'I hope so. Though there has been a strange portent, have you heard; Two huge fish washed up by the Thames. Great grey things half the size of a house. They must have been under the ice.' The twinkle in her eyes told me she found the story, like so much in the world, delightfully absurd.
'Were they alive?'
'No. They lie on the mudbanks over at Greenwich. People have been crossing London Bridge in hundreds to see them. Everyone says that coming the day before Palm Sunday it portends some terrible happening.'
'People are always finding portents these days. It is a passion now among the busy Bible
-
men of London.'
'True.' She gave me a searching look, perhaps catching a bitter note in my reply. Twenty years ago Dorothy and Roger and I had all been reformers, hoping for a new Christian fellowship in the world. They still did. But though many of their guests had also been reformers in the early days, most had now retreated to a quiet professional life, frightened and disillusioned by the tides of religious conflict and repression that had flowed ever higher in the decade since the King's break with Rome. I wondered if Dorothy guessed that, for me, faith was almost gone.
She changed the subject. 'For us at least the news has been good. We had a letter from Samuel today. The roads to Bristol must be open again.' She raised her dark eyebrows. 'And reading between the lines, I think he has a girl.'
Samuel was Roger and Dorothy's only child, the apple of their eye. Some years before, the family had moved to Bristol, Roger's home town, where he had obtained the post of City Recorder. He had returned to practise at Lincoln's Inn a year before, but Samuel, now eighteen and apprenticed to a cloth merchant, had decided to stay behind; to the sorrow of both his parents, I knew.
I smiled gently. 'Are you sure you are not reading your wishes into his letter?'
'No, he mentions a name. Elizabeth. A merchant's daughter.'
'He will not be able to marry till after his apprenticeship.'
'Good. That will allow time to see if they are suited.' She smiled roguishly. 'And perhaps for me to send some spy to Bristol. Your assistant Barak, perhaps. I hear he is good at such jobs.'
I laughed. 'Barak is busy with my work. You must find another spy.'
'I like that sharp humour of his. Does he well?' 'He and his wife lost a child last year. It hit him hard, though he does not show it.' 'And she?'
'I have not seen Tamasin. I keep meaning to call on them at home. I must do it. She was kind to me when I had my fever.'
'The Court of Requests keeps you busy, then. And a Serjeant. I always knew you would reach that eminence one day.'
'Ay.' I smiled. 'And it is good work.' It was over a year now since Archbishop Cranmer had nominated me as one of the two barristers appointed to plead before the Court of Requests where poor men's pleas were heard. A serjeancy, the status of a senior barrister, had come with the post.
'I have never enjoyed my work so much,' I continued. 'Though the caseload is large and some of the clients - well, poverty does not make men good, or easy.'
'Nor should it,' Dorothy replied vigorously. 'It is a curse.'
'I do not complain. The work is varied.' I paused. 'I have a new case, a boy who has been put in the Bedlam. I am meeting with his parents tomorrow.'
'On Palm Sunday?'
'There is some urgency.'
'A mad client.'
'Whether he is truly mad or not is the issue. He was put there on the Privy Council's orders. It is one of the strangest matters I have ever come across. Interesting, though I wish I did not have to tangle with a Council matter.'
'You will see justice done, that I do not doubt.' She laid her hand on my arm.
'Matthew!' Roger had appeared beside me. He shook my hand vigorously. He was small
and wiry, with a thin but well
favoured face, searching blue eyes and black hair starting to recede. He was as full of energy as ever. Despite his winning of Dorothy all those years before, I still had the strongest affection for him.
'I hear Samuel has written,' I said.
'Ay, the imp. At last!'
'I must go to the kitchen,' Dorothy said. 'I will see you shortly, Matthew. Talk to Roger, he has had an interesting idea.' I bowed as she left, then turned back to Roger. 'How have you been?' I asked quietly.
He lowered his voice. 'It has not come on me again. But I will be glad when I have seen your doctor friend.'
'I saw you look away when Lust was suddenly struck down during the play.'
'Ay. It frightens me, Matthew.' Suddenly he looked vulnerable, like a little boy. I pressed his arm.
In recent weeks Roger had several times unexpectedly lost his balance and fallen over, for no apparent reason. He feared he was developing the falling sickness, that terrible affliction where a man or woman, quite healthy in other ways, will periodically collapse on the ground, out of their senses, writhing and grunting. The illness, which was unbeatable, was regarded by some as a kind of temporary madness and by others as evidence of possession by an evil spirit. The fact that spectacular symptoms could erupt at any moment meant people avoided sufferers. It would mean the end of a lawyer's career.
I pressed his arm. 'Guy will find the truth of it, I promise.' Roger had unburdened himself to me over lunch the week before, and I had arranged for him to see my physician friend as soon as possible - in four days' time.
Roger smiled crookedly. 'Let us hope it is news I shall care to hear.' He lowered his voice. 'I have told Dorothy I have been having stomach pains. I think it best. Women only worry.'
'So do we, Roger.' I smiled. 'And sometimes without cause. There could be many reasons for this falling over; and remember; you have had no seizures.'
'I know. 'Tis true.'
'Dorothy tells me you have had some new idea,' I said, to distract him.
'Yes.' He smiled wryly. 'I was telling friend Loder about it, but he seems little interested.' He glanced over his guests. 'None of us here is poor,' he said quietly.
He took my arm, leading me away a little. 'I have been reading Roderick Mors' new book, the
Lamentation of a Christian against the City of London.'
'You should be careful. Some call it seditious.'
