The Invention of Fire (7 page)

“And you believe you could surpass Burgundy’s guns or—how did you speak your oath—‘the devil take my body and bread’?”

“Well now, as to that—” He grimaced. “I’ve never put my hands on ’em. But the Tower’s bombards are unsound, I will tell you truly, cast in haste and unworthy of war. I have seen them tested along the Thames, watched more than a few of them crack with the powder and shot. A weak alloy, a bad pour. Stone’s could do better, is all I meant to say.”

“A bad pour,” the man mused. “Something you would know all about, aye? And how is the widow Stone faring, Marsh?”

“Well now,” Stephen snarled. He reared back and stood. “Who are you, to enter this parish and bring such knifing words with you?”

The man’s eyes had gone cold, metallic. He remained seated and still. “I am William Snell, chief armorer to His Royal Highness the king.”

Stephen felt the blood rush from his head. William Snell, a name whispered with equal reverence and fear among the founders and smiths of London. A fierce, demanding master, with countless arms at his beck and command, charged with the very life of London in the event of war—and Stephen had just insulted his guns.

“A fair welcome to our humble alehouse, Master Snell,” said Stephen weakly. He retook his seat.

Snell considered him for a while. Then he leaned forward, his voice lowering as the tavern din reached a peak. “Here is why I have come, Marsh.” He pushed a chunk of wood and metal across the board, then emptied his jar in one long swallow. Stephen hefted the object. It was heavy in his hand, a darkened length of iron between fixed bands, a stubbed tube sawed from a longer rod. The wooden piece resembled
a barrel stave, though it was the length of a forearm rather than the height of a boy. Stephen brought the object to his nose, catching the distinctive whiff of sulfur. He stroked the wrought metal, then turned the object over in his palm.

He set it back on the stew table. “What is this?”

“A chamber, stock, and firing hole, hacked from one of our small guns,” said Snell, leaving the thing in front of Marsh. “It’s an ugly thing, inefficient and clumsy. I would like you to design and fashion a better one, with more reliable results. These keep misfiring, or worse, exploding on my men.”

Stephen looked down at the piece and ran his finger along the seam. “A better hammer weld would improve it, I’d think. Hot work, but not complicated.”

“We need these devices to be lightweight and made to survive a dozen rounds at the least,” said Snell. “Uniform in their shape, so they can be moved down a line from hand to hand. Cast of bronze, perhaps. Strength, yes, but also flexibility.”

Stephen thought about it. “Why not keep this in the Tower? You have your own metalers over there. Michael Colle, Herman Newport. I’ve trained some of those fellows myself, apprenticed with them before I got my guild key.” Along with its outside commissions, the royal armory had long employed its own smiths and founders and farriers, lines of men whose days were given over to the forging and pounding of guns and shot, boltheads and engines of war, infantry plate and helms and horses’ shoes.

Snell lifted, then dropped the awkward lump of metal and wood. It hit the scarred surface of the table with a dull
thud
and took a half roll. “This is a special job, Marsh. A
particular
job, you see. I am concerned about the privity of the armory. I want to have this done outside, and discreetly, so as not to arouse suspicions.”

“Whose suspicions?”

“None of your concern.”

“With respect, Master Snell, I am not a fool,” Stephen said, leaning in. “You are asking me to risk my position at the foundry, my guild key, my livelihood. I would have to make these devices right beneath
the widow’s nose, yet behind her back.” He thought of Hawisia, the glimmer of suspicion in her eyes whenever she looked at him. “Stone’s is her foundry, the whole of it. Every hammer, every awl and anvil, every ingot of tin, every barrel of wax, every mound of clay. I cannot risk my position there, nor earn more of her fury than I have these four months since the master’s death.”

“Your devotion to the widow is admirable,” said Snell with a mocked sincerity. “Yet there are higher purposes than loyalty to a craft. There is your nation to think of, and your king. We are after something new at the Tower, Marsh. Something . . .” The armorer’s eyes narrowed as his tongue sought out the hard spots on his upper lip. “Something more
efficient
. A maximum of delivery with a minimum of effort. Do you see?”

