A Burnable Book

Set in London during the spring of 1385, the novel unfolds amid the tensions of King Richard II's reign, as hostility deepens between the young king and his powerful uncle, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

The story opens on the Moorfields outside London's walls, where Agnes Fonteyn, a prostitute, watches from dense brush as a dark-cloaked man interrogates a young woman by a dying fire. He demands something in what sounds like Italian, repeating "Doovay leebro" ("Where is the book?"), but the girl refuses to answer. Before he kills her with a hammer blow, the girl screams a cryptic English couplet into the night. Agnes recovers a bundle the dying girl thrust at her: a book wrapped in embroidered cloth depicting royal heraldry. Unable to read, Agnes takes both items and slips into the city.

John Gower, the novel's narrator, is a poet and information broker living in Southwark who trades in the secrets of powerful men. Recently widowed, he meets his old friend Geoffrey Chaucer, the poet and controller of the wool custom, at an undercroft tavern. Chaucer, anxious after a recent trip to Italy, asks Gower to find a mysterious book, admitting only that it "could cost me my life" (14). Chaucer pressures Gower further by threatening to expose a damaging secret about Gower's son.

Gower's investigation reveals a dangerous conspiracy. Katherine Swynford, Lancaster's mistress, tells him a young woman posing as a lady-in-waiting stole a manuscript from Lancaster's Westminster grange and was murdered on the Moorfields. Robert Braybrooke, the bishop of London, identifies the manuscript as the Liber de Mortibus Regum Anglorum ("The Book of the Deaths of English Kings"), attributed to an ancient writer called Lollius. The book contains prophecies foretelling the deaths of English kings, and a thirteenth prophecy predicts King Richard's assassination.

Meanwhile, Agnes flees to her older sister Millicent Fonteyn, who learned to read at the priory of St. Leonard's Bromley and now struggles with poverty on Cornhull. Millicent deciphers the thirteenth prophecy: Richard is to be killed on St. Dunstan's Day (May 19) at a bishop's palace by butchers who will strike during a liturgical procession at the singing of the word spiritus. The sisters realize the embroidered cloth serves as a key to the book, its heraldic imagery tying the prophecy to identifiable noble houses.

A parallel thread follows Eleanor Rykener, a prostitute on Gropecunt Lane who lives as both man and woman. Eleanor discovers the murdered girl's body while searching for Agnes and becomes entangled in the hunt for the book. Eleanor's fourteen-year-old brother Gerald Rykener is apprenticed to Nathan Grimes, a brutal Southwark butcher. Gerald overhears Grimes being recruited by a priest to lead an attack on the king, with the prophecy as justification.

The sisters attempt to sell the book through Thomas Pinchbeak, a senior lawyer. The book changes hands repeatedly: Eleanor steals it from the Pricking Bishop, the Southwark brothel run by Agnes and Millicent's mother, Bess Waller; Millicent reclaims it; and Millicent sells it to Pinchbeak's agent for what she believes is forty marks in gold. The purse contains lead plugs. While the sisters were making the exchange, an intruder attacked Agnes at their lodgings. Agnes dies in Millicent's arms, her last words pointing to her killer's hooked facial scar, which she calls a "crochet."

Gower's son, Simon Gower, returns unexpectedly from Italy, where he served in the company of the English mercenary Sir John Hawkwood. Simon claims his betrothed, Seguina d'Orange, died of fever. Despite suspicions rooted in a long estrangement, Gower welcomes Simon home, but armed men soon seize him for treason.

Gower travels to Oxford and obtains a copy of the De Mortibus from Sir John Clanvowe, a knight of the king's chamber. He confronts Chaucer, who reacts with shock at the murder and hysterical laughter at the thirteenth prophecy, then insists Gower find the book at any cost.

The threads converge on St. Dunstan's Day. At St. Leonard's Bromley, Prioress Isabel Syward recognizes the embroidered cloth as a forgery designed to frame Lancaster and instructs Millicent to replace Lancaster's heraldry with that of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Gower coordinates the countermove: The altered cloth will pass through Swynford to Joan of Kent, the king's mother, who will reveal it at the critical moment.

At Winchester Palace, the feast proceeds. During the procession to mass, Grimes and his butchers charge the king with cleavers at the word "Spiritus" in the hymn. Royal archers cut them down; the attack was anticipated. Oxford reads the thirteenth prophecy aloud, interpreting it to incriminate Lancaster. Joan of Kent intervenes, unfurling the altered cloth showing Oxford's arms. Swynford has slipped a duplicate card into the deck used for a card game at the feast, ensuring both Lancaster and Oxford appear equally implicated. The lord chancellor, Michael de la Pole, claims to have intercepted a French dispatch proving the affair was a foreign intelligence operation. The king orders reconciliation.

Millicent follows Sir Stephen Weldon, the chief knight of Oxford's household, from the palace, recognizes the hooked scar Agnes described, and identifies him as her sister's killer. She overhears him planning a second attack on Trinity Sunday. Weldon pursues her to the Pricking Bishop and kills Bess Waller with his sword. Gerald leaps from a window onto the knight, and the brothel's women swarm Weldon and beat him to death. His final words to Gower are a warning: "Hawks always strike twice" (380).

Chaucer confesses: He wrote the De Mortibus himself in Florence as a literary amusement, inventing Lollius as a fictional author. Simon stole the draft, added the thirteenth prophecy out of jealousy over Chaucer's affair with Seguina, and wrapped it in an embroidered cloth Seguina had made years earlier. Seguina, Gower learns, was the daughter of a Castilian knight whose wife was raped by Prince Edward, King Richard's father. Lancaster saved the family. Seguina traveled to England alone to destroy the book and was the woman murdered on the Moorfields.

The chancellor reveals another layer: Simon was never a criminal. His apparent past offenses were staged by the crown to insert him into Hawkwood's organization as a spy. Simon served faithfully but went rogue, writing the thirteenth prophecy and manipulating all factions. He also planted a coded message designed to turn Hawkwood against his loyal lieutenant Adam Scarlett, scuttling Hawkwood's plans for an English invasion.

Gower puzzles over Seguina's dying couplet until Millicent provides the key. The phrase "doovay leebro" confirms the killer spoke Italian. "City's blade" is a pun on the Latin urbis, pointing to Pope Urban. The true assassin belongs to a papal delegation visiting England, and the attack will come on Trinity Sunday during the procession at Westminster Abbey. Gower races to Westminster and alerts the chancellor as a Dominican friar pushes toward the king with a concealed knife. The chancellor's men cut the assassin down moments before he can strike.

In the aftermath, Millicent takes permanent refuge at St. Leonard's Bromley as a laysister, a woman who lives and works in a religious house without taking formal vows. Eleanor secures Gerald a position at the priory. An anonymous endowment from a Southwark man, clearly Gower, funds the priory's aid to the prostitutes of London and Southwark. Gower visits Chaucer's empty customhouse and reads the opening lines of a new work set "In Southwark at the Tabard," the beginning of The Canterbury Tales. Walking home, Gower reflects on the fragility of sight as dark spots cloud his vision and thinks of the simple, proper objects of a life.