Paul Doherty - The Poison Maiden

No royal barge was available, so we shared one with a garrulous parson taking a portable altar fashioned out of jasper and set in a wooden frame to All Harrows by the Tower. We were joined by a relic seller cradling a fosser of blue and black velvet which, he breathlessly informed us, contained the relics of St John Chrysostom and other Eastern fathers. He was shouted to silence by a merchant dressed in a splendid coat of blue and white damask edged with velvet and lined with green buckram, who boarded the barge as if he owned it. Conversation with Demontaigu was impossible. I sat in the bobbing barge watching a group of beggars at the top of the steps with their long T-shaped crutches chanting the ‘Salve Regina’, the words floating melodiously across the water. At the time, little did I know how that hymn had been used to conceal a great secret. Gusts of fiery smoke belched from a nearby forge. In front of us rocked a pardon barge fastened securely to a hook in the quayside wall. On board a zealous friar waited to hear the confessions of all comers beneath a crucifix on a pole, whilst in the stern a blessed candle glowed in a lantern horn to drive away the demons.

At last our barge pulled off. The day, if I recall correctly, was fair, the clouds breaking, the sun strengthening. The river ran full and fast, busy with craft of every description; after all, winter was spent, spring was here, and soon it would be the great feast of the Resurrection. Demontaigu sat shrouded in a military cloak. He was well armed in a light mailed hauberk and a war belt from which hung sword, dagger and small arbalest with a pouch of bolts. He had insisted that I change into a smock that hung down just above my stout low-heeled leather boots. I understood that his meeting at the Chapel of the Hanged might be dangerous.

The noise and chatter on board the barge was stilled by the booming Angelus bells from the city. The parson obligingly recited: ‘The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary. .’ whilst the merchant and the relic seller kept up their argument about sacred bones in a harsh whisper. I was more concerned with a thin-faced, scrawny-haired man who had joined the barge just before it left. I wondered if he was a spy. I did not like the insolent look in his close-set eyes as he scrutinised me. I whispered to Demontaigu where we were going. He nodded, more preoccupied with his own meeting later that day.

We disembarked at Queenshithe and were immediately swamped by a sea of colour, noise and smells as we fought our way through the crowds up towards Thames Street and into Fish Lane. On the quayside and along the alleyways leading to it, hawkers, hucksters, chapmen, free fruiterers and pedlars sold tarts, fresh skinned eels, meat pies of every description, mousetraps, bird cages, shoehorns and lanterns. Tipplers with their upturned casks offered stoups of beer to passers-by. Water bearers staggered along with ladles and buckets of ‘pure spring water’. Stalls in crooked lanes, built for wheelbarrows rather than carts, forced the crowds to pause. These were entertained by the apprentice boys from the nearby clothiers who imported fabrics from Paris, Hainault, and Cambrai. These envoys shouted how their masters had hangings, coverlets, canopies and testers for sale as well as precious canvas from Ostia. Other enterprising traders held up boards advertising linen thread, amber and bone beads, silk garters, brass rings and beaver hats, paxes, kissing boxes, pepper mills and girdles of every kind. One taverner had organised a six-boy choir to advertise the fresh oysters available in his comfortable oyster room. The song they chanted was well known:

‘They are all alive and very fine

So if you like them come and dine

I’ll find you bread and butter too

And you can have them open for a stew.’

Bells clanged. People shouted. Carts creaked. Dogs barked. People fought and swore. Shops and tavern signs, all garish in their colours, creaked dangerously above our heads, proclaiming: ‘The Hare’, ‘The Honey Pot’, ‘The Saracen’, ‘The Bell at Night’. The air reeked of every stench, perfume and odour possible: sweaty clothes, smoke, dung, pitch, oil, cooking smells, as well as the sweet soapy perfumes of the rich in their satins and furs. Great lords and their retainers, in half-armour or costly clothes, rode by on powerful destriers, while beggars, almost as bare as when they were born, crouched in every cranny available and whined for alms. Bailiffs and beadles eager for trouble swaggered about looking for custom; their chosen prey, the foists, pickpockets, rogues and vagabonds, moved swiftly away like a shoal of fish from hunting pike. No one dared accost us. Demontaigu had thrown back his cloak; the sight of his sword and dagger were protection enough. At All Hallows Bread Street, we had to pause for a while. A red-faced, perspiring beadle informed us how two outlaws had been seen and put to the horn. They had apparently taken sanctuary in the tower of a nearby church and were loosing arrows whenever they wished. One man had already been killed. The delay wasn’t for long. A group of city bailiffs, wearing the blue and mustard livery of the Corporation, stormed the tower. As we passed the church’s great preaching cross in God’s Acre, both outlaws were being summarily hanged from the beams of the lychgate. They were still gasping and struggling against the ropes as we went by.

At last we entered the trading thoroughfare of Cheapside with its great water conduit, the Tun, which was, and still is, used as a prison, with huge cages placed on its roof. On that particular day, a group of screaming doxies and their pimps caught touting for business beyond Cock Lane were being forced up into the cages for the rest of the day. In the stocks beneath, ale-conners and beadles were locking up a number of ale-masters who’d sold their drink in measures shortened by a thick coating of tar at the bottom of the jug. A beadle busily proclaimed their crimes and invited all passers-by to empty brimming buckets of horse urine over the miscreants’ heads. For the rest along that great thoroughfare it was trade as usual, in everything from silver jugs to green wax, rabbits from Hampshire to precious stuff brought across the mountains of Tartary. The broad stalls under their rippling striped awnings stood in front of the lofty mansions and stately houses of merchants with their pink and white plaster, gleaming black timbers and ornately gilded gables. I paused and stared round in wonderment. Ignoring Demontaigu’s puzzled look, I turned as if fascinated by two jongleurs and a tumbler practising their arts to a group of gawping boys. I quickly surveyed the crowds, searching for ‘Close Eyes’, the man who’d been on the barge with us, yet I could glimpse no one. We went up Milk Street towards St Andrew’s Jewry and along a needle-thin alleyway, the houses jutting out above us. On a corner of this lay the Secret of Solomon.

The tavern stood in its grounds behind a grey ragstone wall entered by an ornamental wooden gatehouse with a chamber above boasting mullioned glass; this gave the hostelry the impression of being a wealthy manor house. The old porter waved us into a slightly sloping, broad cobbled bailey. Stables stretched along three sides; on the fourth, facing us, was the magnificent tavern. In honey-coloured Cotswold stone, it rose three storeys high with a black-and-white-painted wooden gallery around the top one. The roof was of gleaming red tile, whilst the front of the building boasted windows of coloured glass above wide steps sweeping up to a grandiose front door. On either side of this hung broad painted signs showing the great King Solomon seated at table pondering some mystery. You can still go there today. The tavern is not as magnificent as it used to be, but any who have survived my tale will tell you about the great mystery from the spring of 1308. Inside, the taproom was as spacious as a lord’s hall, with its raftered ceiling. Yawning hearths were built into the side walls, each with a flue and stack. The floor was of polished dark planks coated with crushed herbs; none of the foul, soggy rushes of dirty alehouses. Tables stood in the window embrasures overlooking the herb and flower gardens, whilst the great common table stretched at least five yards across the centre of the room. A welcoming place. The whitewashed walls were covered with crude yet vivid paintings on stretched linen over wooden backing, all depicting scenes from the life of Solomon. Other notices proclaimed the price of food: