The Invention of Fire: A Novel

by Bruce Holsinger

  Chapter 41

  THE PRESENCE OF BREMBRE’S GUARDS, rough and rude city soldiers stationed in the yard and patrolling along the walls and adjoining alleys, had created a minor stir at the priory. St. Mary Overey was not accustomed to the presence of armed men on its grounds, and the prior himself had dropped by my house to air his tentative but sincere concern. The Order of St. Augustine is an order of peace, Master Gower. Our canons are men of the quill, not of the sword. A promise of generous compensation calmed his clerical nerves. The men’s habitation at the priory would be temporary, I assured him, their presence the result of a misunderstanding soon to be resolved.

  It was the twenty-eighth day of October, the Feast of the Apostles Simon and Jude. Across the river Nicholas Exton would be swearing the oath and kissing the book at the Guildhall, with the morrow set aside for the new mayor’s Riding to Westminster. My own sad palace felt like a prison, though there was little I could do but wait until the following morning, as I did not want to risk another venture through the streets. In the hall, suffering through a bout of nervous tedium and unable to concentrate on my own verse, I found my eyes wandering to Chaucer’s bulging quire. I had placed it on a side table after he left. He had described the work as a mirror for princes, a discourse on good counsel and the mitigation of violence: needful subjects at the moment.

  Looking for distraction I reached for the booklet. The prose was written in the elegant hand of Adam Pinkhurst, which by this point was nearly as familiar as my own.

  Heere beginneth Chauceres Tale of Melibee. A yong man called Melibeus, myghty and riche, bigat upon his wyf, that called was Prudence, a doghter which that called was Sophie. Upon a day bifel that he for his desport is went into the feeldes hym to pleye. His wyf and eek his doghter hath he left inwith his hous, of which the dores weren faste yshette.

  At the opening of the tale Melibee goes out to the field, leaving his wife and daughter at home. While he is gone his house is invaded by a group of his enemies, his wife assaulted, his daughter wounded grievously and left for dead. Upon his return Melibee finds his daughter at death’s door and vows to take vengeance upon the perpetrators of this violent crime against his family and home. Yet Prudence, his wife, intervenes, counseling forbearance even in the face of such a horrific crime. Following an involved debate between those counselors advising restraint and those arguing for war, Prudence offers a series of learned opinions on the wisdom of good counsel, all of them drawn from the writings of learned authorities: Cicero, Seneca, Plato, as well as the books of Scripture. At the conclusion Melibee decides to stay his hand, even forgiving his family’s attackers at Prudence’s urging.

  It took me the large part of two hours to get through the tale, which Chaucer had written in a flat prose rather than in the fair forms of his typical verse: rhymes, couplets, stanzas. Here the style was almost bleak in its plainness, the tale hardly as accomplished as one of his obscene fabliaux. The tale of Melibee was in my judgment a poetical failure, little more than a straightforward translation from his source, and I wondered what possessed him to plan its inclusion among his Canterbury tales.

  Yet it could not be denied that the tale was a topical and timely meditation on the nature and perils of counsel—perhaps too timely, as it seemed to capture the raging dispute among the realm’s governing bodies in our own moment with a dangerous precision. The appellant lords lusting for war, the king and his deposed chancellor pushing back, every counselor murmuring one thing in his lord’s right ear, another in his left. Though I had my doubts about Chaucer’s plan to assign himself such a peculiarly artless tale, its inclusion in the pilgrimage collection would constitute a form of counsel in its own right, aimed at instilling the virtues of prudence and discretion in its readers both lordly and common.

  As I went to my bed that night, with Brembre’s men still patrolling the house and the priory walls, Prudence’s words remained with me, her proverbial wisdom worming through my thoughts as my eyes shut against the long day. Know your friends from your enemies, shouted truths from whispered lies. Always distinguish good counsel from bad, and ethical counselors from evil ones . . .

  In the stillest hours of the night, before I would normally wake from first sleep, I sat rigidly upright, the words of Chaucer’s tale ringing in my ear. In the examining then of your counselor be not blind. . .

