Clerkenwell Tales [Paperback]

Peter Ackroyd opts for full immersion in The Clerkenwell Tales after dipping a toe, or ten, in the Middle Ages with Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination. The Clerkenwell Tales is a gripping novel about murder and religious and political intrigue in 14th century London. As hinted at in the title, a cap is generously doffed to The Canterbury Tales; several characters and chapter headings mimic Chaucer and, at least superficially, it takes the form of a series of interconnected tales.

Although this is a work of fiction, it is nonetheless as rich in historical material as, say, his evocative London: A Biography. Set in 1399, it's heavily underwired by events surrounding Henry Bolingbroke's usurpation of Richard II. On the whole an appendix, dubbed "The Author's Tale", keeps the Ye Olde London factoids from intruding on the yarn but there are moments, especially when he touches on Medieval customs and eating habits, where the research bubbles to the surface. However, like Hawksmoor and The House of John Dee, it's Ackroyd's judicious use of the more esoteric shards of the capital's past that really fuels the drama. This is, after all, Clerkenwell in the era of the mystery plays; a district inhabited by quack physicians, dung rakers, heretical sects and murderous clerics. (Think Umberto Eco in EC1.)

Clarice, the novel's demonic central force, is a sister of the House of St Mary beset by visions. "Some called her the mad nun ... others revered her as the Blessed Maid of Clerkenwell" but in this "turbulent time of a weak and wretched king" Clarice's prophecies of impending doom strike an ominous chord. Elsewhere in the City, a shadowy group of pre-eminent Londoners, known as Dominus, have long been plotting to dethrone Richard and install Henry. William Exmewe, an Austin Friar and Dominus member, has slowly nurtured a gang of lowly religious dissenters--the foreknown, or predestined ones--to, unknowingly, aid their cause. Believing themselves, as Christ's true followers, to be absolved from all sin, William has persuaded them to wage, essentially, a terrorist campaign to bring on God's day of judgement. The predestined ones will fire five churches, making five wounds upon London, mirroring the five wounds of Christ and the five circles of an ancient Christian symbol. (A mystical five-pointed pentagram was something of a motif in Hawksmoor.) Quite how these schemes (and counter schemes) pan out is best left unspoiled. Ackroyd fans and anyone who savours cunning, intellectually exhilarating mystery tales will not be disappointed. --Travis Elborough --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

""The Clerkenwell Tales" is a truly extraordinary feat of historical imagination: a slim novel, straining at the seams with a sort of macabre relish, in which disgust and enthusiasm jostle."
--"The Sunday Telegraph"
"A gripping thriller which also happens to be wonderfully full of engaging historical detail and conversation-enhancing words like 'hopharlot.'" --"Literary Review
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"["The Clerkenwell Tales"] is a pacy novel brimming with Ackroyd's imaginative use of scholarship. This is more than a reworking of earlier material, be it Chaucer's or his own. Ackroyd is clearly out to impress, and it's worked." --"The Daily Telegraph
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"Historical fiction of the utmost potency." --"The Daily Mail
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"Ackroyd's 'colour' is so curious, so rich and so variegated that there is something in almost every sentence to sharpen one's sense of late 14th-century London as squirmingly alive--and extremely pungent . . . a cunning little intrigue." --"The Spectator
""Ackroyd's learning is as impressive as his imagination . . . Like Chaucer, Ackroyd sees literature and history as part of the same tradition. --"The Observer
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""The Clerkenwell Tales" is a tour-de-force, full of rich imaginings and strange happenings. It is as finely wrought as an illuminated manuscript." --"The Scotsman
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'A truly extraordinary feat of historical imagination' Sunday Telegraph'The Clerkenwell Tales is a brilliantly imagined thriller' Guardian

The scene is London, in 1399. It is the last year of the fourteenth century, and there is talk of an apocalypse. Richard II is on the throne, yet strange signs and portents are troubling the latter part of his reign. By the side of the River Fleet in Clerkenwell the people are restless, disenchanted with the church and their King. The streets of London are rife with rumour, heresy, espionage and murder and at the centre of the confusion is the nun, Sister Clarice, who has been vouchsafed visions of the future. Is she a genuine prophet, or the tool of earthly powers? This is a story of adventure and suspense set in the late medieval world. As in many of Peter Ackroyd's novels the distant past is no longer a foreign country but something alarmingly close and authentic. As one critic has put it, 'he is our age's greatest London imagination'. (20030723)

Peter Ackroyd lives in London. He is the author of biographies of Dickens, Blake and Thomas More and of the bestselling London: The Biography. His most recent book is Albion: the Origins of the English Imagination. His novels are listed opposite with * beside the historical novels. (20030723)

