boyish charm. Mind you, Antonio didn’t have Antonio’s boyish charm, at present. And he was lost without it. It was how he won people over; everyone except Rafael, of course, no illusions about that. Here, so far, in England, it hadn’t been working. Presumably just because he was Spanish, people here turned from it, refused it. It was interesting to witness, but Rafael shied away from gloating. Because, like it or not, they were in this – this trip, this escapade – together.
On the far bank, there was nothing but pasture. Some trees, massive but lopped for firewood. Well, they’d certainly need that, here. A few patches of cultivation – vegetable gardens, by the look of them, although impossible to see from the boat what was being grown – and an occasional orchard. Nothing much, then, south of the river.
When the river curved east, they were at last beyond the palace and the cluster of official-looking buildings. This, now, was residential, and what residences! He’d thought he’d never see anything to rival the finer houses of Seville – nowhere in the world was as rich as Seville – and having been told that the English were a Godless people, he hadn’t expected such elegance. These south-facing houses had their own riverside landings and through the immense ironwork gates there he got glimpses of long, geometrically laid gardens, and statues, fountains and – defiant under the dull sky – sundials. In the distance, behind the riverside walls, were the buildings themselves of rose-red brick and their banks of twisted, towering chimneys.
As the boat came to glide alongside the city itself, Rafael’s overriding impression was of the many, many chimneys in a haze of smoke. This time of year, the fires would only be for cooking. How bad would the air be in winter, when Londoners needed heat as well? Above it all, though, reared a Heaven-high, needle-sharp spire. One of the men saw him looking, and gestured towards it, said: ‘St Paul’s.’ He’d spoken grudgingly, but Rafael smiled his thanks for the information.
Standing to disembark, he turned to see an immense bridge downstream. Just the one bridge – all crossings elsewhere were made via the little wherries that had been cutting across in front of and behind their own vessel – but if a city was going to have just one bridge …
‘Look at that!’ he heard himself say aloud. It was made of arches: nineteen, he made it with a rapid count. Just as impressive, if not more so, was the street of many-storeyed houses that ran down its length. It was like a whole small town afloat on the river.
At the quayside, the two men engaged the services of a porter to assist with the rest of the journey, which was to be undertaken on foot. The cart bearing the trunks trundled off ahead – two near-misses of pedestrians before the first corner – and was soon gone from view. Rafael understood why boating was the preferred mode of transport. The streets were like tunnels: narrow in the first place but made narrower still – almost roofed – by extended, overhanging floors above ground level. Timber-frame buildings. There’d be a big risk of fire even without all the fireplaces these homes and shops would be running during winter. Almost every house was also, on the ground floor, a shop. Doors flew open in their path, admitting and discharging a considerable traffic of customers whose elbows bristled with baskets. Many of them were unaccompanied women. Almost every shop also had a trestle table outside, at which Londoners stopped – usually abruptly – to browse. He’d never seen anything like it: these people clearly loved to shop. As long as you had money to spend, this was the place to be.
Some lanes were paved, but many were lined with planks along which everyone had to process. Londoners were, of course, much better at it than he and Antonio. Londoners were good at it, they were practised, they’d learned to balance. Over-balancing meant sliding into mud and muck, and within yards his boots were in an appalling state. One of the liveried men shook him by the shoulder to get his attention and then clapped his own hands to his pockets: Be wary of thieves. Rafael nodded his thanks, but he didn’t need to be told how to protect himself from thieves – he was from Seville. The problem was that he couldn’t balance if his hands were in his pockets.
He saw beggars crouching in the muck at every street corner, barely clothed, bootless, and often with children. He presumed they were children, but there was nothing childlike about them. Small people. Pitifully small, with scabby scalps and claw-like hands. In Seville, there were beggars, of course, by the thousands, black and white, from all around Spain and from the colonies: they all came to Seville. But here, in London, it seemed somehow different. Worse. These people – the small ones, particularly – looked abject. Because they were cold, perhaps that was it. Perhaps because of the smell of roasting of meats, which seemed to be everywhere here but wasn’t for them – that couldn’t help. Something he’d learned on the ship was that there was no charity in England. There was no one to do it; no monks, no nuns. There’d been no religious houses for the past twenty years, thanks to the old king. Nowhere for people to go in hard times but on to the streets. I hate it here sprang up in him and squeezed his throat. I hate it, I hate it. The choked air, the crammed streets, the pitiful children. How on earth was he going to survive this? Even a day of it, let alone six weeks.
A quarter of an hour or so later, they were in a quiet little street where there were no shops other than what looked like a glove maker’s. The two liveried men consulted a note produced from a pocket, waylaid the sole passer-by for confirmation, and then indicated to Rafael and Antonio that they’d arrived. Rafael was finding it hard to get his bearings, the sun hidden behind tall buildings and then behind cloud, but he decided that the lane ran roughly north–south. All that was to be seen of their destination was a high redbrick wall in which was a solid wooden gate overhung by a sign of crossed keys. A knock on the gate provoked the barking of some dogs and summoned a man in a blue jerkin that was a lot less fancy than the brass-buttoned, braided and crest-embroidered finery of royal households, but nonetheless had the look of livery. Tussling with two wolfhounds, he ushered the visitors through into a cobbled forecourt and there was the house: four-storeyed and newly built, ochre plaster and silvery timber, glassed windows glinting greenish. There was a simple sundial on the wall, a double decliner – north-east facing, then – that’d be no use except on the sunniest of mornings.
They followed the porter and dogs towards the main, rosemary-flanked door of the house on which was a large, interesting doorknocker: the head of some beast, something feline, a leopard. A rap of it got the door opened – and more pandemonium with more dogs – but then someone else had to be found to welcome them inside. And quite something, he was: a tall, slender young man with hair like golden silk. All smiles. Good teeth: just the one gap, but barely visible. The household steward, Rafael later learned. He made much of their welcome to the household, not that they could understand what was actually being said; but whatever it was, it was delivered with flair. Slick, was the word that came to mind. And slick would definitely do, after a day of being fobbed off. Rafael wished he could respond more fulsomely to it, make the effort to enter the performance, but he hadn’t realised how exhausted he was until faced with this ebullience.
The man moved them swiftly to a staircase, shooing back the house dogs, up a flight and then along a rush-carpeted gallery – its walls papered, printed with a design in orange and turquoise – to more stairs, three flights of them. The room was small and simply whitewashed, with a glassed window but no fireplace, and the daylight was so weak that he couldn’t immediately ascertain its aspect. Their two chests had been delivered. On the bed were two piles of bedclothes, folded. A truckle bed was perfunctorily demonstrated: for Antonio, Rafael realised with a lurch of despair; he, too, was to be in here. There was no desk. When the truckle was out, there’d be no room for one.
The steward was confiding something, speaking quickly and quietly, his eyebrows raised; he indicated the doorway, the stairs, perhaps the house beyond. Rafael felt this was an explanation and an apology. The house was full and this was all there was. Rafael was careful to keep smiling and nodding; Antonio, he saw, was staring moodily at the window. The steward wore the same blue as the porter, but better cut and better kept, and beneath it was a shirt of good linen, perhaps even Holland linen. He’d stopped speaking and was instead presenting one hand to Rafael, palm upwards; the other hand prodded at it and then at his mouth. Forking food? Then a sweep of the hand that had held the imaginary food, from the doorway: Some food will be brought up to you, Rafael understood him to mean. More smiles