Bruce Holsinger - The Invention of Fire

Soon enough there came a tired shuffle from the outer walk. She looked toward the causeway door. Stephen Marsh, accompanied by a Tower page seeming none too pleased at the haul up to the outer gates. Stephen walked like a beaten dog. Neck matted with whiskers, clothes sodden with sweat and ash, new burns streaking the backs of his hands. At the guard’s direction he came and sat at her side. She could smell the smoke on him, the hard stink of unceasing work.

She took a breath and blew it sideways. “Sanctuary not high enough for you?”

She felt his shrug. “Had no choice, mistress. In here I’m safe from the rope for as long as they’ll have me.”

“So you believe. Yet what’s to keep them from roping you up once they have what they need from you?” She watched him.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and glanced back at her. “Little, in truth, not that I don’t deserve it.” His eyes were leaden blanks. “I killed my master your husband with a cauldron of molten ore,” he said softly. “Killed that poor maid in the woods with a gun. Even shot a lion.”

“A lion ? What are you prattling about, Stephen?”

“And many more killings to come. Seems these hands be made for smithing death.” He looked down at them.

“That is mad talk, Stephen Marsh.”

His head swung from side to side like an old cow’s udder. “Was I who killed your Robert, mistress, with that last pour, my haste. The mold was ready, the thickness was perfect, but he wouldn’t give the go for the pour. He was about to say it, least I thought he was, move his hands away, but he never said it, and the mold man must always give the go before the pour, but Master Stone didn’t give it and I poured anyway. I was impatient. I killed him.”

“Stephen,” she said.

He turned his head away.

“Stephen,” she said again.

He looked at her grimly.

“I killed him, too.”

“No, Hawisia.”

She shook her head, brushed at her womb. “You’ll remember. It was a large and impossible job, too much for our house. Twenty bells of every size, and two weeks to complete them all. Twenty molds, twenty cauldrons, twenty pours.”

“Yet still-”

“Robert wanted no part of it,” she said quickly before he could stop her. “‘Let us make five bells only,’ he said, ‘and my fellows in the guild will split the balance of them,’ he said. Yet I insisted. ‘Why, we can make them all ourselves,’ I told him, ‘and keep the coin for Stone’s!’ He pushed me, I pushed him back, and Stone’s took the entire commission. Two weeks, and every morning and eve you and Robert were in the foundry, smelting, pouring, boring, sounding. And on the last day there were still three bells to complete. Robert felt that he’d done what he could, and it would be understood that we’d finish in a week, ten days perhaps. But I pushed him to finish now, told him Stone’s would never rise to the top if he failed to complete its greatest commission.”

Speaking the bleak truth lodged a new pain somewhere in her, even as it loosened another. “So he tried to finish, as I wished. On the day he died he was to pour the last bell but one. You were helping him, Stephen. You will remember his state.”

“He could scarce keep an eye open,” Stephen murmured.

“He was doing my bidding, and following his fair wife’s fondest wish at his death. To be mistress of the greatest foundry in London. I wanted to hear the music of Stone’s foundry ringing from half the belfries within the walls. More bells, Robert! Bigger bells, Robert! Brighter bells, Robert! Had I not pushed him to climb he would be on this earth.”

“Yet it was I who-”

She showed him a palm. “Your vanity, my ambition. We took his life together, Stephen.” She felt a sharp movement in her belly. “Now it’s yours we must save.”

His fingers ran along the edge of the bench. “How, Hawisia?”

It was a hopeful question, despite the flatness in his voice. “There is a man came to Stone’s yesterday,” she whispered, keeping an eye on the soldiers.

“A sheriff?”

“Not a Guildhall man. His name’s not important. But what he tells me is, things in the armory aren’t what they seem.”

Stephen gave a low murmur. “Aye to that.”

“There is talk of an attack, Stephen. A massacre, and with your guns.”

His eyes widened, and he nodded slightly. The warning, she sensed, was not entirely a surprise.

“This man, he seeks information on the armory’s doings, and will pay for it with great price. If you can learn anything of this attack, Stephen, the where, the when, you will gain the crown’s favor. Even a royal pardon may not be out of the question. The kiss of the king.”

“Truly?” Stephen said, his brow pushing up. “He believes the royal ear could still be bent in my direction, despite the killing up there?”

“Perhaps. But you’ll have to tell what you know, or discover what you don’t. This man, he-”

A harsh cough from the nearer guard. “That’s time enough, Marsh. Mistress, you must leave him now.”

Hawisia nodded up at the guard, then on an impulse leaned into Stephen’s side, shielding her mouth with his neck.

“What is it you know, Stephen?” she hissed at his ear. “ Tell me. ”

“Snell is a viper, mistress,” he whispered fiercely. “If I say anything they’d kill me sure as we’re sitting here. You as well, and that child in your womb.”

“You must become hardened to these men and what they are,” she said. “For you are not a man of death, Stephen. Think on your iron and your steel and your bronze, and you will find your strength, aye?”

“Aye,” he said.

They parted, the guard now looming over them. As they stood, Stephen glanced out toward the customhouse wharf and the clutches of men walking and idling along the broad way. “They won’t let me walk free, Mistress Stone, even for Exton’s Riding,” he said.

Hawisia followed his gaze, seeing it through his eyes. Any one of those men could be an informer for the Guildhall, waiting for Marsh to set a foot outside the Tower liberties and make himself vulnerable to quick arrest.

He put a hand on her shoulder and spun her to face him. The guard clutched his other arm. Stephen’s eyes were strangely fierce as he said, “Not even for the Riding, mistress.”

She shivered, discerning a message behind his words. Was that a flicker of resolve in his eyes? She wondered what it might spark and flame. Yet when Hawisia took Stephen’s hand his touch was cold, as if his very soul had departed his flesh.

It was into a clear, chill morning that I stole out of the priory and made for the Thames, with Will Cooper leading the way to look out for watchers. We left the walls of St. Mary Overey not by my own door but through the postern on the river side, our destination not the foot of the bridge but the wharfage, first along the walls of the bishop of Winchester’s great palace, then past the mill and down Rose Alley. When we reached the river’s edge I remained behind one of the old scalding sheds while Will coined me a float. He went to the waterfront and whistled for a wherry standing out forty feet. It approached, the waterman boarding his sculls as the craft bumped against the dock post. Still hooded, I slipped out and clambered over the low bow. The craft shoved off as Will backed away into the cluster of buildings along the shore.

The rower was a man I knew from many crossings over the years. “Just up from the Fleet, if you will, Sanders,” I said, pushing back the hood.

“Aye, Master Gower. The fosses there?”

“That will do.”

“Ever tell you of my brother Edward lived over that way?”