‘They both say they just acted as middlemen. What about you? Did you find the librarian?’
‘Ay.’ Barak squinted against the afternoon sun. ‘Funny little fellow. I found him saying Mass in a side chapel in his church.’ He smiled wryly. ‘He wasn’t pleased to hear what I wanted, started trembling like a rabbit, but he’ll meet us outside Barty’s gatehouse at eight tomorrow morning. I said if he didn’t turn up the earl would be after him.’
I took off my cap and fanned myself. ‘Well, I suppose we had better be off to Wolf’s Lane.’
Barak laughed. ‘You look hot.’
‘I am hot. I’ve been working while you’ve been resting your arse on my bench.’ I stood up wearily. ‘Let’s get it done.’
We went round to the stables. Chancery had travelled further than he was used to the day before and was unhappy at being led into the sun again. He was old; it was time to think of putting him out to pasture. I mounted, nearly catching my robe in the saddle. I had kept it on as it lent me a certain gravitas that would be useful in dealing with Goodwife Gristwood, but it was a burden in this’ weather.
As we rode out, I went over what I should say. I must find out if she knew anything of the apparatus for projecting Greek Fire; there had been something, I was sure, she had been keeping back yesterday.
Barak interrupted my reflections. ‘You lawyers,’ he said, ‘what’s the mystery of your craft?’
‘What do you mean?’ I replied wearily, scenting mockery.
‘All trades have their mysteries, the secrets their apprentices learn. The carpenter knows how to make a table that won’t collapse, the astrologer how to divine a man’s fate, but what mysteries do lawyers know? It’s always seemed to me they know only how to mangle words for a penny.’ He smiled at me insolently.
‘You should try working at some of the legal problems the students have at the Inns. That would stop your mouth. England’s law consists of detailed rules, developed over generations, that allow men to settle their disputes in an ordered way.’
‘Seems more like a great thicket of words to keep men from justice. My master says the law of property’s an ungodly jumble.’ He gave me a keen look and I wondered if he was watching to see whether I would contradict Cromwell.
‘Have you any experience with the law then, Barak?’
He looked ahead again. ‘Oh, ay, my mother married an attorney after my father died. He was a fine sophister, flowing with words. No qualifications at all, though, like friend Gristwood. Made his money by tangling people up in legal actions he’d no knowledge how to solve.’
I grunted. ‘The law’s practitioners aren’t perfect. The Inns are trying to control unqualified solicitors. And some of us try honourably to gain each man his right.’ I knew my words sounded prosy even as I spoke them, but the sardonic smile that was Barak’s only reply still irked me.
As we passed down Cheapside we had to halt at the Great Cross to let a flock of sheep pass on their way to the Shambles. A long queue of water carriers was waiting with their baskets at the Great Conduit. I saw there was only a dribble of water from the fountain.
‘If the springs north of London are drying up,’ I observed, ‘the City will be in trouble.’
‘Ay,’ Barak agreed. ‘Normally we keep buckets of water to hand in summer in the Old Barge in case there’s a fire. But there’s not enough water.’
I looked at the buildings around me. Despite the rule they should be made of stone to avoid fires, many were wooden. The City was a damp place in winter - sometimes the smell of damp and mould in a poor dwelling was enough to make one retch - but summer was the dangerous time, when people feared hearing the warning shout of ‘Fire’ almost as much as the other summer terror, plague.
I jerked round at the sound of a high-pitched yell. A beggar girl, no more than ten and dressed only in the filthiest rags, had just been thrown out of a baker’s shop. People stopped to look as she turned and banged on the door of the shop with tiny fists.
‘You took my little brother! You made him into pies!’
Passers-by laughed. Sobbing, the girl slid down the door and crouched weeping at its foot. Someone laid a penny at her feet before hurrying on.
‘What in God’s name is that about?’ I asked.
Barak grimaced. ‘She’s mazed. She used to beg round Walbrook and the Stocks Market with her young brother. Probably kicked out of a monastery almshouse. Her brother disappeared a few weeks ago and now she runs up to people screaming they’ve killed him. That’s not the only shopkeeper she’s accused. She’s become a laughing stock.’ He frowned. ‘Poor creature.’
I shook my head. ‘More beggars every year.’
‘There go many of us if we’re not. careful,’ he said. ‘Come on, Sukey.’
I looked at the girl, still crouched against the door, arms like sticks wrapped round her thin frame.