by Helen Burton
‘We have our answer!’ He tossed the offending object onto the midden and in two strides was out of the gate and into the narrow street, Harry speeding after. Stephen heard their shouts as he went slowly back to the house, dragging his feet miserably.
‘Fletchers, Bowyers, 'Prentices - Clubs!’ It was a young clear voice already carrying the ring of authority.
‘What, at this hour?’ muttered the child but, surprisingly, a dozen or so answered the familiar call, running with the weapons nearest to hand, the tools of their trade. They clustered about Simon Scarlet's fair-haired apprentice; Richard Latimer had been their leader for some time now. Casually leaning with his back against the house wall, thumbs in his belt, he related young Stephen's findings and the treachery of the Fishmongers - for it was they, no doubt about it from their reeking trade-mark.
‘And Corpus Christi's the day after tomorrow,’ someone calculated.
‘What can we do now to take our revenge?’ added another.
‘Come on Latimer, we'll have them out of bed, we'll make mincemeat of Jonah and the Whale!’
‘That's just what they'll expect of us, they'll be on their guard all day,’ Latimer said thoughtfully. ‘We'll wait until dark and raid their props depot; it's that old warehouse down-stream from the bridge. Our friend Arthur Chigwell is bound to have a picket on guard throughout the night but with our numbers he'll be easily dealt with.’
‘Then where shall we meet?’ quavered a stocky youngster from the fringe of the group.
‘What about Clerkenwell, the conduit?’ said Harry. It was a local landmark, but Richard shook his head:
‘By the time we reached the bridge we'd have the wardens of every soke between here and the Cheap up in arms. No, we'll assemble down by the river......’
Simon Scarlet and his wife lay side by side in their great bed, listening to the swelling murmur and shouts in the street below.
‘Emma, the lads are up to something,’ sighed the Master Fletcher, pulling himself up onto one elbow.
‘Oh, leave them be,’ his wife counselled, ‘they've worked hard enough lately.’
‘Nothing in their heads but play-acting at the moment.’ Scarlet was on his feet now, flexing his arms and legs, reaching for a cloak. ‘I'll find 'em something to keep 'em occupied.’ He opened the chamber window and leant out into the street. ‘The guild charges me with preventing an unlawful assembly of apprentices. They'll not say my boys are always nattering like wenches on street corners.’ He threw the words back over his shoulder at his wife.
‘Harry, Wat has a job for you in the shop. Richard, lad, old Tom Gilpin promised me two sacks of grey-goose, could you nip down for them before we break our fast? You boys, haven't you homes to go to, work to do?’
Slowly, the apprentices’ ‘unlawful assembly’ broke up and each youth wandered away upon some errand of his own. The sun rose higher, the shops were unshuttered and goods displayed. Bishopsgate began upon the business of the day.
~o0o~
A yellow moon, gibbous, misshapen, rose above the Thames, sending shafts of golden water threshing through the arches of the old bridge, lengthening the shadows, eclipsing the rose-glow of the fading sun, dipping below Ludgate. Richard Latimer slipped softly through the yard gate of the Master Fletcher's house and out into the cobbled street, old mulberry suit black in the dusk, battered cap pulled down over his blond hair. He ducked low beneath the lighted windows of the shop. Wat was working late at his bench, stripping shafts of ash wood. Master Scarlet, silhouetted before the lamp, was intent upon his paper-work; the accounts had always been a source of trial to him. Beginning life as an apprentice, he had never had any book-learning, couldn't write his name when he set up as Master Craftsman and became one of the City's burgesses. It was a sign of the marching times that there were many such as he amongst the new bourgeoisie.
A casement creaked open below the eaves and Harry's red head came up over the sill.
‘Give me a few moments, then follow.’ Richard’s words hardly rose above a whisper and, with a wave of his hand, he slipped through the maze of alleys which were London at night; through St. Helen's Ward and Clerkenwell, down Lime Street and on towards Billingsgate and the wharves. From all parts of the Fletchers' quarter, slinking figures converged upon the warehouses and sheds which huddled along the river bank. Sometimes, they narrowly missed the sharp eyes of the watch. Occasionally they were challenged by a warden and ordered back home.
Richard assembled his motley army in a disused sail-loft, and gave his orders.
