“There’s geese,” I admitted, “and ducks and fish and wild plants and eels. Or if
a man was so inclined he could smuggle.”
“But not you?” he asked cynically.
“I’ve a regard for law, although I do not always agree with it. Without law, man
becomes a beast.”
Jublain stared, then shrugged. “You are an odd one. All right, if it is London
you wish for, to London we will go, but remember what I said. It is a small town
when you are hated.”
Outside, we tried our swords. Jublain was good, skilled in ways in which I was
not. Yet soon I realized I was his master, and deliberately held back because I
valued his friendship. He was a difficult man, cross-grained, cynical, a
scoffer. He seemed to believe in nothing but fighting, wandering, drinking, and
wenching. So I took my practice with him, tried to learn, and refused to show
the limits of my skill.
To me, one hundred thousand people was a multitude. Between London and us,
England was heavily forested with stretches of wild moorland and the marshy
wastes of the fens. Roads were mere cart tracks or trails, wandering by the
easiest routes through the forests and across the land. All were infested with
thieves and highwaymen.
These things my father had told me. There were scattered farms, a few great
estates. A few old Roman roads were still in use. New roads were often knee-deep
in mud.
Waterways would offer the easiest route across country, but any travel was a
hardship. Most who traveled understood why the word “travel” had once been
“travail.”
“We will go by sea,” I said.
“A ship will be hard to come by in these fens,” Jublain said wryly.
“We’re not over-far from Boston, from which sail many ships, but I’ve a thought
we need not even go so far. We’ll put the word out, my friend, and catch a ship
off the River Nene.”
Inside, the fire crackled in the fireplace and the warm glow had driven the damp
chill from the little house. There was wood enough close by, I’d seen to that.
We carried in several armsful and dropped them near the hearth.
“If you’ve a notion of hunting treasure,” I said, “you can always look for the
Royal Crown jewels lost by King John, crossing the Wash. So far as anyone knows
they still lie in the mud there, for no man has ever found them. King John died
only a short time after …”
“I’ve heard men speak of those jewels. What a pretty find they would be!”
“Don’t trouble yourself. By now they’re deep sunk in mud or washed out to sea.
Someday they’ll be found, but a long time from now, I’m thinking, and by
accident.”
I cut thick slices from a ham and tossed them into a pan for frying. It was warm
and snug within and the fog was still thick Without—it might hang on for days.
“Do you know London?” I asked him.
“A bit. There are some inns, but better are the places kept by soldiers’ wives;
they are cleaner, I am thinking. But the White Hart in Southwark is a likely
place, or the Tabard, near London Bridge.”
“Good! Within three days then.”
Long it had been in my thoughts to see London, for there was much I had to
learn, and inquiries to make of the New World. Perhaps I could talk to Gosnold
himself.
Some new clothing first. What I wore was not good enough for London … for the
places I wished to go … for Gosnold.
Yet even as I thought, I looked quickly around. Would I ever come back to this?
Was I leaving it only for now? Or forever?
Was I deliberately venturing into London because of Genester’s threat?
No! I examined myself carefully and found no challenge there. Genester was not
important to me. What was important was that I improve myself and my condition.
My father had taught me much of arms and fighting. Laboriously and through long
hours he had taught me to read and write. He had schooled me in manners. He had
given me the knowledge and skills that could make me an officer and a gentleman
… Was I to waste them here? This much he had done. It was up to me to take the
next step.
“Give a thought to your future, Jublain,” I said. “You need not always be only a
soldier nor I a man of the fens. I intend one day to have a name and an estate.”
He smiled thinly, his eyes taunting. “You have large ideas. I have heard them
before … many times.”
“I will do it, Jublain.”
He glanced at me thoughtfully. “You might, at that. After all, some of the great
families of the world were founded with nothing but a sword and a strong right
arm.”
“I shall found a family,” I said, “but not with a sword.”
Jublain shrugged. “You might do it, but keep the sword at hand. You’ll need it.”
Chapter 4
The tavern we chose in Southwark was a great, rambling old structure with a
large wagon yard, a double row of balconies hanging over the yard, and on the
ground floor, a room where drinks were served—a warm and friendly place. In an
adjoining room, meals were served.
Business was brisk. Horsemen came and went at all hours. Wagons, carts, and,
more rarely, carriages came into the yard.
Despite his hesitation about claiming a knowledge of London, Jublain guided me
to a tailor where I outfitted myself with a rich but modest wardrobe, equipping
Jublain with a few items of which he was in need.
“You’ll have no money at this rate,” Jublain warned. “If you’re to go
a-venturing you’ll be needing it all to buy goods.”
He was right, of course, but there’d been a thought stirring around in my skull.
That evening I wrote a message to Hasling.
If you wish to talk of Romans or antiquities, I shall be some nights at the
Tabard, near London Bridge.
This message I forwarded, unsigned. None knew of my interest in antiquities but
Hasling, nor that I was in London. I saw no easy way in which the message could
be traced back to me, yet I was worried. Despite his foppish dress, Genester had
the look of a shrewd one.
Jublain and I no longer looked like country bumpkins. Attired like gentlemen we
could go where we wished, but the public room at the inn was a hotbed of gossip
and information, so we loitered there, that first day, listening to talk of
roads, people, and politics, of the theater, bear-baitings, brawls, and
robberies.
“Gosnold?” It was the reply to a casual comment of mine. “Oh, aye! He’ll be
going yon. Newport, also. He has a letter from the Queen and can take prizes. If
you be the sort with a taste for action, he’s your man.
“There’s others stirring about you’d best beware of. Cap’n Nick Bardle … no
better than a pirate. He’s outfitting this minute and will be off to the coast
of America. The man’s nae to be trusted. Take the coppers from a dead man’s
eyes, he would, and might even hasten the dying.
“He’s got a bad lot sailing with him and if he’s a man short he’ll just knock
some poor duffer on the head and before he comes to his senses he’s at sea.”
“If it’s venturing you want,” Jublain said, “it must be Gosnold or Newport, or
Weymouth when he gets in. All have sailed the coast of America, all are solid
men.”
Yet I was thinking of something else. Hasling’s quickness to buy my coins
excited my interest in antiquities. If he was interested—and his unnamed friend,
too—others would be. Here was a market ready to be supplied by a man with a
quick eye who could get around the country.
Casually, I mentioned buyers of old things. “Aye,” a drover told me, “there be
plenty. They’ve a society that meets to talk of such things. They’ll chatter
like magpies over an old coin, a chair or a casque.”
Here might be a source of income unsuspected, for the gentry rarely knew the
back roads as did we who labored with our hands. Nor did they suspect the number
of dealers in junk who bought all manner of things from peasants, gypsies, and
vagabonds. I had been to such places searching for tools, and had seen oddments
lying about of no interest to anyone.
Of no interest to me either, then. Now I began to see that if a man had some
knowledge, and a little money, then he might find, buy and sell to a substantial
profit.
I remembered then that my father had once told of a man who devoted much of his
life to wandering about compiling notes for a history of England. He had walked