The Bleeding Land

by Giles Kristian

  ‘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.

  Sir Francis removed his kidskin gloves and turned to Mun through the press, wincing against the din. ‘Where is Tom?’ he shouted. ‘I thought he was with us.’

  Mun shrugged, craning his neck for any sign of his younger brother. The great hall was a seething mass of black coats and broad-brimmed hats that gave Mun the impression of a dark, tempestuous sea in which a man could be drowned if he did not keep his wits about him.

  ‘You know Tom, Father,’ he said through a smile, as though that was explanation enough, for amongst the Rivers family Tom was famous for having a wandering mind and the feet to match.

  But Sir Francis shook his head, brows shadowing flinty eyes. ‘This is no time for your brother’s games. Find him, Edmund.’

  Mun nodded and, hitching his cape back over the hilt of his own rapier, waded into the swell.

  Tom had not yet set foot in Westminster Hall. Instead, he had let himself get snarled up amongst a knot of rabble-rousers and found himself more or less borne south along Margaret’s Street, past the sprawl of ancient chambers, parliament buildings and law courts, like a leaf on the wind. And a bitter wind, too. Several of this band, which was largely made up of apprentices by the looks of their close-shorn heads, eyed him suspiciously, which was hardly surprising, he supposed, given his fine clothes and long hair. One of the louder apprentices, a bullet-headed, stocky man, had even asked if he was a Catholic, to which Tom had replied that he most certainly was not, and this had seemed to satisfy the man, who had given an approving nod and resumed his raillery against papists. For the mob was angry. Many brandished cudgels or balled fists, though none of them so far had threatened Tom as they continued through the pervasive drizzle that thickened the air with the tang of wet wool. So, his heart hammering in his chest, Tom let them and his own curiosity lead where either would.

  Which was past the building his father had earlier told him was the Court of Requests, then into the House of Lords chamber, where he was confronted by a wall of uproarious noise that took him aback, making his head spin. Three hundred or more souls, men and women both, had crammed into the chamber, all eager to get near the rails at the east end of the place where the business was being done. A poor view, it seemed, did nothing to blunt their passions and they bellowed, crowed and squawked, their voices making the loudest sound that Tom had ever heard. And yet he would not retreat, not until he had seen for himself the object of the crowd’s rage, and so he thrust himself into the maelstrom.

  Being the son of a knight and looking like one too still had its advantages, he realized, even in a city where ‘the embers of reform’, as his father had put it, were beginning to glow, and men instinctively shuffled aside so that Tom was drawn inexorably through the clamorous, damp-smelling array and was soon spat out at the other side. Where he found himself face to face with a grim-looking soldier who hefted his halberd towards him in warning, the wicked-looking, rust-spotted blade gleaming dully in the candlelight. Tom showed his palms, a gesture that said he had no intention of coming any closer. And nor did he. Some of the soldiers were no older than he and nervous-looking, their eyes flicking across the boisterous throng, bloodless hands gripping their halberds a little too tightly. Glancing around, Tom saw scorn and malice twisting every face whether yeoman, journeyman, apprentice, or gentleman. To his right was a woman who had left her head uncovered to show off her elaborate coiffure; Tom suspected she was a beauty but could not be sure with her face warped by the squawking of obscenities that would make a sailor blush.

  In sconces along the oak-panelled walls candles, whose wicks needed trimming, were failing against the dark and miserable afternoon, so that with all the people, smoke and noise, Tom was reminded of the rowdy gaming houses in the Bankside and Montague Close that Mun enjoyed telling him about.

  A shoulder struck him square in the back, shoving him forward.

  ‘Stay back, sir!’ the soldier yelled and Tom replied that he would if only he could. Wearing an iron helmet and back- and breastplate over a thick buff-leather coat, the soldier was one of twelve tasked with keeping the crowd from encroaching on the Lords and the man before them: an old grey-bearded priest who Tom perceived was being accused of some crime, though he could not yet say what.

