The Invention of Fire by Holsinger Bruce

Author:Holsinger, Bruce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

He looked over at me with an admiring smile, a rarity in this poetical circumstance. “Now the lathe and screw are verdant images, aren’t they,” he mused. “And yet—and yet I don’t see the precise point of the ‘engine’ or how it could be working in the way you describe . . .”

And so it went, so it always went with Chaucer and my verse, the well-meaning criticisms twisting like knives through my ribs. We rode another mile, as I listened to him prattle on about my sagging lines and stale images, ever with the best of intentions, of course, the most friendly disposition toward my making. Nothing could reduce me to a more childlike sullenness than Chaucer’s blithe cruelties.

Chaucer, too, sank into a studied silence once he had dispensed with my verse. He seemed ill at ease, agitated in his saddle. We passed a large manor house at the edge of a half-cleared wood, then rode over a wide and swiftly flowing creek spanned by a stone bridge, well kept despite the heavy traffic on this byway from London. Upstream a train of late wheat wagons was lined up before a mill on the eastern bank, the tenants waiting their turn at the stone. Chaucer’s position allowed us to cross without paying the toll to the guards, though at the far end our way was barred by the bridge’s hermit. Robed in black with a closely cropped beard and a hood in the newest style, he cut a vivid contrast to the happily unkempt figure of Piers Goodman, a presence still heavy in my thoughts. I found the bridge hermit’s fastidious attire infuriating.

“Fair welcome to you, Master Chaucer,” he said with a bow to my companion.

“And a happy morning to you, Brother Roger.”

The hermit beamed up at me. “Sixpence for your crossing, good gentle,” he said with an entitled primness, his palm open by my left foot.

I heard myself scoff. “Here is a groat.” I flicked it down at him.

He caught it in the air, looked at Chaucer.

“John,” my friend murmured, turning from the affronted hermit. “You would never insult one of your own mouths. Please do not slight mine.”

I hesitated, my anger ebbing. “Of course.” I handed down eight pennies to make up for my rudeness, and after a satisfied nod from the hermit we were on our way.

When we had got beyond the man’s hearing Chaucer half turned in his saddle. “Margery Peveril,” he said at last, a certain reverence in his voice, as if the name were a minor sacrament.

“The woman,” I said.

“The woman, the murderess, and now the fugitive.” Chaucer hocked his throat, spat off to the side. “An unlikely fugitive, but a fugitive nonetheless. And I am charged with finding her, apprehending her and this Faulk, the smith, and bringing them both to London in chains for a glorious hanging before the commons.”

“What do you know about her?”

“Margery Peveril,” he said again, this time with a harsher inflection. “Not a lady, but an esquire’s

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