The Clerkenwell Tales, Peter Ackroyd [sight word readers txt] 📗

of sparrow grease. “What sharp shower of arrows reached you, fool?” she asked him.

“From the butchers of the Chepe. They made a great roistering.”

“And you did not? What woman would love such a wretch as you?”

“They say, mistress, that pity runs swiftest in a gentle heart.”

“But I have no gentle heart. I have no heart at all.”

“Then fortune is my foe.”

“Why so?”

“I had looked to you for – for grace.”

“Grace, wretch? Or favour?”

“Greedy are the godless. I want all.”

“Who taught you courtesy?”

“A lighthouse hermit.”

She laughed at this, and soon an understanding was reached between them. They could do nothing in the presence of the little haberdasher but, when he was gone for a day or even for an hour, they played the devil’s game.

After their first lovemaking Anne Strago had sighed and complained that Radulf did not keep her in her proper estate. “Other women,” she said, “go gayer than I.”

“Fine gear will come your way.”

“From you? You have no more of money than a friar has of hair.”

“When the will is strong, there is a way.”

The fate of Radulf Strago was then determined.

Janekin had buckled his shoes and now, on this spring dawn, he came down the stairs with an ivory box in his hand. “What is this,” he asked, “left with the woollen caps in the solar?”

“What do you think? A comb case.” Radulf Strago walked over to his apprentice, and opened it upon his palm. “Here are your ivories. Your scissors. Your ear-pickers and all your other knacks.”

There was suddenly a loud explosion, which sent Radulf and Janekin flying across the open counter. It had come from the other side of the street, where a hermit’s oratory stood. The hermit himself had died some three months before, and the adjacent parishes were arguing over the appointment of his successor; but the oratory had remained a well-known place of prayer on behalf of those who had departed into purgatory. The loud explosion sent people shrieking into the street. The walls of the oratory had been blown out, and its thatched roof demolished. Radulf could not rise to his feet, and he lay among the hats and purses as wisps of straw floated through the air.

Janekin had roused himself, and was brushing the dust off his taffeta jacket when he thought he saw a tall figure running towards the city. He was too shaken to raise the hue and cry. Instead he helped to support Radulf as he struggled upright, murmuring, “Christ and His tree save us!” All those around them were shrieking “Fire!” Some were wrapped in cloaks, some had quickly pulled on hose and jacket, while others were already dressed for the day’s work. They clustered around the smouldering oratory, where a wooden image of the Virgin lay in fragments among the blackened stones. The air smelled of sulphur, as if the smoke of hell itself had ascended into the outer world. Radulf walked unsteadily towards the ruin, and noticed traces of dark powder on the earth floor. “They have used Greek fire,” he said to no one in particular.

But who would wish to destroy a place of prayer, a corner of London where the souls of those in purgatorial fire were perpetually remembered? It was for the living as well as for the dead. The chantry priest of St. Dionysius the Martyr, a small church in a nearby side street, had claimed that anyone who prayed in the oratory all night would be rewarded with ten years’ release from purgatory. Who would violate such a place with fire and gunpowder?

Two brothers hospitallers had come running from the gate of St. John, and begun howling that the nun of Clerkenwell had prophesied this. The merchant glanced at them with contempt, and in that instant he glimpsed something daubed upon a wall beside the oratory. It was some crude device, depicted in white lead paste. On peering closer at it, he saw circles linked one with another. His head ached, and he felt himself falling forward.

He was woken by the strong scent of vinegar in his nostrils. He opened his eyes, and found himself gazing at his wife. “Have you closed the shop?” he asked her.

“Janekin has bolted it and locked it. All is as safe as could be.”

“Did you hear the din? The oratory has gone.” She nodded. “Today is Friday. Friday is a hard day. An unfortunate day. An Egyptian day. It was on a Friday that I bought that false silver.”

“Hush. Rest.”

“Monday’s thunder brings the death of women. Friday’s thunder portends the slaughter of a great man. Who will we lose after this? May it be the king himself? The foxes of division are among us.” He had been undressed by his wife. He lay beneath a white cover garnished with golden lambs, moons and stars. “I must go to siege,” he said. “Help me.”

He had told his wife some weeks before that he had felt a “wambling” in his stomach, but nothing had cured it. He had also experienced an airiness in his head and heels, as if he were walking on moss. He ascribed these symptoms to newly corrupted blood, and had been cupped on several occasions. But the letting only made him more weary. Then he had begun to vomit. His wife encouraged him to try every remedy although she knew that nothing would save him.

She had gone to the apothecary in Dutch Lane, some way from her parish, and had asked him what poison was needed to kill rats. She had also told him that there was a weasel coming into her yard to eat the hens; this, too, must be destroyed. She had taken away some grains of arsenic in a linen bag, with careful instructions how to use them, and from that evening she had begun to mingle them with the pottage which Radulf always consumed for his supper. She had not told Janekin, fearing that he might blab her secret.

“Help me,” Radulf said again as he rose impatiently