A Mystery Of Errors

And drunkenness was less the exception than the rule. Smythe had long since learned that his habit of making an infusion of boiling water with dried clover flowers, mint, and raspberry leaves with honey, a healthful and revitalizing recipe meant to clarify the mind, taught him in his boyhood by old Mary, the village cunning woman, would be considered quite the eccentricity. Water, as everybody knew, was merely for washing up and cooking, certainly not for drinking. Ale was the universal beverage, imbibed at breakfast, dinner, supper, and all throughout the day, save by the more affluent citizens of London, who drank wine, all of which created a constant state of ferment where violence could brew and street fights could erupt at any time.

Shakespeare and Smythe stumbled into just such a street fight shortly after they had entered the city, passing through one of the large, arched gates in the encircling stone wall. For Smythe, it had felt like passing through a gate from one world into another. They were assailed by a dizzying cacophony of smells, from the market stalls selling fish, meats, produce, breads, and cheeses, to the heady, pungent odor of the horse droppings and the still fouler stench of human waste and garbage that was simply dumped into the streets, to be picked at by the crows and ravens who nested in the trees and made their meals out of whatever refuse they could find, in addition to the fleshy morsels that they tore from the severed heads stuck up on the spikes outside the law courts.

There was noise and tumult assailing them from every quarter, with the squeaking, clomping sounds of ungreased cart wheels jouncing by on cobblestones, the snorting and neighing of the horses and the jingling of their tack, the clacking of the beggars’ clap-dishes, the ringing of shopkeepers’ bells, and the cries of the peddlers and costermongers-”Hot oakcake! Hot oatcake! Come an’ buy! Come an’ buy!” “New brooms ‘ere! New brooms!” “Whaddyalack-whaddyalack-whaddyalack now?” “Rock samphires! Getchyer fresh rock samphires!”

As they moved through the streets, another cry suddenly went up with great alacrity, rising over and above the din they heard around them as it was taken up by many other voices. “Clubs! Clubs! Clubs!”

“Clubs?” said Smythe, frowning with puzzlement.

No sooner had he spoken than they found themselves engulfed by a stampeding mob that came streaming out from around the corner like the abruptly released waters of a sluiceway, forcing them back toward the gutter that held all the filth and garbage that would ferment there like an odious, swampy brew until the next rain washed it down into Fleet Ditch.

“Street riot!” Shakespeare cried out, pulling hard at Smythe’s arm in an effort to drag him back out of the way, but the crowd had already surged around them and they found themselves caught up in its momentum and carried back the way they came.

It was impossible to tell who was fighting whom or how the whole thing had started. All they knew was that they were suddenly caught up in a crush of people trying to get away from the rising and falling clubs and flashing blades that were at the heart of it. Smythe slipped and tried to keep his footing on the slimy cobblestones near the gutter running down the center of the street, where most of the noxious muck had gathered and where people, forced into it by the press of bodies all around them, were falling down into the stinking, toxic ooze and being trampled. Someone bumped into him and Smythe pushed the man away roughly, sending him sprawling as he glanced around quickly for the poet.

“Will! Will!”

“Tuck!”

He spotted him, reaching out for help, being jostled repeatedly and trying desperately to keep his footing. He had lost his staff and he looked panic-stricken. Smythe stretched out his arm and, just at that instant, the poet lost his footing, slipped, and fell.

“Got you!” Smythe said, seizing his wrist and yanking him up and back from the filthy mire at the center of the street.

“Odd’s blood!” said Shakespeare, gasping for breath as Smythe shoved their way roughly through the crowd to the nearest wall. “A man could get himself hurt around here.”

“Watch out, the City Marshal’s men!” somebody cried.

The sound of hoofbeats on cobblestones rose over the shouting and the clanging of steel as the marshal’s men came galloping upon the scene, responding to the riot that had been moving through the streets and causing considerable damage. There was a rather large group of young men, in various styles of dress, going at it with a vengeance with both clubs and swords, though Smythe had no way of telling who was on whose side. It looked like a wild melee. The combatants, however, either did not seem to suffer from that problem, or else they were simply fighting with anyone within reach.