The Great Revolt by Paul Doherty

Author:Paul Doherty
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781780107646
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2016-01-29T05:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

‘Truth Has Been Imprisoned Under A Lock.’

(The Letters of John Ball)

They left Blackfriars a short while later in a skiff rowed by Brother John and three men-at-arms from the friary. They deliberately hugged the riverbank, slipping past Castle Baynard, the Wardrobe and other riverside mansions. Cranston was correct: the city was in the hands of the mob. Clouds of grey smoke drifted up against the sky. The glow of fiercely raging fires was commonplace. The riverside gallows were heavy with corpses, whilst here and there rose clusters of poles driven into the ground, each bearing a bloodied severed head. The occasional horseman raced along the quayside. Strident cries and clamour drifted across whilst the stench of burning mingled with the usual fishy smells of the riverbank. Further along flaming plumes of smoke shot up from warehouses put to the torch. Foreigners and those marked down for vengeance had been summarily hanged just above the water line.

Athelstan glimpsed two corpses bobbing in the swollen river, and one of the rowers claimed he’d seen three more, all chained together. A man-at-arms murmured that the Earthworms had allegedly impaled some prisoners on sand banks further down the river. Certainly fear seemed to hang over the usually busy Thames: wherries, barges, fishing boats, cogs and bumboats had all disappeared. Ships from foreign parts had slipped their moorings, moving downriver towards the safety and security of the gull-swept waters of the estuary.

Cranston gestured towards the city. ‘They will all be there,’ he muttered bitterly. ‘They’ll have swarmed out of their dungeons of eternal night, their filthy mumpers’ castles, cellars and sewers which never see the daylight, Madcap and Mudfog, Cut-throat and Back-stabber, Daniel the daggerman and Richard the riffler, garbed in shit-strewn rags but armed with the sharpest blades. Harvest time has arrived with easy plunder and pretty pickings …’

‘And how do you think this will end?’

‘Someone, Athelstan, will have to strike, and strike swiftly, at the very heart of this chaos. Now, brace yourself.’

The small wherry began to rise and fall on the growing swell which hurtled them towards the arches of London Bridge, its pillars and columns protected by sturdy starlings. The noise of the river grew to a constant thundering, drowning even the clacking of the mills and filling their nostrils with a salty tang which almost concealed the rank smell from the nearby tanneries. Athelstan glanced up at the bridge: even that had not escaped the fury of the mob. He glimpsed darting flames and a moving pall of black smoke.

‘May the guardian angel of the bridge protect us!’ one of the men-at-arms shouted, the usual prayer of those who were brave or rash enough to shoot the turbulent, thrashing waters between the arches. Athelstan closed his eyes, murmuring, ‘Jesu Miserere’ and then they were through, aiming like an arrow towards the Tower quayside. Athelstan immediately sensed something was wrong. All the gates, windows and towers overlooking the river quayside were firmly shuttered, and he glimpsed men-at-arms behind the crenellations on the soaring walls.

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