London - Edward Rutherfurd [225]
“You are asking a favour from me already, are you, Alderman Barnikel?” the monarch coolly demanded, as he surveyed him from under his drooping eyelid. “You know that the favours even of kings usually come at a price?”
Barnikel nodded. “Yes, sire.”
King Edward smiled. “We have a busy Parliament ahead,” he remarked. “Remember, Alderman Barnikel,” he added meaningfully, “that I shall be relying on you.”
The fishmonger smiled, “Yes, sire.”
The king summoned a clerk.
“Go with him,” he said. “I should think you’d better hurry.”
And so it was, a quarter of an hour later, that a greatly astonished Martin Fleming, as he stood under the elm tree upon Smithfield with the noose already round his neck, saw William Bull, Alderman Barnikel, and a royal clerk, riding swiftly towards them with a cry.
“Royal pardon.”
The marriage of Martin and Joan Fleming took place a few days later, in the porch of the riverside church of St Mary Overy in Southwark.
Though Martin was fully satisfied by now of his wife’s purity, it had required a long conversation with Bull to overcome his horror at Joan’s action in becoming a prostitute, even in name. As for his family, and hers, neither had got over it and neither had come to the wedding.
So it was that Alderman Barnikel stood by Martin, and William Bull gave the bride away, and the two Dogget sisters acted as bridesmaids, and the priest thought he had never seen anything like it in his life.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all, was that young Martin Fleming was the only man in the church that day who had never slept with either of the Dogget sisters.
Margery Dogget and her sister Isobel left London the next day. They had a reason for absence which not even the bishop could quarrel with. They went to Canterbury on pilgrimage.
While they were away, Margery continued to use the ointment the doctor had given her. To her great surprise, by the time they got back, it seemed to be working.
The Parliament of 1295, often referred to because of its broad composition as the Model Parliament, successfully concluded its business by Christmas. The barons and knights granted the king a tax of an eleventh of their movable goods, the clergy a tenth, and the burgesses, stirred no doubt by a passionate and loyal speech from Alderman Barnikel, a generous seventh.
The alderman might also have been amused to discover, the same day, that Isobel Dogget had come to the reluctant conclusion that he was going to be a father.
“I’m definitely pregnant and I’m sure it’s him,” she told her sister.
It was just after Christmas that Dionysius Silversleeves began to experience a burning sensation in his private parts.
It was Margery, not Isobel, that he had slept with.
LONDON BRIDGE
1357
As the medieval world approached its final flowering two things could be said with certainty. The first was that earthly life, so rich and exciting, was also fleeting. War, disease or sudden death came behind every footfall. The second, which provided some comfort, was that the order of the universe was known. More than twelve centuries had passed since the great astronomer of classical times, Ptolemy, had described it, and with such ancient authority, how could there be any doubt?
At the centre of the universe was the Earth. And though simple men – and even some mariners who feared to sail over the edge – supposed the Earth to be flat, men of learning understood that it was a globe. Around this central Earth, the universe was arranged in a series of concentric spheres – translucent and therefore invisible to men – upon each of which moved one of the seven planets: the haunting Moon, swift Mercury, lovely Venus, the Sun, warlike Mars, fear-some Jupiter, sullen Saturn. Their motions around the Earth followed an elaborate dance whose pattern the astronomers could predict. Outside these lay yet another sphere in which the