The Devil's Diadem (48 page)

One resourceful man had affixed a small sled to a pole which was itself affixed to a central gearing mechanism so that the man could push sledfuls of shrieking children round and round and round at ever faster rates. Elsewhere, adults, well-fuelled by ale, had set up circles on the ice to play Bee in the Middle.

People were selling hot nuts, dried apples, sweetmeats of every description, alcohol — whatever your heart could desire and whatever could be carried easily down to the ice (there was even one tent of whores, though Ghent hurried me past that all too quickly, despite my curiosity).

At one point our group stopped by an archery field set up in the very centre of the river, and it was not long before Alianor and I persuaded Ghent and Robert to show us their skills with the bow and arrow. Gytha watched with wide eyes (I had brought my three women with me), and when Ghent won a ribbon for his skills he presented it to the blushing girl.

I thanked him for that, for it was a sweet and courtly thing to do for a girl who had, I think, seen little pleasure in her life.

We wandered for hours, stopping now and then to rest at one of the tavern tents where we drank small beer and feasted on hot beef from one of the roasting oxen. The ice was such a novelty, and the scene so festive, that none of us truly wanted to leave.

By the late afternoon we had walked closer to the bridge. Here the ice was rougher, for the tides underneath the ice could the more easily pull at its edges, and we did not linger. We could see, also, the tops of the piles of jumbled timbers, poking through the ice and mush, that so obstructed the flow of the river that this ice pond had become possible.

There were groups of boys here who, I think, had imbibed a little too heavily of cups of full ale, for they were loud and raucous and too uncaring of the danger on the rougher ice. Several of them had brought along the smaller bows that boys often learned with, and were running about with arrows dipped in oil and set alight, that they might shoot them a little too close to their friends for comfort.

We left, lest they started shooting those arrows in our direction.

‘We should make our way back to the stairs,’ Alianor said, ‘and then make our way home.’

I nodded, and there was general agreeance. It had been a full and most enjoyable day, but I was tired now, and content to begin the gentle ride home to rest before a fire.

Everyone was weary, I think, for there was little conversation as we wandered back toward the stairs by Baynard Castle. My head slowly drooped, and, as I leaned ever more heavily on Ghent, I found myself studying the strange patterns in the ice. Occasionally objects had been caught and then frozen into the ice. There were muddy brown fish, and some flotsam and jetsam. An infant rabbit, its jaws wide open in an ever silent scream, its black eyes staring.

That made me shudder, yet I did not look away, for I was strangely fascinated by these objects that had become caught in the ice.

A few steps later I saw what looked like the partly decomposed hand of a man in the ice, its black hairs still clearly visible on its upper aspect, its wrist ragged and thick with putrid pus where the hand had been torn from its arm.

I began to feel ill, yet
still
I did not look away.

A few paces on I saw an entire body under the ice. It was blackened, yet red raw in places, and looked as if it had been burned. The layers of ice above it distorted the corpse, so that it appeared as if it had a short, thick body and impossibly long, thin limbs. Even its tail looked as if —

My heart started thudding. I stopped, staring, unable to look away.

Deep under the ice, the imp’s head swivelled so it looked up at me.

It grinned, its mouth gaping red and broken-toothed.

I opened my mouth to scream when Ghent exclaimed, ‘Mother of God! Look to that! Look to the bridge!’

The bridge? The bridge? He was worried about the bridge when underneath our feet an imp —

I blinked, and the imp was gone and there was solid ice under my feet once more. Still, I felt sick to my stomach, and had to battle the urge to void the nuts and sweetmeats I had nibbled on these past few hours.

Everyone about me was exclaiming, and I finally looked up to see what had happened.

London Bridge was afire.

I couldn’t understand what I saw for a few heartbeats, for my mind was still consumed with the vision of the imp. But the leaping and roaring of the flames and the crackling of the timbers — heard even from this distance — finally penetrated the fog that had overcome my mind, and I gasped in horror.

Those boys must have shot one of their damned flaming arrows into the jumble of timbers about the base of the piers.