‘Raymond, Lambert, you'll render the picket 'hors de combat' as silently as possible. You've rope? You'll need to bind and gag him. I'll be waiting just below the bridge and when I get your signal the rest of us will follow.’
Raymond and Lambert slipped away and, a minute or two later, Richard left the loft to saunter out into the night to await their pre-arranged signal. The lights winked down at him from the crazy jumble of houses atop the bridge, their gables and upper storeys leaning out perilously above the water which swirled and eddied about the starlings of the piers. A heavy hand on his shoulder and the young man reached automatically for his knife. The Warden of Billingsgate smiled grimly down at him.
‘Richard Latimer - And what brings the fletchers down to the wharves at curfew hour?’
‘Good evening, sir, and only this particular fletcher - and Master Scarlet. He's been invited to sup with Burgess Chigwell.’ He jerked a thumb in the direction of the fishmonger's imposing house. ‘I usually go along to see him safe home - him not being as steady on his feet coming back as going - Chigwell keeps a fine malvoisie in his cellar.’ He smiled conspiratorially.
‘You're a little forthcoming tonight, Latimer.’ The warden's suspicions showed plainly upon his face. ‘Why aren't you within doors attending your master?’
Richard gave him a smile, dazzling in its innocence. ‘I'm a fletcher's 'prentice, sir, as you said yourself. I've no nose for your trade. The Fleet smells sweeter than yon house of Chigwell's! I suppose you've nostrils attuned to it.’ He dodged the blow aimed at him with a deftness born of long practice. The warden was hampered by his torch and decided to let the insult pass.
‘You'll be off the street by the time I'm round this way again,’ he warned.
‘I'll be gone.’ Richard watched the man as he strode away into the shadowy direction of the Cheap.
Raymond's head emerged round a corner and the party from the sail-loft scrambled down and followed their leader into the huge warehouse, property of the Master Fishmongers. Jars of paint, brushes and cloths were littered about the floor and there were cursed mutterings and stubbed toes. The moon obligingly sailed out of the clouds and, with morning brightness, light streamed in through the high, shutterless windows, full onto the huge effigy of a whale - sail-cloth stretched over a wooden frame, jagged teeth bared in a grotesque grin.
‘Smash it,’ Harry said dispassionately but Richard grabbed for a youngster advancing with cudgel raised.
‘No!’
‘You'll not stop us having our fun!’
‘Set a finger on it and I'll lay you out! Do we want it put abroad that the fletchers are so afraid of competition that they would completely wreck another Guild's chances? Smash that smiling leviathan and without a whale there'd be no Jonah. An eye for an eye; all we can afford to ruin is their back-drop.’ He stood aside as Raymond and two lanky thirteen-year-olds were happily slicing through the painted cloth.
‘That'll do, fletchers, let's be away. We'll split up at the old sail-loft and plan our return home with a minimum of arrests by the watch.’ Harry at his side he opened the warehouse door and stepped out into the street, the fletchers behind him. Ringing the building, arm in arm, cudgels and knives at their belts, stretched a human chain of grinning apprentices.
A youth of about eighteen detached himself from his fellows and strode forward, swaggering before them. ‘I've just been having a little tete a tete with the warden. He came along to chec
k that Simon Scarlet was supping with my father. Of course, I told him that was the case to assure a reduction of panic on the part of the wardens. I think we've all been waiting for a chance like this. My greetings, Richard Latimer.’
Richard inclined his fair head. ‘Arthur Chigwell - if anyone was in doubt,’ he flashed back at his own followers. Arthur was a dark, well-built young man; he tested his knife blade on a broad, chapped thumb.
‘Unfortunately for you, we outnumber your little force by about three to one,’ he said conversationally.
‘I'd call the odds even,’ Richard said, with a smile.
‘And I'd say we outnumbered them!’ muttered Raymond. ‘One fletchers worth a dozen fish-gutters!’
‘Offal-mongers!’ yelled someone else and the fight was on...
No one saw a window open in a house nearby or heard what was shouted; no one perceived a distraught officer of the watch pleading with his warden to bring in hands from another soke, and no one noticed a lighted barge shooting the bridge in a welter of foam, pulling into the north bank. Who in their senses would be out on the river at that time of night, and who would dream of shooting the bridge in the darkness? Madness! But then, the man issuing his orders from the bows, sending men hurrying hither and thither like demented ants was no ordinary mortal.
Thomas de Beauchamp, 11th Earl of Warwick, son of Black Guy, the Hound of Arden and scourge of the middle shires, stepped down upon terra firma and sent his own men-at-arms into the fray. Beauchamp, at twenty-eight, was reckoned a worthy successor to the legend of his father; tall, broad-shouldered, with eyes of clear blue which could nevertheless darken to an opaque and slatey grey when roused to anger. Yet Thomas was possessed of a personal magnetism which had somehow eluded Guy. Men served this man because he was Thomas Beauchamp, not because he was Warwick and thus demanded their allegiance.
Striding forward now, limned by the wavering torchlight of his clustering entourage, he cut a splendid, terrible figure, smouldering in red; his mantle, caught upon his right shoulder with a great jewel as smooth as a pebble, large as a pigeon's egg, was lined with the silver fur of Russian squirrel, soft and sleek to the touch. His accoutrements glittered, from the gold links of the belt which bound his narrow hips and supported the sheath of his baselard, its haft set about with balas rubies, to the gold spurs at his heels, the gold circlet about his dark brow.
‘So this is my return to lawless London!’ he thundered. ‘For these wretched specimens of English youth we sweat out our guts in foreign fields!’
The apprentices had expected the watch to put in a belated appearance but the sight of these mailed figures, scarlet surcotes emblazoned with gold crosslets, swords at their belts, sent them fleeing for the alleys and passages of Billingsgate. Of the fletchers, only two remained, Raymond who had bitten an ungloved hand and was now pinioned firmly in the arms of one of Warwick's sergeants and Richard Latimer, still engaged in combat with Arthur Chigwell. Somehow they had each rid the other of a knife before serious damage was inflicted; now they wrestled on the cobbles. Richard had Arthur by the neck of his cote and was steadily knocking his head of stringy black hair upon the roadway. Arthur, in his turn, had a hand at his opponent's throat, clawing for a hold. Warwick's minions ringed them round.
‘What an audience!’ murmured Raymond, who had a fair sense of the dramatic.
Beauchamp raised his voice. ‘Part them, fools! Gawping there as if you were at the cock-pit!’ He brought a booted foot down upon the back of Richard's free hand and someone dragged a dizzy Arthur to his feet.
‘Who are you?’ demanded the Earl. ‘Oh, your names are of no consequence, they're of little account. Which Guild has the charge of you?’
‘Unfortunately, the name is of little account to me, it quite escapes my memory,’ Richard drawled insolently, ending on a groan as the elegant brown boot, best Cordovan leather, ground down further upon his knuckles and a gilt spur swung dangerously close to his face. ‘I think I might be a fishmonger,’ he added in haste.
Arthur, not to be outdone, seized the moment to volunteer, ‘And I'm a Fletcher.’
‘You - up!’ Warwick removed his boot, only to drive it persuasively into Latimer's ribs. He wasted few words. ‘So, you're a Fishmonger. When are your herrings in season?’ When the boy hazarded wide of the mark Arthur Chigwell chuckled to himself.
‘And how long is your standard arrow?’ It was his turn now.
‘A cloth-yard, My Lord,’ Arthur said meekly, eyes downcast.
Richard shook his head. ‘That was too easy, My Lord, ask him...’
‘Silence! Am I here to play games? You stand accused of a breach of the peace of this city, the gathering of an unlawful assembly and failure to observe the curfew regulations. What was the cause of this fracas?’
‘A private feud, dread lord,’ said Arthur, managing to sound servile.
‘Honour among thieves, eh?’ said Thomas Beauchamp grimly.
‘Not thieves, My Lord, honest craftsmen,’ flared Richard looking down at his mangled hand, the fingers already beginning to swell. On his little finger, dark and glinting, he wore an amethyst, a ring curiously wrought, the bezel fashioned like two golden hands which clasped the stone between their fingers. Thomas did not need to ask what legend, if any, was born within the band, he already knew. His dark face searched the young, belligerent one before him and he remembered a scrap of a boy, seven years old, with a mop of fair curls and mutinous dark eyes, black as ivy berries. He would be fifteen or sixteen now, much the same age as this insolent adolescent, fair still and dark eyed, who answered him back without fear or reverence.
‘A Master Fletcher is any knight's equal these days.’ The mouth was set; the winged dark brows were challenging him.
