CHAPTER XXIV
London folk went up and down. Palace where sat a strong king, Tower where traitors lay in ward, wall maintained through the centuries upon the base the Romans laid, Aldgate, Newgate, Ludgate, Bishopsgate. London Bridge, London Stone, Baynard Castle, old Temple without the Templars, with the lawyers. Blackfriars, Whitefriars, Greyfriars, Austin Friars, Crutched Friars, crowd of monasteries and nunneries, great buildings of stone, lesser buildings of wood, churches and churches, and a good way out of town Westminster, where the king was building his great chapel with the wonderful roof. Sixty thousand, maybe seventy thousand people in London. Learned men were there, artists were there, merchants there, men of the Church, of the law, of the sword. Hidden Wickliffites, hidden Lollards were there. Astrologers and alchemists were there and men of the rosy cross. Navigators and discoverers were there, striving to show Henry what to do to balance or counter Ferdinand of Spain and Emmanual of Portugal. Mechanics and artisans were there, many and many men of many crafts. Guilds and guilds. London of the bells, of the Wall and the Thames; London outer, London inner.
Near the Old Jewry ran a narrow street where dwelled many workers in metal—ironsmith, coppersmith, silversmith, goldsmith—not the great known workers but the lesser ones that the great hired. A narrow street of poor houses, dark and noisy, or dark and still. The children were poured into the street, the women sat in the doors or clacked up and down. From some houses came always the clink of metal upon metal, from others the workers went away to other places of work. At night they returned. Now the sun cleansed all, now the fog came dull-footed into the street and the houses and stayed.
Jankin, a worker for an armourer, opened the door of an old house. A large room, which was a workshop, and four small rooms, and out of the house had recently been carried a bier. The man who died had been an old, independent metal worker. Here still were his furnace and his tools. Whatever had been his family it was gone; apprentices who had dwelled with him were away to other masters. “But his custom would come back,” said Jankin. “The whole thing for so many pounds. Something down, but the most could be worked out. ’Tis said there’s a ghost in the house, and so they don’t sell or rent it easily.”
The man with him said, “I rent it and buy the tools.”
Jankin answered, “If you do the work you used to do, master, ’t will be like planting a tree in a flowerpot!”
“No. And ‘master’ me no more, Jankin!”
“Diccon Dawn. It comes strange! But many a man and a great man is in danger. Well, you were never much in London, master, and you’re changed. Eh, those days I was with you in Paris! I hear them still between hammer strokes, and they come around me like fairies. And you’ll live here?”
“Aye.”