Part 14 (2/2)

Pleased at the frank reaction, I grasped his near arm. 'You just did, Ralph.'

'Good, then.' He cleared his throat. 'When we met at Westminster, I mentioned a murder. A girl, slain in the Moorfields.'

'I remember.'

'What she took from La Neyte, it's said, was a book. This book contains a number of prophecies written by this Lollius. Twelve of them foretell the deaths of our past kings.'

'And the thirteenth,' I added, 'the death of King Richard.'

Strode studied me. 'You are well informed.'

'Braybrooke.' This prompted a brisk nod. 'The bishop is confounded, has no more idea about Lollius than I do. Without having seen the work I can't speak to its accuracy, of course but I have my suspicions.' I lowered my voice. 'From all I have heard, this Liber de Mortibus Regum Anglorum must be a forgery.'

He frowned. 'A forgery?'

'To write a prophecy about times already past is hardly a challenge,' I said. 'What would prevent a living man from tracing back through our chronicles the means of these royal deaths, and ”prophesying” accordingly?'

Strode nodded slowly. 'Then simply writing a new prophecy about King Richard.'

'What better way to trouble the realm than to predict the manner and means and even time of its sovereign's death?'

Strode's eyes caught flecks of candlelight from the chapel's altar. 'I have thought about the name ”Lollius” a good deal myself. Is there a taste for Lollius's work in Wycliffe's circles, among these Lollers?'

'Braybrooke thinks so.'

'I'm not surprised, though I've heard nothing of it from my former colleagues in Oxford.'

'I can't help but think I might have better luck than Braybrooke's men in identifying this Lollius. But I need an excellent library, Ralph. A library with the ah, the muscle to bear up under the inquiries of a dogged man.' I thought of Chaucer's account of the Visconti library, the immense holdings that had furnished him with the Italian writings that inspired so much of his current making. 'The problem is, there's little time, and I can't go abroad.'

Strode, always up for an intellectual challenge, adjusted his bulk and sat forward. 'There are libraries aplenty in Oxford, Gower, of more variety than even the great monkish collections at Bury or St Albans. In fact, now that I think on it, there may be a collection of books in Oxford uniquely suited to your purpose.'

'At Merton?'

'No indeed,' Strode said. 'The library I'm thinking about is in an outbuilding behind the Durham grange. A roomful of trunks and crates. I know little about the collection beyond the fact of its existence. Yet I do know its keeper. A cantankerous old man, but we are on friendly terms, and I'd be happy to write you a letter of introduction. The man in Oxford you'll want to see is Peter de Quincey.'

'And he'll admit me, even though I'm not a monk?' Durham was a small Benedictine college, and the order was jealous of its privileges.

Strode shook his jowls. 'Quincey is a lay brother to the order. His late master was Richard Angervyle de Bury.'

'Bishop of Durham?'

'And a great lover of books. You'll have read his Philobiblon, of course.'

I gave a chagrined frown, feeling ignorant as I often did in Strode's presence. 'I haven't, though the t.i.tle intrigues me. Do you own it?'

'I do,' said Strode. 'I'll have my copy sent round to St Mary's in short order. As for the collection, well.' He looked up at the vaults, as if searching the ceiling for the appropriately lofty words. 'The most mysterious collection of books in England, some say, though I've never plumbed it. Few in Oxford have, though it's the subject of endless speculation.'

'And Angervyle himself?' I asked.

'He was quite the figure: Clerk of the Privy Seal, a noted emissary at Avignon before this disastrous break with Rome. Peter de Quincey was his most trusted clerk. He's an old man now, though with a letter from me he should give you a friendly hearing, despite the whiff of suspicion in the Oxford air these days.'

This took us to the subject of rising heresy, and the disturbing news out of Oxford. Strode had mixed feelings on the matter of Wycliffe's emergent sect. 'The condemnation of Wycliffe before his death has divided my colleagues on the faculties of logic and theology,' he said, getting to his feet. 'Every syllogism is now pa.r.s.ed for heretical content. The old freedoms are being threatened.'

He led me out of St Lawrence and on to the street. 'The effect is chilling, Gower. You have to wonder how long it will be before the same scrutiny comes to the inns, and infects how we teach the very laws of England.'

'It surely won't come to that,' I said, considering this dire possibility. I struggled to match his pace. 'Would you recommend against this visit to Oxford, then? This Lollius could be anyone.'

'One has to start somewhere,' said Strode. 'Take our students, who must entertain absurdities of the most outrageous sort when they're first learning to theologize. ”Suppose G.o.d revealed Christ not to be His Son. What then would be the authority of the sacrament?” ”Suppose it were discovered that the faculty of intellection resides in the stomach. Could a hungry man think well?” Such inquiries aren't threatening. They merely pretend to question our beliefs precisely in order to strengthen them. Consider the nature of the irrelevant proposition. Such a proposition must be greeted with scepticism, and yet we cannot discard it entirely, can we?'

