London (68 page)

“Disgusting,” he would say of a place like St Lawrence Silversleeves. “This has got to be cleaned up.” As for the Great Conduit: “One conduit for a city this size? Totally inadequate. The city must put this right. Or one day I will.” When he asked how Whittington would accomplish such things, the young man calmly replied: “I shall become mayor.”

“How does one become mayor?” he asked one day.

For answer, Whittington pointed to a stout building in the Cheap, just below where the Jewry had once begun. “Do you know what that is?” he asked.

On the site where the family of Thomas Becket used to live stood a handsome chapel, with a hall above, dedicated to the memory of the London saint. “That’s where the Mercers Guild meets,” Whittington explained. “First you become a member; then perhaps the warden; and then they make you mayor. The guild, that’s the thing.” And Ducket looked at the building and thought that to be a mercer like Bull and Whittington must be the finest thing in the world.

When he was seven, young Geoffrey Ducket was sent to school at St Mary-le-Bow. He had been a little fearful of this, but when he got there he received one pleasant surprise. Though the children were taught to read and write Latin, of course, the classes were now being conducted in English.

Bull was astonished. In a conversation which the little boy did not overhear, he complained to Whittington: “It was Latin and the birch in my day. What’s the matter with them?”

“All the schools are starting to teach in English now, sir,” the young gentleman laughed. “After all, even at court they speak English.”

The merchant was not convinced though. “I suppose it’s good enough for a foundling,” he grumbled.

And then there was the girl. A wavy mass of dark hair, a pale little face with a rather pointed nose, small red lips, grey-blue eyes. Theophania, the priest had solemnly baptized her, using the Latin form of her name. But never, after that day, was she known as anything but simple, English, Tiffany. Bull adored her.

Ducket had paid little attention to her until she was five, when Whittington’s stay in the house came to an end; but in the years that followed he was often her companion and, remembering Whittington’s kindness to him, tried to be kind to her in turn. Besides, it was pleasant to have someone who looked up to him and followed him around so faithfully. He would even break off from some game of ball or wrestling to play hide-and-seek with her or, as she loved best of all, to carry her on his shoulders across the bridge and back. Sometimes he would take her fishing and they would catch a trout or one of the salmon with which the river was so plentifully stocked.

Of all the things a young man could do, the most daring and dangerous feat was at London Bridge. One day, when Ducket was eleven, Whittington casually remarked to him: “If you watch the river tomorrow morning, you might see something of interest.” It could only mean one thing. No one had done it in months.

The next morning, hand in hand, he and Tiffany stood at the big upstairs window. It was a fine day and the Thames was sparkling, but thirty feet below them the water eddied impatiently by the great stone pier and poured down with a terrifying roar through the channel. “Will he be safe?” Tiffany whispered. “Of course he will,” Ducket said. But secretly he was not so sure. Maybe I shouldn’t have let her see this, he thought.

There was Whittington, with two friends in a long boat, standing in the stern and sculling with a single oar as if he had not a care in the world. Dear God, how brave he looked! As he approached, he glanced up, smiled and gave a cheerful wave. He was wearing a blue neckerchief. Then he coolly set the prow of the boat at the centre of the arch, and sailed into the race.

It was just now that Ducket realized that Bull was standing behind them. His big face looked stern. “Damned young fool,” he said, but Ducket thought he detected approval in his voice. “Better see if he’s alive,” Bull said as the boat disappeared below them, and he led the two children out and across the bridge to the downstream side. Whittington had already been carried well away and was nearly level with Billingsgate. He had taken off his kerchief and was waving it over his head in triumph. Tiffany watched, her eyes very wide. She turned to Ducket. “Would you do that?”

He laughed. “I don’t think so.”

“Would you do it for me?” she persisted.

He gave her a kiss. “I would for you,” he said.

When Ducket was twelve, Bull summoned him into the big upper room.

“It will soon be time you were apprenticed,” he said with a smile. “I want you to think about what you’d like to do. You can choose what you want.”

The great moment. He had been waiting for it for years.

“But I already know,” he blurted out. “I want to be a mercer.” Like Whittington. Like Bull himself. He looked at the merchant happily, and only after several moments wondered why the smile had died on his face.

