The Invention of Fire

by Holsinger, Bruce

  “You,” he said to the first. “We need iron, four of the arm bars to start. Bring them here, and I will show you what we are about. And you,” he said to the founders. “Copper and tin, eight parts and two.”

  “Eight and two, Marsh? Are you—”

  “Yes, eight and two, and you will soon know why. Get it bubbling now, will you?”

  They obeyed. Next an apprentice approached him hesitantly, offering an apron of boiled leather, thick and long. Stephen donned it, then took up a hammer from the main smithy table and started giving the men their orders. Soon enough he felt himself slipping into his familiar role from Stone’s, as he moved among the forges and foundry, correcting a young hand here, providing an older one new direction there.

  He took his own turns at the anvil and cauldron, making folds upon folds of iron, new foundings of bronze, sizzling blooms of metal in the flames, and when he came to the forges he found new strength in the shaping, the bending, the welding, the plunging and hiss. These weapons would be the greatest and most fearsome works of his life, he vowed, and soon he stood as some young demon amidst the fires and the men, commanding these monstrous births of snake and gun.

  IT WAS LATE THE FOLLOWING DAY when Stephen finally called for a pause in their work, a rest well deserved by the metalmen under him. He had labored through much of that day and night before, pushing his workers to forge along with him, and now he wanted to reward them with strong beer or cider rather than the piss-weak ale served out by the Tower seneschals. Only the armorer himself could authorize that, he’d been told, so at the bell of five Stephen set down his hammer, took off his apron, and walked toward the structure housing Snell’s chambers. Though it was the first time he had visited the building since his initial visit to the Tower, he felt no fear as he climbed the narrow stairs, confident his request would be met with approval, even pleasure. For Stephen was, after all, the pride of the royal armory—and not only that, but the artist responsible for bringing a new breed of handgonnes into this coming age of war.

  Why yes, he thought with a shivering pride as he climbed up the stairs, his soles a whisper on the rock. Despite the humble start at Stone’s, the confounding sentence at the wardmoot, and the unfortunate accident in the woods, look at me now, will you! I am Stephen Marsh, master gunsmith to His Royal Highness King Richard! I have ascended to this office with the speed of a hunting wolf, and who is to say I cannot climb ever higher? Even an appointment as chief armorer of the Tower wardrobe isn’t out of the question, albeit William Snell holds that position currently. Yet how long can he last given the vagaries of royal favor—especially once it’s known that a superior craftsman, a higher quality of mind, is making his guns for him, already leading the men of the armory in their needful work for the crown?

  He had reached the darkened landing before Snell’s chamber. The door, he realized, was already slightly open. Must have that repaired, Snell had said during Stephen’s first visit to the Tower. The bad latch allowed a sliver of light to escape, along with the low murmurs of two conversing men. Snell had another visitor before him. Stephen would abide in the antechamber, he decided, as his matter was hardly urgent. The men of the armory could wait for their refreshment, even as they waited on their new captain. Soon enough, however, Stephen’s curiosity got the better of his judgment, and he stole softly forward, putting an ear to the crack.

  “In any case I hope it all meets with your approval,” Snell was saying.

  “My approval is the least of our worries,” said the other quietly. “It is the duke whose wants we must satisfy.”

  Though Stephen could not see the visitor’s face it was apparent he was talking down to the armorer. The man’s voice was clipped and distinctive, with the confidence of a lord’s, and at first this deafened him to the content of their talk—though not for long.

  “And you are familiar with his wants?”

  “His Grace will no doubt be pleased,” the visitor said. “These devices are an ingenious bit of work, and he will enjoy this small adornment to his arsenal.”

  “We can only hope so,” said Snell, sounding doubtful. “Burgundy’s artillery is the wonder of Christendom. One minor innovation will hardly buy us favor if it comes to war. Or so it seems to me.”

  “Think of our gift as a token of fealty, then,” said the other man. “Yes, a few hundred of these feeble handgonnes crafted by your farrier will wilt in the glare of a thousand longbows. You have said so yourself, Snell. Yet it is the gesture that matters in such affairs.”

