The Bleeding Land (3 page)

Standing on the south bank he stared through the drizzle across the Thames, taking in the sprawled mass of humanity cloaked in November grey before him. The western end of the city was topped by the great mass of St Paul’s Cathedral, seat of the bishop of London. Tom recalled his father telling him that the church had once boasted an enormous spire, but that had been destroyed by lightning some eighty years ago – a sure sign of the Almighty’s displeasure with the papists, Sir Francis had said ominously. To the east at the opposite end of the city stood the Tower, England’s fortress. Arsenal,
prison
, government storehouse, royal palace and site of the national mint, its sprawling complex was London’s most important centre of state. Cathedral and Tower dominated the city’s skyline, but it was what lay in between them that sent Tom’s mind reeling, filled his nose with its stench with every gust from across the river. Market areas, wharves, guildhalls, monuments, myriad church spires, houses, and the city gates were linked by a tangle of meandering streets all crammed with people. So many people!

Rag-and-bone men soliciting folks’ saleable waste, pedlars crying their wares, woodcutters offering their skills, food vendors transporting fresh victuals. Animals, too, choked the thoroughfares; draught horses drawing carts and coaches, riding horses carrying travellers and messengers, dogs, pigs and poultry running loose in the streets. Then there were the cattle and sheep that were daily driven into the city on their way to rich men’s tables. Along with the stench of people and manure, the hearth smoke slung in dirty brown clouds above the buildings added its muscle to this assault on Tom’s senses. It was a seething, reeking clutter, a scene of chaos that half intrigued and half terrified him, so that for now he was glad that the sluggish brown river lay as a barrier between him and it.

He took the wide-brimmed hat from his head and shook the water from it, watching a ship trawling for eels, pushing its way against the tide past the Old Swan inn and the Fishmongers’ Hall. The Thames was choked with all manner of craft, from the tall ships moored in the Pool of London before the yeomen warders of the Tower, to the rowboats, or wherries as he had heard men call them, and barges that ferried passengers hither and thither.

Yet Tom knew he must soon immerse himself in the flow of folk joining the southern end of London Bridge and make his way along that most important of arteries into the city’s beating heart, where he would meet his father and brother. He would
leave
Southwark behind, passing through Bridge Gate upon whose crown the heads of traitors were skewered as ghastly reminders of what awaited such men. To Tom such barbarity reinforced his image of London as a living thing, an anarchic beast to which sacrifices must be made if some semblance of civilization were to be maintained. Many of the heads were little more than skulls now in which not even the crows would be interested, scraps of leathery skin and wisps of hair stirring in the chill breeze. That morning, when Sir Francis and Mun had left their lodgings early to be about their business in the city, Tom had walked with them as far as the bridge, there telling them he would join them later after he had explored Southwark. But the heads on London Bridge had bound him for a while with their macabre allure. He had simply stared at them, even though he knew such fascination marked him clearly as a countryman. He had stared and wondered what kind of men they had been in life and what offence had led them to that bad end. He’d wondered too how it must feel to cut off another man’s head.

Now, peering up through the grey at the pale sun, rain falling softly on his face, Tom reckoned it was approaching midday. Time to cross the bridge then and walk the two miles upstream to Westminster, the other major suburb outside London proper and where, last morning, he had marvelled at the great buildings of Westminster Hall and the royal palace of Whitehall. His father and Mun would be expecting him, for as MP for Ormskirk Sir Francis had privileged access to Westminster Hall and had promised to show Tom its famous roof today, made, Mun had announced proudly, from six hundred and fifty tons of English oak. It irked Tom that his brother knew all these things before him, but that was ever likely, seeing as their father had taken Mun to London several times even before his elder son had become a resident of the Inns of Court.

An appreciation of the complexities of English law was
an
essential quality in any gentleman, even one owning but a modest acreage, their father had explained when it had been decided that Mun, just turned eighteen, would lodge in London for two years. But this was Tom’s first experience of the city and it had not proved disappointing. He drank it in like a parched man. Yet, for all its vibrancy and chaos it was a bitter draught, because Tom knew his fate lay in the Church, where order and hierarchy suppressed instinct and channelled impulse. Such was the lot of many second sons, he knew, young men who could not inherit their father’s wealth and power. Mun would get Shear House and its estate and the Church would get Tom. First, though, he would spend four years at Oxford with Homer, Aristotle, Ovid, Virgil and Cicero, honing his skills in grammar and logic, history and mathematics. He would gain the degree of Bachelor of Arts and perhaps even go on to achieve Master of Arts. But all that could wait. For now there was London.