  Throwing on a heavy cloak, I padded down to the kitchen hearth, where the Coopers kept coals alive through the night, and lit a candle. In the hall I fired two more and positioned them around the quires containing Chaucer’s tale. Spectacles balanced on my nose, I found the portion of the tale that most clearly addressed the quality of counselors. “For trust well that commonly these counselors are flatterers, namely the counselors of great lords,” Prudence was warning her husband. “For they try always rather to speak pleasant words, inclining to the lord’s desire, than words that are true or profitable. And therefore men say that the rich man seldom has good counsel, unless he has it from himself.”

  I read on, my heart rushing furiously as my mind gathered suspicions like a demon gathers souls.

  “In the examining then of your counselor be not blind. You should also mistrust the counsel of such people as counsel you one thing privately, and counsel you the contrary openly, or whisper the counsel they have given you secretly into other ears. For Cassiodorus says that ‘It is a sleight of hand to hinder you, when he shows to do one thing openly and does the contrary privately.’ Upon that thing you wish to have counsel, absolute truth should be said and observed; this is to say, tell truly your tale. For he that speaks falsely may not well be counseled in the case of which he lies. You should also hold in suspicion the counsel of such people as reveal their counsel to others without your consent.”

  When I had finished I stared down at Chaucer’s quires, the shards of deception assembling themselves in my mind.

  With tremulous hands I folded my spectacles and returned them to their pouch. The texture and substance of the fine leather on my fingertips was somewhat calming, even as I felt myself begin to question the unquestionable. A pile of nameless prisoners slain with guns. A village massacred. A brash mayor too cowed to confront the magnate responsible for the atrocities. Bands of badged men, flaunting the livery of their master as they commit wanton murder upon the helpless and the innocent.

  There was the nut of the thing. Livery and heraldry, the language of lords. I thought of Scrope and Grosvenor. Two lords, each of them enlisting the peers of the realm in claiming the arms he believes are rightfully his. For a man’s livery is inseparable from his name, his honor and belonging, his very soul. A man’s arms are his truth and his troth.

  Or are they?

  The beginning of wisdom lies in doubt, so Peter Abelard writes. By doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth. All along I had been seeking, questioning, searching for the truth. Yet had I genuinely opened myself to doubt, to the afflictions and setbacks brought on by a rigorous questioning of the known? Or had I allowed an arrogant confidence in my own dark skills to guide me down a road of false conclusions?

  Be not blind. Since that morning in the St. Bart’s churchyard, I had followed an oiled chain of logic, one thing leading to another in a seemingly unbroken series of links and connections. A murder, a mayor, a duke; a maudlyn and a scribe. Corpses, guns, banners, the witnessing of children. A serpent with a burning cord in its fangs, a flashing knife in a dark square. The word of my son. And behind them all two gorged swans before a tree, their shapely necks entwined in a twist of unmistakable culpability. How precious. How neat.

  Yet now, as I returned to my bed, a different vision flashed before me, a sad spectacle of ineptitude and error. I saw John Gower, hobbled over a stick, walking blindly along a trail of polished stones, his weakening eyes discerning only what had been arranged for them to see. A king will do anything to stay a king, Gloucester had murmured in my ear at that Kentish keep, an attempt at deflection and intimidation, as I
heard it then. I could not be wrong. I could not. Even as I whispered such assurances to myself I sensed their weakness, my will to harvest strong connections from the barren soil of coincidence.

  Be not blind. The coming day would tell. In the morning, in the hours before Exton’s Riding, I would either confirm or put to rest this rising suspicion. Then I would know. I closed my eyes that night awash in doubt, aware that the morrow might well bring disaster, and that the blame would forever be my own.

  Chapter 42

  THAT MORNING THE COMPANY reached the southern border of the County Palatinate of Durham and the liberty of St. Cuthbert’s land. Winds gusted down from the north in great rushes of cold, moaning through the scattered trees, gathering the brittled leaves into dry spirals that shot skyward before lowering to the road to swirl among heads and hooves. The land around them had changed over the last several days, as the company snaked through the northern moors, the endless heaths spreading out in all directions, large stones littering the barren hills on either side of their route.