'The truth affrights them.' Roger's tones were quiet but intense. 'By Jesu, Mors' book is an indictment of our city. It shows how all the wealth of the monasteries has gone to the King or his courtiers.
The monastic schools and hospitals closed down, the sick left to fend for themselves. The monks' care was niggardly enough but now they have nothing. It shames us all, the legions of miserable people lying in the streets, sick and half dead. I saw a boy in a doorway in Cheapside yesterday, his bare feet half rotted away with frostbite. I gave him sixpence, but it was a hospital he needed, Matthew.' 'But as you say, most have been closed.'
'Which is why I am going to canvass for a hospital funded by the Inns of Court. With an initial subscription, then a fund for bequests and donations from the lawyers.'
'Have you spoken to the Treasurer?'
'Not yet.' Roger smiled again. 'I am honing my arguments on these fellows.' He nodded towards the plump form of Loder. 'Ambrose there sa
id the poor offend every passer-
by with their dangerous stinks and vapours; he might pay money to have the streets cleared. Others complain of importunate beggars calling everywhere for God's penny. I promise them a quiet life. There are arguments to persuade those who lack charity.' He smiled, then looked at me seriously. 'Will you help;'
I considered a moment. 'Even if you succeed, what can one hospital do in the face of the misery all around;'
'Relieve a few poor souls.'
'I will help you if I can.' If anyone could accomplish this task it was Roger. His energy and quick wits would count for much. 'I will subscribe to your hospital, and help you raise subscriptions, if you like.'
Roger squeezed my arm. 'I knew you would help me. Soon I will organize a committee—'
'Another committee;' Dorothy had returned, red'faced from the heat of the kitchen. She looked quizzically at her husband. Roger put his arm round her waist.
'For the hospital, sweetheart.'
'People will be hard to persuade. Their purses smart from all the King's taxes.'
'And may suffer more,' I said. 'They say this new Parliament will be asked to grant yet more money for the King to go to war with France.'
'The waste,' Roger said bitterly. 'When one thinks of how the money could be used. But yes, he will see this as the right time for such an enterprise. With the Scotch King dead and this baby girl on their throne, they cannot intervene on the French side.'
I nodded agreement. 'The King has sent the Scotch lords captured after Solway Moss back home; it is said they have sworn oaths to bring a marriage between Prince Edward and the baby Mary.'
'You are well informed as ever, Matthew,' Dorothy said. 'Does Barak still bring gossip from his friends among the court servants?'
'He does.'
'I have heard that the King is after a new wife.'
'They have been saying that since Catherine Howard was executed,' Roger said. 'Who is it supposed to be now?'
'Lady Latimer,' Dorothy replied. 'Her husband died last week. There is to be a great funeral the day after tomorrow. 'Tis said the King has had a fancy for her for some years, and that he will move now.'
I had not heard that rumour. 'Poor woman,' I said. I lowered my voice. 'She needs fear for her head.'
'Yes.' Dorothy nodded, was quiet for a second, then raised her voice and clapped her hands. 'Dinner is ready, my friends.'
We all walked through to the dining room. The long old oaken dining table was set with plates of silver, and servants were laying out dishes of food under Elias' supervision. Pride of place went to four large chickens; as it was still Lent the law would normally have allowed only fish to be eaten at this time, but the freezing of the river that winter had made fish prohibitively expensive and the King had given permission for people to eat white meat.
We took our places. I sat between Loder, with whom Roger had been arguing earlier, and James Ryprose, an elderly barrister with bristly whiskers framing a face as wrinkled as an
old apple-
john.
Opposite us sat Dorothy and Roger and Mrs Loder, who was as plump and contented
-
looking as her husband. She smiled at me, showing a full set of white teeth, and then to my surprise reached into her mouth and pulled out both rows. I saw the teeth were fixed into two dentures of wood, cut to fit over the few grey stumps that were all that was left of her own teeth.
'They look good, do they not'' she aske
d, catching my stare. 'A barber-
surgeon in Cheapside made them up for me. I cannot eat with them, of course.'
'Put them away, Johanna,' her husband said. 'The company does not want to stare at those while we eat.' Johanna pouted, so far as an almost toothless woman can, and deposited the teeth in a little box which she put away in the folds of her dress. I repressed a shudder. I found the French fashion some in the upper classes had adopted for wearing mouthfuls of teeth taken from dead people, rather gruesome.
Roger began talking about his hospital again, addressing his arguments this time to old Ryprose. 'Think of the sick and helpless people we could take from the streets, maybe cure.'
'Ay, that would be a worthwhile thing,' the old man agreed. 'But what of all the fit sturdy beggars that infest the streets, pestering one for money, sometimes with threats? What is to be done with them; I am an old man and sometimes fear to walk out alone.'
'Very true.' Brother Loder leaned across me to voice his agreement. 'Those two that robbed and killed poor Brother Goodcole by the gates last November were masterless servants from the monasteries. And they would not have been caught had they not gone bragging of what they had done in the taverns where they spent poor Goodcol
e's money, and had an honest inn
keeper not raised the constable.'
'Ay, ay.' Ryprose nodded vigorously. 'No wonder masterless men beg and rob with impunity, when all the city has to ensure our safety are a few constables, most nearly as old as me.'
'The city council should appoint some strong men to whip them out of the city,' Loder said.
'But, Ambrose,' his wife said quietly. 'Why be so harsh; When you were younger you used to argue the workless poor had a right to be given employment, the city should pay them to do useful things like pave the streets. You were always quoting Erasmus and Juan Vives on the duties of a Christian Commonwealth towards the unfortunate.' She smiled at him sweetly, gaining revenge perhaps for his curt remark about her teeth.