Tom clinched the neck of his coat in a fist and tilted his hat against the rain before stepping back into the road. Then, avoiding two oxen driven by a young man whose face was a mass of pustules, he turned left and made his way towards the bridge.

‘How is the debate proceeding, Father?’ Tom asked, banging his slipware cup against his brother’s before downing a great wash of beer. Pushing through the sopping crowds thronging Westminster had been thirsty work. Sir Francis shook his head and put his own cup to his lips, sipping carefully. His face was gaunt and the reeking tallow candles of the Three Cranes only emphasized the dark pools under his eyes.

‘I cannot get a taste for beer,’ he said, dragging his hand across his lips, ‘I find it too bitter. Let me have my ale and all is well.’ Mun rolled his eyes and Tom grinned, drinking again. ‘I fear it has gone ill for the King,’ their father said, returning to the question and glancing round to make sure he
was
not overheard. The inn was glutted with drinkers, all types of men so it seemed, and though it thrummed with noise it paid to be discreet about matters to do with the great debate. The Three Cranes being so close to the corridors and alcoves of Westminster Hall, some of those enjoying wine and beer were, Tom knew, bound to be men involved with the Grand Remonstrance in one way or another. ‘It’s fair to say the Commons is split on the issue,’ Sir Francis went on, smoothing his short beard between ringed finger and thumb, ‘with many who find it abhorrent that at times like these we should arraign the King and, furthermore, accuse His Majesty of misrule.’ He frowned darkly. ‘It is preposterous.’

‘The Irish rebels must be rubbing their hands at the thought of us all at each other’s throats,’ Mun put in, shaking his head, so that a damp curl of fair hair fell across his right eye. He took a lump of cheese from the plate between them and bit into it.

‘Indeed they must,’ Sir Francis said. ‘But Pym is persuasive. And determined to boot. Neither does he lack for supporters. Unfortunately. Their strength grows daily and those that are against them begin to fear for themselves.’ He shook his head. ‘They are all too keen to drag old skeletons from their graves.’ At that Tom thought again of the heads spiked on London Bridge. ‘Pym would have us believe there are Jesuits lurking in every shadow, waiting behind every tree. The man is a fear-monger and the thing about fear, boys, is that it binds folk. Prevents a man from pursuing his hopes.’

‘But what if he’s right, Father, and the Catholics
are
preparing to strike?’ Mun asked, chewing. ‘You only have to look to Ireland. There is no smoke without fire. Don’t you always say as much?’

‘Aye, perhaps,’ Sir Francis admitted. ‘And yet, instead of rallying support and raising an army to retake Ireland we are railing against our king.’ He scowled as though hit by a foul odour. ‘There are those who love chaos. Who would turn the world upside down.’ Sir Francis leant closer to his sons,
his
face tired and drawn; a mask of sharp angles in the dim fug. ‘Remember this, boys, fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.’ He shook his head and grimaced. ‘And I am guilty enough. This night we have even stopped a motion that would have seen much-needed arms put in the hands of our brave and loyal men in Ireland.’

‘Poor bastards,’ Mun muttered, earning a reproving glance from their father. ‘As if it wasn’t bad enough them being sent there in the first place.’

Tom had heard it said that Protestants were being savaged in Ireland. Men were being butchered, women were being raped, and children were being skewered with pitchforks and roasted in flames. And fear and chaos, he knew, were very much like fire. They were flames that devoured and spread.

‘Aye,’ Sir Francis said again, nodding, ‘God save their souls.’ Mun mumbled a curse as Sir Francis sat back, picking up his cup again. ‘And damn Pym for that.’

‘If you are too tired, Father,’ Tom began, ‘we can see Westminster another day. I have already seen so much that I fear I shall not sleep for a week once we return home.’ He rubbed his knees, trying to rein in the grin that was running away with his lips. ‘Besides, Mother says these days your bones object to London’s streets and the flagstones of Westminster’s grand halls. She says this is a young man’s city.’