  As they rounded one of these low hills Margery saw an obstacle on the road ahead. A bar lay across the way, a log resting atop two pillars to each side of the way. On the eastern hand there was a small tollkeeper’s encampment, with a stone hearth, two rough huts, and an open pavilion, where a pair of soldiers lounged by the road on an enormous rock the size and shape of a lord’s table. At the approach of the company one of them pushed himself off and ambled slowly toward the bar, gnawing on a leg or flank bone as he looked them over.

  She shivered, willing the man to hurry it along. They had ridden that morning in the middle of the company, staying largely silent, the anticipation and dread only mounting as they neared their final destination.

  “Fourpence a head before the town,” said the guard between bites, head sweeping left and right, mouth still working the meat. Farpence a head afore the toon. A northman’s tongue, the words barbed and bristling in her ears. “And a word of advisement for visitors to the lands of St. Cuthbert’s between Tyne and Tees. Though you’re yet a full seven leagues out from Durham, here the bishop is as good as your king, see?”

  He waited for their nods and yeses.

  “Vary good. Now f’yar coin.” He hailed his companion and the two of them proceeded to lower the bar, first one end, then the other, taking their time. Once the log lay flat on the ground the pilgrims crossed into the Palatinate, the horses stepping delicately over as their riders’ coins clinked into a shallow clay pot the first soldier held up for the purpose.

  Robert paid their toll along with the others and they passed over the bar, into the bishop’s liberty of Durham, one large and meaningful step closer to the Scottish marches. She glanced over her shoulder as the remainder of the company made their payments. The sisters Constance and Catherine, riding near the back again that morning, had paused by the bar—to negotiate a smaller toll, she assumed, and why would they not, given their undisputed sanctity?

  Yet as she watched she saw Constance point up the road—toward her. She turned away. Her heart thrummed in her ears, the day darkening before her.

  She considered saying something to Robert, weighed the chances, but what would she say, what could he do? Flee across the countryside and they would be hunted down like harts. Stand and fight and they would surely be downed on the spot. He had no sword, no bow, no arrows to nock in his skillful and killing way. Instead she said a prayer, watched the road before her, and braced herself tightly in her saddle.

  And soon felt somewhat reassured. She heard no hooves of pursuing mounts, no shouts from behind. When she next turned Catherine was speaking urgently to her scowling sister. Their imprecations to the tollkeepers seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. Another respite, for how long she could not know.

  In Derlinton they found lodgings in a private house, the company dispersing for the night around the village. Robert slept soundly. Margery was fitful, unable to keep her eyes closed, much less sleep. Finally an uneasy slumber came, and with it a dream of a new home, and the lowland hills.

  She was just waking from her first sleep when she heard it. The soft moan of a door, a shoe crackling the rushes in the next room. Their host? She thought so, but saw no light beneath their door.

  Then she heard the whispers. Two men, perhaps three. They were outside, beyond the shutters. She clutched Robert’s arm, shook him awake. “Someone is here,” she whispered in his ear.

  His eyes came open and he leapt up, immediately alive to the danger. There were no weapons in the room, nothing to use to defend themselves. He grasped her arms and moved her against the wall farthest from the door and window, pushing her head down until she was huddled on the floor. Then he reached up and pulled himself into the rafters above.

  The silence lingered. A dog barked faintly. The door burst open. The shutters cracked. The first intruder came through the door, his short sword a vicious gleam in the night. He went straight for the pallet, assaulting it with four strokes before realizing it was empty.

  From the rafters Robert came swinging down to kick the man against the wall. The sword clattered to the ground and he grasped it just as the shutters splintered with another crack. He still had the surprise on them, and took the first man through the window with a thrust to the gut. The second, sensing the danger, shouted for his fellows, but Robert was already on the inside man. There was slicing, hacking, grunts of pain, then Robert grabbed their attacker and twisted his neck to a snap. Two dead inside, one outside and warned.

  He spun toward her. “Take whatever you can.” He struggled into his coat as she gathered some of her clothing, the purse of coin that had gotten them here. Bearing what she could she followed him into the main room and outside toward the stable.

