Kate Sedley: The Goldsmith's daughter

‘Well?’ Adela asked, kissing me again. ‘Are we to go or not? If you don’t wish to stay at an inn, there are those friends you’ve mentioned so often, Philip and Jeanne Lamprey. Perhaps we could lodge with them.’

This time I was able to speak with decision. ‘No, for unless fortune has favoured them since we last met, their cottage is too small to accommodate even one extra person, let alone two. We shall certainly call upon them, for they would never forgive me if I didn’t take you to see them, but there is no question of being their guests.’

Adela pulled away from me a little, her dark eyes glowing with excitement.

‘Does this mean that we are to go to London? That you have agreed?’

I realised that I was now as eager to make the journey as she was, but I made one last, desperate stand on the side of common sense.

‘Suppose the weather turns bad? We might be snowed in for weeks on the road.’

‘Master Nym assures me that that isn’t likely to happen,’ my wife said, getting up and going to pour me some ale. ‘I was questioning him while you were drawing water for Margaret, and he’s adamant that it’s as mild a winter as he can remember, and thinks it almost certain that it will remain that way. All the signs point to it, he says.’ She put the overflowing beaker down on the table beside me and went to fetch a cloth to mop up the overspill. This done, she knelt down by my stool. ‘Roger, my love, just this once let’s take the risk. The children will be well cared for by Margaret. You know as well I do that we need have no fears for them. And when we’re old and grey, I’d like to have something to look back on. When you’re deaf and doddering around with a stick, when I’m bent double, when the children are grown up and beginning to treat us as though we’re not safe to be out alone on the streets, we’ll be able to laugh and say to each other, “Do you remember when we were young enough and mad enough to travel to London in the depths of winter with Jack Nym and his cartload of soap? Do you remember the wedding of the little Duke of York and the Lady Anne Mowbray? Do you remember the trial of the Duke of Clarence?”’

I knew I had lost the argument. I knew that, stupid and hare-brained as the adventure appeared, I was suddenly as committed to it as was Adela. I sighed and pulled her back on my lap.

‘And when does Jack Nym think of returning?’ I asked.

‘He’s hoping to stay long enough to see the wedding tournament on January the twenty-second. In the meantime, he intends to tout around for someone who needs a load transported back to Bristol.’

This, I calculated, meant at least a week in the capital, and I could not help wondering if our meagre savings were sufficient to support us for such a length of time. Then I reflected that if I took my pack with me, I could earn money by selling my goods. I had done it before in London on more than one occasion. I could do it again.

I smiled at Adela, putting up a hand to smooth her cheek. ‘Don’t look so worried. We’ll go.’

The twelve days of Christmas were over, and still the weather held, crisp and dry and bright.

Adela and I shut and locked our cottage in Lewin’s Mead, warned our neighbours and the Brothers at Saint James’s Priory that it would be standing empty for some weeks, took what few valuables we possessed, such as pots and pans and bedlinen, to Margaret Walker’s for safety, saw the children happily ensconced in her tiny house and, on the sixth of January, not without some lingering misgivings on my part, set out for London, sitting up beside Jack Nym on the front board of his cart. Behind us, locked in by the tailboard, the crates of grey Bristol soap rattled and clattered and bumped.

I suppose I ought to have guessed what lay ahead, but for once I was lulled into a sense of false security. I presumed that God, if not sleeping, had forgotten me. He had, after all, a lot at present to keep Him busy elsewhere. It never occurred to me that He might have another job for me to do.

Sometime around midday on the fourteenth of January, Jack Nym brought his cart to rest before the strange, wedge-shaped building of the Leadenhall, announcing with relief, ‘Here we are at last.’ Inside were innumerable market stalls, a granary, a wool store, a chapel in which Mass was celebrated every morning for the stallholders, and the great King’s Beam, where goods were weighed and sealed by the customs men.

I knew from past experience that every sort of commodity was on offer within, from iron to cloth, lead to soap, food to second-hand clothing. And it was this last reflection, as well as a sense of obligation, that made me offer to assist Jack Nym to haul his crates of soap indoors.

Our nine-day journey had been uneventful, confounding all my prophecies of doom. The weather had stayed mainly fair with only two or three scattered showers of rain; and after Adela had taken Jack into her confidence regarding her condition, he had behaved with the greatest concern, making sure that at all the places where we found shelter along the route, she was treated with the highest degree of care and attention. Now, however, having reached our destination, we were to part — Jack, once he had made his delivery, retreating to a kinsman’s alehouse in that insalubrious, riverside quarter of the city known as Petty Wales, whilst Adela and I had to seek out a cheap, but clean and comfortable inn.

This was partly the reason why I accompanied Jack into the Leadenhall, in the hope that it might be one of Philip Lamprey’s days for serving behind his old-clothes stall in the market; for he, if anyone, could advise me where best to look. Adela had borne up remarkably well under the rigours of the journey, but I noticed that since passing through the Lud Gate, some half an hour earlier, she had begun to look pale and strained. No doubt she had thought herself fully accustomed to the noises, smells and heaving masses of a large city. But London had three or four times the number of people crowded within its walls than did Bristol. Furthermore, unless you knew what to expect, the continuous clamour of the bells, the constant, full-throated cries of the street traders and the deafening clatter of iron-rimmed wheels over cobbles could come as an unpleasant shock to the first-time visitor.

Added to all that, the stench of the gutters seemed to assault the nostrils far more pungently than it did at home. We were fortunate that, by the time of our arrival, the rakers had already done their early morning rounds, carting away the previous day’s refuse either to the pits outside the various city gates or to the river, where boats were moored, waiting to ferry it out to sea. But the filth was already piling up again, and by nightfall the mounds of stinking rubbish would be just as high as they had ever been. Keeping the London streets clean, then as now, was a never ending struggle.

Inside the Leadenhall it was a little quieter than without, but not much. I seated Adela on an empty, upturned wooden box while I helped Jack to locate his buyers, two soap merchants who sold not only tablets of Bristol grey, but also both the expensive white Castilian sort and the cheap black liquid kind. Then, with Jack’s instructions ringing in my ears — ‘We meet again here, the day after the tournament, the twenty-third of January, around midday’ — I went in search of Philip Lamprey.

I was lucky enough to find him almost immediately, haggling loudly with an elderly woman over a pair of tattered, particoloured hose which I should not have considered worth even the carrying home; or which, if I had, Adela would most certainly have consigned to the dust heap.

‘Philip, you old rogue,’ I said, putting an arm about his shoulders, ‘surely you’re not going to charge this poor soul for that disgusting old garment?’