Bruce Holsinger - The Invention of Fire

He had also tried to speak with several parishioners in and out of the church that week, though news gets out quickly in such matters, and already the entire ward was abuzz with Stephen’s new status as a man wanted for a girl’s death. Though he had known many of these men and women all his life, some since before the deaths of his parents, few would spare him so much as a friendly glance or nod. Even his brother could not bring himself to look Stephen in the eye-and all for an accident of circumstance and timing.

“Yes, Father Martin?” he said when the curtain was pulled aside.

The priest’s look mingled distaste with warning, both explained by the presence of the man behind him.

“Fair morning to you, Marsh,” said William Snell, stepping around the priest. “You are looking poorly.”

“What do you want, Snell?” Stephen backed into the chapel. The priest turned away, skulking up the north aisle toward the altar.

“I want you, Stephen.” The armorer stepped in after him.

“What can you want with me now? I have killed a woman, with a weapon fashioned for the Tower. Surely the king’s wardrobe can want nothing to do with Stephen Marsh after such an incident, and all the talk it’s spawning.”

“ Sed contra, Marsh,” said Snell, looking amused by Stephen’s distress. “I am really quite impressed at your facility with these guns of yours. From what I understand you spun on your heel and shot the girl in her delicate neck from fifty paces.”

Marsh felt his fury rising. “How can you know that? I revealed those details only to Father Martin, within the privity of confession.”

Snell’s eyes crinkled at their edges. “Confession.” He turned to look out on the nave, visible through the chapel’s interior window. The priest was murmuring in low tones with one of his lay deacons on the near side of the chancel screen. “A sacrament to buy and sell, if you know the right price.”

“And the right priest,” said Stephen bitterly. He thought about the armorer’s knowledge, and the consequences of the priest’s indiscretion. If confession was not to be kept sacrosanct, how could he expect sanctuary to protect him? Was he safe any longer within the walls of All Hallows Staining? Would he be turned over to the city sheriffs or the watchmen outside, to be carted through the streets to Newgate and then the gibbet? Why, there was nothing now between his neck and a hanging but the word of a false priest! He began to doubt the wisdom of Hawisia Stone’s bringing him here, and to wonder where he might find a true measure of protection against the law’s probing finger.

“The Tower, Stephen,” said Snell, as if a confessor himself, discerning his inmost thoughts, teasing out his fears. “Come with me. You have no real choice.”

“I will abjure the realm,” said Stephen grandly. “Father Martin says I may do so in lieu of a trial. All it requires is a writ from the king’s coroner, and I shall be free to leave England of my own will and under my own power.”

“What power?” Snell rejoined, almost jovially. “A naive young fellow like you cannot survive abjuring the realm. As soon as you set foot outside the walls you would be attacked and dragged to your death by the family of that girl you shot. And where would you go, Marsh? Wales? Dublin? France, where you would be interrogated and tortured before meeting your end? Better to die now, on the rope of a skilled hangman.”

Stephen, jellied in his legs, shuffled to the far corner of the chapel and leaned on the splintered altar, a width of scorched oak. He looked back at Snell. “And the Tower can offer protection?”

“Of a fashion,” he said. “At least your natural talents would be employed to the benefit of the realm, even as the disposition of your case is sorted.”

“Yet I will be considered a fugitive, to be hung on sight.”

“As you are now,” he countered. “Consider your situation, Marsh. Here at Staining you are in constant jeopardy, and I cannot see this parish harboring for long a man who has done what you’ve done. But in the liberties of the Tower you would be safe. Protected. The justices and serjeants won’t dare pursue you there. Why, there are men within the compound who haven’t stepped outside those walls in twenty, thirty years. Criminals, slaves, deserters. Not that you would be counted among their number,” he added hastily. “But it will give a space of time to let this affair work itself out. Once you are installed in our foundries, before our own forges and anvils, doing what you do so well, why, all this will come to seem like a night terror.”

“The Tower, then,” Stephen said, wishing he could discern a ray of hope in the armorer’s words. “I shall send word to Mistress Stone, then there will be the-”

“No need for that. The less she knows about your whereabouts the better, hmm? Wouldn’t want to put the widow in jeopardy.”

He wouldn’t, though the thought of leaving Staining without informing Hawisia was difficult to stomach. He felt a fresh and unfamiliar loyalty to his mistress, alone in the world yet willing to risk so much to save Stephen at his most miserable and endangered. In the moment, though, there seemed little he could do.

“Time is short, Marsh,” said Snell briskly. “Move along.”

They left the church together, Stephen carrying only a bundle of clothes tucked beneath his right arm. Snell led him down along the walls through the eastern edge of London, a walk that Stephen took in some fear, looking out all the while for the sheriff’s men. They reached the barbican without incident, however, and Stephen took a last glimpse of the river to his right. As he paced across the span over the moat Stephen felt as if he were walking through a gate of purgatory itself, down into an infernal machine of war, and such sensations of doom were only heightened once he found himself in the yard and the armorer’s precincts, where at least a dozen masons were being directed in the construction of several new kilns and furnaces along the north wall. The air was choked with ash and burning lime, grimy smiths at the forges hammering tangs, drawing out blades, folding steel upon steel, the din of metal ringing from every surface.

Snell placed a hand between his shoulders. “Your serpent guns are just the thing, Marsh. My own master is quite pleased with them, you know.”

“Is he?” said Stephen, his head spinning with the sudden flattery.

“Those two you left here last time? They have done good work already, and now we need more. One hundred of your snakes, Marsh. Make them strong in barrel and true in aim, whether forged or founded I don’t much care, but with this firing device of your invention affixed to each one. I have already conscripted four of the cleverer smiths to work under you and hasten the process along, and you’ll have the near foundry to yourself. Consider yourself master here, Stephen. Recover your pride, straighten your spine, and act accordingly. You may test the guns just there, against the wall.” He pointed to the place where the noble beast had died. “If you do my bidding and accomplish this task, your crime may well be forgotten, or at the least forgiven.”

“I thank you, Master Snell,” said Stephen, bowing to the armorer, a small spark of hope in his breast.

Here Snell paused, stepping in, his eyes going cold with a suddenness that nearly took Stephen’s breath. “Though make no mistake, Marsh. Should you fail me in this you will suffer, and your death will be slow. A lion makes an adequate and entertaining target. But a man? There is no comparison.” He laughed, the false warmth returning to his face. “Now get you to work.”

The armorer left him, and Stephen was left to gaze at this small world of iron and fire-this world that for the present was his. At Snell’s orders a number of metalers broke off their work and came to meet their new master. Two founders Stephen knew from the city guild stood off to one side, awaiting his command, and before him stood four smiths, strong men of the forge, their faces blackened with smoke, and all to do his bidding.