  “I hope you are right, or all our efforts will vanish in our own smoke.”

  “We are doing everything we can to guard against such an outcome.”

  “Yes. Though I worry His Grace will prove changeable, not a man of his word.”

  “You should read the chronicles. With the invasion Valois may well swallow Plantagenet like a hawk swallows a mouse. Yet King Charles is hardly William the Conqueror. He will not be tempted to flood our wild and primitive island with his dukes and counts. England will be ruled from abroad, of that we may be confident. And its domestic overseers will be men who have already proved themselves loyal to the winning side.” A heavy pause. “Men like us, my good William.”

  Stephen heard the clap of palms on knees and the shuffle of feet, though in his fury at the insults he failed at first to register what these sounds signified. His handgonnes feeble? His serpentine device a minor innovation? His craft no better than that of a farrier, a mere maker of horseshoes? How dare these two slander his talents and craft in such a way?

  Then he realized his peril. The men had risen too quickly. They were about to leave the room. Stephen was trapped in the antechamber, giving him no chance of making it down the stairs without detection. He had no choice but to squeeze himself into a niche in the walls not three feet from where they would pass on their way out. He made himself as small as possible.

  “Very well, then,” said Snell as he came out the door to his chambers.

  The visitor’s head was turned away, his hood already drawn up against the cold. No livery on his cloak or coat, though there was considerable wealth in his fine raiment.

  “Exton rides in one week,” said the man in a low murmur. “Seven days, twenty men, one hundred serpents. Your gunsmith is up to the task?”

  “I have no reason to doubt him. He is a proud fellow, but the Tower has a way of beating pride out of even the hardest men. And Marsh? He’s of the softer sort, I’m afraid.”

  The men shared rough laughter as they descended the stairs. Then they were gone.

  Chapter 33

  AS BEAUCHAMP HAD REQUESTED, I reported to the keep immediately upon the return from Desurennes. He asked me not into his chambers but into the keep’s upper hall, a narrow though high-ceilinged room looking out distantly on a dimming sea at dusk. A servant brought me wine and a light meal, which I ate quickly by candlelight as I told him a portion of what I had learned at Desurennes—all but the most important detail.

  “You are quite sure, Gower?” he said.

  “I am, your lordship.”

  “No other signs? No evidence of responsibility, nothing to suggest who might have done this to those poor villagers?”

  “I am afraid not, my lord. The attackers came and went without leaving the barest of traces, it seems.”

  He gave me a long, catlike stare. I wondered what he knew, and whether my colloquy with Iseult had been overheard.

  “Perhaps your renowned skills have left you, Gower.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, sitting back. “Though I am certain there is nothing more to be learned, at least not in Desurennes.”

  “You will return to London, then,” he purred.

  “At first light, your lordship, or as close to it as I can manage.” Though I was on English soil I felt suddenly vulnerable and alone. Simon was supposed to have made contact himself, yet I did not think it wise to remain in Calais any longer, regardless of the chancellor’s wishes. Edmund Rune’s pursuit of his trea
sonous smuggler would have to do without me.

  “Very well,” he said, seeming eager for my absence. We parted cordially, though I felt his eyes on my back as I walked out of the hall. One coin slipped to a sailor and he could have me tossed off a boat half a league from shore, to sink like a stone in the sea.

  Curfew was ringing by the time I left the keep. Calais took its evening bell less seriously than London did, it seemed, despite the town’s militant posture, regarding it more as a warning than a sentence. There were several evening gathering places within the walls, one of them between the church of St. Nicholas and Stapler’s Hall, where at least a hundred townsmen milled about. On my way back to Broussard’s I passed through the large square and left by way of Rigging Street, which cut off at an angle from the main thoroughfare in from the gate.

  As the noise from the square faded I heard footsteps approaching from behind me. At first I thought nothing of their hurried patter. At the next corner I cast a glance over my shoulder. A lone figure was approaching. His face was hidden behind a cloak, only his eyes visible beneath the dark hood.