‘Everyone off the ice,’ Ghent said, his voice curiously flat. ‘Now.’

He began urging us toward the stairs, still some distance away. ‘Be still, man!’ Robert de Lacy said. ‘We need to see if those flames are going to enter the city!’

‘My lord,’ Ghent said, ‘the ice is no longer safe. If the bridge collapses it will break the weir of timbers beneath it, and likely all this still water dammed upstream will rush downriver — the ice will break apart if that happens.’

Before any of us could answer, one of the central spans of the bridge crumpled in a shower of sparks, and heavy, burning beams collapsed into the jumble of ice and timbers beneath it.

There was a momentary pause, and then we all saw the timbers and ice give way.

Even this far distant we all felt the slight shudder in the ice underfoot.

‘The stairs.
Now!
’ Ghent said.

We hesitated no longer. We all moved toward the stairs as fast as we dared, Ghent holding onto my arm and half pulling me across the ice.

Every so often I glanced back to the bridge. It burned even fiercer now, and two other spans collapsed as we walked and slid our way to the steps.

Most of the crowd on the ice were staring at the bridge, even moving closer to it to catch a better glimpse.

‘I hope those small boys drowned in the cursed water,’ Ghent muttered, and I could not find it in my heart to condemn him for his uncharitable thoughts.

Suddenly there came a distinct tremor under our feet, and we heard cries of fright behind us.

‘The ice is breaking up!’ Alianor said, and unfortunately her words carried, and the people nearby panicked and rushed for the stairs.

Our way was now more difficult, for so many pushed and pummelled us, fighting to get off the ice, that we found it ever harder to move as fast as we wanted. People fell in the crush, and at one stage Ghent had to lift me bodily over a tumble of three people fighting to get up.

I looked about me, desperate to see that Isouda, Ella and Gytha were close, and felt immense relief when I saw they were near behind. If Ghent felt responsible for me, then I felt responsible for them. Their faces were panicked, as I supposed mine was, too, and the smile I tried for them failed before it even began.

‘Maeb!
Climb!
’ Ghent said, and suddenly, thankfully, there were the stairs, Ghent pushing a way through for me, and reaching behind for Alianor and my three women. Robert de Lacy lent his strength, too, and I have never felt anything so good as those solid steps underneath my feet. Above I heard the grooms we had brought with us crying our names, and shouting something about —

The stairs trembled and then fell through the air.

The ice had collapsed at their base!

We clung to railings and steps, whatever we could manage to grasp and, achingly slowly, painfully, we clambered up the now vertical steps as if they were a ladder.

Praise sweet Jesu their upper joints had stayed fastened to the wharf.

Always there was Ghent at my side or beneath me, pushing me up, supporting me, saving my life.

I was sobbing with fear — I could hear Alianor crying, too — and every moment I expected to be pulled or pushed from my precarious hold by the terrified people about me. I feared the steps would collapse with the weight of the people remaining on it. I feared one or all of my women had fallen into the river below — the ice now deadly splinters churning amid the rushing waters.

I feared the imp would not let me go, and would reach up from the ice to drag me down.

But somehow, somehow, we all managed to reach the wharf alive, our grooms reaching down to haul us up the final few feet. Even my women clambered up securely, as did the de Lacys, and we stood shaking in fear, hugging each other as we wept.

I turned to Ghent, and in my joy and relief forgot all propriety and hugged him tight, kissing his mouth, thanking him with all the strength left in my voice, for without him I know I would have died.

We were among the last to have found safety.

As I clung to Ghent I turned my head and looked over the river.

Even now I can barely describe the horror.

Almost all of the burning bridge had now collapsed, and in the doing it had destabilised the weir that had held back the waters of the Thames. Everything had been swept away, bridge and weir, in the maddened rush of water downstream.

Upstream from the bridge the ice pond had collapsed, taking with it people, horses, tents, everything and anything that had sat on its surface. Now sheets of jagged ice surged and tumbled through the water, and I could see bright flashes of some of the gaily coloured tents as they rose suddenly through the churning waves and then were sucked underneath.

