BEAR PUT A HAND ON MY shoulder. “Crispin,” he said softly, “try to show less worry. The worst disguise is fear.”
“What if they stop me?”
“I don’t think they will. But if they do, always remember what I told you; run away. Head into a crowd. Your size will hide you.”
Watching intensely, I saw that those trying to get into the town had formed two lines, which pressed through a gauntlet of soldiers. As we slowly made our way forward, I could feel myself becoming increasingly timorous.
“Here’s a better way,” Bear said into my ear. “When I tell you to—when we’re close to the gate—start playing the pipe. I’ll dance.”
“But won’t that make them pay more attention?” I said.
“Do as I say,” he said, but in so tense a fashion I dared not question him.
Instead, we edged along. Just as we approached the gate—and the soldiers—Bear said, “Begin.”
I hastily made the sign of the cross over my heart, called on Saint Giles to protect me, and with trembling fingers took up the recorder and began to play. Bear began to beat his drum and dance. People turned to look. There were smiles on their faces, and from some, applause. That included the soldiers.
We fairly well danced our way up to the gate and through the town walls with not so much as an unkind look from anyone.
“Well done,” said Bear with a palpable sigh of relief as we entered Great Wexly itself.
If I had been amazed by what I’d seen on the road, I was more astonished once within Great Wexly. For we had hardly passed through the gate, when I saw more people—men, women, and children—in that one moment than I had seen in all my life together. Just the din that burst upon my ears was beyond belief. People were shouting, calling, arguing, laughing, selling their wares to any and all from where they stood. Wandering water carriers were proclaiming what they sold. So were those who offered apples, lavender, or ribbons.
It was hard to know who was talking to whom. It all appeared to my eyes and ears like a flock of crows screaming at one another in a crowded field of new-threshed wheat.
No, it was more like a dense forest, not of trees, but people. For we could not walk straight, but had to weave our way along, constantly bumping, banging into others.
In Stromford Village you could not pass anyone without knowing them and receiving some nod of greeting, perhaps a grunted word or two. Even I received such notice. There, strangers were as rare as shooting stars, and just as portentous. But though Bear and I were strangers to Great Wexly—and I a wolf’s head—no one seemed to care, though they did glance at Bear, if only on account of his size.
Still, what assaulted my senses more than anything—aside from the sheer numbers of people of all ages and the ensuing cacophony—was the stench that filled the air: rotting goods, food, dung, manure, human slop, and swill, mixed together into such a ghastly brew as to make me want to swoon.
In my village, refuse was heaved behind our houses. In Great Wexly, foulness lay on the wide road where we walked. This road was no longer dirt and mud, but laid out in stone. A filth-filled gutter—like an open gut—ran down its middle. Even as we passed, I saw house shutters opened and muck heaved out on the street, sometimes dousing passersby, to the hilarity of those watching, arousing fury from the victims.
Nor was it only people I saw, but animals: pigs, chickens, geese, dogs—and rats—all of which scurried among the crowds with as little thought to people as the people seemed to give to them.
Pressing in on the crowded, narrow streets were looming walls of close-built buildings, structures two, sometimes three, stories high, with slate, not thatch, roofs. These houses were, for the most part, built of timber beams with pale mortar filling in between the wood. Here and there stood stone buildings of even grander proportions. Many houses had their upper stories built so that they extended over the narrow streets, blotting out the sky.
The houses had countless windows, mostly with shutters but some with glass, more than I had ever seen before. As for doors, I did not think the world had so many. These people, I thought, must live their lives by little more than entries and exits.
And again, on many places there was black cloth draped with intertwining ribbons of blue and gold. I asked Bear what it meant.
This time he replied, “Someone important has died.”
From numerous buildings hung great wooden images of things: a pig here, a helmet there, a fish, a jacket, a hoop, even a sheaf of wheat. These—as I was to discover—were emblems to inform passersby of the nature of the business or goods made or sold therein. Tradesmen simply lowered their shutters onto the streets, making a kind of shelf from which they marketed their goods. As for sleeping and eating, people did that in the second-or third-floor solars.
There was so much to see, I barely looked at one thing but felt compelled to look at yet another. Indeed, there were so many objects to look at that if I had had ten eyes I could not have seen them all. It made my head ache.
More than once Bear had to haul me in, or yell, for, dumbfounded by what I saw, I would halt in my tracks and stand in danger of being knocked down and trampled by the swarming people. For instance, I saw a bakery that sold bread that was swan white, something I had never seen before. And meat. I swear, by Jesus’name, there was more meat than the whole kingdom could consume. I had always known that Stromford Village had little enough to eat, but assumed it was no different from the rest of the world. Now I discovered how poor my village was.
On and on we went, until Bear unexpectedly grabbed me by my arm and swung me around.
“Look,” he said.
We were in front of a building from which a straw-stuffed man, painted all in green, dangled from a pole.
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“It’s the Green Man tavern. Where my affairs will be conducted.”
Bear boldly pushed through the doorway. Though I followed on his heels, I was more than a little hesitant, knowing his business—as he had said himself—was dangerous.