  He saw me looking back. His pace quickened. I rounded the bend at a faster pace. I was on an oblong section of the street sided by two high walls providing no means of escape, nor any place to hide. Starting to run, I slipped on a slick spot and fell forward, jamming my arm. The pain spread from my elbow to my hand. As I struggled to my feet I heard the slap of my pursuer’s shoes on the pavers.

  I glanced back as I staggered up. He was thirty feet away now. Twenty. His hand went to his belt. There was the flash of a blade. I half turned, making for the next street, cowering beneath my uninjured arm as I ran, expecting a thrust between the shoulder blades at any moment.

  Another sound, from off to my left. A grunt, hurrying feet, an impact.

  “Ohf!”

  Sounds of a struggle, then silence.

  I looked back. In the middle of the widened part of the street a man bent over my hooded pursuer, now prostrate on the ground. Still, perhaps dead. The other man was patting his sides and front, searching him.

  I did not stay to see the result. I rounded the next corner, but now the second man was chasing me. In my state I had no strength to resist him. A hand clutched my injured arm. He had me. Yet I turned into him, hand balled into a fist, prepared to defend myself with my good arm.

  “Father!”

  He threw me against the wall, and I felt the blood drain from my face.

  Even in the near darkness Simon’s countenance was as familiar a sight as my own hand, though it had changed for the worse. A new and whitened scar ran down from his forehead through his left cheek, ending in an ugly star-shaped mark just above the line of his chin. A bark of French from the square, more running.

  “The watch,” Simon whispered fiercely. “We cannot talk here. Come.” Still grasping my arm, he ducked beneath a slanted beam and took me down a narrow alley and through a series of linked passages winding snakelike through the buildings around us. It was a part of the sea town left untouched by King Edward’s renovations, a labyrinth of hidden courts, odd corners, and sudden staircases that quickly took us out of reach of the watchmen.

  Soon we arrived at a tall, narrow house to one side of a small courtyard. We climbed three flights of stairs to a low door that had been left open to the night. Simon closed it behind us, then with some effort flinted up a flame.

  MY SON, STILL SHORT of his twenty-fourth year, looked well above his thirtieth. Simon had aged in the mere fifteen months since I saw him last, leaning over me at night, staggering across the priory yard with the fate of a kingdom clutched in his hands. His face was gaunt, with a greyish cast to his skin, which sat too taut over the visible bones of his face. He had lost much of the physical grace that once distinguished him. Even in his worst moments Simon would always be at ease with himself and those around him. Now he was shaky and restless, as if his limbs were animated by some maddening ague.

  Attending to my throbbing arm appeared to calm him somewhat. I sat silently as he bandaged the limb. He seemed practiced at it, as if used to repairing the minor injuries of his companions in stealth, and I let him do what he would without complaint.

  “Not broken, certainly,” he said. “A minor sprain of the wrist. Keep it bound for several days.”

  I could not look at him and instead gazed around the chamber. No hearth and thus no fire in these upper rooms, only a thin clutch of greased rushlights, the weak flame casting our distorted forms against the close walls and low ceiling. When he had finished with my arm he sat across from me. His leg worried the seat of his chair. He reached up constantly to wipe a palm over his brow, which was not moist, though in his agitated state he seemed if anything feverish and ill. His eyes shifted right and left.

  “Who was that man?” I finally asked. My first words to Simon since that night at the priory house.

  “You don’t know?” His voice was hollow, with no resonance or depth, as if coming from behind a muslin cloth.

  I shook my head.

  “He was your traveling companion. He sailed with you from London.”

  I thought for a moment. “The cloth merchant?”

  Simon stared at the rushlight. “He is no cloth merchant, Father.”

  “You know him?”

  “We have met,” he said darkly. “He was a killer for coin, with twenty knifings to his credit. His target tonight was you.”

  “Apparently.”

  “I am more than glad that he failed.”

  “I should hope so,” I said, and he looked away, his leg bouncing anew. Simon had just saved my life. Yet why did I suspect he had also had a hand in jeopardizing it?

