Bernard Cornwell - Fools and Mortals

‘I’ve never been to London,’ she had said wistfully.

‘It’s full of strangers. From France, the Netherlands, the Germanies, even blackamoors! And the buildings … My sweet Lord, but you could cram all Stratford into Saint Paul’s and have room left over for Shottery!’

‘I worry about my Will being there,’ my mother had said.

‘He’s thriving, mistress. I saw him last week when he gave me that missive.’ Ned had brought a letter from my brother, along with two gold eagles wrapped in a scrap of linen. ‘He’s thriving,’ he said again. ‘He has silver aiglets on his laces!’

My mother had toyed with the golden coins. ‘They say the plague strikes harder in London.’

Ned had made the sign of the cross again. ‘Everything’s bigger, better, or worse in London. That’s just the way of it.’

Now, riding Ned’s wagon behind the big rumps of Gog and Magog, I had a whole week to ask more questions. ‘It’s a dirty city, boy,’ he told me as we trundled slow between wide Oxfordshire pastures and fields of growing barley, ‘filthy like you’ve no idea. And the city smells … shit underfoot and smoke overhead, but there’s gold between the shit and the smoke. Not for the likes of us, of course.’

‘My brother sends gold …’

‘Aye, but your Will is a clever one. He always was.’

‘Mother says he should go back to his school-teaching.’

‘Mothers are like that, boy. They think you mustn’t rise too high in case you fall too far.’

I knew what my mother thought because I had usually written her letters as she dictated them, and in every one she had pleaded with my brother to return to his old job as an usher in a Warwickshire school.

‘But he won’t,’ Ned said with a grin, ‘he’s having a high time, he is. Just you wait and see.’

At that time my brother had lodgings in the Dolphin, the tavern just north of the Bishopsgate, and that is where Ned took me. ‘I’m not letting you walk through London, boy, I’d rather let you loose in hell.’ He stopped his wagon beneath the huge inn sign on which a grotesque fish leaped out of the water, and gave me the newest letter my mother had dictated, a letter that had probably been written by Gilbert or by Edmund, then tossed me one of the two shillings I had given him. ‘Look after yourself, boy. It might be a grand city, but London can be dangerous.’

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