Chapter One

The Prioress's Tale

Dame Agnes de Mordaunt was sitting in the window of her chamber, looking out over the garden of the House of Mary at Clerkenwell. Her aunt had been prioress before her, and she assumed familial responsibility for the acres as well as the souls under her care. The garden was called 'Forparadis', 'Out of Paradise', but on this mild February morning it seemed blessed with the air of Eden itself. It was triangular in shape, in commemoration of the Blessed Trinity, and there was a triangular bed on each side. The three paths connecting them had been constructed with thirty-three flagstones; the three walls around the garden, each one of thirty-three feet, were built out of three layers of stone - pebble stone, flint and rag stone. Some lilies had been planted round a cherry tree in token of the Resurrection, and in the language of flowers might spell the words she knew by heart, 'The just man will grow like the lily, and he will flourish in the sight of God.' But then Dame Agnes sighed. Who could bring more unhappiness upon this house? Who can give more heat to the fire, or joy to heaven, or pain to hell?

In the open fields beyond the walled garden, stretching down to the river, she could see the malt-house with its dovecote, the familiar cart-house, and the turf-house beside the stables. On the western bank of the Fleet river stood the mill-house and, on the other side, a cottage of whitewashed walls and thatched roof which belonged to the bailiff of the convent. The miller and the bailiff were engaged in a protracted lawsuit over their rights to the river which flowed between them. They had often taken one of the Thames barges from the mouth of the Fleet to Westminster in order to press their cases with a judge or a sergeant-at-law, but nothing had been resolved; the boat costs twopence, the bailiff had said to Agnes, but the law costs a man everything. The prioress had tried to intercede but had been told by her cellaress, among others, that she might as well spread honey among thorns.

She could smell the steam coming from the kitchen across the cloister, and could hear the clatter of brass plates being washed for bread and beef after prime. Would the world always run in this way until the day of doom? We are like drops of rain, falling slantwise to the earth. Her monkey, sensing her melancholy, clambered upon her shoulders and began to play with the gold ring suspended on a silken thread between her breasts. She sang to it a new French song, 'Jay tout perdu mon temps et mon labour', and then played handy-dandy with a hazelnut.

She had entered the House of Mary while still a young girl, and had somehow maintained the dazed demureness of her childhood. But she could also be excitable and irascible, taking pride in her exalted position as a child might. Some of the younger nuns whispered that, on Innocents Day, she ought to couple with the Boy Bishop. Her chamber was hung with green cloths, together with curtains of green velvet. Green was the colour considered to be friendly to the underworld spirits. It were wise, she had said, not to wake the well. This clerk's well lay just beyond the stone wall of the convent, a few feet from the infirmary, and was deemed to be a sacred place.

At this hour of the morning she drank either ypocras or claree, the sweet wine soothing her stomach made tender by the ordeals which she had recently endured. Rumours of the strange events within the convent had already reached as far as the cookshops of East Cheap and the fish-stalls of Friday Street; although Agnes had not been informed of these somewhat garbled reports, she was aware of a strange disquiet in the vicinity and felt uneasy. She dipped her finger into the wine and honey before giving it to her monkey to suck. 'The first finger is the little man,' she murmured to it in a childish voice which would have embarrassed her in company. 'This is the leech finger, for it is the one that the physician uses. The next is called the long man. This one here is the toucher or lick-pot. Do you see? I touch your nose with it.' There was a sharp rap upon the door, and she rose quickly from the window seat. 'Who is knocking?'

'Idonea, ma dame.'

'Enter in God's name, Idonea.'

The sub-prioress, an elderly nun whose face was as raw and as pitted as over-salted meat, hardly waited for the invitation. She made a hurried pretence at bowing, but it was clear that she could not contain her excitement. 'She has fallen into a fit. She is speaking in another voice than her own rightful voice.'

Agnes looked with pity, as always, at the ill-favoured visage of Idonea. 'She is fighting with God.'

There was no need to explain who 'she' was. The mad nun of Clerkenwell, Sister Clarice, had been conceived and born in the tunnels beneath the convent.

'Where is she now?'

'In the painted chamber.'

There had been unhappiness before in the House of Mary. A great scandal had been provoked by certain nuns under the rule of Agnes's aunt, Joyeuse de Mordaunt, whose manifest infirmities prevented her from keeping control over her flock.

Two hundred yards from the convent stood the more celebrated priory of St John of Jerusalem, the house of the Knights Hospitallers. A great congeries of stone buildings, chapels, orchards, gardens, fishponds, wooden dwellings and outhouses which stretched as far as Smithfield to the south and the Fleet river to the west, it was an ancient foundation, rendered more sacred by the relics which had been the gifts of several popes, among them a phial of milk from the breasts of the Virgin Mary