  “Who’s there?” came a shout from the house behind them.

  As they ran they looked wildly left and right for the third assailant. Nothing. They reached the stable, open to the night. Four horses. They chose the two they knew, but no time for saddles. They led the horses out of the barn.

  “Mount,” he said, cupping his hands. She stepped up and he threw her over the beast’s bare back. As she spun on the animal she heard the thud of footsteps behind him, saw a silver slash in the moonlight. He grunted in pain and fell to the dirt. The attacker raised his sword.

  Margery heeled her horse. It jumped toward the attacker, startling him, giving Robert just enough time to kick the man’s legs from beneath him. There was a brief struggle on the ground, then it was over.

  As more shouts came from the house and street he rose and pulled himself onto the other horse. She kicked her own in the flanks. They were off, skirting along the stable and out to the street, the shouts of the townsfolk ringing out behind them. They rode north along the central way. As they neared the upper edge of the town a door opened to the left. A candle flared in the darkness. Two faces over the flame. Constance and Catherine, their eyes wide with wonder and fright.

  Margery and Robert rode through the night in silence, the fear clawing at their backs. He was hurt, badly, though he never moaned nor spoke a word of complaint. Their mounts took the road at a steady pace, not too swiftly to tire, nor too slowly to risk apprehension from behind.

  Dawn came on without incident. They must have been less than a league from Durham, she reckoned it, and still they had not encountered another group of riders, though that fortune would surely not last. As they forded a wide and slow-moving creek he spoke for the first time in hours.

  “Margery,” he said. “Margery, I must stop now.” His voice was weak, sickly. She felt her only real terror since that night in the woods.

  On the shallow far bank he slid from the wide back of his horse and staggered toward the water. She dismounted and tied their reins together. He had collapsed at the creek’s edge.

  It was a grievous wound, she saw, a gash on his upper right thigh that sent spirals of blood through the water, dark coils in the rising light. With his knife she cut away the surrounding portions of his b
reeches and saw the extent of it. The opening was deep and wide, beyond her powers to heal. She wished for a surgeon but settled for a poultice, crafted from chickweed leaves, which she mashed up with mud from the bank. She smeared it into his wound, making him groan in agony.

  He clutched at his leg. She pushed his hands away and had to sit on them to keep him from worsening the wound. She held him behind his neck with one hand, cooled his face with the other. His eyes fluttered open. More blood, leaking out around the poultice. His grip weakened. He fixed her with a stare, gave her a slight smile, raised his hand, then lowered it. At last he was still. She looked up at the sky, at circles of birds whorling in the chill morning air.

  Chapter 43

  FROM THE WHARF BANKSIDE of the Temple Church a narrow stone stair climbed up through the wide yard toward the level of the Strand, the broad road leading from the walls out past Charing Cross nearly to Westminster. Along the south side of this avenue marched a colorful series of great palaces and houses, all facing the Thames and showing the arms of their inhabitants: bishops, lords, some wealthier knights, a few successful tradesmen. Over the years many smaller structures had been built up against the back walls of these houses. Let to hostelers and shopkeepers and facing the smaller residences across the Strand, these randomly spaced buildings and fronts lent the avenue its flavor as simultaneously a busy commercial district and a fashionable place of residence for the monied. In the middle of it all sat the charred ruins of Lancaster’s Savoy, still uncleared since the Rising five years earlier. The land around it had been partially reclaimed since then, though the palace itself remained an unsightly hulk on the waterfront, overgrown with weeds, shrubs, and even young trees.

  At nine on the morning of Exton’s Riding I had summoned the mayor’s guards and made for the Thames with Jack Norris at my side. We floated over the river to the Temple wharf, this time aboard a small craft let and rowed by one of the mayor’s guards. I had explained the plan to Jack as we crossed. He was bedazzled at the prospect of an audience with the king, an unthinkable thing for an earless cutpurse and the son of a hanged thief. Though I told him honestly of the risk in witnessing against a duke, he seemed determined to reveal what he had seen, whatever the consequences. He would remain with me for the balance of the morning, with both of us to be allowed into Westminster Hall on the word of Nicholas Brembre.