  ‘Who is he?’ he asked the soldier, but the man ignored him to glare threateningly – but do no more than that – at an apprentice who had spat a wad of phlegm at the priest. So Tom asked the same question of a man beside him whose face bore the pitted scars of the pox. Like many around him the man was smoking a pipe, its fumes thickening air already acrid with burning tallow, wet cloth and sweat.

  ‘He’s a Scot,’ the man spat, nodding towards the priest. ‘Name’s Robert Phillip. He’s the Queen’s confessor, a damned papist.’

  Insults cut through the fug, most of them aimed at the elderly priest, but if they were arrows he was suited in plate armour and seemed oblivious of them.

  ‘This is all because he is a Catholic?’ Tom asked, staring at Phillip and straining to hear what the Speaker for the Lords was saying to him.

  ‘It is crime enough if you ask me,’ the pockmarked man said, eyebrows arched. Then he pointed the stem of his pipe at the priest. ‘But worse than that they say he’s the Pope’s bloody spy, sent here to spread his filth and pervert His Majesty.’

  Tom watched Phillip’s lips move but could not hear his words, though whatever they were had the Lords scowling and shaking their heads. ‘He looks harmless enough,’ he said, wondering how the old man could remain so calm in this bubbling cauldron of hatred.

  ‘
That’s what makes the bastard dangerous,’ his neighbour muttered through tight lips as he drew on his pipe. ‘His type are a bloody canker that needs cutting out for the sake of all God-fearing men. For the sake of the country.’

  ‘Bastard’s refusing to be sworn on our Bible!’ another man yelled, raising a chorus of jeers and taunts.

  ‘Hang ’im!’ a man yelled.

  ‘Aye, string the cur up!’ someone else bawled. The Speaker for the Lords, a fat man whose red face and sharp black beard glistened with sweat, turned to the throng, both hands raised in an appeal for quiet. Eventually the clamour died, leaving a few late-hurled curses hanging in the pungent air.

  ‘This man is accused of being an agent for the Pope,’ he said, ‘and of divers seditious and traitorous acts.’

  ‘Give him the whip!’ a woman shrieked.

  ‘Furthermore,’ the fat man went on, ‘he has before this assembly stated his refusal to recognize our Holy Bible.’ This provoked another storm and someone threw a fleshy bone, which struck Robert Phillip’s shoulder, though he barely flinched as his rheumy eyes glared at the crowd from beneath bushy, unkempt eyebrows.

  The Speaker turned back to the Lords, seeming to seek a particular bishop’s approval to continue. The aquiline-faced bishop nodded sombrely, his eyes revealing nothing, and the fat man turned once more to the crowd.

  ‘Robert Phillip will be confined to the Tower,’ he announced, stirring a chorus of ayes from the Lords and inciting another two dozen opinions for and against the punishment as Tom was buffeted this way and that.

  Now Robert Phillip’s face flushed as at last he lost a grip on the reins of his equanimity.

  ‘You dare not!’ he bellowed in a voice that surprised Tom, for it defied the priest’s apparent frailty. Men jeered at his outburst. ‘I am Her Majesty’s servant! I claim our queen’s protection!’

  ‘The Queen is a whore!’ someone yelled. Even the Lords were jeering now, some daring to voice their own opinions of their Catholic queen.

  ‘Take him away!’ the Speaker commanded the soldiers, and so they formed a guard of iron and steel in which they ensconced the priest that he might make the three miles to the Tower in one piece.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE RAPIER WHISPERED up the scabbard’s throat, flashing in the dimly lit hall, and Mun looked along all three foot of slender blade at the man who had come at him with a dagger.

  ‘Stand off, sir!’ he said, at which his would-be attacker bared well-worn teeth and spat in disgust. Mun had not seen who had begun the trouble but none of that mattered now, for he was caught in the maw of it come what may.

  ‘You Roundhead dogs grow too bold!’ Thomas Lunsford roared at the growing mob that had forced Lunsford’s party and Mun and Sir Francis back into the hall’s north-east corner, by the stout door that led to the Receipt of the Exchequer. Being similarly attired to Lunsford’s men, Sir Francis and Mun had been lumped together with the objects of the mob’s wrath and now found themselves outnumbered five to one with the odds getting longer as more apprentices were drawn to the fray.

