Kate SEDLEY: The Eve of Saint Hyacinth

It was the eighth of June, the Eve of the Feast of Saint Columba, and in less than seventy-two hours it would be the longest day of the year, when the bright, dewy mornings and the seemingly endless evenings made it a pleasure to be on the road.

I had set out from Totnes at the beginning of May in that year of Our Lord 1475, and spent the intervening weeks selling my wares in as many hamlets and villages along the south coast of England as I was able to reach in comfort, without the expense of hiring a local guide. Such men were apt to overcharge for their services and, for all I know, still do. But I am old now, in my seventieth year, and no longer stray far from my native Wells. Almost half a century ago, however, I was young and vigorous, six feet tall and strongly built, and had chosen the freedom of a pedlar’s life in preference to entering the Benedictine Order, which had been the dearest wish of my dead mother’s heart.

But I had been made to pay a price for flouting her wishes. On four occasions during the past few years God had used my talent for unravelling mysteries to bring to justice a number of villains who might otherwise have escaped the consequences of their evil deeds. After the last unpleasantness, in the town of Totnes, I had argued with God that enough was enough; I had paid my debt to both Him and my mother for abandoning the religious life. But my experience of the Almighty is that He has a deaf ear, which He conveniently turns towards those He does not desire to hear; and attempting to thwart Him by an act of defiance is worse than useless. As was soon to be proved to me yet again.

My act of defiance this time had been the decision, after leaving Devon, to go to London, with no other object in view than to indulge myself in the pleasures of the capital. Conscience told me that I should return to Bristol, where my widowed mother-in-law lived with my motherless daughter, little Elizabeth, six months old. But instead, at Exeter, I had found a trustworthy friar – at least, I judged him to be trustworthy, although I could not help recalling the saying that ‘friars and fiends are but little asunder’ – who was travelling northwards, and entrusted to him a sum of money, along with Margaret Walker’s direction in the weavers’ quarter of the city.

‘Commend me most heartily to her. Say that I promise to be with her before the beginning of winter and ask her to give my child a kiss from its loving father.’ And I had added a generous bonus for the friar’s own use.

He had nodded merely, taking it for granted that my journey to London was necessitated by the need to earn more money in a lean and hungry year, when taxes had been raised to help fund King Edward’s proposed invasion of France, for which the levies were even then massing in Kent. (I had met many men on the march during the past two months and most were bound for Canterbury or its neighbourhood.)

Increasing my fortune, however, was not my main object in going to London and I felt a stab of guilt in deceiving not only the friar, but my mother-in-law as well; for the holy man would undoubtedly pass on his own conclusions with the other messages I had given him for Margaret Walker. But the truth was that a goodly sum of money had been pressed on me before I quit Totnes, in gratitude for all that I had done, and for once in my life I was plump in the pocket. No, my reason for visiting the capital was purely a whim; a desire to experience once more its numerous fleshpots and, on this occasion, with a little loose change jingling in my purse.

All the same, I had not disdained making what extra I could during my journey and had proceeded at a leisurely pace, with the result that, on this eighth day of June, as the summer solstice approached, I had just spent a profitable morning in the port of Southampton, and was now, at ten o’clock, thinking about my dinner. As I walked along High Street, away from the quayside and its huddle of dwellings, my nose scented the rich aroma of pig’s trotters and gravy, causing my stomach to rumble hungrily. I was always hungry in those days and no matter when, or how much, I had last eaten, I was forever ready for more. I had a big frame and it demanded constant nourishment.

The town’s butchers’ and poulterers’ shops bordered that stretch of High Street just north of Saint Lawrence’s Church, although one or two were to be found in the alleyways and courtyards which opened between the houses. Southampton was as busy then as it presumably still is today and was always full of sailors, both native and foreign. The streets – and very bad streets they were, with broken paving stones and holes in the road to trip up the unwary – echoed with a babel of different tongues and there was much jostling and pushing from the various tradesmen as they vied for custom in front of their booths. I have seen unwilling customers lifted bodily off their feet and forcibly carried to the opposite side of the road by an over-zealous shopkeeper, determined on making a sale. Not that I ever suffered any such treatment. Even the most foolhardy would not dare to harass me. One glance at my height and girth and they all turned away with a shrug, content to let well alone.

The gabled ends of many of the houses faced on to High Street, with small courtyards to the side and rear, an arrangement which formed narrow passages between them. And it was along one of these, close to the public latrine, that my nose led me in search of food. It did not deceive me. Twenty paces in, set at right angles to its neighbours, was a butcher’s shop which also, judging by the number of people sitting around outside busily eating, sold some of its wares already cooked. The smell of pig’s trotters was overwhelming, although mixed with it was the equally delicious scent of freshly baked pies and pasties and the mouth-watering aroma of newly boiled tripe. A large trestle table displayed various cuts of meat, which two thrifty housewives were carefully prodding before making up their minds to buy, watched by the butcher, who occasionally offered his expert advice.

He was a large, jolly man, as those of his calling so often are, although I have never quite understood the reason why. Behind him, suspended from hooks set in the ceiling of the covered booth, hung the eviscerated carcasses of a pig and a sheep, not long slaughtered and still dripping blood. The trotters, then, would be fresh and tasty. I went forward to the trestle, where the goodwives continued to haggle over their purchases, and lowered my pack to the ground. The butcher’s round, weather-beaten face split into a grin and the hazel eyes kindled with laughter as he eyed me up and down.

‘And what can I do for a big fellow like you?’ he demanded good-naturedly. ‘That belly of yours takes a deal of filling, I’ll be bound!’

‘I can smell trotters and gravy,’ I answered. ‘A bowlful wouldn’t come amiss.’

He chuckled. ‘I’ll lay it wouldn’t. If you go to the back of the booth you’ll find my cottage. Knock at the door and my wife will attend to you.’ He turned to the two women, a shade of impatience creeping into his tone. ‘Goodies, if you prod that meat any more it won’t be fit for man nor beast. Make up your minds, now. What’ll it be?’

There was laughter and a good deal of chaff from the other diners as the women refused to be hurried and retorted in kind, but I was too hungry to stop to listen. I picked up my pack and did as the butcher instructed me, making my way to the back of the shop, where a timberframed cottage stood with its door wide open and the hole in its thatch belching forth steam. This was the source of all the tantalizing smells which had been teasing my nostrils for the past fifteen minutes; where the boiling and baking was done by the butcher’s wife.