by Toni Mount
Christ be thanked for the mercy of the bell, calling them to dinner in the Great Hall.
‘Coming, Piers?’ Jude asked, setting down his pen and pushing back his stool which grated on the flagstones fit to set teeth on edge. Despite his vile personal problem, Creed was the closest thing to a friend Jude had made among the clerks since coming to Westminster.
‘I’ve nigh finished this summons. I’ll join you shortly. Save me a place at the board.’ Creed went on scribbling without looking up.
Jude shrugged, gazing down on his industrious companion. The fellow’s lank hair was sparse, his nose bulbous and his build so skinny he made Jude’s lean-limbed brother Seb seem plump in comparison. In truth, Creed’s only asset was that he made a splendid foil for Jude: a fine figure, broad of shoulder, taller than most, good-looking with a full head of fair hair.
At least, that was how Jude saw himself, refusing to acknowledge that incipient and unwelcome roll of flesh that began to do daily battle with his belt buckle or, of late, the receding hairline Chesca took malicious delight in pointing out. ‘’Tis but a high forehead,’ he’d told her, ‘The sign of a large brain and great intelligence.’ The young hussy had laughed, devil take her, and earned a slap for her mischief.
Mistress Baxter’s Lodging House,
Thieving Lane, Westminster
Chilled and miserable, Jude trudged home in the dark, through the deepening snow. But a surprise awaited when he returned to the upper chamber where he and Chesca dwelt at present, unable to afford anything better. He came bearing a cold supper of white bread and cheese, napkin-wrapped, filched at dinner. Living on a pittance, most of his fellow clerks did likewise, those who did not live at court. The unwed clerks had bed and board within the ramshackle parts of the palace but wives weren’t allowed. Thus, Jude lodged in this single chamber with hardly space to spread his arms and a roof too low for him to stand to his full height of just six feet. Mind, at this rate, what with being bent over his desk all day at Secretary Oliver’s behest and stooping here at Mistress Baxter’s place, he’d be a bloody crouchback before he was five-and-thirty – not that he intended his life to go on in this dismal way for that long. He had plans.
Jude gawped at the sight that greeted him at the head of the rickety stair, Chesca decked in all her finery, her hair loose, gleaming, black as midnight, being the least of it. A good fire burned in the hearth, the room had been swept and the draping cobwebs removed. A table-board he’d never seen before was spread with a pristine cloth and all manner of food set out in pewter dishes: a whole salmon, jellies, cheeses and sweetmeats. And wine!
‘Sweet Christ alive, Chesca. What have you bloody done?’ Jude waved his arms to encompass the chamber. Even the bed was neatly made.
‘Are you pleased, Jood? This for your birthday. I pouring wine for you... good wine, no dog’s pees now.’ She served him the red wine in a chased silver cup fit for royalty. God alone knew how she’d come by such luxuries. It was a fine Gascon wine, as had been served at King Edward’s Twelfth Night feast.
Jude sipped it cautiously, wondering how much each swallow cost him. Money he didn’t possess.
‘Everything looks... so clean. Did you do it yourself?’
‘You no spoiling it.’ Chesca pouted like the child she was at just sixteen summers of age.
‘You didn’t, did you?’
‘Servants clean. Baldesis no clean.’
‘You’re not a Baldesi now; you’re a Foxley. We can’t afford bloody servants... nor all this food and drink.’
‘Your brother having servant; why no us?’
‘You mean, Nessie? That foolish chit costs him more to feed than she does in labour. She doesn’t count and answer my damn question, woman.’
‘Mistress Basster. I paying her to making clean.’
‘Mistress Baxter? You paid our bloody landlady to do the work? How much did that cost?’
‘Leettle, leettle money, I swearing. Pleease now we eating good food.’
‘Did you steal it or borrow the money?’
‘An’ I no meaning Nessie. Rosa – she serving or no?’ Chesca changed the subject.
‘Rose? She’s a special case.’
Chesca cut flakes of salmon with her knife and arranged them on a piece of fresh white bread.
‘I knowing. Nessie telling me how you an’ Rosa were marrying an’ you never coming to the church. Why you no coming to her? She fine woman.’
‘’Tis none of your bloody business! Besides, you should be grateful I never wed her, else I couldn’t have saved you from that filthy old lecher your family wanted you to marry.’
