‘Why us?’ Sarah demanded sharply.
‘Because he has no one else. He’s broken his indentures by rushing off. Neither his family nor his old master want anything to do with him. We’ve been over all this a dozen times, sweetheart.’
Sarah pouted. ‘I know you feel loyalty as his friend but he has only himself to blame and we have problems enough of our own.’ She turned to me. ‘Master Treviot, can’t you make my dear dolt of a husband see sense?’
‘I’m sure none of us wants to see Bart whipped through the City at a cart’s end for begging in the street,’ I said. ‘Perhaps, between us, we can find him a job.’
‘What jobs can a one-armed man do?’ Ben asked mournfully.
‘He has a mind,’ I said, ‘and it seems he knows how to use it.’
‘Oh yes,’ Ben agreed readily. ‘He went to a grammar school and has good Latin. He isn’t foolish. If anything, his problem is that he thinks too much.’
‘Then, perhaps we can persuade him to channel his thoughts into something more positive than rebellion. I’ll make some enquiries among my merchant friends. But you will have to sober him up — in more ways than one. No respectable businessman has room for a powder keg that’s liable to explode at any time.’
Smiles of relief appeared on the faces of the newlyweds.
‘As for you two,’ I said, ‘your first task is to make peace with Sarah’s father.’ I ignored Ben’s scowl and went on. ‘I don’t think you want to remain at enmity with your family for the rest of your lives and I suspect they don’t want that either. The longer the estrangement lasts, the deeper it will become. It will be worth a little humbleness on your part to put a stop to it now. May I suggest that Christmas would be an appropriate time for a reconciliation? If your olive branch is spurned, come and see me again but, please God, that won’t be necessary.’
‘You collect people with problems, don’t you?’ Lizzie said after the others had left. ‘I feel sorry for that one-armed scapegrace.’
‘Oh, Bart is his own worst enemy,’ I replied, ‘like someone else I know.’
Lizzie made a face at me as she left the room.
In the days leading up to the festival, London was, as usual, abuzz with excitement and anticipation. The food sellers were doing good business and staying open late. My shop was busy with customers buying jewellery to give as New Year gifts or negotiating loans to pay for their celebrations. Christmas is the season of generosity, when households relieve the gloom of midwinter with feasting on the last fresh meat of the year, from fowls and beasts kept and fattened for the occasion. But there were other reasons for the euphoria that pervaded the City in the Nativity season of 1536. News had spread that the northern rebellion was over. The fear that disaffection would spread and that southern counties faced a possible inundation by peasants brandishing billhooks and pitchforks in the name of Holy Church had evaporated. The feeling of relief was almost tangible and seemed to be shared even by many who were in sympathy with the ‘pilgrims’. Also it was noised abroad that the king was coming.
The splendour of the royal court was very rarely seen on our streets. When Henry and his richly adorned attendants travelled to and from the palaces near the capital they almost invariably went by the river. The royal barge and a flotilla of other craft conveyed our social elite to Whitehall or Hampton Court or Richmond. But this year the king decided to keep his Christmas at Greenwich and to go there by road. This meant that his cavalcade would pass from Westminster, right through the City and across the bridge.
The immediate reason for the change of routine was ice. The river had a solid coating for a hundred yards or more upstream of the bridge and beyond that there was floating pack ice. But the bitter weather did no more than provide the opportunity for a royal show. Henry loved spectacle. Tournaments, pageants, processions — he was never the one to miss an opportunity for public display. And at no time did he have a greater need to remind the people of his power and magnificence than in the Christmastide of that woebegone year, 1536. The event planned for 22 December was to be a triumphal procession. Henry would appear before the citizens as their saviour, the warrior king who had delivered them from bloody rebellion. It mattered not that his victory had been achieved by guile rather than military might, nor that throughout the crisis he had not taken the field in person, but had skulked behind Windsor’s ancient walls. He would claim credit for defeating the ‘pilgrims’ and appear before a grateful populace to receive their plaudits.
The day before this display I received Lord Cromwell’s command to wait upon him at Greenwich on St Stephen’s Day, 26 December. Before then there was much to do. All householders whose properties fronted the processional route were required to deck their houses with tapestry and rich cloth and to ensure that the street was covered in gravel of a regulation depth so that the finely caparisoned horses did not become besmirched with mud. The hard frost made this task easier. The attitude of the overseers sent from Westminster did not. They expected citizens to spread gravel twice — once for the royal baggage wagons that would come through on the twenty-first and once for the court personnel. Several of us went to the Lord Mayor to protest strongly the impossibility of complying. He, in turn, rode to the palace to discuss the problem with the Master of the Horse. After much arguing, it was agreed that some at least of the court’s furniture and chests of plate would be transferred across the river from Whitehall and proceed from there along the south bank. The Lord Mayor agreed to allow the paraphernalia that could not be thus transported to be brought through the City and to keep back a supply of gravel to effect any repairs that might be necessary before the royal party entered via Ludgate and Paul’s Yard. As well as decorating my own house front, I had to help with the impressive furbishment of the stretch of road allocated to the Goldsmiths’ Company.
We were charged with decorating with cloth of gold the house fronts opposite St Michael’s at Querne at the end of Cheap, close by the gate to Paul’s Yard. However, it was not our gaudy preparations for the royal show that dominated our conversation as we supervised the servants clambering up ladders to attach our loyal tributes.
‘Have you heard? He’s been called to Westminster to be knighted by the king. Scandalous!’
As usual, it was Simon Leyland who was complaining. The ‘he’ referred to was Ralph Warren, alderman, sometime Master of the Mercers’ Company and reputed the richest man in London. His nomination as the new Lord Mayor had been announced some weeks before and had divided the merchant community into warring factions. The Common Council had determined upon Sir Ralph Holles as the next holder of the leading civic office but had been overborne by the king, who had sent his mandate instructing the council to elect Warren.
‘He has lent the king large sums of money,’ my friend Will Fitzralph commented.
‘That’s not to the point,’ Leyland retorted. ‘The king likes not Holles for certain foolish words spoken in support of the northern rebels.’
‘Are you, then, a secret sympathiser with these papist pilgrims?’ I asked with a wink at Will. We both knew where Leyland’s religious sympathies lay.
‘Certainly not,’ he roared. ‘Holles is a troublesome heresy-hunter and I like not the man but there is a more important principle at stake. Our ancestors fought hard to establish our civic liberties and we should not allow the king to trample them.’
‘I fear present politics count for more than ancient rights with our Harry,’ Will said, being careful to lower his voice so that the servants could not hear. ‘At the moment he is all for the new men.’
I was surprised to hear our new Lord Mayor named in that context. ‘I had not heard that Warren is a religious radical.’
‘Well,’ said Will, ‘he’s very close with Cromwell and he has just been appointed the king’s representative to the German merchant community here at the London Steelyard — and we all know what a nest of Lutherans that is. No, no, Peter, more to the left!’ This last comment was addressed to one of the servants balanced on a ladder above our heads.