practice of the artillery there.
And once while walking in St. Nicholas Shambles, where butchers work and gutters are clotted with offal—Londoners call it Stinking Lane—heard the bells of St. Pulchre toll news of an execution. Ran and came in time to see a fellow given his nosegay in front of that church, then followed the crowd all the way to Tyburn, with a stop at St. Giles, where the prisoner drank his last cup of cheer, to see him ride upon the Three-Legged Mare, as they called the gallows there.
Watching that fellow die, he saw a lank shadow cut a purse, as clean and neat with a knife as a barber surgeon and less painful by far. For the victim never felt his loss and the cutpurse vanished.
For more of blood and courage there were the cockpits and the bear and bull baiting. Where a man could make a wager too. But he was no match for the Londoners, who knew the names and histories and the pedigree of every animal.
Money dwindling, and he could not wisely return to those places to wager on his archery, Ralegh crossed over from The Mitre to its neighbor inn, The Mermaid. And found that a Devon lad with a country look and quick hands could turn a trick or two with dice. Then, Fortune favoring him, he haunted taverns, and alehouses with their painted lattices of red or green. For a time his only losses came from tapster’s arithmetic.
Until at last he met a fellow, a Westcountry seafaring man, fresh out of “Sailor’s Town,” east of the Tower. Met the man at Devil Tavern, sign of St. Martin and the Devil, on Fleet Street, close by the places of the moneylenders.
Seeing the boy’s skill at dice and cards, the seafarer proposed a joint-stock venture.
“Boy,” he told him, “you have skill and a good head for remembering odds. But it is not enough in this wicked town, where there are guilds of cardsters and dicers and haunters of even gentlemen’s bowl yards and tennis courts. They have as many tricks as any lawyer or dancing bear. And they speak in canting tongue and pedlar’s French to each other. You are no match for them.”
The fellow prated on, parading a great knowledge of Barnard’s Law and Vincent’s Law, of Setters, Versers, Rutters, Markers, Scrippers, and Oaks, all of them in league against some ignorant Martin like him. And then proposed that two good Westcountry men have more wit than all these put together and how, using the blunt end of London arrogance against them, the two might proceed, playing the fat conny, to catch some conny-catchers and be gone before any man was wiser.
Young and foolish and homesick for the sound of Devon speech, Ralegh agreed. And they played that dangerous game all over the city, and were even so bold as to try their luck and lives at Turnmill Street and Pickt-hatch, where the houses had turning doors with spikes and every man and boy above knee-high was a roaring boy who would fight over the cut of his hair or the cast of his eyes.
And all went well until—oh, the satires of Fortune!—they found themselves caught in the midst of a brawl in Bible Tavern, close to the Devil, where they had begun. A bone-breaking, eye-gouging, table-smashing battle having nothing to do with cards or dice, or any cause he ever knew of. But once it began it was every man for himself and to hell with the hindmost. Just before the constables burst in with the watch, it had come down to knives and death. Ralegh went out, following others, through a trap door and a passage.
And never saw the Devon sailor again. Who either ran all the way back to his ship without one backward look or else lay on the floor of the Bible in a bed of blood, making two grins from ear to ear.
Could as well have been himself lying there to greet the lanterns of the watch.
A night or two later in Southwark he followed a woman up to a high chamber and let her instruct him in the world’s oldest dance for two. Then, light-headed, blithe-hearted, he went to play at dice once more in a tavern. Lost the last of his coins, but cared not at all. Sang old songs and laughed with a one-eyed soldier, a vagrom man for sure, with a patch over his bad eye and a scar like a crescent moon across his cheek. And afterwards they fought each other in an alley and, feeling his young strength for certain, Ralegh hugged that soldier till his ribs cracked and then hurled him across the alley in the air.
Ran from voices and guttering torches, through a rat’s nest of muddy alleys and lanes, past barks and snapping dogs and many a curse from high windows. Ran swift, laughing like a moon-man, until he found himself, heavy-footed and breathless, in an open field under a sky full of spinning stars. Spread his arms like a scarecrow and, looking into the diamond-spattered sky, laughing his breath away, turned round and around, a top spun off a string, until string broke and sky melted and stars came down to fill his head and slam to the lids of his eyes.
Woke with rain in his face. St. George’s Fields for his bed and a forlorn windmill for companion. Woke with his skull a beating bass drum and his tongue made of fresh-sheared greasy wool and each bone a rotten timber, creaking when he tried to move. Lay in rain, too weak and dizzy to dig a grave and climb into it. Finally, by prayer and wishing, got to his feet and stumbled through mud toward Southwark. Found a ditch by the road and lay beside it vomiting up London’s pleasures. While a wild-haired, savage-looking beast of a man (a gypsy?) with a cudgel crouched nearby and watched him. Lying there puking, Ralegh drew his dagger and showed the fellow the blade. But the man made no move at all, still crouched there, when Ralegh set off on the road for London again.
It was not the blade that saved my head a cracking. The fellow could see I had no purse or jewel. What a fool I was! The knife was all I had worth the trouble of stealing and I showed him that. Perhaps he pitied me.…
His cousin of Gray’s Inn was not so charitable, though he laughed till his eyes were cloudy with tears.
So down they walked to the round church of the Knights Templar, made in the fashion of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, church for the scholars and lawyers of Inner and Middle Temple.
Rain slacked and sky clearing, but the streets were rivers of mud. This time his cousin took the honor of the wall. He had the honor of mud from horses and carts.
Entered that ancient chapel, under the Norman arch of the western porch, humbly flanked by polished rows of Purbeck marble columns, to see two churches. Then on into the round church, where eight armed knights lay in solemn stone upon the pavement, unsmiling.
He thought he would change places with any of them but none of them stirred.
His cousin took him past tombs to the stairs leading to the triforium and showed him the penitential cell, opening onto the stairway. Where once a knight could lie naked in a sort of coffin, too small by half for Ralegh, of stone and hear the saying of Mass while he starved. And be led forth every Monday to be flogged naked in public by a priest.
“Now then, Wat Ralegh, go down and say your prayers. You may kneel if you wish to, for we are alone here.”
Knelt indeed and bowed his head and moved his lips. But if he prayed, it was not in proper contrition. He gave thanks that he was still alive, and then quietly prayed his cousin would see fit to be generous to him.
Back they went to his cousin’s chambers at Gray’s. Where he was ready to kneel too, if he had to.
“What an excellent beginning!” his cousin told him. “And now you will make a scholar. Master of the arts of the tavern, of drinking and whoring and alley brawling. With especial skills—as witness your empty purse, nay, you have lost it too—in the subjects of dicing and cards.”
Death of the Fox: a novel about Ralegh Page 15