The Fetter Lane Fleece Read Free Page B

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