The Heretic’s Wife (6 page)

A light seemed to go on in the clerk’s face, “Ah, a printer.” His expression hardened. “Check the Lollard Tower,” he said, and before she could tell him she’d already been to Lambeth Palace with its infamous and dreaded square tower built to house and torture heretics, he shut the door in her face. She’d gone to the Lollard Tower the first week, her heart in her throat, almost faint with relief when the warden had said the prison was full and they had taken no new prisoners for weeks. That being the case, she thought, they might just frighten John and let him go. But that relief had vanished as the days crawled by and he did not appear.

She reached up to knock again at the door and then let her hand drop. What was the use? It was getting late. Mary would want to be by her own hearth when darkness fell. Kate should head home, though she dreaded facing her sister-in-law, hated seeing her banked tears at Kate’s no-news report. So when Kate neared St. Paul’s churchyard with its cacophony of familiar bells, she did not turn into Paternoster Row and homeward but went west, past Ludgate Hill.

There was still time to check Fleet Prison again.

The effluvium from the river Fleet was always worse with approaching dusk. All day the human waste and refuse from the city’s gutters had bled into the river as it made its noisome way to the Thames. The smell of it made her heave, but nothing came up. She had not eaten since this morning and then only a bite of the heel from a stale loaf. There’d been no time for a proper breakfast. But when had John last eaten? she wondered as she approached the gates of the Fleet and entered its grim courtyard.

The same old grizzled watchman she’d seen before slouched against the door of the gatehouse.

“I told ye last week, and the week before, and the week before that, mistress, I don’t know of a John Gough here,” he said before she could even ask.

“He may be here under another name. He could have been . . . unconscious when they brought him in. They might not even know his last name. Just let me describe him to the warden.” Kate fumbled in her purse.

“Ha! As if his greatness the warden is ever here! And the deputy warden will not see ye again so there beint no use fer ye to waste yer pennies trying to get to him.” He leaned forward to whisper as he scratched his greasy beard. She steeled herself against the onslaught of his breath and tried to ignore the suggestive shouts directed their way from the knot of prisoners playing at dice in the center of the yard. “Ye’d be better served to save yer ha’ pennies for the prisoners begging at the grill on the Common Side. They’ll know more than the deputy warden. He scarcely ever dirties his boots in the galleries.”

“The grill?”

The watchman jerked his head toward the right wing of cells with their barred windows opening onto Farringdon Street where the lowborn prisoners begged for money from passers-by to buy food and fresh straw for their lice-ridden cells. She’d always avoided that end of the street, after that first time when she’d walked past to the hoots and hollers and banging of tin bowls on the bars. But she saw the logic in the watchman’s suggestion.

Stiffen your backbone, Kate. Just do it.

With a vision of Mary’s disappointment prodding her courage—and the certainty in her soul that her brother was still alive—she walked to the first window and peered inside. The cell looked to be about twice as long as a man was tall and about as wide. It had no furniture, just a pile of rags on the floor in front of a fireplace wherein no coals glowed. Her presence at the window blocked out the only light.

The cell’s lone occupant stood gazing out the window an arm’s length from the bars, but Kate could see the prisoner clearly, like some caged animal, visible to all who passed by.

She appeared to be oblivious to Kate’s scrutiny. The shadows under her eyes, the bruise above her cheek—or was it dirt?—all unsettled Kate. The woman was dressed in rags and painfully thin—except for the bulge of her belly. Yet she was not banging on the bars and shouting at passers-by, begging as the others did. Instead, she was just staring dumbly into space, her eyes half shut, her face vacant of any expression. This one would be no help,
Kate thought. She was obviously mad with grief or fear. Kate started to turn away, but pity pulled her back. She loosened the strings on her little leather purse again and withdrew two pennies.

“Here, mistress, I am sorry for your plight,” she called, and held out the pence.

The woman looked frightened and withdrew farther from the window. She opened her eyes a little wider and stared at Kate, unblinking, but she did not move to take the money. Kate stepped a little closer.
Not too close,
she warned herself. The woman might turn on her. Even try to grab her.

Kate gripped the tuppence between her forefinger and middle finger and slid her arm through the narrow space between the bars.

“Come on. Take it. For the baby in your belly.”

The woman did not move.

Kate let the pennies fall. They thudded against the grime-caked stone of the floor. As fast as a serpent’s strike the woman swooped down and with long thin fingers clawed them from the dirty straw.

At least she does have some sensibility, Kate thought, encouraged. “Mistress, do you know of a prisoner named John? A tall, blond man with blue eyes . . . he has a vein that is prominent on his forehead. He is a gentle, quiet man.”

The woman retreated from the window and shook her head violently. Kate could barely see her in the shadows.

“I suppose not,” Kate said, and then added as she turned away, “God’s blessings on you, mistress.”

Kate thought she heard some whimpered response and perked her ears. But no. She could see the woman’s silhouette in the corner of her vision. She had not moved.

“Here, over here.” The clanging of a tin bowl against the iron bars accompanied the words. It was a male voice, coming from the next cell.

“I know a man named John,” the prisoner shouted. “He may be the one you’re looking for. If you have any more pennies in that bag.”

Kate’s heart gave a little thump.
Likely not,
she told herself.
He saw me give the woman money and figures me for an easy mark.

“John’s a proud man,” the prisoner said. “Too proud to beg. Or too melancholy to care if he starves. He came in fairly beat-up.” He paused, then snaked a hand from between the iron bars, motioning for her to come to his window. When she did not respond, he continued. “Raves in his sleep about a woman named Mary. Might you be Mary?”

