Matthias travelled south. He kept well away from the main trackways and paths. The journey was an uneventful one. He reached Colchester ten days later, where he stayed at the Golden Fleece tavern and hired a barber to shave his face and cut his hair, closely cropped like that of a soldier. He bought new clothes in the marketplace — sober, dull attire — and then continued his journey. Two days later he arrived at St Giles, Cripplegate, and entered London.
At first Matthias found it difficult. So many people of different sorts: madcaps, beggars, white-eyed Abraham men dancing their mad jigs along the streets. Merchants and lawyers in their wool and samite robes. The gaudily decked whores, the courtiers in their taffeta; the city toughs and bravos with their tight hose and protuberant codpieces. These walked narrow-eyed, fingers constantly tapping the hilt of their swords or daggers. The streets were dirty and packed. People moved in shoals round the stalls, which sold everything from Spanish herbs to cloths from Bruges. Fights broke out. Apprentices touted for custom, bailiffs and beadles stood in the doorways of churches and shouted their messages. Iron-wheeled carts crashed and lumbered across the cobbles. Funeral processions wound their way to the city cemeteries.
Matthias grew so dizzy he had to dismount. He stood for a while in a tavern yard, sipping at a tankard of ale to calm his stomach and soothe his wits. A party of sheriff’s men ran by the gateway crying, ‘Harrow! Harrow!’ in pursuit of a felon against whom the hue and cry had been raised. On the corner of St Martin’s Lane, just near the Shambles, an execution was being carried out: a rogue who had killed a shopkeeper was now being hanged from the sign of his victim’s shop. The crowds gathered round to watch him kick in his death throes. Matthias pushed his way through. He wondered if anyone would be interested in him. In law he’d received a pardon after East Stoke but, there again, he had not served his three years at Barnwick.
Matthias made his way up, past the grim, stinking prison of Newgate. He turned right after Cock Lane into the great expanse of Smithfield. The open area in front of St Bartholomew’s was fairly desolate. A group of beggars chattered beneath the huge gallows in the centre. A woman knelt before the great blackened stake where people were burnt, hands clasped, sobbing quietly to herself. Two rogues, caught selling bogus relics, had their hose removed, were tied back to back and forced to wander until darkness fell and their crime was purged. A madman ran up, a dribble of white foam coming out of the corner of his mouth. He was dressed in a dirty linen robe with a cord round his waist.
‘Have you heard?’ he screamed. ‘The Great Whore has returned to Babylon! Her dragon has been seen in the skies! The moon will turn to blood! The stars will fall from Heaven! The Antichrist is now on his way. Have you seen him?’
A long, sharp dagger appeared from the sleeve of his gown.
‘Have you seen him?’ he threatened.
‘Yes,’ Matthias replied soothingly, ‘I have. He’s been taken to Newgate.’
‘Thank you, thank you, brother.’ The madman ran off, brandishing the knife in his hand.
A whore slipped silently up beside him, her hand going out to stroke his genitals.
‘A fine cock there,’ she murmured. ‘And all fit for the crowing!’
‘I have a loathsome disease,’ Matthias replied, ‘which will rot your stomach and turn you blind.’
The whore screamed an obscenity and ran off. Matthias paused and glanced around. A long line of gong carts trundled out of Little Britain, the area behind St Bartholomew’s. They had just emptied the public jakes: the breeze wafted the stench, Matthias covered his mouth and nose. He glimpsed a tavern sign, the Bishop’s Mitre, and made his way across. He was tired, rather disturbed by his abrupt arrival in London so he bargained with the landlord for a stable for his horse and a narrow, dank garret for himself.
Matthias spent his first two days in London eating, drinking and sleeping. Then he asked the taverner for his advice and went to St Paul’s to stand by the ‘Si Quis’ door where merchants, traders, noblemen and lawyers came to hire servants and maids. The place was thronged: the great central aisle full of people waiting to be hired. Matthias paid a scrivener to write a short description of his name and his skill as a clerk. Matthias pinned this to his tunic and walked around the great tomb of Duke Humphrey but, though some expressed an interest, no one would hire him. He carried no letters of accreditation and was reluctant to discuss his recent service at Barnwick.