Sir Francis’s brows arched, bridging bewildered eyes, then he slammed his cup down. ‘Nonsense!’ he declared. ‘I have not begun to patch up this
old
body for Heaven yet, despite your mother’s . . . concerns. We shall go there this very moment. What say you, Edmund?’

Mun finished his own beer and belched into a fist. ‘Oh if we must,’ he conceded, though there was a half smile playing on his lips. ‘We cannot have these country folk being entirely ignorant of how the kingdom is run.’ He jabbed a finger at his younger brother. ‘So long as you get back to Parbold in time to plant the wheat before Martinmas. And we’ve hogs that need
slaughtering
before the snows. London is not for the likes of you, young Master Rivers,’ he mocked in a quavering voice, repeating the very words their parish churchwarden had used when Sir Francis had first made public his intention for Tom to take the cloth.

‘I’ll slaughter
you
if you don’t watch your tongue,’ Tom threatened, presenting his eating knife to his elder brother before stabbing a chunk of cheese with it. Several slices of cured meat lay untouched beside a pot of fruit preserve, but Tom was too excited to eat properly.

‘Father, isn’t it today that they shall present the Root and Branch again?’ Mun asked, thumbing towards the inn’s door, which yawned open, vomiting a crowd of drunken apprentices into the afternoon grey. Many such men had been given the day off in light of the furore that gripped the city.

‘Root and Branch?’ Tom said, feeling light-headed because the beer was strong, of the first water he guessed.

‘A petition that seeks the exclusion of the bishops and papists from the House of Lords,’ Sir Francis explained soberly. ‘Many would take it further still and have us rid of bishops altogether.’

Tom lifted his head, understanding. ‘On the way here I heard men protesting loud enough to wake the dead. Though I’ll be damned if I could fathom their grievance. Is London always like this?’

Sir Francis shook his head, teeth dragging a small portion of beard across his bottom lip. ‘Not like this,’ he said, sharing a knowing look with Mun. ‘There’s a storm brewing, boys, and someone ought to reef the sail before we are all drowned.’

‘No fear of drowning around here,’ Mun announced. ‘I am empty.’ He upended his cup, the last drops of beer spotting the rough wooden table. ‘Either we go now or I shall have another drink and be damned with Pym and Parliament and their squawking.’

‘Edmund!’ Sir Francis hissed, glancing around them. ‘Do not
forget
that I am a member of this Parliament you would damn for the sake of a pint of beer.’

Grinning, Tom wagged an admonishing finger at his brother who stood, snatching a last piece of cheese and wrapping it in a slice of ham.

‘Come, little brother,’ Mun said, producing a shilling from his doublet and slamming it down on the table, ‘let me show you where our father and the rest of them spend their days and nights bickering like children.’

Sir Francis sighed, Tom grinned, and the two of them followed Mun, whose broad shoulders cleaved a passage through the press towards the door.

Their father had smelt trouble in the air even before they had threaded their way amongst the crowds thronging the Palace of Westminster, through St Stephen’s Porch and into Westminster Hall. Mun had seen him hitch his cloak over the hilt of his rapier, seen his thumb rubbing the swell of the weapon’s fluted pommel as they walked, as though to gently wake the sword from its sleep. And though Sir Francis had told them that he expected quite a gathering for the Root and Branch petition, Mun got the impression that even he had been surprised by the multitude. He had said nothing though, and now Mun watched his eyes sift the assembly into types of fellows, that he might deduce what new grievances had bloomed into open protest. Everyone knew that as MP for Ormskirk Sir Francis Rivers felt it his duty to keep one ear to Westminster’s ancient flagstone floor, but now Mun suspected their father was beginning to think they should have left the city that very morning. For angry crowds of apprentices swarmed around Westminster, converging on Whitehall, and the whisper was that many amongst the nobility had already retreated to their estates. ‘Even the King has quit the city for Windsor,’ Sir Francis had said. A hot fever was taking a grip of London.

They moved with the tide as folk sought to get to the west end where, in the wash of grey afternoon light from the great
arched
window, a boisterous horde, their petition presented to a stern-looking official, had taken up a chant against Catholics and popery. The tumult rose, filling Mun’s head, weaving with a thousand other voices to cram the vast hall right up to the magnificent hammer-beamed oak roof.