By now, the city had come fully alive. Sailors surged up the road as if carried on a tide, legs spread wide, straddling the pavements as if walking along the heaving deck of a ship. Knife sharpeners, sellers of whelks and oysters, rag-and-bone men, pie and chestnut sellers, all moved along the streets behind their handcarts, each giving out the distinctive, high-pitched cry peculiar to their trade. Monks in undyed wool, servants of the Pilgrim, walked in disciplined silence on rope sandals. Servants bustled on errands, the wealthy bustled in chairs or coaches, children bustled to school, and apprentices bustled to the nearest source of ale. Dogs and pigs, which devoured the waste, wandered freely; while cats perched on high gables and viewed all from a position of superiority. Drunken men sang, drunken women screeched, drunken children darted underfoot. Carters rode in the press, their wagons piled high with goods, surging along like galleons in the human flood.
My long legs carried me easily through the throng. I delighted in the familiar sights of my city, not to mention the fact that I’d survived the night unscathed. My black velvet apprentice cap had remained on my head through all the night’s adventures. The tunic I’d acquired, striped in faded green and thinning white, was stretched to the limit by my big shoulders; and the quilted doublet, originally the deep red color called cramoisie, was a pale ghost of its original self. I was beginning to think I had overpaid for my new clothes.
Still, having survived pursuit, I was in charity with alclass="underline" I walked with a smile, greeted friends and acquaintances, while with practiced skill I dodged small children, pigs, and filth.
I paused by the shop of Crook, the printer and bookseller, but the door was closed. Inspired perhaps by the bound verse that he imported from the capital, Crook the businessman kept poet’s hours. I would try to visit later in the day.
“Hoy! Quillifer!”
I turned at the cry, and saw the urgent signal of Mrs. Vayne, the greengrocer. I avoided the rumbling handcart of an oyster-seller and crossed the street to join her.
Mrs. Vayne was a large woman in a starched white apron and a boxy hat that covered her ears. Her cheeks were red as the baskets of pippins piled about her feet. I saw at once the distinctive white-green apples nested in straw, and I felt my mouth water.
“Pearmains!”
The grocer smiled with crooked teeth. “Ay, the first pearmains have come down the river. And you know how your mother dotes on them.”
“Can you send two baskets to the house?”
Mrs. Vayne nodded. “I’ve already set them aside.”
I leaned over a tub of cresses and kissed Mrs. Vayne’s cheek. She drew back in mock surprise.
“A forward creature you are,” she said. “But for all that, you may have a forelle.”
I picked the spotted pear from the greengrocer’s hand and took a generous bite. I chewed with great pleasure and dabbed at my lips with the faded sleeve of my doublet.
“Best send a basket of these as well.” I took another bite, and my free hand snaked a pearmain from its den of straw. Mrs. Vayne saw and pursed her lips in disapproval. I made my wheedling-infant face, and the greengrocer shrugged.
“The gages should come in two or three days,” she said.
“Then I shall return in two or three days.” I kissed her again, and she wiped pear juice from her cheek.
“You’re not dressed for Dacket’s office,” she said.
“It’s a sea dog I am today. I’m going sailing.”
Mrs. Vayne crooked an eyebrow. “Does your master know?”
“I am on my master’s business. Which I should no longer delay.” I raised the stolen pearmain, inspected it, and took a bite of the white-green apple. I crunched the pearmain happily, smiled, and said, “Best make it three baskets sent to my mother.”
“They will keep all winter,” said the pleased grocer. “Provided you keep them in a cool room.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw a pair of broad-shouldered men striding through the crowd. Was it Greyson livery they wore? And were they bearing cudgels?
It was time to depart. I gave a wave, kicked away a pig that was investigating the beetroots, and continued my walk, eating from either hand as the fancy took me.
Royall Street opened into Scarcroft Square, with its fountain surrounded by marble allegories, and the glory of Ethlebight brickwork shone bright in the clear morning sun.
Ethlebight, sitting on its swampy delta, had an excess of clay, with more delivered every spring by the flooding river; and the merchants of the town had made the most of this bounty. The city produced bricks, millions every year—plain red brick for plain buildings, but also bricks of mellow gold, of blue and purple, of black and brown. Some bricks were glazed with bright colors, pinks and yellows and green.
Scarcroft Square was a fantasia of masonry, all built of the brick that formed the town’s main industry. The ivy-covered town hall, the guild halls, the grand mansions of the burgesses and the local lords, the Fane, the Court of the Teazel Bird, the New Castle, the Grand Monastery of the Seven Words of the Pilgrim . . . all blazed in the morning sun with color and light, red bricks and gold, black bricks and blue, pink bricks and green, all the glazed, bright hues. These colored bricks were laid in patterns, rose in spirals to support upper storeys, or twisted high to hold aloft the chimney pots. The square itself was paved in brick, set with spirals, quincunx patterns, or pictures of fabulous animals—mosaic done in enormous scale, with bricks instead of tiny tesserae.
We also produced glass, and the glazier’s art was fully displayed: leaded glass, glass stained to produce triumphalist pictures of the city’s history, glass cut into cabochons or faceted like gems, glass opalescent, etched, and enameled. The result was a square that glittered in the morning sun and winked sunlight from a thousand faceted eyes.
A temporary theater was being built on the square, to support the players during the Autumn Festival, and it was the only wooden structure in sight.
Another impermanent structure was the effigy of our much-married King Stilwell. His statue stood on a plinth, and he wore armor and carried a sword, looking like the young warrior that had triumphed in his wars against Loretto.
It was a tribute to the city’s burgesses, who counted every penny, that the King’s statue had been made of some kind of plaster, then painted to look like marble. There was no point in cutting a figure in stone, or casting it in bronze, when the King would sooner or later die and the image be replaced by that of the next monarch. I had to admire the canny sense of thrift displayed by our aldermen.
In fact, I delighted in everything I saw. I felt my chest expand at the sight of the square, straining the fabric of the borrowed tunic. I had spent all my eighteen years in Ethlebight, with only a few trips to other cities, and I adored the city that had raised me, and also admired the bustling inhabitants who lived within its walls.
Scarcroft Square was magnificent, but I knew I was seeing it at its height. The city was fading, doomed by slow strangulation as silt choked its harbor. I pictured it fifty years hence: the grand houses empty, windows empty, roofs sagging, colors faded, the square filled with windblown trash . . .
It could not be prevented. Best not to think about it.