Excerpt from The Invention of Fire by Bruce Holsinger, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I squatted and peered in. "Good day to you, Piers."

With a start the hermit opened his eyes, then gapped his mouth in a dark and toothless smile. He kept his door closed but scooted his ragged frame toward the window, jutting his nose and lips into the aperture. "Why, John Gower himself, the Saint of Shrouded Song! You have—oh— spices in your pouch for Piers, do you, or—oh— a heady lass?"

Piers Goodman, though thin of brain, was one of the city's more useful hermits, with sharp eyes and good ears, unafraid to stick his head out of his hole and sell what he knew, which tended to be a great deal. The Hermit of St. Giles-along- the- Wall- by- Cripplegate was the rather pompous title he had chosen for himself long ago, and for years its grandeur fit him. Nobles from the king's household, bureaucrats from the Guildhall and Chancery, mercers and aldermen: all sought his counsel on matters large and small, climbing up to the old storeroom he had claimed as his hermitage, offering thanks, charity, and spilled secrets to a man as discreet as he was pious—or so it appeared to most of those who consulted him. In reality the hermit leaked like an old wine cask, sharing the private lives of others for trifles: coins, fruits and pies, the occasional whore. In recent years the cask would often run dry, though with Piers Goodman you seldom knew what you might get.

It took a while to lead him around to the subject of the day, but when I finally did, he was as usual quite forthcoming. "Strangers, you say? Company of men? Oh, we've had our share of strangers we have, and companies—why, just Saturday or was it Tuesday a little brace of—oh— Welshmembers it was. Whole flock of Welshmembers, herded through Cripplegate quick as you please. Piers saw them he did, looking down through his slitty slit, and Gil Cheddar told him all about it. Big trouble for the mayor, says Gil Cheddar, those Welshmembers. And had a carter of Langbourn Ward up here—oh— last week? Weeping mess he was, too, with a sad sad sad sad story to tell about his cart and his cartloads. What's in his cart and cartloads, Gower, hmm, what's in his cart and all his cartloads? Not faggots, mind, not beefs, mind, not Lancelot, mind, but—"

"Stop there, Piers. A company of Welshmen, you say?"

"Aye, Welshmembers they were, and right through the gate they went, says Gil Cheddar, who brings Piers his supper and his—"

"You said this Gil Cheddar told you about them?"

"Aye he did, told me all that business. Not ale, mind, not—"

"And who is Gil Cheddar?"

"An acolyte of St. Giles Cripplegate is Gil Cheddar, and the sweetest face you'll ever see on him. Gil Cheddar brings his old hermit his suppers he does—not every day, but some days his suppers he does. Breads, fishes, cheeses, a dipper of ale for Piers and I'll thank you for a piece of silver, and now a song for you, Gower? A song of hermits pricking bold, aye, that is what Piers'll seemly sing." And he intoned it in his nose: "I loved and lost and lost again, my beard hath grown so grey. When God above doth ease my pain, my cock shall rise to play . . ."

I pushed a coin through the window and left him to his melody. Back on the walkway I had a decision to make: proceed along the wall through the remaining gates or descend to the outer part of the ward and try to find Gil Cheddar. It was not a feast, and as an acolyte, Cheddar would likely not appear at St. Giles until later in the day. I would return in several hours.

Soon after Cripplegate the wall bent southward, angling past the peculiar roof of St. Olave's and the five towers placed like sentries above this misshapen corner of the city. I learned nothing at Aldersgate nor at Newgate, where I had extensive connections among the guard, though I did gather a few nuggets about unrelated matters for later use. On leaving Newgate I got a warning from one of the guards to watch my step farther on. As I soon discovered, the walkway had collapsed perhaps forty feet short of Ludgate, beams leaning askance from the wall, planks dangling creakily in the wind. A heavy scaffold had crushed an abandoned shack beneath, leaving a sprawl of broken timber that looked too rotten for salvage.

Excerpted from The Invention of Fire by Bruce Holsinger. Copyright © 2015 by Bruce Holsinger. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.