Marsh. A particular job, you see. I am concerned about the privity of the armoury. I want to have this done outside, and discreetly, so as not to arouse suspicions.’
‘Whose suspicions?’
‘None of your concern.’
‘With respect, Master Snell, I am not a fool,’ Stephen said, leaning in. ‘You are asking me to risk my position at the foundry, my guild key, my livelihood. I would have to make these devices right beneath the widow’s nose yet behind her back.’ He thought of Hawisia, the glimmer of suspicion in her eyes whenever she looked at him. ‘Stone’s is her foundry, the whole of it. Every hammer, every awl and anvil, every ingot of tin, every barrel of wax, every mound of clay. I cannot risk my position there, nor earn more of her fury than I have these four months since the master’s death.’
‘Your devotion to the widow is admirable,’ said Snell with a mocked sincerity. ‘Yet there are higher purposes than loyalty to a craft. There is your nation to think of, and your king. We are after something new at the Tower, Marsh. Something …’ The armourer’s eyes narrowed as his tongue sought out the hard spots on his upper lip. ‘Something more efficient. A maximum of delivery with a minimum of effort. Do you see?’
Stephen frowned. ‘Larger guns, then?’
Snell’s nose twitched, and a corner of his mouth turned up. ‘It’s smaller guns we are after. Smaller, quicker to load, more portable, more …’ He squinted, as if looking across a great distance. ‘More deadly. And thus more efficient.’
‘Efficient?’
‘Efficient,’ said Snell with a tight smile. ‘It’s the common word of the season at the Tower and among the king’s familia, from top to bottom. After what happened in Edinburgh last year, who could wonder that the king’s army is looking for better ways to fight, and happier machines of war? We chased the Scots from town to town and pile to pile but they wouldn’t engage, nor was our army swift enough to split up and catch them, what with all the equipment and baggage in tow. So now here we are, looking our own invasion in the nose, and the talk is all of effectiveness of operation. Do more killing, we tell the cavalry and infantry alike, but with fewer men, fewer arrows, fewer bolts. More slaughter, we tell them, but with less treasure, less shot, less powder.’
‘And less gun,’ Stephen mused.
‘And less gun,’ said Snell, his voice lowering to a gritty whisper. ‘Now you are seeing it, as I rightly knew you would. You are a man of solutions, Marsh. If we can find the right alchemist with his tinctures or the right priest with his sacraments, why, we should be able to shrink a gun to the size of a ram’s cock. I am not concerned with the look of these weapons, you understand. They needn’t be beautiful things, like your hinges and such. Deadly efficiency is what we are after here.’
Stephen stared at the wall behind Snell, and a procession of guns marched across his inner sight, great cannon leading the small, the pots-de-fer before the bombards before the ribalds before the culverins, throwing their balls and bolts to every side. Less gun. A stirring goal; an attainable one. He knew little of gunpowder and shot aside from the pieces he’d seen wheeled to the gates and stationed beneath a few sentry towers along the walls, and his sole work on artillery was represented in the few large guns founded for the Tower before the passing of Master Stone.
Yet Stephen could already imagine ways that might be discovered to render such devices more efficient, to constrict their girths, lessen their lengths, improve their firing, and now that the notion had entered his mind he yearned to get his hands on one of them and apply his own skills to the problem, to gauge for himself the intricate balances of weight and mass, force and propulsion guiding these wondrous instruments slowly multiplying across the battlefields of the world.
Stephen sat up straighter, feeling a need to impress the armourer. ‘Efficiency and beauty are hardly natural enemies,’ he said, ‘and weight can be compensated for by other means.’
Snell raised his heavy brow. ‘Go on.’
‘A simple solution to an unknown problem. A gun is no different from a hinge. The sorts of things I found and smith and repair at Stone’s – hinges, buckles, coffers, gates, bells, to say nothing of clocks and the like – they are the fittingest prologue one could imagine to the new guns your men are smelting and forging behind those walls. And no one in London melts and bends and tinkers as I do, or the devil take my—’
‘Body and bread,’ Snell completed the thought. ‘You make quite free with such oaths, Marsh. Are they sincere? Is this your earnest will, to know the privity of the armoury?’
Stephen took a large mouthful of ale and drew a sleeve across his lips. ‘Let me at your guns, Master Snell. Let me understand the tooling and mechanics of it all. By God’s bones you won’t be sorry.’
Snell studied him, fingers playing at his beard. ‘I hope not, Marsh. For your sake, and the sake of your craftsman’s soul.’
‘Aye,’ said Stephen confidently, and Snell seemed to coil up on himself as he reached for his jar. Stephen shivered, despite the tavern’s warmth.
‘You will come to the Tower in the coming days, then,’ said the armourer. ‘Give your name at the east barbican. One of my men will fetch you down to the yard.’
‘Very well, Master Snell,’ said Stephen, working to hide his pleasure, an anticipation something like lust. It was a too easy thing, in that flush of ale and ambition, to excuse the minor swell of vanity that had held him there talking to the king’s armourer, despite the sentence that kept him so tightly bound to Stone’s. For if Stephen’s heart lingered always at the foundry and forge, his pride looked now to the Tower, and the machines of a coming war.
Snell slipped out the cellar door as the taverner rang the closing bell. Stephen stood and mingled with the crowd of men staggering out to the lane. He crossed back over Aldgate Street as the first stroke of curfew rang from St Martin-le-Grand, and as he entered his own parish along Bellyeter Lane his pace quickened with his craftsman’s pulse, all his mind on the making of guns.
‘I should feel worse,’ Hawisia Stone said.
‘And you don’t?’ Rose Lipton, midwife of Fenchurch Street, tapped at the sides of Hawisia’s belly, then bent to put an ear to her tightened skin.
‘The babe is less after prodding my bile this time. Haven’t coughed up a caudle in weeks.’
‘Nor would you, not at this stage,’ said Rose with a sniff. ‘You’re not longer than six weeks from birth, mistress. Now it’s all sore muscles and devil’s air, isn’t it?’
‘Aye, it is,’ said Hawisia ruefully.
‘And will only worsen these last weeks.’
Rose adjusted the poultice, an evil-smelling mixture of jasmine, roots, dung and St Loy knew what else, all gathered in a sack at the top of Hawisia’s bare belly, right below her breasts. Hawisia suspected the midwife reused her herbs and roots for her concoctions though didn’t want to say anything for fear of putting the woman off. It was hard enough keeping Rose Lipton happy and working as she should be. Often as not it felt as if Hawisia were the one hired to serve Rose rather than the reverse, despite the good coin the midwife took away after each visit.
Rose prodded some more, pressed her palms and fingers deeper into Hawisia’s heavy mound. At one point the midwife’s hands froze. She frowned.
‘What is it?’ said Hawisia.
‘Thing’s not turned round as it should be,’ said Rose as her hands resumed their wanderings. She clucked twice. ‘Don’t like it when they get footstrong.’
‘What