Gilbert Bull was an intelligent man. For a second, he had thought the boy was being impertinent, then realized: he did not understand. How shall I tell him? he thought, and knew it was kinder to be firm at once.

“That is impossible,” he said. “The Mercers Guild is for merchants, people with money. If you were a Whittington, or . . .” he almost said “a Bull,” but thought better of it. The truth was that there were poor apprentices, even in the élite Mercers Guild, but he had no intention of placing this foundling there. “You’ve no money, you see,” he said bluntly. “You must learn a craft.” And he sent the boy away to think about it.

Ducket did not stay downhearted for long. A few days later, he was walking round the city, poking his head into this workshop or that, always cheerful and always curious. “God knows,” he muttered to himself, “there’s choice enough.”

Glovers making gloves. Saddlers making saddles. Lorimers making bridles. Coopers making barrels. Turners making wooden cups. Bowyers making bows. Fletchers making arrows. Skinners dealing in furs. Tanners curing leathers – the stench of the tanneries decided him against this. Then there were the shopkeepers – bakers and butchers, fishsellers and fruiterers. He could see himself as any one of these.

The issue was resolved, however, from another quarter entirely.

Though he was vaguely aware that Bull’s friend Chaucer had been his godfather, young Ducket seldom thought of the courtier. After all, he was usually away. But he heard the merchant speak of his progress from time to time. This had been considerable. From a humble page, the wine merchant’s son had progressed through the various stages of a young gentleman at court, making himself both useful and popular. This last came to him easily, for he had a naturally sunny temperament. “Amazing fellow. Never loses his temper,” Bull remarked.

“He knocked down a friar once,” his wife gently observed.

“All students do that,” Bull replied.

Chaucer had gone on campaign several times, been ransomed once, and studied enough law for any official appointment he might get. He also possessed one other talent: he could turn a pretty verse in French to please a lady or celebrate a great event. Lately, he had even experimented by rendering some verses into the Frenchified version of English spoken at the court – a daring novelty that the royal circle found charming. He had been included in a diplomatic mission, to broaden his experience. And a little while ago he had also received another significant reward.

In the large and sophisticated court of King Edward III, it had become usual to find aristocratic wives for rising young courtiers from the middle classes, and Chaucer, the popular wine merchant’s son, had been favoured with the daughter of a Flemish knight. “Yet doesn’t the fellow have the devil’s own luck?” Bull had cried happily. For Chaucer’s amazing good fortune was that his wife’s sister, Katherine Swynford was the acknowledged mistress of no less a person than King Edward’s younger son, John of Gaunt.

There were numerous royal sons, all handsome fellows who sported the long, drooping moustaches that were fashionable. If John of Gaunt was shorter and broader than his heroic brother the Black Prince, he was still an impressive figure, and almost certainly more intelligent. By his first marriage he had secured the vast estates of the dukedom of Lancaster; by his second, to a Spanish princess, a claim to the throne of Castile. But his real love, to whom he was as quietly devoted as any husband, was Katherine. Geoffrey Chaucer therefore had married into the outskirts of the Plantagenet royal house.

John of Gaunt lived in the huge palace of the Savoy, by the Aldwych. And it was from there one summer’s day, as Ducket and little Tiffany were walking out to Charing Cross, discussing the merits of being a butcher over those of a bowyer, that a man with a forked beard strolled, who, as soon as he spotted the boy’s white patch, came over to them with a smile and asked: “How does my godson?”

Nor, when Ducket told him about his problem, did he hesitate for more than a moment before declaring: “But I think I’ve got the very thing for you.”

A week later, it was all arranged. Ducket prepared to leave the house on London Bridge and move into his new master’s. On a summer morning, with a spare hose and two new linen shirts provided by Bull’s wife, he set off cheerfully to his new home. Though this was less than a mile away, it was a parting nonetheless. As she stood by the door, little Tiffany asked him: “Will you come back to see me every week?” He promised he would. “Will you miss me? Every day?” “Of course I shall.”

Even so she stayed by the door for a long time as he went upon his way.

As for Geoffrey Chaucer, he smiled to himself. “Your master is a kind fellow,” he assured the boy; “but the household is, you might say, unusual.” More than this, however, he would not divulge, preferring to leave his godson curious.

