tenement in Norton Folgate. It was here
that I headed, plunging into a bright new morning breezed through
with the stink of the Thames.
It
was early by theatrical standards but the streets were already
swarming with the need to make a coin. I crossed the bridge,
travelling against a tide of travellers who were bound for the shore
I had just quitted. A parade of people who, having nothing to sell,
sold themselves. Jugglers and tumblers; comers, cutpurses and
cosiners; dancers, fiddlers, nips and foists, vagabonds of all
description. Three generations of rogues swelled the throng. Ragged
children studying the moves of apprentices and masterless men. Old
soldiers, who were soldiers no more, just shuffle gaited beggars
nursing their sores. All were making their way to the City from the
night-time sanctuary of privileged places.
Prominent
amongst their ranks were the strangers. Those who, finding no
sympathy in their own country, had sought out ours, bringing with
them their own ways and customs and sometimes an expertise the Queen
wished to claim for her own. They were unpopular amongst the people.
The incomers' differences and skills inspired jealousies and mistrust
that resulted in attacks, woundings, murder and dissent. The Crown
had countered with statutes promising harsh measures against anyone
offering harm to strangers and promising the ultimate sanction of
death. The paper the Council had shown me had taken my writings and
implicated me in a rough plot against the newcomers for which I might
be hung.
Come
dusk the traffic would reverse direction. And as the night grew dark
so would creep the respectable rich and poor following in the rogues'
wake. Burgesses, merchants and aristocrats, esquires and gentlemen,
stepping from the city into the unchartered quarters, heading for the
bear-baiting pits and playhouses. Hunting for the company of harlots,
whores and sixpenny strumpets. Bewigged and bedazzled they would drop
their breeches in bawdy houses, thanking God for inventing a sin they
would regret and renounce even before they had returned to the safe
side of the river.
In
the midst of the crowd someone shouted, `Look to your purse!' Most
were wise to the old ruse and kept their hands clear of their money.
Near to me though a youth in velvet breeches clutched at the chest of
his jerkin, nicely marking the thief's target. A one-legged man
vaulted past, nimble on one crutch, jolting the youth as he went. A
second cripple followed in the first's shadow, a legless long-armed
rogue birling fast on a box fixed with rollers. Each man bore the
leery marks of boxing bouts. In an instant the boy's purse was
snatched and passed and the thieves absorbed by the crowd. No one
offered sympathy. London hands out such lessons by the minute and it
is up to each to look to himself
Every
fourth door led the way to a tavern or ale-house, every fifth to the
house of a bawd. The interview with the Council still hung heavy on
me. I wondered at it coming so fast on Walsingham's attentions, but
dismissed my suspicions. What we had done was a capital offence, but
neither could implicate the other without incriminating himself and
he could easily be free of me without recourse to law or murder.
I
turned my thoughts instead to my destination, wondering if my rooms
remained free. I'd paid my landlady two months' rent on the eve of my
departure. She'd been in her quarters frying chitterlings. The
chopped intestines had wriggled like grubs, bouncing and snapping in
their own fat, filling the room with the sicksweet smell of burning
hellhag. She'd turned to face my knock on the open door with her
usual sour expression. But my promised absence and the sight of so
much coinage had wrought a transformation. The landlady had tested
each bit with her teeth then gripped my arm in a nightmare hold, with
hands even harder and more wrinkled than her face. She'd invited me
to eat with her and, not offended by my curled lip refusal, began her
feast,
that I headed, plunging into a bright new morning breezed through
with the stink of the Thames.
It
was early by theatrical standards but the streets were already
swarming with the need to make a coin. I crossed the bridge,
travelling against a tide of travellers who were bound for the shore
I had just quitted. A parade of people who, having nothing to sell,
sold themselves. Jugglers and tumblers; comers, cutpurses and
cosiners; dancers, fiddlers, nips and foists, vagabonds of all
description. Three generations of rogues swelled the throng. Ragged
children studying the moves of apprentices and masterless men. Old
soldiers, who were soldiers no more, just shuffle gaited beggars
nursing their sores. All were making their way to the City from the
night-time sanctuary of privileged places.
Prominent
amongst their ranks were the strangers. Those who, finding no
sympathy in their own country, had sought out ours, bringing with
them their own ways and customs and sometimes an expertise the Queen
wished to claim for her own. They were unpopular amongst the people.
The incomers' differences and skills inspired jealousies and mistrust
that resulted in attacks, woundings, murder and dissent. The Crown
had countered with statutes promising harsh measures against anyone
offering harm to strangers and promising the ultimate sanction of
death. The paper the Council had shown me had taken my writings and
implicated me in a rough plot against the newcomers for which I might
be hung.
Come
dusk the traffic would reverse direction. And as the night grew dark
so would creep the respectable rich and poor following in the rogues'
wake. Burgesses, merchants and aristocrats, esquires and gentlemen,
stepping from the city into the unchartered quarters, heading for the
bear-baiting pits and playhouses. Hunting for the company of harlots,
whores and sixpenny strumpets. Bewigged and bedazzled they would drop
their breeches in bawdy houses, thanking God for inventing a sin they
would regret and renounce even before they had returned to the safe
side of the river.
In
the midst of the crowd someone shouted, `Look to your purse!' Most
were wise to the old ruse and kept their hands clear of their money.
Near to me though a youth in velvet breeches clutched at the chest of
his jerkin, nicely marking the thief's target. A one-legged man
vaulted past, nimble on one crutch, jolting the youth as he went. A
second cripple followed in the first's shadow, a legless long-armed
rogue birling fast on a box fixed with rollers. Each man bore the
leery marks of boxing bouts. In an instant the boy's purse was
snatched and passed and the thieves absorbed by the crowd. No one
offered sympathy. London hands out such lessons by the minute and it
is up to each to look to himself
Every
fourth door led the way to a tavern or ale-house, every fifth to the
house of a bawd. The interview with the Council still hung heavy on
me. I wondered at it coming so fast on Walsingham's attentions, but
dismissed my suspicions. What we had done was a capital offence, but
neither could implicate the other without incriminating himself and
he could easily be free of me without recourse to law or murder.
I
turned my thoughts instead to my destination, wondering if my rooms
remained free. I'd paid my landlady two months' rent on the eve of my
departure. She'd been in her quarters frying chitterlings. The
chopped intestines had wriggled like grubs, bouncing and snapping in
their own fat, filling the room with the sicksweet smell of burning
hellhag. She'd turned to face my knock on the open door with her
usual sour expression. But my promised absence and the sight of so
much coinage had wrought a transformation. The landlady had tested
each bit with her teeth then gripped my arm in a nightmare hold, with
hands even harder and more wrinkled than her face. She'd invited me
to eat with her and, not offended by my curled lip refusal, began her
feast,
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