  “I have been following you since your arrival from London,” he said, almost shyly.

  “How did you know I was coming to Calais?”

  “I didn’t know, not in advance,” he said. “But I have men at the docks and generally receive word upon the arrival of passengers, particularly newcomers to the Pale. I was as surprised to hear of your disembarkation as you were to see me tonight. I didn’t think you would come.”

  “You learned where I have been?”

  “From one of the servants of Broussard. You went looking into the killings at Desurennes.”

  “Yes.”

  “What have you learned?”

  I scoffed. “What reason would I have to tell you anything I’ve learned?”

  “None,” he admitted. He tapped a finger. “Though surely you suspect some connection to this business with Gloucester and Snell.”

  A name I had heard any number of times in recent weeks. “The king’s armorer,” I said.

  “He is a longtime ally of Gloucester’s,” said Simon, his tone subtly changing. “That is why I contacted the chancellor, Father, and asked to speak with you, and only you. Snell is not simply laying in powder and weapons for the Tower and the crown. He has become a notorious trader in arms against the interests of England. I’ve learned that he is selling saltpetre to Burgundy and France by the barrel.”

  “With Gloucester’s approval?”

  “More than his approval. It is Woodstock’s men who have been bringing it across and selling it here.”

  “And you believe the king’s uncle conspires so openly against England’s interests?” I asked, hearing the skepticism in my own voice.

  “What I believe is not of relevance. It is what I have seen that convinces me, and what my paid men up and down the coast have seen. With my own eyes I have witnessed Gloucester’s men unshipping kegs of saltpetre from a cog off Dunkirk, then rowing them into Burgundy’s maw.”

  “How do you know they were Gloucester’s men?”

  “They wore his bends, flew his colors off the ship.”

  “What proof do you have?”

  “Nothing written,” he conceded. “There is only my word, and this.”

  He pulled a piece of cloth from somewhere in his coat. It was a heraldic bend, a band meant to be worn around the forearm, with a ba
dge of embroidered kidskin sewn into the cloth. The badge itself was lozenge shaped, displaying two white swans, their wings spread wide, their linked necks collared in gold with a chain descending to entwine the birds’ webbed feet. The same bend described by poor Iseult.

  “Where did you get this?”

  He looked down at the badge. “In Dunkirk. I was watching one of the docks as an English ship unloaded. A cog, bearing a large shipment of saltpetre. Two of the men were arguing on the high quay. They were drunk, I believe, and the dispute involved a maudlyn they had hired to come aboard. It soon came to blows. Nothing murderous, just two sauced sailors swinging their arms, a bit of wrestling. But in the struggle one of them had his band ripped off his sleeve, and it fell to the ground. I waited until they’d left the quay, then went and retrieved it.”

  I fingered the badge, the embroidered feathers and chain. I had seen dozens like it on the streets of London, and more recently in Gloucester’s castle in Kent, where the duke’s men had imprisoned Chaucer and me in the tower. The duke seemed to have an endless reserve of men. Hauling bodies on the Thames and through the streets of London, gunning down a market in the Pale, and now this.

  “Did you ever speak to any of the company?” I asked.

  “No,” he allowed. “I spoke to one of their buyers from Sluys, and learned that the arrangement has been going on for months. Since before Pentecost, he told me.”

  “I can hardly bring myself to believe it, Simon. The Duke of Gloucester—”

  “You must believe it, Father. I have seen it, and it can’t be denied that his men and Snell’s are involved in the highest treachery.”

  “And killing all in their way,” I murmured, newly awake to my peril.

  “Saltpetre and gunpowder are a mere portion of it, Father,” he said. “They are also trading in guns.” Simon stood and walked to a high pair of shelves by his door. He reached up, lifted a long object off the lower shelf, and brought it to me. It was a handgonne, of a similar length and heft to those I had fired at the Calais keep. A tubelike length of metal bolted to a carved wooden stock, a priming pan hammered into the barrel, a small hole bored through to the chamber.