Free The Invention of Fire by Bruce Holsinger Page B

fur-trimmed cape chiseled with decorative slits, long legs in particolored hose, three ostrich feathers stemming ostentatiously from his hat. He spread his arms, shook his feathers like a plumed bird, then brought his hands to his mouth, cupping the rhythm of his cries.
    “ And now for a taste of foul crime, my good gentles and commons! Now shall I shout of brigands and killers, slayers and thieves! A poacher of pigeons, a smith turned to pilfer! The most lawless of ladies at large in our land! ”
    He had our attention. Several outliers moved closer to the crier’s perch, crowding in and looking up at the man’s raised and thinly bearded chin as he went on.
    “Now give me your ears and your good hearing, people of London! Know all present that Robert Faulk, cook of Kent and poacher of His Highness the king’s forests, along with Margery Peveril, gentlewoman of Dartford and murderess of her husband, having jointly slain a sheriff’s turnkey and escaped from the sheriff’s gaol at the manor of Portbridge, do now flee, together or alone, through country and city, their destination unknown, with great bounty from King Richard to any man who would aid in their apprehension and seizure, singly or together.”
    There were scattered exclamations, a fair amount of murmuring at the notion of a murderess at large. The crier repeated the announcement, added a brief description, then went on to shout a series of royal proclamations. The crowd loosened, the hubbub returned. Soon enough the royal servant’s drones were drowned beneath the renewed barks of the hucksters and their hired mouths.
    “Oysters! Oysters! Oysters! Get your oysters here, and your eels!”
    “Grind your knives or your shears? The sharpest blades in London ground here, my good gentles!”
    “There is Paris, there is Paris in this thread, the finest in the land!”
    The poulterers’ coops stood along the western span of the street, forming a low, loud wall of fowl that lent an air of barnyard looseness to this city lane. The old ordinances had tried to restrict the poulterers to the wall by All Hallows, though recent mayors had proved morelenient. Hens pushed their feathers and beaks through the slats in a ceaseless hunt for grains, while a rooster strutted proudly along the perimeter. The constant murmur made a happy cover for conversations both ill intentioned and benign.
    I gathered a handful of kernels from between the pavers and was pushing them through the slats of the nearest coop when I felt a hand at my shoulder. I turned into the thick-lidded eyes of Adam Pinkhurst, a scribe for the new common serjeant at the Guildhall. As always I was distracted by the pied spectacle of his face, a patchwork of burned and healthy skin patterned like some elaborate Moorish cloth, as if he had got in the way of one of an alchemist’s acid flasks.
    “John Gower,” he said, the cleft in his chin deepening as he spoke, his gaze direct and confident, regarding me as an equal. Pinkhurst’s stature among the Guildhall clerks had grown somewhat over the last few years since Chaucer had designated him as his favored copyist, commissioning three manuscripts of his poem on Troilus. I had never employed his services for my poetry, preferring to hire a dedicated bookman along Paternoster Row rather than a city scrivener like Pinkhurst. The Guildhall scribes were notorious for passing around unauthorized copies of their clients’ work, and I had no desire to see my making treated like so much fodder for the common gut. Though Pinkhurst, by near-universal acclaim, was trustworthy and discreet, I knew him as a forger of remarkable skill.
    “Pinkhurst,” I said as we clasped hands, his ink-stained but smooth. “What brings you out of your cage?”
    He grimaced. “I drew the short lot today, so I go in search of pies for our chamber of scribblers. Pork, chicken, liver, dog, friar—makes no difference, so long as they’re not rancid. Six pies, then I’m back to inking,