Stephen frowned. “Larger guns, then?”

Snell’s nose twitched, and a corner of his mouth turned up. “It’s smaller guns we are after. Smaller, quicker to load, more portable, more—” He squinted, as if looking across a great distance. “More deadly. And thus more efficient.”

“Efficient?”

“Efficient,” said Snell with a tight smile. “It’s the common word of the season at the Tower and among the king’s
familia,
from top to bottom. After what happened in Edinburgh last year, who could wonder that the king’s army is looking for better ways to fight and happier machines of war? We chased the Scots from town to town and pile to pile but they wouldn’t engage, nor was our army swift enough to split up and catch them, what with all the equipment and baggage in tow. So now here we are, looking our own invasion in the nose, and the talk is all of effectiveness of operation. Do more killing, we tell the cavalry and infantry alike, but with fewer men, fewer arrows, fewer bolts. More slaughter, we tell them, but with less treasure, less shot, less powder.”

“And less gun,” Stephen mused.

“And less gun,” said Snell, his voice lowering to a gritty whisper. “Now you are seeing it, as I rightly knew you would. You are a man of solutions, Marsh. If we can find the right alchemist with his tinctures or the right priest with his sacraments, why, we should be able
to shrink a gun to the size of a ram’s cock. I am not concerned with the look of these weapons, you understand. They needn’t be beautiful things, like your hinges and such. Deadly efficiency is what we are after here.”

Stephen stared at the wall behind Snell, and a procession of guns marched across his inner sight, great cannon leading the small, the
pots-de-fer
before the bombards before the ribalds before the culverins, throwing their balls and bolts to every side.
Less gun.
A stirring goal; an attainable one. He knew little of gunpowder and shot aside from the pieces he’d seen wheeled to the gates and stationed beneath a few sentry towers along the walls, and his sole work on artillery was represented in the few large guns founded for the Tower before the passing of Master Stone.

Yet Stephen could already imagine ways that might be discovered to render such devices more efficient, to constrict their girths, lessen their lengths, improve their firing, and now that the notion had entered his mind he yearned to get his hands on one of them and apply his own skills to the problem, to gauge for himself the intricate balances of weight and mass, force and propulsion guiding these wondrous instruments slowly multiplying across the battlefields of the world.

Stephen sat up straighter, feeling a need to impress the armorer. “Efficiency and beauty are hardly natural enemies,” he said, “and weight can be compensated for by other means.”

Snell raised his heavy brow. “Go on.”

“A simple solution to an unknown problem. A gun is no different from a hinge. The sorts of things I found and smith and repair at Stone’s—hinges, buckles, coffers, gates, bells, to say nothing of clocks and the like—they are the fittingest prologue one could imagine to the new guns your men are smelting and forging behind those walls. And no one in London melts and bends and tinkers as I do, or the devil take my—”

“Body and bread,” Snell completed the thought. “You make quite free with such oaths, Marsh. Are they sincere? Is this your earnest will, to know the privity of the armory?”

Stephen took a large mouthful of ale and drew a sleeve across his
lips. “Let me at your guns, Master Snell. Let me understand the tooling and mechanics of it all. By God’s bones you won’t be sorry.”

Snell studied him, fingers playing at his beard. “I hope not, Marsh. For your sake, and the sake of your craftsman’s soul.”

“Aye,” said Stephen confidently, and Snell seemed to coil up on himself as he reached for his jar. Stephen shivered, despite the tavern’s warmth.

“You will come to the Tower in the coming days, then,” said the armorer. “Give your name at the east barbican. One of my men will fetch you down to the yard.”

“Very well, Master Snell,” said Stephen, working to hide his pleasure, an anticipation something like lust. It was a too easy thing, in that flush of ale and ambition, to excuse the minor swell of vanity that had held him there talking to the king’s armorer, despite the sentence that kept him so tightly bound to Stone’s. For if Stephen’s heart lingered always at the foundry and forge, his pride looked now to the Tower, and the machines of a coming war.

