Not long after his meeting with Despenser, Swale left the Tower and made his way to the narrow, bustling streets of Farringdon in Westcheap. Farringdon was a prosperous mercer’s district, thick with tradesmen and mercers, goods wagons, beggars and street hawkers, and his progress was slow. Some noted the badge showing the Despenser arms on his chest, and veered out of his path. He ignored their black looks, but kept his fingers curled tightly about the gripe of his sword.
The Despensers were hated for their avarice and corruption, but fear of them and their retainers was slowly ebbing. All of London knew that Mortimer and Isabella were poised across the Channel, ready to invade as soon as they had scraped together enough money and men.
The streets Swale trudged through were little more than open sewers, with open drain channels running along the sides or down the middle, rank with thick, stinking effluence. Occasionally he was required to dodge to avoid pails of dirty water thrown out of upper-storey windows. There was an overwhelming smell of shit and piss, mixed with the noxious stench from dyers vats, which were also poured out into the street. Swale had walked these streets many times in the past eighteen months, but still his nostrils burned with the acrid, vile smell, and the bile rose in his throat.
Despite the filth, Farringdon was a prosperous ward, and this was reflected in the size and quality of the houses that lined the streets. These were the private residences of the mercers, usually with a shop on the ground floor. Most of the houses were timber, but the very richest and largest were built of stone, with such luxuries as tiled floors and glass in the windows. Wooden signs projected from the upper storeys, painted with crude images of the kind of wares they sold, or else with a bolt of fabric nailed to the sign.
Breathing heavily from his long trudge through the muddy streets, Swale stopped outside one, a fine two-storey timber house, neatly whitewashed and half-timbered, with a slanted, gabled roof.
He gazed up at the bolt of scarlet cloth dangling limply from its pole. There was no wind, though the chill of advancing dusk made the sweat cold against his skin.
He needed a moment to collect his wits. This was the house of William Bataill, a rising star of the Mercer’s Guild, and father of the girl Swale wished to marry. Her name was Joan, a pretty, dark-haired little creature of fourteen, fragile as a bird and rather too submissive for Swale’s taste, though he had persuaded himself that he was in love with her. She was the younger of William’s two daughters, and stood to inherit half his wealth when he died.
Swale was honest enough to recognise that he wanted her money, having little of his own, but the problem was her father. Joan was entirely under his thumb, and relations between William and Swale had cooled of late.
Swale stepped onto the flagstones at the front of the house – they were swept rigorously clean, since William took pride in his dwelling and kept the filth of the streets at a distance – and rapped on the door of the timber half-bay that fronted the shop. He had to do so twice before the sound of heavy footsteps and the jangle of keys sounded from within. The little barred grille at chest height shot open, and a suspicious pair of eyes peered out.
“We are closed for business,” said a deep, sullen voice, followed by a grunt as the eyes recognised Swale. The key turned, and the door slowly swung open.
“Thank you, Edwin,” said Swale as he entered, and the servant, a long-faced youth with a shock of greasy red hair, shuffled aside to let him through. Swale walked down the short, narrow passage of the bay, to another, stronger door set in a stone surround. Edwin did not rush past him to open this second door, as usual, but skulked in the passage. Suspicious, but choosing not to make anything of it, Swale pushed the door open and stepped into the shop.
The walls of the shop were lined with shelves piled with rich cloth, silks, satins, calicos, linen, hemp-cloth, and gauzes, all richly coloured and no doubt ruinously expensive. In the middle of the room was a long table, where William conducted his business with private clients during the day. A high-backed wooden chair stood behind the table, and the surface was littered with bits of sample cloth, a candle in an iron holder, and the remains of supper.
Beyond the shop, Swale knew, was a hall with a wooden staircase leading up to the bedchambers. The hall contained more trappings and symbols of wealth, brightly painted cabinets, colourful wall hangings and the like. Swale wondered if William had contrived a coat of arms for his family yet. The Bataills were a trade family, from Norfolk originally, without an ounce of noble blood in their veins, but that was no barrier to the ambitious mercer’s social climbing. Swale had once been part of that ambition.
The youth, Edwin, was still standing behind him. Irritated, Swale stepped further into the room. Then the door into the hall opened, and William Bataill came through. A burly, wine-faced man in his forties, he resembled a pork butcher rather than a cloth merchant, and wore a rich, heavy scarlet robe trimmed with fur. His veiny slab of a face twisted in distaste as he recognised Swale.
“Sir John,” William began. A hard man of business, he looked embarrassed for a moment, and then recovered his stern countenance.