The days passed. Matthias’ supply of silver dwindled. He lost his garret but the landlord agreed, in return for Matthias doing tasks around the tavern, that he could sleep in the stable. Matthias eventually had to sell his horse and saddle but he kept his arms. He tired of walking St Paul’s and spent more time out in the graveyard where the thieves and rogues of London sheltered from the sheriff’s men.
One day, about a month after his arrival in London, Matthias was sitting with his back to the wall sunning himself. He was wondering if he should leave and go back to Baron Sanguis when someone tapped his foot. He raised his head, shading his eyes, and peered up at a grizzled-faced, one-eyed man.
‘God save us both, if it’s not Master Matthias Fitzosbert!’
The fellow crouched down. Matthias studied the narrow-seamed face, the white eye covered by a milky film, the other dancing with mischief. The man was dressed in a soiled ragged shirt, tattered leather jacket and hose. He wore two right boots of different size but Matthias noticed the sword and dirk pushed in the waistband were sharp and clean.
‘Do I know you, sir?’
‘Dickon,’ the fellow replied. ‘Don’t you remember, Master? The gatehouse at Barnwick? I served as an archer there. I held you down the day. .’ the good eye began to flutter, ‘. . the day young Rosamund was killed.’
Matthias closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Of course!’ He looked at the man. ‘So, what have you been doing?’
Dickon shrugged. ‘Well, when we were driven out of Barnwick, I thought that’s it: no more soldiering for Dickon boy! I travelled south, a little bit of fighting here, a touch of robbery there.’ Dickon was now peering at him carefully. ‘I’ve never forgotten you, Master Fitzosbert. Even now I still tell my friends about the north tower of the keep. Do you remember it?’
‘If I have to.’
‘You seem down on your luck.’ Dickon sat beside him.
‘I’d say that was a fair assessment of my situation.’
Dickon patted him on the thigh. ‘I thought you were dead.’ He shifted, his good eye studying Matthias. ‘But, of course, the likes of you don’t die, do they? Do you have any money?’ he continued.
Matthias flicked his empty wallet. ‘I have what you see. And, as for food, I’d give my right arm for a meat pie and a tankard of ale.’
Dickon scrambled to his feet. ‘Come on!’ he urged. ‘I have someone who would like to meet you.’
Matthias stayed where he was. ‘Who is he?’
‘Henry Emloe. He’s a. .’ Dickon grinned, ‘he’s a merchant, a trader. You’ll get more than a meat pie and a blackjack of ale from him.’
Matthias glanced round the graveyard: the tawdry stalls, the mummers and the jackanapes. Perhaps it might be best to stay rather than go, cap in hand, to Baron Sanguis. He scrambled to his feet and followed Dickon out along Bowyers Row, past Blackfriars. They crossed the Fleet river and entered the tangled maze of alleyways which surrounded the great convent of Whitefriars. Matthias had never been here before. It was a small town in itself: a ward dominated by thieves, cutthroats and wolf’s-heads. The great-storeyed houses were shabby and dilapidated. They rose up so close together, the lanes and alleys beneath narrow and gloomy. Ramshackle bridges stretched from one house to another. The doorways to the taverns were thronged with beggars, men and women who had good reason to hide from the law. There were no stalls, but hawkers and garishly dressed journeymen pushed their wheelbarrows around, piled high with goods and trinkets they had filched from the markets in Cheapside. Whores, guarded by their pimps, called out salacious invitations. Every so often Dickon and Matthias were stopped and asked their business. The men were some of the most depraved Matthias had ever seen: their faces showed their souls were steeped in villainy. Some bore the mutilations of previous punishments: brand marks upon their faces, slit noses and lips, their hair was often long to conceal cropped and clipped ears. A few had lost a hand or a foot. Nevertheless, they were all well armed and watchful over who passed along their respective street or alleyway. Dickon did not carry or show any pass, he simply murmured Emloe’s name and these self-appointed guardians slunk back into the darkness.