Bruce Holsinger - A Burnable Book

Inside the villa Hawkwood was staring up at the arms of his father, Gilbert Hawkwood, now his brother’s: a lion rampant above a bend, the tendrils curling up the sides and the centre. The Inheritor, Hawkwood liked to call his brother. The condottiero ’s own arms, much more prominently displayed on the east wall, consisted of a lone falcon poised above a tangled forest of vines.

‘My father was a strange man, Adam,’ Hawkwood said into the gloom. ‘Imagine having three sons, and naming them all John. The eldest son, heir to the name, and all that comes with it. The youngest, also John Hawkwood, has the luck to die young. And the middle son? That’s right: John Hawkwood.’

He sniffed. ‘Middle John, my mother called me. “Does Middle John want his cider now?” “Time for Master Middle John to get him to his lessons!” And it all stacks on, doesn’t it? Thornbury and the others, fled back to suck on Lancaster’s teat with scarcely a word of thanks. My son-in-law takes my daughter away and now sits in Parliament, one of the highest men in Essex. Then all this business with Chaucer …’

‘You’ve bought up half of Essex, John,’ Scarlett said. ‘Sible Hedingham, the lands around Gosfield.’ He put a hand on Hawkwood’s shoulder, a gesture to frame the familiar use of the condottiero ’s first name. Hawkwood permitted it when they were alone, though Scarlett rarely took advantage. ‘You own more of England than your brother ever could, let alone Coggeshale.’ The son-in-law. ‘Are you absolutely sure this is the wisest course? This is what you want for yourself, to reclaim your legacy under such circumstances?’ He had been trying for weeks to turn the condottiero from his dark purpose; one last try, however weak, could not hurt.

Hawkwood reached up and patted Scarlett’s hand, clasping it tightly as he nodded at his family’s arms. ‘It is not about me any more, Adam. It is about my son.’

‘Your — your son, sire?’

‘He’s in Donnina’s belly. I can smell him in there, baking away.’

This was news to Scarlett — and, he suspected, a bit of wishful thinking.

‘The next Sir John Hawkwood will be a baron, Adam. Perhaps even an earl, belted by the king himself. And I won’t curse the poor fellow with a brother, either. Perhaps I’ll name him George.’ He smiled, looked at his friend. ‘Or Adam.’

Scarlett felt it, more deeply this time. The warm glow of inevitability and fate. Sir John Hawkwood was a hard man, the hardest he had ever known, but this plan of his, despite its ruthlessness, was melting the great mercenary into a soup of sentiment. ‘His given name hardly matters, John. It’s his surname that will bear his nobility.’

‘Well spoken, Scarlett.’ Hawkwood turned back to his family’s arms, his eyes verdant with the ambition of a much younger man. ‘England, Adam,’ the condottiero said. ‘It is time to go home.’

Temple Hall

Dozens of struggling lamps cast a hellish glow on the huddled apprentices, all stomping their feet against the raw air, their eager faces greyed by the smoke lowering down from those few chimneys rebuilt in this precinct since the Rising. I slowed in the middle of the courtyard and just watched them: their pent-up energy, their fear of rejection, their tentative pride at this rite of passage, all readable in the nervous poses struck as they waited. Forty young men, no more than half to be utter barristers by the evening’s end.

Fifteen years had passed since my own, less formal initiation at the Temple, yet the occasion could still raise the hairs. As I stepped beneath the row of arches along the cloister a familiar voice stopped me. ‘Is that you, John Gower?’ I turned to see Thomas Pinchbeak hobbling along from Temple Church, with Chaucer holding an arm. ‘Wait there.’ He wiped his high forehead, exposed by the tight-fitting coif worn by his order. A capped stick bore part of his fragile weight.

‘Good evening, Thomas. Geoffrey.’ I took his stick and his other arm, my hand brushing the silk rope belted around his banded robes. Pinchbeak was a man who had grown into his name, with a long, sharp nose that jutted forward above lips pursed against some unnamed offence. Behind the serjeant-at-law’s back Chaucer gave me a meaningful look, which I returned with a subtle shake of my head. We hadn’t spoken since Monksblood’s, I had no real news yet about the book, and I didn’t want him to think I was avoiding him.

‘Lurking at the fringes, I see,’ Pinchbeak said to me, and I smiled at the ribbing. My ambivalent ties to the legal world were a matter of occasional amusement to Pinchbeak, newly a member of the Order of the Coif, one of the most powerful lawmen in the realm and now a royal nod away from appointment to justice of the King’s Bench.

‘You are one to talk.’ I gestured across the lane at the last of the crowd straggling into the hall. ‘Late, as always.’

‘Ah, but I have the excuse of a wound,’ he said, though something in his eyes belied his easy manner. A compact and wiry man, Pinchbeak had taken an arrow in his left thigh at Poitiers yet stood and fought for hours after, an incident that had rendered him both lame and legendary. When he gave the gold and ascended to serjeant not a soul in the realm begrudged him the honour. Yet his face that evening was troubled, and he seemed about to say something more when a small group of other serjeants-at-law surrounded him, hustling him gaily into the throng.

Chaucer watched him go in, then turned to me, his face lined with concern. ‘Nothing?’

‘Not really.’

‘What did Swynford say?’

‘Very little,’ I said, deciding to mention nothing about the book’s theft, nor about Swynford’s peculiar suggestion regarding its prophetic nature. I needed to learn more first, and I was not in the business of giving away information, even to an intimate friend. ‘She doesn’t have it, if that’s what you want to know. She’ll do some discreet asking around.’

‘I see,’ said Chaucer, looking at me dubiously.

‘I’ve only started searching, Geoffrey,’ I said, wanting to give him something. ‘London is a big place. A book could be anywhere.’

He gave me a tense nod.

‘Just one question.’ I pulled him out of the human flow. His eyes darted to the hall door, then back to the lane as I leaned into him, my mouth inches from his ear. ‘What do you think this book is, my friend? What do you know about it that you haven’t told me?’

I felt his breath on my cheek. ‘Less every day, it seems.’

‘And you’re aware you’re not the only one looking for it?’

‘I suspect not,’ he said. ‘But I need you to find it first, John.’

I backed away, found his eyes. ‘You know me, know my skills. If it’s there to be found I’ll find it.’

His shoulders rose slightly, and he grasped my arm before turning for the feast. We parted at the arched doorway into the great hall, where hundreds of lawmen were already at table, ladling soup, picking flesh from lavish trays of sauced cod and porpoise. At the front of the space stood the pageant wagon, covered in a cloth that obscured everything but the wheels. As I found a seat the men around a far table lifted their glasses in song. The crowd joined in, the din rising to the rafters and the darkened spaces high above.

Twice two full quarts we lawyers need,

To fill a legal jug.

With one, we’re gay, with two, we teach,

With three, we prophesy.

And four good quarts it takes to bind

Legal senses, legal tongues,

A lawyer’s hands and mind.

Cups and flagons clashed on the last word, drink sloshed, the sobriety of Lent set aside for an evening. The clamour stirred a familiar longing. Though I had spent two formative years at the Temple, my father had not allowed me to remain in the profession. For an esquire’s son the practical application of law was regarded in those days as a rather low trade. Had I been born ten years later I might well have been sitting that night with Pinchbeak and the serjeants instead of on that crowded bench, shrouded in ignorance.