Chesca sat in his lap and fed him the fine fish.
‘You liking?’ She raised her eyebrows in question, wriggled provocatively and began to unlace the doublet he wore beneath his clerk’s gown. ‘You liking other things more?’
‘We’re bloody eating, Chesca. I’m tired...’
‘Never too tired. Eating later... after.’
‘Don’t take my clothes off, you little harlot. It’s still chilly in here.’
‘Warming in bed, Jood. Come now, husband.’
Thoroughly satisfied regarding all bodily requirements, Jude lay awake in bed, thinking – a bad habit of his brother’s but, for the most part, one he rarely bothered to indulge. He reached out for his wine cup upon the floor, careful not to knock it over. Such good wine; how in Christ’s name had Chesca paid for it? The possibilities stewed in his head, all of them bad. Had she taken up thievery? It seemed unlikely, seeing how much food and drink had appeared, as if by magick. Stealing on that scale could hardly have gone unnoticed. Maybe she’d run up a great account and he would suffer such a shock when the reckoning arrived with demand for immediate payment. God knows where the coin would come from in order to settle it.
But it was a third possibility that wormed its way insidiously into his head, like a small but venomous serpent: that somebody else had paid for everything. And why would that be? No one did favours out of kindness these days; they expected the favour returned – in full. He had nothing to give... but Chesca. What had the hussy done? Or rather who had she done? That little minnekin! If she’d lain in another man’s bed, he’d kill the bastard, whoever he was.
Of a sudden, he was convinced he had struck upon the truth and the rich food – paid for by some snot-nosed knave – roiled in his belly until he felt quite sick. He looked at his wife curled close beside him: young, beautiful, aye, and desirable, devil take her. In the fading firelight, she looked so innocent, sleeping like a well-fed kitten. No wonder the adulterous bitch hadn’t answered his questions; avoiding the issue. Well, she’d bloody regret it; that was certain but he couldn’t be bothered now. He turned his back on her and spent much of the long night plotting his revenge on the shit-monger scawager who’d cuckolded him, whoever it was. The worse the punishment he could devise for the pillaging prick the better.
Saturday, the twenty-eighth day of January
Beyond the frosted horn-paned window, as best he could make out, Jude saw a world shrouded white. Damn the snow. Damn the cold. His breath fogged the air even indoors. Last eve’s welcoming blaze was now grey ash in the hearth with not a splinter of wood to revive it to life. His anger had likewise cooled overnight but he knew it wouldn’t take much to rekindle it. One word amiss from Chesca and he’d skin her like a bloody cat so it was as well then that she slept on, huddled in the warm bed – no early riser she in any case but ’neath the blankets was the best place to stay on such a day. He’d wring the truth out of her later.
Jude donned his clerk’s gown over almost every item of clothing he possessed: three shirts; doublet; jerkin; two pairs of hose and breeches. In so many clothes, he could hardly move and pulling on his boots proved a struggle. The debris of his birthday feast still littered the cloth. No point in wasting good food, whoever had paid for it. Jude cut a fat wedge of
cheese which he put in his scrip for later, along with a handful of marchpane-stuffed figs. He piled flakes of salmon on a slice of white loaf and folded it to eat on his walk to work. It wasn’t a mannerly way to break his fast but he didn’t care. He swung his cloak around his shoulders and pulled his coif and plain clerk’s cap as low over his ears as possible, cursed at finding his cheap gloves were splitting. Thank God it was Saturday, a half-day only of scribbling and shivering in that devil-damned place with Piers Creed farting and stinking beside him. It was no life for a red-blooded Englishman and definitely not for Jude Foxley.
Hard pellets of snow gusted in his face, stinging like icy sand. It was difficult to tell if this was fresh snow falling from the dour, leaden clouds, or simply blowing off the roofs. Underfoot was treacherous ice, hid by a soft layer of innocent-looking virgin white. He and others forced, complaining, from their firesides, slipped and slithered, ungainly. As Jude turned off King Street and entered Westminster Palace’s outer courtyard through Great Gate, a fellow in front of him lost his footing and collided with a baker’s lad carry a tray of still-warm bread, fresh from the ovens. Small loaves scattered in the snow but not for long. Folk swooped upon the scene of the mishap like scavenging kites and the bread disappeared, four pains de main finding their way into Jude’s scrip to join the cheese and sweetmeats. Waste not; want not, as the old saying goes.
He trudged on towards the Exchequer Offices and the scriptorium adjoining the Great Hall. At the threshold of Secretary Oliver’s cold little kingdom, he knocked the snow off his boots, shook it out of his cap, removed his useless gloves to chafe his numb fingers into life and prepared to work. The door whined like a lost soul – as it always did – when he pushed it open on its time-worn iron hinges.
As ever, first to arrive and last to leave, the industrious Creed was already at his desk, aye, and had begun his daily production of farts, to judge by the stink.
‘Don’t you have anything better to bloody do, Piers?’ Jude greeted him.
‘I’m not an idle layabout like the rest of you. Besides, since Secretary Oliver entrusted me as key-holder, I have to be first here and leave last.’
‘You have that wrong: he only gave you the key because you’re so bloody eager to start work every morn. You give the rest of us a bad name, you foolish bugger. Here, have a sweetmeat.’ Jude put a stuffed fig on Piers desk.
‘What’s this for? You want me to copy out your quota of summonses?’
‘You suspicious old curmudgeon. ’Twas my birthday yesterday and a few morsels were left after.’
‘Secretary Oliver’ll be in a rage if he finds out we’re eating at our desks, getting crumbs and grease marks on the parchment.’
‘I won’t tell him if you don’t.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Jude.’
‘Well, damn it then, I’ll bloody have it.’ Jude took back the sweetmeat and ate it in two bites. ‘Dilemma solved! Now, what’s the old goat got for us this morn, eh?’ he spoke through a mouthful of fruit and marchpane, wiping sticking fingers on his gown. ‘More bloody summonses, no doubt.’ He rubbed his hands together vigorously to warm them so he could hold a pen and sat on the stool with the split seat that pinched his arse if he didn’t take care.
‘Aye. He left us instructions to do another thirty: fifteen each.’
‘What? Us alone? What are the other buggers doing, then?’
Creed shrugged.
‘Something just as boring, I suppose, when they get here. They’ll be blaming the snow for their tardiness. They always do. Snow makes a fine excuse for being late to work.’
‘Even those who live here? I had to walk from Thieving Lane.’
‘That’s not so far.’
‘Farther than you had to come from your bloody dormitory above stairs. Oh, shit. My damned ink’s frozen solid.’ Jude threw down his pen in disgust. ‘Well, I can’t work ’til that thaws out.’ He took the inkpot and set it beside the solitary brazier the clerks were permitted in their icy den. He stood close as he dare to the glimmer of warmth bestowed by the feeble glow of charcoal without scorching his threadbare gown. It had been his predecessor’s cast-off and, therefore, was too short to keep his knees warm when he sat to write – yet another reason for complaint about his current employment.
‘While you’re waiting for your ink, last night, after you’d gone, Chief Clerk Sowerberry put a sheaf of papers on the shelf up there.’ Creed nodded towards an untidy-looking pile of mismatched sheets in danger of sliding to the floor. ‘He said we’re to sort them out, see what’s relevant and send them to the appropriate offices.’
Jude took the papers to his desk and began to straighten dog-ears and smooth out creases. Some were torn.
‘Reckon this could all go for bloody fire-lighting.’ He leafed through them, muttering under his breath: ‘Laundry list... order for parchment... memo to self: “don’t forget M’s birthday”... another laundry list... an anonymous tailor’s demand for payment... Whose stuff is this? Each one in a different hand...’
‘Don’t ask me. Mayhap, some servant was finally setting about cleaning behind a coffer. Could be years old, some of it.’ Creed fidgeted and let out a long rumbling fart.
‘Can’t you go outside to do that, you disgusting wretch? I have to breathe in your bloody stink.’
‘It’s a penance we both have to bear.’ Creed sighed and repeated the offence for good measure before dipping his pen to complete the document he was writing.
Jude made no answer, frowning over a paper. Smoothing out the wrinkles where it had been screwed up, he followed a line of wording with his finger, puzzling to make sense of it. It seemed to be in some Italian form but not of Venice, which he would recognise for certain, nor of Florence, with which he had some acquaintance. The hand was tiny, cramped and execrable with many crossings-out and insertion marks, dots and under-scoring.