I hesitated, not sure where Strode was taking me. 'I suppose not.'

'Suppositions are exactly the point in the case of an irrelevant proposition. If the proposition proves useless, we simply ignore it. If, on the other hand, it proves itself worthy to think with, why, we should do everything we can to exploit its use. There's hardly heresy in that.' We had reached the porch at the Guildhall, where Strode indicated that he would leave me for an appointment with the mayor. 'It's a lesson,' he said, 'we would all do well to remember. In dialectic, even what seem the most irrelevant propositions can lead us to the truth.'

'Or truths,' I muttered, feeling glum.

Strode paused on the first step, towering over me. 'Tell that to Braybrooke, Gower. The Bishop of London should cultivate a taste for tolerance to match his enthusiasm for gardening.' He took the shallow steps in one move, his long robes fluttering in his wake.

Back through Guildhall Yard. A flash of colour before the eastern gate, and a few scattered laughs. On approaching I saw the cause: a bit of street theatre of the sort often seen in the city's larger gathering places. With Strode's concerns still preoccupying me, I paused, distractedly, to watch.

The mimes were performing a play about the first King Edward. Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots. The company had reached the deathbed scene, performed with the king prostrate on a mat, his lords gathered round. The speaker stepped to the front to interpret the scene for the crowd.

'As he lingers his last, with lords all about, By six-less-two swords he shall say as he dies, ”My heart you must heft toward heaven on earth, To Jerusalem journey, joy to enjoin, And my bones against Bruce to be borne into war, My gravestone to graveth: Leave Gaveston gone.”'

The mime playing Longshanks put a hand to his forehead, chortled out a last breath, and expired, to the warm applause of the circle of Londoners gathered around the actors. He leapt to his feet, the mimes collected small coins in their caps, and the scene broke up as quickly as it had gathered, the company heading for St Paul's or the bridge with the heat of the day.

My own skin had gone cold. By six-less-two swords he shall say as he dies. Seven of swords, sovereign of swords, prince of plums, three of thistles and now six-less-two swords, another numbered symbol echoing with the voice of the De Mortibus prophecies. Even this rough street spectacle of Longshanks's death had drawn its language from the book, which now seemed to be everywhere I turned. A street preacher, the bishop and his friars, the common serjeant, and now the mimes of London, all speaking the morbid idiom of Lollius, the whisper of kingly deaths on their lips.

It was at that moment that I started imagining the prophecies as a kind of pestilence, raising boils on the vulnerable body of the realm. Despite the laughter of these Londoners, the image stayed with me the rest of that day, as the book spread its ill portents through the city and the realm.

Men of our time have a peculiar fascination with a form of story. It is the story of raptus, of ravir, of raviss.e.m.e.nt. It has various names, in the Moorish tongue the muwashshah, in Spanish the serranilla, most commonly in French the pastourelle.

A simple story, always the same. A young shepherdess strolls in a field or on a road. A knight on horseback swoops in and seeks to seduce her, beguiling her with poems, or clever words, or promises of fame. She resists his advances, resists yet more, until eventually his desire goads him to force himself upon her, destroying her virtue. There are variations here and there: the shepherdess is carried off by an evil knight or a murderous giant, so her gallant rescuer saves her life even as he sullies her flesh. Often there is a rival involved, and one knight must defeat another to win the lady.

Yet however the matter falls out, the young lady remains silent about her rape, her tongue as useless as Philomel's after it was severed by Tereus. So acceptable a part of lovemaking is this vile act that even Father Andreas, in his Art of Courtly Love, enjoins n.o.ble men to delight in it without thought: 'Remember to praise them lavishly,' he writes, 'and should you find a suitable spot you should not delay in taking what you seek, gaining it by rough embraces.'

Yet where is the woman's sovereignty, her choice in the matter? The woman never writes her own story. She is rather like the lion in Aesop's little fable, who sees a painting of another lion being strangled by a man. But who paints the lion? Tell me, who?

He who paints the lion claims to know the lion, and with his brush he may colour whatever lies he wishes. The power of the teller, you see, is inestimable.

And so it is with women in these pastourelles, these tales of rural virgins who know not their own desire well enough to keep from resisting the rapes they must suffer with all the inevitability of death. I have heard them in the langue d'oil, I have heard them in the langue d'oc, in the tongue of Juan Ruiz, in the tongue of Dante, and translated from the tongue of the Jews. In every human language, it seems, men have depicted the joys of ravishment, and never with consequence for the ravisher. Just one time I would like to hear a version with a righteous end, one in which the perpetrator- -I flee my matter.

One morning, as the girl sat with her mother in their bedchamber, learning to pin out a broad st.i.tch on her frame, there came a pounding at the outer door. They heard voices, then one of the servingwomen entered.

'The prince requests an audience, my lady.'

'Very well.' The lady gathered her embroidery and placed it in a basket. 'I shall receive him in the salon.'

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