1376

On a wet spring morning, Dame Barnikel faced her eleven-year-old daughter Amy across the matrimonial bed and prepared for battle.

Dame Barnikel’s bed was a splendid affair. It was by far the most valuable piece of furniture in the house – a huge four-poster. It was made of oak. Upon it she had already had two husbands. In the taverns of Southwark, the betting was five-to-two for a third within seven years. The first man, they said, had died of exhaustion. The bed had a thick mattress stuffed with down. At its foot rested a huge wooden trunk, banded with iron, in which all the bedclothes were kept and which, when Dame Barnikel had sat on it to close it, packed the contents so tight that any unfortunate fleas who had failed to jump out were instantly suffocated.

For several seconds she eyed the girl, who wilted stubbornly under her gaze. Then she began.

“You’re very pale,” she announced gruffly. She paused now, searched for words and found them. “You look,” she suddenly roared, “as if you’d been kept under a pot.”

But this was not the real issue on her mind; that followed soon enough.

“This young man of yours. This carpenter. He won’t do at all.” She gave the girl a firm look. “Just you forget about him,” she growled affectionately, “and you’ll feel better.”

As Dame Barnikel looked at the girl, she inwardly sighed. How like her father Amy was. Though more strongly built, she had the same thin, concave face and, as far as one could tell, the same tendency to silence.

When people saw John Fleming and Dame Barnikel together, they could never believe they were man and wife. It was no wonder: with his spoon-like face and spindly body they never thought he could stay the course. As for why, only a year after first being widowed, she had married this quiet grocer, it remained one of the mysteries in an otherwise ordered universe.

But Dame Barnikel, at thirty, was magnificent. Half a head taller than Fleming, with her dark red hair pulled back like an Amazon, even Bull, who was a harsh critic, admitted she was a fine-looking woman. Silent she was not. Her voice would boom an indiscretion across the street or share a secret in a husky growl; once a month she would get drunk, and then, if crossed, she could roar like a Viking in battle. Above all, she loved to dress in bright colours.

Sometimes this led to trouble. Since the reign of Edward I, there had been a number of laws regulating dress. Not that this gave offence in an ordered society. A merchant, for instance would think it impertinent to wear the red robes of an alderman; nor was his wife likely to put on the elaborate headdress and flowing silks of a lady of the court. Indeed, the main offenders against the laws were the more fashionable nuns who, in winter, were apt to forget their vows of poverty and trim their habits with costly furs. But Dame Barnikel took no notice of these laws at all. If a headdress, a bright silk or a rich fur took her fancy, she wore it. And when the beadle, more than once, came to complain to Fleming, the grocer only shrugged and suggested: “You talk to her.” At which the beadle would hurriedly leave.

Her daughter’s interest in Ben Carpenter had only begun in the last year. The girl was young and Carpenter still an apprentice, but Dame Barnikel was taking no chances. Many girls married at thirteen and betrothals, even for humble folk, could come years before that. She was going to put a stop to it at once.

“He’s not good enough,” she stated firmly.

“But he’s my cousin,” the girl objected. For what it was worth, this was true. One of the grandsons of the saddle painter whose daughter had rescued the Fleming boy eight decades before had become a carpenter and taken the name of his new occupation. Thus, as could easily happen amongst such craft families, two branches were called respectively Painter and Carpenter – and both were distantly related to Amy. Dame Barnikel, however, treated this information with a snort.

“Father likes him.”

This was the problem. For some reason Fleming had taken a liking to the solemn craftsman; otherwise, Dame Barnikel could easily have sent the fellow packing. It was a point of honour with her, however, to respect her husband’s opinion in matters concerning their daughter.

“The reason you like him,” she told the girl, “is that he’s the first boy who’s taken an interest in you. That’s all.”

Dame Barnikel was often puzzled by Amy. She herself had been born a Barnikel of Billingsgate. At thirteen she had married a tavern-keeper. Widowed, at sixteen, she had married Fleming. Yet so great was her force of character that she had never been known by any name but Barnikel, to which, as though she were the wife of an alderman, even the aldermen themselves would usually add the prefix Dame. “I’d be afraid she’d cut my head off if I didn’t,” Bull once laughed.