Of Judgement Fallen by Steven Veerapen

Author:Steven Veerapen [Veerapen, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

Darkness.

A low throb, like a heart beating dully in the base of my skull – out of place, causing low tides of pain.

Things darted on the edge of my vision: lights, shapes. I tried to focus on them, and they fled.

Voices fluttered over me, indistinct and muffled, as though I was hearing them underwater.

Alive.

I was alive.

‘Urgh,’ I said. It wasn’t what I’d intended; but I needed to be making noise. I needed to speak. ‘Urgh.’

The voices deepened. Something nudged me in the ribs, making me squirm. I forced my eyes open in protest. Lights hovered, dancing around me, above me. I squirmed again, and wiggled movement into my hands. My fingers slid in coldness, wetness, the slime and mud of . . . the street.

But I was alive.

I tried to arrange my thoughts, to sort them into order.

Sir Thomas More’s house came forward, in a blur of St Catherine and her wheel, flowers, arbours, caged birds, books, and papers. And the scholar himself, rumpled and ranting. I tried to form his name and found I couldn’t. The pain flared again. My eyelids screwed shut against it. ‘Urgh.’

And then I felt something; my restless hands, still flailing in the muck, came upon it. It was hard, smooth.

Stick?

My fingers danced around its edges.

But why was I alive? How?

What had happened?

Bucklersbury and More refused to make way; they stood in my mind, refusing to let in anything that might have happened afterwards. My mouth was dry, my breath stinking in it.

‘Stand.’ The voice blasted at me.

Again, I opened my eyes and saw the lights, close now. It was still dark; we were deep down in the gutter of the night. And still I couldn’t seem to form clear thoughts. ‘Stand, you dog!’

Dog?

A little mongrel danced through my mind, its tail wagging in the air.

I laughed.

‘Get the creature on its feet.’

And then I was being handled. My head lolled forward, my chin dipping to my doublet. Pressure forced its way under my armpits, and I was lifted, I was flying up, up. My head jerked.

I’d been attacked, I realised – I couldn’t remember it, but surely I’d been attacked by cutpurses, night-rogues. I swallowed, bringing on a fresh wave of pain, and raised my head. Suddenly, I was released; I remained on my feet, swaying but not falling, as my saviours moved back from me. There were two lights, I saw: two men.

Didn’t I have a lantern?

‘Attack. . .’ I managed. I blinked, and then repeated it over and over, until the fellows and their torches ceased their wild swaying. I’d been attacked, to be sure, and these were my saviours. ‘Thank you. God . . . thank you. Attacked.’ My words, in my own ears, were diffuse. I’d been drinking, I remembered – wine – hippocras.

A giggle burbled up in my throat.

A hiccup killed it.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m . . . attacked.’

Two faces resolved themselves: two bearded, hardened faces, floating indistinctly above their lights. They looked at each other, not me. ‘Drunk,’ said one to the other.

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