The Invention of Fire (25 page)

At the other side of the clearing Chaucer had moved to a similar stump, also newly created from the trunk of a felled elm. We each stood behind our respective length of fallen tree. Our eyes met in a heavy silence across the glade.

“There was a battle here,” he said, walking slowly back toward my position. “A skirmish of some kind, with gunners, archers, crossbowmen—”

“Not a battle,” I said, sure of it now. We met in the dead center of the glade. My limbs felt heavy, as if trying to pull me to the soil with the sixteen men who had died here. “A battle is two-sided, with both companies armed and opposed. This was a massacre.”

“And this as well,” said an unfamiliar voice.

My neck prickled. Chaucer froze, his hand halfway to his head.

We turned as one.

Three men, bunched together and emerging from the trees at the north side of the clearing. Not rough country men, of the sort one might expect to find in a remote Kentish wood. These were true soldiers, clad in the well-cut raiment of an elite company serving a high lord: linen tunics, woolen hoods, badged armbands wrapping their sleeves—though the livery was folded under and obscured, hiding any sign of their lord. Military men, battle-hardened and unflinching as they confronted two unarmed strangers in the woods.

The man on the left drew his sword. The one on the right did likewise. The middle soldier had already notched an arrow, its point gleaming in the fading sun. The string was taut and the shaft seated, aimed at my throat. My vision darkened and narrowed to the arrowhead’s lethal point, and God’s living earth stood still.

A
N APPRENTICE, HAVING FALLEN
from the smithy loft and broken his arm, now sat whimpering on a table edge at the corner of the foundry yard. Hawisia watched from the house door as Stephen helped the surgeon set and splint the limb. The boy leaned into him, his moist, reddened face crumpled in pain. Stephen gently grasped his shoulders and soon enough the work was completed.

“You’re a strong one, Tom,” said Stephen soothingly as the apprentice tried to fill his lungs.

“Not a splintering fracture, as I feel it, and no skin broke.” The surgeon checked his knots before the final wrap. “Four, six weeks and you will be swinging your hammer again, my good fellow.”

The apprentice grimaced at the babying and pushed himself from the table with his uninjured arm.

“Give thanks to our leech, Tom.” Marsh poked the boy in the chest. “Gratitude is ever a finger of God.”

“Aye, Stephen,” said the apprentice. He nodded at the surgeon. “I thank you, Master Dobbes.”

The surgeon waved a hand before his face. “You will thank me by keeping yourself out of high places. God save those young bones for another day.”

“Aye.” The apprentice skipped off to join his fellows at the other end of the yard, bravely waving his splint.

Hawisia paid the surgeon, who went out the front through the shop room. “You are good to our boys, Stephen,” she said when they were alone.

A rare kind word. It felt strange coming from her mouth, though it was merited. Stephen’s face hadn’t acknowledged the compliment. He finished gathering up the scraps from the surgeon’s work, then glanced somewhere over Hawisia’s shoulder.

“They miss their master,” he said with a blank stare. “As do I.”

“As do we all,” she said, puzzled by his manner. He looked about to say more; then his mouth snapped shut. His eyes were tired and pouched.

“Stephen—”

“I must be off,” he said, still avoiding her gaze. “We’re short copper. Bradley’s’ve got a lot I can take for a good price.”

“See to it, then,” she said. He turned to walk away. His head was down. His feet dragged along the dirt. One of them caught on a clump of horse dung, and he stumbled forward, graceless and clumsy.

Since Robert’s death and his sentence at the wardmoot Stephen Marsh had become a glummer young man, true. He could be sullen at times, trying to mask the understandable bitterness he felt at being chained to Stone’s in the servile way he was. Yet Hawisia had never seen him go about as he had in recent days, so ragged and careless. Shirts and breeches soiled, face going swart and unwashed from one day to the next, as if he were suffering from some unnamed madness.

It had something to do with these snakes and tubes, of that she was certain. Over the last week she’d observed him several times at his dark work, the forge fired all through the night, tinking at the small serpents, forging iron and pouring bronze into these long rods, thinking he could hide it all from her. She was on the verge of confronting him about it, yet wanted first to understand the nature of his work—and, if she could, discover who was paying him for it.

Once Stephen had left on his errand she walked over to the smithy, where two apprentices were throwing dice. “Clear out of here, the both of you. And give me those dice. Now go shovel the stable.” The apprentices obeyed, and soon she was alone. She hoisted herself on the stool, put her feet on the bench, and got her next look at the top shelf.

Two long rods of iron, with one of Stephen’s snakes affixed to the middle of each. She lifted one gingerly and fingered the serpent. It was hinged. The snake moved at her touch, its gaping mouth reaching for a small pan hammered into the rod. The whole of the thing smelled vaguely of sulfur. She set it down and picked up the next rod. Nearly identical, though with subtle differences in its heft and balance.