“Sir John,” he repeated, “it is growing late. You sent no word of your visit. I am not pleased.”
Swale bowed courteously. “My apologies, sir,” he replied. “I have to leave London, and may not return for some weeks. I wished to speak with Joan before I left.”
“You will address me as Master Bataill, if you please. We are not family, and not likely to be. You may not see my daughter.”
Swale was startled by the man’s bluntness. William had always been careful to use him with perfect civility, in stark contrast to the mercer’s sharp, ruthless manner with his customers.
“I beg you, tell me why?” Swale asked, trying to retain his courteous tone.
William said nothing for a moment, his jaw clenched, and then he sighed and ran a hand through his thinning brown hair. “It is nothing we have not spoken of before - your lack of money, lands, and prospects, and your choice of master. I am skilled in assessing the market value of things, and your value has depreciated to an unacceptable level. You are not fit to marry into my family.”
Swale swallowed the insults. “My prospects have risen. I am engaged on my lord Despenser’s business, and he has promised me land if I do well.”
“What land?”
“He has promised me a fine manor on his estates in Glamorgan.”
William shook his head dismissively. “A few damp and unprofitable acres in a land full of barbarians. Not near enough to make you eligible for Joan. She may be a chattel like any other, but I will extract the highest possible price for her.”
The mercer’s cold, calculating attitude enraged Swale. “I can remember a time when you did consider me eligible!” he cried, louder than he intended. “What has made me such a pariah? Is it the rumours from France?”
William refused to meet his eyes, and seemed to choose his next words carefully. “I do not speak against the King, of course,” he said, “but the Despensers are loathed by everyone. There is barely a soul left in the kingdom that would piss on either if they were on fire. Except you, of course. Loyal Sir John Swale. For the last time, will you see sense, put off their badge and offer your service to a more acceptable master?”
So that was it. Not only did William consider Swale a poor prospect for his daughter, but a dangerous one. If the Despensers fell, then those who stayed loyal to them would fall also, such was the way of things. A shrewd businessman like William did not want to bind his family to one of the doomed regime’s most loyal retainers. That way the Bataills might also be dragged into the pit.
Swale could see the logic of this, but logic was not important. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “you do not understand, and never have. It was his men who found me on the moor in Scotland, where I would have died, and brought me into camp. It was his men who nursed me when the army retreated south. Eight years ago, I put my hands between his, and swore to be his faithful knight.”
William sneered. He had heard this all before. “Your knighthood, that devalued office, is the only thing that separates you from a common thug. You are an indentured lout, Sir John, a lout who dares to stand on his honour. Tell me, is it honourable to serve the likes of Hugh Despenser, a man who breaks the limbs of rich widows when they refuse to hand over their money to him? A man who has enriched himself at the expense of others, who has foully corrupted and twisted the law? Who has had honest men beaten, intimidated, tortured, even murdered, for his own ends? In your eight years of service, how much of this have you witnessed? How much have you participated in?”
To his shame, Swale did not care to answer the last two questions. “You still do not understand,” he said stubbornly. “These things are matters for his honour, not mine.”
William gaped, and uttered one of his rare creaking laughs. “Wonderful!” he exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “Now I have heard all. Well, Sir John, this has been amusing, but now I really must insist that you leave. Do not come to my house again.”
He placed some emphasis on the last word, as if it was a pre-arranged signal. The door to the mercer’s right, which led to the under-croft, opened and a bulky figure stepped through. Another filled the doorway behind him.
Swale recognised them as William’s hired bullies, employed to make sure no clients filched his cloth, and break the fingers of those who tried. He could not recall their names, but their names did not matter. What did were their big, active physiques, padded jackets, open-faced bascinets, gauntlets, and greaves, and the heavy staves clutched in their beefy fists.
Swale knew that Edwin was standing close behind him, and could feel the boy’s warm breath on his neck. He glanced up at the stairs and wondered if Joan was watching from the gallery. Whatever happened, he knew that she would not dare intervene.
He had four men to deal with, then, though William was unlikely to be any use in a fight. Edwin, he remembered, carried a long knife. The youth might be slow-witted, but would surely be capable of sticking the blade in before Swale could turn.
Some great warrior, like Giles de Argentine or the Black Douglas, might have fancied the odds, but Swale knew his limits. He let his hand drop away from his sword.
“Very well,” he said, with as much dignity as he could muster. “I will leave. At least convey to Joan my love and warmest regards, and the best of fortune. She will need it.”
Relieved that no blood was to be shed in his house, William nodded curtly. Swale was allowed to turn and walk out of the house, into the cold of the gathering dusk and an uncertain future.