10 - The Goldsmith's Daughter Read Free Page A

sense of false security. I presumed that God, if not sleeping, had forgotten me. He had, after all, a lot at present to keep Him busy elsewhere. It never occurred to me that He might have another job for me to do.

Two
    S ometime around midday on the fourteenth of January, Jack Nym brought his cart to rest before the strange, wedge-shaped building of the Leadenhall, announcing with relief, ‘Here we are at last.’ Inside were innumerable market stalls, a granary, a wool store, a chapel in which Mass was celebrated every morning for the stallholders, and the great King’s Beam, where goods were weighed and sealed by the customs men.
    I knew from past experience that every sort of commodity was on offer within, from iron to cloth, lead to soap, food to second-hand clothing. And it was this last reflection, as well as a sense of obligation, that made me offer to assist Jack Nym to haul his crates of soap indoors.
    Our nine-day journey had been uneventful, confounding all my prophecies of doom. The weather had stayed mainly fair with only two or three scattered showers of rain; and after Adela had taken Jack into her confidence regarding her condition, he had behaved with the greatest concern, making sure that at all the places where we found shelter along the route, she was treated with the highest degree of care and attention. Now, however, having reached our destination, we were to part – Jack, once he had made his delivery, retreating to a kinsman’s alehouse in that insalubrious, riverside quarter of the city known as Petty Wales, whilst Adela and I had to seek out a cheap, but clean and comfortable inn.
    This was partly the reason why I accompanied Jack into the Leadenhall, in the hope that it might be one of Philip Lamprey’s days for serving behind his old-clothes stall in the market; for he, if anyone, could advise me where best to look. Adela had borne up remarkably well under the rigours of the journey, but I noticed that since passing through the Lud Gate, some half an hour earlier, she had begun to look pale and strained. No doubt she had thought herself fully accustomed to the noises, smells and heaving masses of a large city. But London had three or four times the number of people crowded within its walls than did Bristol. Furthermore, unless you knew what to expect, the continuous clamour of the bells, the constant, full-throated cries of the street traders and the deafening clatter of iron-rimmed wheels over cobbles could come as an unpleasant shock to the first-time visitor.
    Added to all that, the stench of the gutters seemed to assault the nostrils far more pungently than it did at home. We were fortunate that, by the time of our arrival, the rakers had already done their early morning rounds, carting away the previous day’s refuse either to the pits outside the various city gates or to the river, where boats were moored, waiting to ferry it out to sea. But the filth was already piling up again, and by nightfall the mounds of stinking rubbish would be just as high as they had ever been. Keeping the London streets clean, then as now, was a never ending struggle.
    Inside the Leadenhall it was a little quieter than without, but not much. I seated Adela on an empty, upturned wooden box while I helped Jack to locate his buyers, two soap merchants who sold not only tablets of Bristol grey, but also both the expensive white Castilian sort and the cheap black liquid kind. Then, with Jack’s instructions ringing in my ears – ‘We meet again here, the day after the tournament, the twenty-third of January, around midday’ – I went in search of Philip Lamprey.
    I was lucky enough to find him almost immediately, haggling loudly with an elderly woman over a pair of tattered, particoloured hose which I should not have considered worth even the carrying home; or which, if I had, Adela would most certainly have consigned to the dust heap.
    ‘Philip, you old rogue,’ I said, putting an arm about his shoulders,