She angled one of the rods away from herself and saw the hole at the end. She put her fingertip to it, then brought the finger to her nose. Sulfur again, and her finger was covered in soot. Another smell came back to her then. The scent of saltpetre and sulfur, the damp powder Robert and Stephen had made up in the clay pit to test the strength of their cannon. Her husband had made a jest of it, hadn’t he, ordering the apprentices to line up and piss in the pit. He’d pissed, too, as had Stephen Marsh. Robert even invited Hawisia to come and contribute to the cause.

The finished powder, though, had been no matter for laughter. As Robert warned, once mixed the powder would be as unstable as it was deadly, needing but a single spark to set a house aflame. He’d carried a measure of it out to the yard, poured it into the belly of a bombard, then touched the side of the thing with a coal. A flash, a great
crack,
then a new and acrid smell came floating across the yard with the smoke. Not the woodsy aroma of a slowly burning fire but a sharper scent.

It was a smell Hawisia remembered well, the very stench coming from the end of these rods. The stink of the devil.

Stephen Marsh was making guns.

“Mistress Stone!”

A man, calling from across the yard. Hawisia hastily replaced the rod and snake, climbed down from the bench, and left the smithy. Mathias Poppe, beadle of Bread Street Ward, stood at the back door to the shop.

“Mistress Stone,” he hailed her as she approached.

“Fair welcome to you, Master Poppe.” She hastily brushed her hands along her dress. The ward official was the owner of a bakeshop in the next parish and a close friend of her late husband’s.

“A few moments, if you please?”

“Of course, Master Poppe. We’ll speak in the shop.” He turned to follow her within.

“It’s passing good to see Stone’s sitting well, bells and pans and all,” the beadle said as they entered the display room. He asked delicately after her health, the general state of the foundry. Poppe seemed friendly enough, solicitous as usual. He’d been a frequent presence around the shop, a tavern companion of Robert’s, a strong talker about every subject you might name. Yet he was clearly avoiding something, dodging around a topic he seemed reluctant to broach. Hawisia was about to prompt him for his frankness when he got to the matter himself.

“Your Stephen Marsh,” said the beadle, not looking at her. “Is he about?”

“Whatever could you want with Stephen?”

The beadle tongued a lip. “Have a few questions for the fellow, is all.”

“What sort of questions, Master Poppe?”

“In honesty, mistress, I’d rather not say. We’ve had some inquiries from a sheriff from—looking into a—well, into an incident on a tenancy.”

“What sort of an incident?”

“I am more than confident that this business has nothing to do with your Stephen, nor with Stone’s. Yet thoroughness is a virtue in such matters, so I must speak with him, and soon. Is he about?”

“He is not.”

“Might you know where he is?”

“He’s after some copper. Over at Bradley’s, he said.”

“When do you expect him to return?”

“I couldn’t say, Master Poppe.”

“Then perhaps you might answer a question or two for me yourself.”

“Happy to.”

“Was Marsh about the foundry last Wednesday?”

“Last Wednesday,” she said, trying to remember. She shook her
head, seeing no reason to be elusive. “He was gone from the foundry that day, Master Poppe. Gone from the city indeed, as he had some business to transact for Stone’s.”

“Up by Ware?”

This surprised her. “Aye, halfway to Ware. Some ingots of tin, from a thrifty peddler he’d heard from. Had a large lot to sell cheap.”

“Some quantity of tin, you say?”

“Aye.”

“And the name of the peddler?”

“That I can’t tell you. You’ll have to ask Stephen.”

“Oh, I’ll ask him, Mistress Stone. Have no concerns on that score.”

She found his manner prickling. “Pray tell me why Stephen Marsh’s whereabouts that day are of interest to you, Master Poppe. What was this incident, and how does it concern him?”

The beadle traced the tips of his fingers across a sacring bell. “All I can say, mistress, is there’s a bad situation on one of the hundreds up there. A death.”

“A
death
?”

“Aye,” he said. “Daughter of a tenant farmer by Tewson. Body was found in a small wood up that way, hidden away in the bushes, poor girl. And the way she was killed . . .” He shook his head.

“Surely you cannot think Stephen was involved?”

“What I can and cannot think is beside the matter, Mistress Stone. The fact is, your Stephen was—”

“He is not
my Stephen,
Master Poppe,” she said, with a pointed formality.

“Excuse the figure, mistress.” He held up a placating hand. “I am simply following my orders. A young woman met an untimely end, a death other than her rightful. When such a thing happens we must cooperate with the sheriffs of the shire, wherever such cooperation may lead us.” His voice softened. “And in this case, dear Hawisia, it has led us direct to Stephen.”

