Suddenly alarmed Ned blurted the first thought that came to mind. “By the blessed saints John, it isn’t your family! Not…not the sweats or the plague?” This last word came out as a strangled gasp. These days urgent letters in the night often presaged one or more sudden deaths in the family. Summer usually brought with it the first signs of pestilence, but as Ned had seen, the Sweats could sweep through a community at anytime. Worst still you could be fine in the morning, come down with a headache around midday and dead at sunset.
Reedman forced a wry smile but shook his head. “Hmm, what? No…no, it is to do with my family but not illness…unless one counts stupidity as a disrupter of good physick!”
Ah now that made sense. Stupidity begot so many fruitful problems for clerks and lawyers. Ned attempted what he hoped came across as an commiserating shrug at the foolishness of relatives. This was a tempting opportunity-a problem the respected Reedman couldn’t solve and he’d asked an esteemed friend with a growing reputation for aid. Hmm, why not help a fellow clerk? He’d solved the most complex problems and conundrums for Councillor Cromwell and Meg Black and how likely was it that whatever ailed Reedman was anywhere near as labyrinthine-or dangerous.
Ned’s silent display of understanding seemed to calm Reedman who after a few low muttered curses continued his explanation. “I’ve three brothers y’see. The oldest of us has a printing press over on Fleete Street with Pynson. That’s Robert. He’s a decent sort. Prints a lot of law manuals and texts plus the usual religious work like The Pylgrimage of Perfection by Bonde for Archbishop Fischer. I…I shouldn’t blame Robert. He does what he can and its hardly his fault, but by all the corrupted devils and monks, he should‘ve known!”
“Known what? What’s the problem John?”
“Tis that fool Richard!” Reedman snarled and again smote the wall, this time with fist clenched, clearly still angered by the recitation of family problems.
Ned just nodded. He well understood the myriad difficulties of relatives particularly the cross he had to bear that was Uncle Richard. “Who’s he?”
“My stupid measle-brained brother, the youngest in our family. The lackwit’s been here less than a fortnight and he’s got himself grabbed by those foisters and rogues at the Wool’s Fleece in Fetter Lane!”
“Ahh, I see.” And to be honest Ned did. At the mention of the Wool’s Fleece the whole situation was darkly illuminated. The tavern was as fine a haunt of rogues, foisters, nips and dicemen as you could find anywhere in the Liberties, excepting of course the lair of Earless Nick at the Black Goat.
His daemon growled at the name while his better angel quailed. The Wool’s Fleece, now didn’t that bring back memories, and none, not a one of them pleasant. Ned leant against the wall, arms crossed and eyes alight with the potential of mischief…and revenge. “Why John, if you’ve a problem at the Fleece needing sorting why don’t you tell me all about it?”
Chapter Three. Memory Lane-Fetter Lane
It was dark out here, and bitterly cold. Leading the way ahead of Ned by three paces was his friend Rob holding out the small flaring link light, its flame sputtering with the occasional snowflake. For once their evening passage through the city had been reasonably well lit. Perhaps it was all the festivities. Most of the doorways they’d passed had been festooned with arches of holly and ivy. In the midst of winter the vivid green was a cheering sight, especially in the warm golden spill of householders’ small lanterns. Now however they’d crossed the Fleete Ditch bridge, and apart from a wintery chill-induced shiver, Ned felt all the hairs at the back of his head rise in remembered terror of his almost turd-choked doom. A dozen paces later they were past striding along Fleete Street, though his spirit didn’t lift that much as he left the ill omened bridge behind.
So here they were, fully in the Liberties, the debatable lands of fair London City-a crowded patch, packed to the rafters with thousands in rough tenements, cobbled together from crumbling buildings such as decayed monasteries or the tumbled ruins of fallen lords who’d lost all in the bloody strivings of York and Lancaster. The sad remnants of glories past, broken stonework and carving that spoke eloquent if mutely of battle, death and execution. Though southwards in the open spaces closer to the river, away from the jostling road, stood the proud towers and gleaming plastered walls of present splendour. Fronting the river were the rows of great houses and palaces such as His Sovereign Majesty’s Bridewell Palace-a beautiful building some four stories high, its corners flanked by turreted domed towers with its central squares of gardens. Further along still lay the riverside Inns of Court such as Inner Temple and Middle Temple, each well appointed with secluded courtyards and orchards for the contemplation of weighty matters of law, or an opportune tumble in the grass with a willing punk. The latter also housed the chambers of that most formidable Autumn Reader, the distinguished Richard Rich, his uncle, wherein he practiced a successful if rather ‘unique’ and probably twisty style of law.
However Ned wasn’t in those blessed isles of law and tranquillity. No, he was trudging along perhaps the worst stretch of Fleete Street and it was dark. The residents of the Liberties possessed a frankly dismissive attitude to city statues. In theory by law, of an evening between the feasts of Hallowtide and Candlemass, the citizens of London were required to have a small lantern outside their dwelling to be lit after dusk. Ha! This was the Liberties-as if! Any lantern left unattended was pinched and offered for sale in a tumble down alehouse before the rush light had the chance to grow cold. It was Ned’s well founded suspicion that the tallow was more likely to be used as a sop for coarse ravel bread than for lighting. The Liberties had that kind of desperate reputation. That was probably the reason Westminster was shielded from its pernicious influence by the steady and prosperous row of the Inns of Court. After all it wouldn’t do for mere royal clerks and servants to pick up the bad habits of forgers, nips, foisters and punks. No, not when they could be put to better use by a better class of rogue arrayed in dark gowns and with a more thorough knowledge of the ins and outs of the Law.
At this particular moment of more urgent concern to Ned than the habits of petty thievery and lawyers was that the Liberties was also the haunt of Earless Nick, the self proclaimed Lord of the Masterless men of the Liberties-a somewhat genteel and grossly erroneous description for this collection of scabby rogues, nips, foisters and beggars that plagued the honest citizens of London. As of a few days ago Red Ned Bedwell had come to the negative attention of Earless Nick due to circumstances surrounding that damned evangelical ‘lamb’, Walter Dellingham. So there no small need for circumspection in this matter. As a precaution and to hopefully prevent recognition the normally strutting Red Ned, aspiring lawyer and potential gentleman had drawn upon the classical tale of Ulysses and opted for disguise. He’d felt himself rather inventive. The beaver’s pelt of a beard and the padded hunchback were dismissed out of hand back as worse than useless. Instead he had reasoned that the simplest of disguises usually proved to be the best, and thus he had put this problem to the assembled Revellers. In the main their suggestions had been sound, that was all except Radford who’d sniggered that Ned needed a kirtle, a dress and a french hood to truly be hidden from view. That drunkard’s delusion had been ignored. Instead they’d pooled a collection from several of the lads at the Revels who were newly come to the Inns this last law term. For a couple of flagons of Rhenish and the sly whisper of a play at cozenage in the Liberties they’d been more than keen to lend their older garb.