I saw the flailing limbs of people, as they too were sucked and spat through the torrent.

Hundreds,
thousands
, were dying.

I turned away, unable to look, and realised that only two score or so of people had made it up the stairs from the ice.

So many. Dead.

I was wracked with sobs, and Ghent lifted me into his arms, then put me atop his own courser, mounting behind me, keeping me safe with a strong encircling arm. He shouted to the others to mount, to ride away as safe as they might, that the fire was spreading into the city.

Ghent did not wait for them to mount. Instead he kicked his courser into a canter, sending it up through the streets of London, and then out Lud Gate, the first gate we encountered. His courser shied and panicked amid the shouting people in the streets and from the smell of fear on his riders, but even with one hand Ghent controlled him with little effort, and

I have never breathed so easy as I did once we were out of the city and riding northward toward the de Lacys’ hall.

There was a white flash by our side, and I saw that someone had loosed Dulcette, and she had followed us through the gate.

Our group reformed outside the city and we stopped, far from London, on the rise leading to the de Lacy’s hall.

None of us spoke.

The entire south-western corner of the city was ablaze.

We sat our horses for a long time, watching, and then, with a sigh, Ghent turned our horse for home, and everyone followed.

Chapter Eight

I
stayed abed the next day, and only heard what news there was to be had when Ghent came to see me in the mid-afternoon.

He sat by my bed. ‘Are you well, my lady?’

Too often now these queries after my health could be roughly deciphered as, ‘Is the Pengraic heir you carry safe, my lady?’ But when Ghent asked, he sounded truly concerned for my own welfare.

‘I am, Gilbert. I am merely fatigued.’

He smiled, and I thought once again how good-looking he was.

‘I am glad,’ he said.

‘How goes London, Gilbert? Have you heard?’

He nodded. ‘It is said that near eight thousand perished in the river.’

Sweet Lord Jesu!
I could not begin to comprehend such numbers, nor the terror they must have felt in their dying.

‘The fire,’ Gilbert went on, ‘has been devastating, destroying many shops, homes, taverns and warehouses — even scorching Saint Paul’s — but it has taken relatively few lives. Sixty-three, so one of the aldermen has said. The loss of the bridge is disastrous, for it shall take many months to rebuild, and in the meantime Londoners shall need to rely on ferries for their transport to and fro the Thames.’

‘My lord’s house in Cornhill?’

‘The fire did not come anywhere near, my lady.’

‘Praise the saints. Can you send one of the grooms or servants, and instruct fitzErfast to offer what assistance he can? There must be homeless, and people need to be fed.’

Ghent nodded. ‘I have word also that Edmond is returning, together with his hunting party. They should be back within London by early tomorrow morning if they ride hard.’

‘I will return to Cornhill tomorrow, I think.’

Ghent looked concerned. ‘My lady —’

‘We will ride slow, and I will be well enough, Gilbert.’

I hesitated, then held out my hand.

He looked long and hard at it, then took it, closing his fingers gently about mine.

‘Gilbert. You saved my life. You saved
all
of our lives. I thank you, and shall tell my husband of your actions. I hope that he will reward you with more than mere grateful words.’

Ghent flushed slightly, but he nodded, and smiled.

I allowed my own smile to widen. ‘You have more than redeemed yourself for losing me in the forest. You are my saviour, Gilbert.’

He could hardly be held responsible for losing me to the dream falloways of the Old People in the forest, but I knew that Ghent felt that failure deeply.

The next morning we set off just after dawn. I knew that Raife must be either barely arrived at the Cornhill house, or close to, and I wanted to reach him as soon as possible. I knew he would be worried about me.

We avoided the western gates of London. A thin pall of smoke still hung over the south-western quarter of the city. We rode through the northern fields and orchards outside the city to Bishops Gate, where we rode down the street to Cornhill and thence to the house.

Raife had just arrived — so recently that he was still in the courtyard of the house, handing the reins of his courser to a groom.

‘Maeb!’ he cried as he saw me. ‘Praise God you are safe!’