Peter Cawdron, (c) 2023, 415pp
Anthony is a seemingly unremarkable teen apprentice to an chemist/herbalist/alchemist at an apothecary stall on the outskirts of Westminster, a small town not far from the city of London. Westminster, like Anthony, seems usual, but like Anthony, has a feature that makes it rather extraordinary. About a quarter mile from the small marketplace lies the House of Parliament, recently restored, and actually a collection of two churches and two former palaces, with the House of Commons squeezed into one of the palaces. The year is 1558, Bloody Mary is on the throne, and the relative social tranquility of the Elizabethan era is some years ahead. Fear, zealotry and chaos are the lot of Englishmen.
Anthony has uncommon curiosity about the nature of the world, and in an era where an expression of doubt could get you burned at the stake, a surprisingly skeptical view of the nature of the universe and humanity. He is molded by the two most important people in his life, his master, Master Dunmore, owner of the apothecary, and Julia, a girl his age who was blinded at age six by smallpox. His master teaches him to question; his friend teaches him to describe.
Then one day he is sent on an errand to fetch some spices. He skips along the embankment on the north shore of the River Thames, perhaps a bit too caught up in a daydream, and stumbles, falling over boulders and bouncing into the muck that serves as a low-tide edge of the river. While not badly hurt, he is bruised and stunned, and lays in the mire for a moment. A voice calls from above: “Are you well?” He looks up to see a noblewoman peering down at him. She drops well below her station just by noticing the boy, let alone offering aid. She has a couple of her guard pull Anthony up to the relative safety and dryness above. She is Lady de Brooke, who, along with her husband Lord de Brooke have an estate between the apothecary and Westminster. Turns out she’s a regular customer at the apothecary, and has taken note of the boy. They strike up a conversation, and she expresses an interest in “rocks that look like bones” (fossils). He says he knows where such could be found, to her delight. She gives him a gold sovereign (unimaginable wealth to a peasant) and bestows a promise to teach him to read.
However, he has managed, through no fault of his own, to come to the attention of Bishop Blaine, a Catholic intent on purging the land of heresy. To that end, he is busily burning any doubters at the stake. Anthony escapes, but the guards chasing him realize where he works, and snap up Julia with the notion that if you can’t burn the heretic, at least burn his friend as an object lesson. (Blaine, so far as I know, is fictional. The burnings—some 300 in all—during that time are real, a time reckoned in English history as the time of the Marian Martyrs.)
It is then that we learn the de Brookes aren’t English gentry. They aren’t English. They aren’t even human. And thus the stage is set.
Cawdron is always a delight to read, and as a child of London, I was deeply gratified by the depth of the meticulous research he has put into mediaeval London. His portrayal of the role of religion in that era, and of ideology in our era, is a voice more than urgent in this era of rising fascism. His characters are solid, his science is meticulous, and his plotting and action are, as always, top-notch.
Cawdron notes that he meant for his characters to use Elizabethan English but decided it would be a burdensome task for modern day readers. Instead, he tried to avoid modern words, saving authentic dialogue for authenticity when describing actual historical events. He elected to use wholly English spelling (tyre, kerb, centre, etc.)
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