Snell slipped out the cellar door as the taverner rang the closing bell. Stephen stood and mingled with the crowd of men staggering out to the lane. He crossed back over Aldgate Street as the first stroke of curfew rang from St. Martin-le-Grand, and as he entered his own parish along Bellyeter Lane his pace quickened with his craftsman’s pulse, all his mind on the making of guns.

I
SHOULD FEEL WORSE,”
Hawisia Stone said.

“And you don’t?” Rose Lipton, midwife of Fenchurch Street, tapped at the sides of Hawisia’s belly, then bent to put an ear to her tightened skin.

“The babe is less after prodding my bile this time. Haven’t coughed up a caudle in weeks.”

“Nor would you, not at this stage,” said Rose with a sniff. “You’re not longer than six weeks from birth, mistress. Now it’s all sore muscles and devil’s air, isn’t it?”

“Aye, it is,” said Hawisia ruefully.

“And will only worsen these last weeks.”

Rose adjusted the poultice, an evil-smelling mixture of jasmine, roots, dung, and St. Loy knew what else, all gathered in a sack at the top of Hawisia’s bare belly, right below her breasts. Hawisia suspected the midwife reused her herbs and roots for her concoctions, though didn’t want to say anything for fear of putting the woman off. It was hard enough keeping Rose Lipton happy and working as she should be. Often as not it felt as if Hawisia were the one hired to serve Rose rather than the reverse, despite the good coin the midwife took away after each visit.

Rose prodded some more, pressed her palms and fingers deeper into Hawisia’s heavy mound. At one point the midwife’s hands froze. She frowned.

“What is it?” said Hawisia.

“Thing’s not turned round as it should be,” said Rose as her hands resumed their wanderings. She clucked twice. “Don’t like it when they get footstrong.”

“What does it mean?”

“Nothing good, my dear,” said the midwife, with one of her dark looks. It changed to a smile and she patted Hawisia’s wrist. “Should straighten itself out in time, though, with the right charms. Let me see what we have here.”

She dug through her bag and came up with a much-thumbed little book. Hawisia had seen it before, heard its bootless charms wheeze out through Rose Lipton’s wide lips. “Have you straightened your husband’s girdle, as I asked?”

“Just there,” said Hawisia, pointing to the delicate metal chain dangling from a bedpost. Wrought pewter, a gift from Robert on their wedding day, though crafted by Stephen Marsh, his chief apprentice then. Rose lifted it from the post and draped it across Hawisia’s waist.

“It is a husband’s charm, you know. Shame Robert’s not here to sing it himself. I’ll lip it out for you, though,” she said helpfully.

“I thank you for it,” said Hawisia, tightening her jaw.

Rose fixed the clasp before Hawisia’s nether way. Hawisia could do nothing but lie there, propped up on her bed, as Rose recited the familiar words by rote. “I bound, as so shall I also unloose. I bound, as so shall I also unloose. I bound . . .” The midwife murmured the girdle charm ten times, not reading from the book, simply thumbing the page containing the words and the rubrics for their use.

When Rose had finished she tucked the book away, followed it with the poultice, and helped Hawisia dress and sit up on the edge of her bed.

Hawisia, unable to stop herself, asked, “All seems well, then, aside from the babe’s position?”

Rose waggled a hand, shot out her lower lip. “You are well past where you’ve got to before, Hawisia, I’ll give you that,” she said, but then shook her head. “Yet that means little when it comes to the birthing.
How many is it you’ve lost to the flux since Robert Stone took you to wife? Two is it, or three?”

“Four,” said Hawisia, remembering them all. The first three gone in rushes of blood that could have been her menses if she hadn’t known better and cramped so badly. The last one was stillborn early, an unchristened lump pushed out into a world it would never see or know.

“And Eleanor, she gave him two, aye? Sweet one, that Eleanor.”

“Two. Yes,” said Hawisia flatly. “Both girls.” Eleanor Stone, Robert’s first wife, had been dead these eight years. The daughters were departed from the foundry as well, one recently married off to a wine merchant of Cripplegate Ward, the other gone to fever in her childhood. Robert would often speak of his late wife with a certain longing skidding through his voice, and though he never said so, she could feel the contrast between his wives working on his desires.

Eleanor, fertile and fecund. Hawisia, barren and fruitless. Robert, wanting a son.