That could be naught but a cunning guess. There were hundreds of men named John and more women named Mary. Still . . .
too proud to beg
! She looked hopefully at the gate to see if a gaoler or some sentry stood watch on the street.

None did.

Backbone, Kate.
She moved over to the grilled window where the prisoner stood with his face pressed against the bars, but she kept a safe distance.

“Will you take a message to him for me, then? Will you bring me news of him, or bid him come in person to this window to meet his sister?”

“Sister! So I’ll be guessin’ you’re not Mary. I might do it,” he said, nodding purposefully.

He was not an old man, though it was hard to tell through the stringy black hair, hair as sooty as a raven’s wing. He had a wide straight mouth with smooth lips that curved scythelike within a stubble of dark beard. She grew uncomfortable beneath his scrutiny. His eyes were jet-bright and bold, both searching and staring. The eyes of a man who is always on the hunt, she thought. A dangerous man—maybe even a Spaniard—her good sense said, a man who would always seek the advantage. His shirt was filthy with a ragged bit of lace at the throat and full sleeves. Not the usual dress of a beggar. Probably stolen from some wealthy merchant, maybe even the reason for his incarceration.

“I suppose you would not do it out of human kindness?” she said dryly. “I am courting poverty myself by always paying for information that is never forthcoming.”

He laughed. “I’m not too proud to beg. Or to negotiate. I have to eat. And I have no loving sister to look out for me.” His voice dripped sarcasm.

“Have you some offer of proof,” she said, “that this man is the one I seek? John is a common name. So is Mary.”

“This John speaks like a man with an education,” he said. He had withdrawn his hand from the window, now that he had her attention. He leaned against the bars, picking nonchalantly at a ragged cuticle, his tone as light as though they were equals engaged in gossip. “There are ink stains beneath his nails. Maybe an artist—or a printer, I’d say.”

He lifted his gaze and looked directly into her eyes, one eyebrow cocked like a crow’s wing.

Her heart raced.
An artist or a printer!
The question tumbled out before she realized she was giving her adversary the advantage in negotiation. “Is he . . . is he well?”

The prisoner shrugged then, looked up at her and gave her the crooked smile of a survivor. Strong, white teeth flashed within a scythe of a smile. The teeth of a predator, she thought. She thought she saw a little gleam of triumph in his eyes, like a man who’d run his quarry to ground. “ ‘Is he well?’ I’d say that is a relative term. He is alive. And he’s not in the cellars.”

Kate didn’t know what that meant, but she could guess. These last few days she’d learned more than she ever wanted to know about the prisons, such as the hierarchy of bought justice at the Fleet, ranging from the relative comfort of the dilapidated houses of the Liberties outside the prison walls to the rank, putrid condition of the cellars. At least John had access to this window on the street. Or so she surmised.

She reached into the bag and withdrew a penny. The sentry had left and another was standing guard at the gate. He had his back turned, but he would hear if she screamed. She held the coin just out of the prisoner’s reach.

“Will you bring him to me here? Tomorrow?”

“Maybe, if you can spare a coin for poor Tom Lasser.” He nodded, grinning, but it was not a grin that purchased trust. He thrust the shallow tin bowl through the bars. She dropped the coin in. He pulled it back through the window, then frowned when he saw its value. “Either you are truly impoverished or you don’t value your brother very highly.”

“I will return tomorrow. If my brother is at this window, I will give him money, money enough to see to his needs—and share with another. He will not be ungrateful.”

Without waiting for a further rejoinder she turned away. “Tomorrow morning,” she said. She walked away to the sound of his laughter.

As she left the odor of the Fleet River behind her, she reminded herself not to be too hopeful, for what faith could be placed in the words of a felon and a rogue who was even now laughing at how desperate she was, how easily duped? But at least she had something to offer Mary when she reached the little shop in Paternoster Row where the windows were already glowing faintly in the clabbering twilight.

Of Merry Margaret
As midsummer flower
Gentle as a falcon
Or hawk of the tower.

—F
ROM A
F
IFTEENTH-CENTURY
POEM BY
J
OHN
S
KELTON

T
he next morning Kate returned to the Common Side of Fleet Prison and walked the gauntlet of barred windows along Farringdon Street. She was almost light-headed with anticipation and anxiety as she tried to ignore the obscene hoots and lecherous shouts and pleas for money. This is what I have to do, she thought, and steeled herself to do it. But when she reached the remembered window, one quick glance showed it and the one beside to be occupied by other prisoners. She counted back in her mind. Yes, this was the right window. The woman had been in the first one, closest to the courtyard entrance, and the man in the other.

The same old snaggle-toothed watchman leaned against the iron post of the gate. His eyes watched her warily as she considered how best to approach him.

“Yesterday there was a woman in the first cell. What happened to her?” she asked.

“We change them out regular. To give everybody a chance.”

Her heart skipped a little beat. “Do you mean to say that everybody gets a turn, then? How often do you change them?”

“Nay. I don’t mean to say ‘everybody gets a turn,’ ” he mocked. “Just the ones that pay for the privilege.”

“But the woman—surely she was too poor to pay and she showed no interest in begging at the window. She would hardly take the coin I gave her.”

“The prisoner in the cell next paid for her. Tom Lasser, I recollect. I tried to tell him ’t were a waste.”

The black-haired thief? Kate wondered. He hardly seemed the kind to give charity . . . more the kind to steal it. Still, he was in the next cell. “What happened to him? Is he still here? May I see him? I think he knew . . .”

“Nay, mistress. He beint here. Some fancy-dressed lord bailed him out, like always.”

“Bailed him out?” she asked. “But . . . how . . . ?”

“Paid surety for him.”

“Do you know the man’s name who bailed him out?”