fascinated by what was being enacted. The crowd was noisy. The air reeked with a fug of odours which mingled with the ever-present stench of stale, salted fish, rotting vegetables and human sweat. Nevertheless, the Dominican, tall and rugged, his black hair neatly tonsured, seemed impervious to his surroundings but listened intently to the rant of the preacher’s most scathing diatribe against the Church. Behind the preacher, the rest of his troupe was assembling cleverly painted panels, each depicting a message. On one a fiend jeeringly pulled the ropes of a prayer bell torturing a damned, fiery-red soul who served as the bell’s clapper. Below that on the same panel, a rat-headed demon was throttling a banker whilst another stabbed a goldsmith with a candle prick. On the second panel, a hare carrying a hunting horn, game-bag and a deer-spear was striding towards a castle with a wench slung by her feet to the spear. At the castle gate, a thorn-beaked lizard devil, dressed as an abbess, waited to welcome them. The third panel depicted the Prince of Hell, Lord Satan, with a gigantic sparrow hawk’s head and a spindle-shank thin body. The master of demons was busy devouring a damned spirit, whose perjured red-hot soul slipped from the Devil’s anus in the form of a swarm of ravens.
Lascelles stopped his cavalcade here. One of his lackies dismounted, pushed through the crowd and whispered to the Dominican; he reluctantly nodded and followed the man back, hoisting himself into the saddle of a spare horse. Athelstan caught his breath; he was sure he recognized that round, serene face from his days in the novitiate at Blackfriars. Athelstan stared again. He noted the sharp eyes, full lips, skin burnt brown by the sun and rather delicate hand gestures and how fastidiously clean this fellow friar appeared to be.
‘Brother Marcel.’ Friar Roger had been watching just as closely. ‘Don’t you recognize him, Athelstan, a man much loved by your order? Some say he will become Minister General of the Dominicans. Brother Marcel of St Sardos – the Papal Inquisitor from our Holy Father in Rome.’
Athelstan closed his eyes. He certainly remembered Marcel, the son of Anglo-Gascon parents born in English-held Bordeaux, a brilliant canon lawyer who particularly excelled in the disputation, the sharp cut and thrust of question and answer so popular in the halls of Oxford and Cambridge. What on earth was he doing in London? Athelstan glanced back at the mummers as Lascelles urged his cavalcade on. Such dramatic presentations were certainly not orthodox and, if what he recalled about Marcel was correct, would certainly be frowned on by the Papal Inquisitor.
At last they reached London Bridge. A firedrake was performing magic tricks with a torch he had inveigled from the keeper of the gatehouse, Robert Burden, that diminutive dresser of the severed heads of traitors which hung like black balls on their poles against the lightening sky. Burden, dressed in the usual blood-red taffeta, had assembled his large brood of offspring to watch the fire-swallower. Athelstan called out a greeting but Burden, engrossed in the spectacle, simply raised a hand in reply. They entered the lane which cut through the houses and shops which ranged either side of the bridge. As usual, Athelstan found such a journey frightening, literally crossing between heaven and earth. The sights and sounds always disturbed him. The clatter of nearby windmills, the stench from the tanneries, the stink of the lay stalls and that ever-crashing thunder as the river poured through the bridge’s twenty arches, pounding the lozenge-shaped starlings protecting the pillars below. Nevertheless, this was also a busy marketplace where everything was sold: Baltic furs, Muscovite leather, Paris linen, lace from Lieges and cloth from Arras. An apprentice ran up to offer a laver, a tripod pitcher with a nipped-in neck and spinous spout which ended in a dragon’s head. Athelstan
Lascelles stopped his cavalcade here. One of his lackies dismounted, pushed through the crowd and whispered to the Dominican; he reluctantly nodded and followed the man back, hoisting himself into the saddle of a spare horse. Athelstan caught his breath; he was sure he recognized that round, serene face from his days in the novitiate at Blackfriars. Athelstan stared again. He noted the sharp eyes, full lips, skin burnt brown by the sun and rather delicate hand gestures and how fastidiously clean this fellow friar appeared to be.
‘Brother Marcel.’ Friar Roger had been watching just as closely. ‘Don’t you recognize him, Athelstan, a man much loved by your order? Some say he will become Minister General of the Dominicans. Brother Marcel of St Sardos – the Papal Inquisitor from our Holy Father in Rome.’
Athelstan closed his eyes. He certainly remembered Marcel, the son of Anglo-Gascon parents born in English-held Bordeaux, a brilliant canon lawyer who particularly excelled in the disputation, the sharp cut and thrust of question and answer so popular in the halls of Oxford and Cambridge. What on earth was he doing in London? Athelstan glanced back at the mummers as Lascelles urged his cavalcade on. Such dramatic presentations were certainly not orthodox and, if what he recalled about Marcel was correct, would certainly be frowned on by the Papal Inquisitor.
At last they reached London Bridge. A firedrake was performing magic tricks with a torch he had inveigled from the keeper of the gatehouse, Robert Burden, that diminutive dresser of the severed heads of traitors which hung like black balls on their poles against the lightening sky. Burden, dressed in the usual blood-red taffeta, had assembled his large brood of offspring to watch the fire-swallower. Athelstan called out a greeting but Burden, engrossed in the spectacle, simply raised a hand in reply. They entered the lane which cut through the houses and shops which ranged either side of the bridge. As usual, Athelstan found such a journey frightening, literally crossing between heaven and earth. The sights and sounds always disturbed him. The clatter of nearby windmills, the stench from the tanneries, the stink of the lay stalls and that ever-crashing thunder as the river poured through the bridge’s twenty arches, pounding the lozenge-shaped starlings protecting the pillars below. Nevertheless, this was also a busy marketplace where everything was sold: Baltic furs, Muscovite leather, Paris linen, lace from Lieges and cloth from Arras. An apprentice ran up to offer a laver, a tripod pitcher with a nipped-in neck and spinous spout which ended in a dragon’s head. Athelstan
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