“So your evil fortune weren’t from his seed, then, was it?” said Rose with her brow raised, an inquisitive tilt to her head.

“I suppose not,” Hawisia said.

“Good then.” She nodded. “But don’t give in to despair, Mistress Stone. For the babe’s quick in there now, I can feel him shifting about, and who can say? Could be that Lady Fortune will turn the thing out alive.” She wagged a finger. “Though don’t let your hope spring too fresh, Hawisia. Not with your luck.”

No fear of that, Hawisia thought, feeling her hopes pushed and pulled by the midwife’s shifting wisdom.

“Dead birth can be a fearful thing though, can’t it?” said Rose. “I well recall it with my third. John, it was.” She sat back plumply on her stool and folded her arms. “We thought he was a choked one, too, all grey in the skin, not a twitch from his toes to his nose. But my old gossip Grace, she thwacked the little thing on the arse she did, and out comes his screamin’ breath, loud and full as you’d like!” She laughed merrily at the memory, which Hawisia had now heard at least ten times.

Rose packed her remaining things, then pushed the stool back beneath the bed and smoothed her dress as Hawisia shoved herself to standing. “So you see, Hawisia, y’must trust in the grace of God to sort wheat from chaff. Some of us be fecund, bursting with bairns, like my eight. Others are chosen to be virgins in a house a nuns. Others to be barren, such as yourself. But better to be barren than rotting off in a grave, aye?”

Hawisia walked the midwife down the outer stairs and through the house door to the showroom. Stephen Marsh was there, watching the shop in Hawisia’s absence.

“Why, good morn to you, Stephen Marsh,” said Rose, beaming widely at him.

Stephen gave the midwife a nod. “Mistress Lipton. And Mistress Stone.” He showed one of his too easy smiles, brushed away a dangling lock from his brow, and pondered them with those wide-spaced eyes, a soft doey brown. In the parish there were wives and widows alike who giggled and gossiped on those eyes. Not Hawisia. She sniffed and turned away.

Rose, though, paused in the doorway like a mud-stuck log. “How is the work, Stephen? Bells shining bright this autumn?”

“As bright as ever, Mistress Lipton,” he said. They spoke for a few minutes of newborn infants in the ward, and of Rose’s two unbetrothed daughters, fresh as new buds on an elm, each as lovely as a daisy, the midwife claimed.

Hawisia could sense Stephen’s awkwardness. She watched his eye shift toward the rear of the shop and the foundry yard. Stephen hated being trapped up front, she knew, just a hundred feet from his natural home amid the forge and metals, yet in his mind a sea’s width away. He was like a penned bear up here, never truly content unless he was at his work—and Hawisia wanted him at his work. For with Robert’s sudden passing Stephen Marsh’s needful craft was all that stood between pounds and penury for the foundry.

How different it had been while her husband lived, when what she desired most keenly was prestige and the awed respect of the guild wives. If she could not have children of her own she would have the
richest, finest foundry and smithy in the city of London, and it was up to Robert and his workers to make it so. More commissions, more customers, an ever-growing share of the city’s metaling trades.

And it was this nagging want, this thoughtless avarice that killed Robert Stone, despite Stephen Marsh’s hand in the accident. This she knew, and felt the weight of it every day, though it was easier in her mind to blame Stephen—and have him blame himself. Now all she wanted was to survive the birth of this only child, with enough coin for their bread and this roof. Her ambition had diminished with her future.

“Allow me to walk you through to Fenchurch Street, Mistress Lipton,” Stephen was saying. Rose, delighted, took his arm, and together they left the shop.

Hawisia went to the door and watched them walk down Bellyeter Lane and past the Fullers’ Hall, Rose chatting gaily, her free hand flying wildly back and forth before her loud and prattling mouth, Stephen nodding,
yes
sing, feigning a youthful interest in the midwife’s wisdom and wit.

Hawisia closed the street door, flattened her back against it, felt the rough board against her palms. Grey and old already, even with a babe stewing in her belly. She wondered how it would be, to reside in that world of green life and vitality it seemed everyone inhabited but she.