Warwick laughed. ‘I'm not sure that I can agree. Without the work of our soldiery these last few months there'd be no Flanders with which to trade - no market for English wool - and exports generally would be down.’
‘Not ours, sir. We rely on home markets and if I might make a point, your armies wouldn't go far without the English arrow and the English bow.’ He saw the flax flower eyes narrow momentarily.
‘So you'd teach Warwick how to fight his wars?’
Richard only said: ‘And now you will report us to our guilds?’
‘That should be the least of your worries. You think your precious guild has the power to order heaven and earth. I could walk into Fletchers' Hall tomorrow and take upon myself jurisdiction in this case. Your guild would turn a blind eye. I am Warwick! Oh, some of you see these two delivered home and let my displeasure be known in the appropriate quarters!’ He had dismissed them; he turned on his heels and left the ring of torchlight. The darkness swallowed his retreating figure.
As they reached Bishopsgate and Master Scarlet's shop, Richard could have wished that his escort had not rapped upon the door and hollered out fit to wake the entire soke. He cut a disreputable figure with torn cote, stained hose, his shirt tails hanging and a bruise upon his face. Scarlet drew back the bolts and peered out into the night. Warwick's henchmen told a sorry tale of street brawls and city unrest and, because they could have wished to be in their beds an hour ago, they embellished it with more embroidery than the Bayeaux Tapestry, finally prodding their captive over the doorstep where Scarlet pulled him into the hallway, cuffing him soundly on one ear as earnest of his later intent. He made apology and sent his thanks to My Lord of Warwick, bade the men a courteous goodnight and closed the door on the dark street, shooting home the bolt with a rasp and a rattle that seemed to sound the trump of doom.
‘So, the prodigal is returned to the fold!’ He stood, incongruous in shirt and slippers, a loose robe thrown over all and his night-cap perched awry upon his greying head. ‘As you see, I arrived home safely,’ he said, voice controlled.
‘Arrived? Safely?’ Richard ventured, puzzled.
‘From Burgess Chigwell's, where I'm in the habit of imbibing too much, you'll remember. The whole town appears to have
seized upon this myth. Am I ever to hold my head up high again in London's streets? I have lost all integrity!’
‘Oh, Holy Mary, I'm sorry, sir!’ Richard ducked his head to hide a rueful grin.
‘And will be sorrier yet, don't doubt it.’ Scarlet had flung open the workshop door and thrust him inside with a clout for the other ear. He had kept a lamp burning but it did not touch the dark corners. He reached for the belt he kept hanging on a nail behind the door. Scarlet was not a harsh man, Emma had chided him on many occasions for his softness, but he had a duty to perform. Richard's dark eyes were impassive; no help there. A flicker of fear might have urged Scarlet to leniency, a flash of insolent bravado might have added strength to his resolve. The wrist he still held lest the culprit thought to make a break for it proved salvation for them both for it jerked into view the mangled hand with its skinned knuckles and swollen fingers. He said, ‘If you're to be fit for work tomorrow morning that must be attended to and at once. Sit down.’ He motioned towards the work benches and set to rummage in the shadows for a pot of Emma Scarlet's pungent marigold ointment and a long strip of unbleached linen. He bathed, anointed and bound the swollen hand with a mother's tenderness but to save face gave the miscreant a tongue-lashing which set his toes curling, before subsiding into a constant mutter. ‘Chigwell's malvoisie, never touch the stuff, bloody awful cellar; wouldn’t know a good year if he had his nose rubbed in it. Hold that hand still, can't you! Are you laughing, boy? By all the Saints, you are!’ He jerked the fair head up angrily by the chin, the dark eyes were veiled by lowered lashes and Latimer was biting back an explosion of laughter, lower lip caught in his teeth. ‘Dammit, boy, you need a good strapping, you really do.’ But he was beginning to see the funny side at last, feigned another cuff at his apprentice and began to guffaw until eventually they had to lean weakly against one another, fair head to grey, unable to stop the streams of mirth. ‘Go on, up to bed with you,’ said the Master Fletcher at last, fighting for composure, and Latimer fled whilst the going was good. Struggling out of his clothes in the darkness of the attic and feeling his way to his straw pallet, he felt Harry Holt's hand upon his wrist, squeezing it in a gesture of comfort.