‘Something of interest?’ Creed asked, finishing another summons and reaching for a fresh parchment to commence with ‘Right Trusty and Well-Beloved, We Greet You Well...’ – the customary royal greeting.
‘Doubt it. Someone’s first draft for a letter home, by the look of it. Just rubbish.’ Despite his words, Jude set the paper aside for perusal later, if he could be bothered. If it contained a bit of juicy court gossip, it might be worth the trouble to interpret. A few extra coins for ‘information’ could always be of use to a poor clerk with a spendthrift wife.
Their fellow scribes arrived in twos and threes, all blaming the weather for their late arrival, as Creed had predicted, moaning about the pitiful brazier that did nought to warm them. They, too, found their inkwells frozen – another reason to delay working, so they trooped off, in search of mulled ale whilst the ink thawed, the door screeching closed behind them.
‘Hal, Lawrence, bring some drink for us!’ Creed called out with little hope that they would, he and Jude being the lowest of the low in the clerks’ unspoken hierarchy.
Unsurprisingly, the clerks returned without any ale for Jude or Creed.
‘What have you two been doing?’ Hal Sowerberry, the Chief Clerk, demanded. He was heavyset but of short stature, dark-browed. Jude hadn’t liked him on sight, the pompous, puffed-up toad. Chief Groveller and Arse-Licker Extraordinary were better titles for him in Jude’s opinion. And he possessed a nasty temper.
‘More summonses. What else?’ Creed told him.
‘Foxley. What of you, you lazy cur? I don’t see any summonses on your desk.’ Sowerberry leaned back in Secretary Oliver’s vacant chair, arms folded, making the most of their master’s absence to sit close to the brazier.
‘My ink was frozen as yours. Meantime, I’ve been going through a pile of waste papers from somewhere or other. You said to make certain there’s nought important among them before putting it all on the fire. Wouldn’t do to accidentally burn your love letters, Hal, from your latest mistress, would it now?’
‘Shut your mouth, Foxley.’ Sowerberry leapt towards him, fist raised.
Jude stood up, straightening to full height. Up on his toes, he added an extra couple of inches, towering over the angry clerk.
‘Touch me, Sowerberry, and you’ll bloody regret it,’ he said, sounding utterly calm and composed. No note of ire in his voice.
‘I’m your superior!’
‘I don’t care if you’re Pope Sixtus himself,’ Jude continued in the same easy tone. ‘No man lays a finger on me.’
Sowerberry thought better of it and backed down but his scowl promised retribution to follow.
‘You’ll be the one in trouble when I inform Secretary Oliver of your behaviour.’
‘My behaviour? You’re the one threatening to strike me, you ridiculous little prick.’
Sowerberry had been goaded beyond bearing and went so far as to climb upon Jude’s desk to get at him. His eyes blazed and his penknife was in his hand.
Jude stepped back, avoiding a clumsy thrust, laughing.
‘Get off my desk before you fall and hurt yourself. We don’t want blood splashing the parchment, do we? That would upset Secretary Oliver, wouldn’t it? God knows, he might even chastise us, then we’d all be in tears.’
‘Stop it, Jude, don’t mock him,’ Creed said softly. ‘You’re making matters worse with every word. You don’t want him for an enemy. He’s a sly one.’
The situation was ended by the entrance of Secretary Oliver himself, fur-swathed and red-nosed, sniffing. He croaked a greeting of sorts – or it might have been a reprimand, it was hard to tell – and slumped in his comfortable chair. Lord of all he surveyed here in the clerks’ office, if he was afflicted by an excess of rheumy phlegm and a chill, then everyone else should be made to suffer the same. Leastwise, that seemed to be his purpose as he sneezed and coughed and spat his contagion right freely upon all.
Jude now had reason to be glad of his draughty place, farthest from the brazier, well away from Oliver. The fellow looked pitiful and, for once, uninterested in what his underlings were doing, whether working or wasting time. Creed, of course, was writing out yet more summonses. Such diligence should be commended, though it rarely was. More likely, poor Creed was derided by his fellows and given far more than his fair share of work.