“But how? Why has Stephen Marsh, of all people, been spotted for this?”

Poppe sighed. “That’s the difficulty, you see. He was spied going
out by Bishopsgate that morning, alone, by one of the guardsman who knows him by reputation. Then spied again coming back in by bell of four or thereabouts. And there was a merchant company saw a lone rider answering to his description leave the road just east of where the girl met her end. The tenant’s daughter went missing that very afternoon, and hadn’t been seen since. Not until some sheepman’s dog found her two days later, on the Friday it was.”

“The tin peddler, then,” she said. “Find the tin peddler, ask him about Stephen, and this goes away with no one harmed, jailed, or hung.”

Poppe gave an agreeable nod. “We find the fellow, confirm that Stephen was up there for tin, as he said to you he was, then we shouldn’t have any more reason to trouble him over this. You see, mistress?”

“I do,” said Hawisia, though despite his reassurance she felt no easier about the beadle’s inquiry. She would send Marsh over to Poppe’s bakeshop upon his return, she promised him, and the whole unpleasant business would be behind them.

When the beadle had gone Hawisia stood for a long while at the counter, struggling to make sense of what the man had told her. A lone rider, a woman killed—and Stephen Marsh in the area, supposedly riding toward Ware by himself. With his guns?

Throwing a heavy mantle over her shoulders to mask her condition, she left the shop to look for Stephen. Bradley’s was a peddler of scrap metals in the next parish. Stephen would likely be making his way back to Bellyeter Lane along Fenchurch Street. She waited for him outside the cooper’s shop at the crossing. The wait was not long. As the bell at All Hallows Staining stroked, she saw him dodging around a wagon, his head down, hands swinging slowly at his sides.

“Stephen,” she said. He stopped when he saw her.

“What is it, mistress?”

“The beadle has come by, asking questions.”

No surprise on his face, nor unease in his voice. “What sorts of questions?”

She watched him closely, the resignation already rimming his eyes. “About a dead girl, up toward Ware.”

He blinked.

“Another of your accidents, was it?”

His lips quavered. “Mistress—”

“Come along.” She spun around and strode down Bellyeter Lane. He followed her meekly. When they reached the foundry she led him through the house door.

“Go into the chapel,” she said without looking at him. “Remain there until I come for you. You understand?”

“Yes, mistress.”

She went out to the yard, kept herself busy for the next several hours, her thoughts racing. The beadle returned at the end of the day, this time bringing along a constable. She lied them off, claiming Stephen had never come back from Bradley’s. Hawisia could sense Poppe’s skepticism, though thankfully he did not press her on the matter. Now she would have to wait.

HOURS LATER HAWISIA DESCENDED
the inner stair in the dark and cold, palms whispering along the rough wall. She turned before the kitchen, walked along the screens passage toward the street door, then came to the low entrance leading into the chapel.

She ducked beneath the beam and stepped down into the family chapel, a long and narrow chamber sunk several feet below the first story of the main house. It had been added only two years before, after Stone’s best-ever string of sales, when Hawisia’s vanity led her to declare that a chapel would be a fitting ornament for a wealthy founder’s house. Robert had resisted, the frugal man, but she had won out in the end. The chapel was fully shuttered against the autumn chill, though with no fire going in the altar hearth the room was bitterly cold, and the first thing she saw was the icy breath of Stephen Marsh as he came to his feet at her entrance.

A servant had lit a candle from the kitchen coals, and in its wavering light Hawisia witnessed Stephen’s present state. Skittish hands, trembling limbs, a fear burning in his eyes. If she didn’t know better Hawisia would have guessed he was afflicted with a fever or pox.

“Mistress Stone.” His head hung low.

She stepped forward and reached for his chin, opening his face to her own. “Look me in the eye, Stephen, and tell me true. You killed this little faun?”

His lips loosened. “I did.”

“With one of these snake guns, was it?”

He gasped. “How—how did you—”

“Never you mind that. What happened?” She let go his chin.

“A misfiring is what it was. I heard something in the woods and I spun round and the snake came down—”

“Yet you hid her body beneath a bush. The act of a coward, that, and a fool.”

“Aye, mistress. After the accident I was taken with fright’s what it was, and didn’t think it out, and now . . .”

“And now you face the sheriffs, Stephen, and the shire court by Ware. Had you found a shire justice, told him what happened, you might have begged a jury for mercy or gotten the ear of a barrister. But dragging a girl’s bleeding flesh into the shrubs? You will hang for certain, Stephen Marsh.”

“It seems so,” he said softly. “Unless you help me, mistress.”