Gregory House - The Queen's Oranges

The summer nights in the city were long warm affairs, rich in the soft twilight that was the gift of the season. Where one could, the labour continued taking advantage of the lingering light-farmers, tradesmen and even the punks who strolled the riverside flashing their loose ribboned hair along with other open bodice enticements. The wherries that plied the river in their thousands also had cause to thank the weather. It meant good trade for the bear and bull pits across the river in Southwark.

The merchants, as well, had reason for good cheer. It was the week that His Majesty, King Henry VIII, had summoned the country’s lords to the city to deal with the petition to His Holiness, Pope Clement, in Rome, for the annulment of his current marriage. While the tangled politics of the situation did not concern them, they still eagerly prepared for the anticipated bounty as the crowded city filled out with the families and retinues of the lords of the land. The holy orders also were not slow to see the potential and used the gathering crowds to advantage. Hundreds of mendicant friars had joined the jostling throngs of London to preach, threaten and cajole. Or as some parish reeves complained ‘make much mischief by their disputes, alarums, beggings and affrays.’

This was a sample of life in the great city of London, the wonder of the world in the year of Our Lord, Fifteen Hundred and Thirty.

The shrouding dark of the summer night brought forth its own custom-thieves lurked in the concealing wells of shadow, cozeners played their gambits to wide eyed farmers too beer befuddled to notice the twitched slip of the dice, while outside the taverns, whores and trulls plied their trade in the alleys of the Liberties. In all this new evening the sounds of life and death echoed amongst the thatched roofed lanes-grunts, groans and curses along with the sudden scream. If you were lucky, the Common Watch trundling along may come to your aid, if not too drunk or compliantly deaf.

Other cries, abruptly terminated by the sharp blade or choking flow of blood that washed out from a slashed throat went unnoticed in the nightly hubbub that was the riverside. Hands clenched, such victims died without the grace of confession, their spirits caught up in the torment of the moment, locked on the mortal plane, frantic for the release that vengeance brings.

Two men had a seat at the dockside tavern, still some hours to go before the yellow wash of dawn. They were raucous and loud as they downed a second firkin of ale. The shorter one gazed at a blonde punk a couple of tables across. She had that sort of eye catching beauty that gave a man a case of cramp in the codpiece with only a single smile.

Shorty wiped an encrusted sleeve across his face, leaving a wide dark smear that lent his face a savage look like those of the barbarous Indies across the great waters. He wasn’t watching her smile. “I wants ‘er!”

“Don’t be a clod pate. Yer cods a’ just got the itches! After what’s we did afore, we ain’t got the time!”

“I say I wants ‘er. Always gets the raging ‘ornaffer a bit o’ work like that.”

“Yer a’ daft a’ a Bedlamite. We still got to finds it! Yer killed ‘em too quick afore they squealed.”

Rather than a serious complaint, this was more in the form of a professional judgement. The taller one lent out from their cubby and squinted towards the door, the iridescent feathers in his cap sparkling in the rush light. He was used to night work, preferred it to his daytime labour. For one thing, it was eminently more profitable.

“We’s got a couple o’ hours. ‘ow in God’s teeth are we goin’ to do it?”

“Naw got days ‘ow’s I rigged it. Any’ow stop yeryammerin’. We got friends who’ll see us right if’n they wants a share o’ the gilt.”

The shorter man gave a braying, evil-sounding laugh that startled the table of dockmen to their left. One of the younger men made to get up and complain but his grizzled haired companion put out a restraining hand and shook his head. The reputation of the two grimy drinkers was known along the river.

The one with the peacock’s feather in his cap grumbled a few more curses then slumped back into the cubby. This was the best cozener’s game they’d ever tried and all manner of men were keen to hand over their gold. He took another couple of hefty swallows and shrugged. Who was going to care about a pair of dead foreigners anyway?

Most deaths were given no more than a cursory glance in the daily mortuary bill of the city. But some deaths it was just too imprudent to encompass or ignore, for one never knew who could be drawn in by the trail of blood and heretical sin.

***

Ned limped through the grey stone archway of Aldgate into the clustered noisy wards of London city. He’d been at Aldgate Bars out past the wall to the east and it couldn’t have been more than a mile or so but it felt like several and up hill at that. His better angel sternly chastened his grumbling. After all it reminded him, he’d paid for the lessons and if he was clumsy enough or inattentive then Master Ned Bedwell certainly deserved the bruises! In answer his daemon chimed in that pain and lumps from left hip to ankle weren’t part of the bargain, nor was the painful stagger along the muddy road. Ned ignored them both. It was immaterial that the blows were unfair and not considered part of the gentlemanly code of combat. That was the point. Since the ambush last year on the way to Grafton Regis, where he had been forced to run for his life and cower in a badger’s set, he’d promised himself not to undergo similar humiliations. So as a consequence he had taken up Margaret Black’s offer and had trained diligently four times a week under the watchful eye and heavy hand of Master Robin Sylver, a veteran of the wars on the continent, and expert at the arts of staying alive in brawl, affray or battle.

The fellow was a true master of his craft, especially if it required the adroit use of the knee, boot, elbow or God forbid, the forehead. Master Sylver’s idea of combat rendered down to its raw essence was that you walked off the battleground leaving your opponent bloody and groaning in possession of the field. Ned, at the beginning, had asked him about how that accorded with the code of honour and chivalry. After all, holding the field at the end of combat was what indicated victory. Master Robin gave one of his gap tooth sneers and commented that such fancy notions were fine for fellows who were rich enough to afford playing at the sport of war, or who could whistle up twenty armed retainers to guard them in their evening strolls. Then after a hawked gob towards the battered pell, he’d said that for ordinary lads without the security of ransom to load the grim dice of battle, one scrap of dirt was as good as another so long as it wasn’t being shovelled over you.

After the badger’s hole incident, that realistic appraisal of battle made a certain amount of sense to Ned. In his last affray, Don Juan Sebastian de Alva had been very insistent regarding what he felt was the honourable way to face an opponent, even to offering Ned a dagger, in fact the one he now had at his belt. Its acquisition had been a very painful and almost fatal spur to his current training regime. For one thing, Ned knew that the affair between the Spaniard and him was far from finished, and badger sets were in short supply in London.

Ned’s battered limbs were feeling the worse for the walk and he stopped at the Bee Skep Tavern on Aldgate Street past the city gates for a firkin of refreshment. The place had been recommended by Rob Black, the artificer, and even had the approval of his redoubtable sister Meg. Taking a seat at one of the outside trestles to enjoy the passing life of the Aldgate markets, Ned took a long pull on the fresh golden ale. As it went down he could have sworn it washed away some of the ache-beneficial indeed. He was planning on further relief soon by angling towards Greyfriars and the establishment of Williams the Apothecary, hoping that his sorry state, the results of valiant efforts on the training field, might elicit some sympathy and a useful remedy from Mistress Margaret Black. His last visit had earned a surreptitious smile when he had regaled her with the tales of his mighty battle with the Blackamore pell. True, she’d given him a light buffet when he sneaked a kiss, but it seemed to lack her usual affronted vigour. At the time he’d suspected the symbolic thump was only due to the two sniggering faces of her cousins peering through the curtain.