Free The Invention of Fire by Bruce Holsinger

sect.
    A royal trampling of the outer wards!
    Gross violations of ancient rights!
    The commons kicked about like river rats!
    St. Giles, despite its close proximity to the walls, remained, though the old rectory between the sanctuary and the Cripplegate guardhouse had recently been sacrificed to the cause. Some of its rubble filled three handcarts pulled by a trio of sullen workers, pressed into service by the two infantrymen standing to the side. None of the five men acknowledged my presence as I walked past them and up the porch stairs.
    A small group of petitioners waited on the porch; then the church’s dark and cold interior prickled my limbs. As my eyes searched weakly through the gloom I heard the distinctive voice of the longtime parson. He stood within one of the shallow side chapels, arguing with another man over some aspect of the parish rents.
    “Nor has he yet made good on the summer’s leasing,” said the priest.
    “That old hole in Farringdon,” said the other.
    “Yes.”
    “Two shill four, as I remember.”
    “Press him for it, will you?”
    “Aye, Father.”
    “Harder this time. I cannot have a tenant sucking the parish teats without paying for his milk like all our other lambs.”
    “Aye, Father.”
    “Be off, then.”
    The two separated, the other man passing me on his way to the west doors, the priest making for the altar end of the nave. He spokeagain as he disappeared through the chancel screen, calling out instructions to several parish underlings, all of whom answered with a respectful tone of assent. As I neared the low middle door he spoke more pointedly to one of his charges.
    “That pile of ash, Gil?”
    “Yes, Father, I removed it. As you asked.” A higher voice. Young, a touch sullen, as if its owner were being inconvenienced by the parson.
    “Very well. Finish up with that polish, then, and you may go.”
    “Yes, Father. As you please.” Almost insolent, as I heard it. I wondered that the parson let one of his charges speak to him in such a way.
    The candles on the near side of the chancel beam flickered as I passed. I waited, fumbling with an unlit wick, until the echo of the priest’s footsteps receded and the vestry door opened and closed. I looked around and through the screen. Before the low altar two masons worked on the floor, which in that portion of the church had, over the years, decayed into an uneven surface of old planks and broken stones that the men were busily replacing.
    I looked through the crossing toward the south door. The sullen voice I had heard belonged to the youth squatting by the door to the sacristy, working a rag over a sacring bell at a low table. He wore the high-cut robes of an acolyte, the plain jet of a young man in minor orders. I approached him quietly, stood at his back.
    “Gil Cheddar?”
    The hand holding the rag flinched. The acolyte sat back in surprise, losing his squat and half sprawling onto the church’s stone floor. With an embarrassed flutter of limbs and robes he came to his feet, his chin and jaw raised at me. “Gil Cheddar indeed. Who’s asking?”
    “John Gower,” I said, unmoved by his tone. His uncovered hair, coal black, swept back from a brow as close to pure white as living skin can be. Early whiskers grew along his cheeks and chin in seemingly random patches, and his narrow shoulders topped a gaunt frame of medium height and slight build. “What does the good parson of St. Giles have you about today, Gil?” I asked him.
    There is something in my voice that I have never comprehended, a quality of silken acuity that seems to work its peculiar charm even onthose hearing it for the first time. Chaucer once compared it to a flat of sacrament bread. If unleavened bread could talk, he said, it would talk like John Gower, with no airy lift or taste of yeast to distract from the flat purity of the grain. A weak figure, though I have witnessed the effect of my own voice often enough to lend some credence to the image.