  Having failed to find Tom, Mun had returned just as the one-eyed soldier had swaggered into Westminster Hall, threatening anyone who dared bawl against bishops. Mun had asked who the man was and his father had told him as they watched Lunsford’s men shoving their way through the protesters, their battle-scarred commander riding roughshod through an already volatile situation.

  ‘The King has made him Lieutenant of the Tower,’ Sir Francis had said, his tone betraying that even he thought that an odd appointment for a man of Lunsford’s dubious qualities. ‘That raised Cain in the Commons. Lunsford’s a hot-headed fool, a bully and a braggart. Look at him! He’s like a child poking a stick into a beehive.’

  Many, including Members of the House and others whose curiosity had brought them to Westminster to witness the presentation of the Root and Branch, had slunk off as the mood darkened. Others, city apprentices mainly, who had heard that Lunsford was about the Hall making threats, had come to add their spleen to the growing discord. Any who had come looking for trouble had found it and now Mun and Sir Francis had their swords in their hands and their backs to the wall.

  Lunsford will get us all killed, Mun thought, flicking his rapier’s point high to deter the fiery-eyed apprentice who had clearly chosen him as a sheath for that dagger of his.

  ‘Keep your guard up, Edmund,’ Sir Francis said calmly, ‘and cut if you have to.’

  Mun nodded, trying to match his father’s composure whilst inside his heart was pounding madly. For though he was confident in his skill with the sword – had trained with it most of his life – this had nothing of the art of fencing in it and he feared having to plunge that sharp steel into another man’s flesh.

  ‘Bastard Cavaliers think you own us all,’ a short-haired apprentice snarled, brandishing a cudgel at Lunsford but keeping his distance from the colonel’s wicked-looking blade.

  ‘Have ’im, Daniel!’ another apprentice growled, and the mass of them edged nearer, so that Lunsford’s men drew closer to one another, presenting an arc of swords to the mob.

  Sweat sluicing between his shoulder blades, Mun recalled what he had heard about Lunsford, that he was a cannibal, that he had even on occasion eaten babies, though who could believe such a thing? They also said Lunsford feared neither man nor God, and this Mun suspected was likely true, as he glanced across and saw the twist of a smile beneath the soldier’s flamboyant moustaches. He was enjoying this.

  ‘What are you waiting for, traitorous scum?’ Lunsford asked this Daniel, who appeared to have appointed himself the mob’s captain, with their consent from the looks they gave him. Lunsford’s coiffured head was half turned so he could glare at the man with his one remaining eye. ‘It will be a pleasure spilling your rancid guts across this stone.’ Then he lunged, slashing his blade through Daniel’s doublet into the flesh just below his collarbone, and the apprentice screeched in pained surprise, dropping his cudgel. There was a collective gasp and some curses from the crowd, though they instinctively retreated from the colonel’s bloodied blade. Lunsford turned and grinned at Sir Francis.

  ‘They whine but they have no bite, Sir Francis,’ he said. ‘I’ll wager it’s been a while since your blade slaked a thirst, hey?’

  Sir Francis seemed to swallow the words his eyes betrayed. ‘I’d appreciate it, Colonel,’ he said, ‘if I could get my boy out of here without further bloodshed.’ Lunsford laughed, then feinted low at another apprentice’s legs but pulled the blade at the last.

  Mun had watched the blunt-toothed man’s courage bloom and now the apprentice leapt forward, the dagger flashing, but Mun sidestepped neatly and cracked the rapier’s knuckle guard into his jaw, dropping him like a rock.

  ‘Your boy looks like a fighter to me, Sir Francis,’ Lunsford remarked. ‘The apple has not fallen far from the tree, I see.’ Then one of the colonel’s men slashed another apprentice across his thigh and this was enough to break the mob, so that they parted, giving clear passage to the eleven men who were better armed and clearly not afraid to spill blood.

  To Mun’s relief, Thomas Lunsford was not so big a fool as to ignore the opportunity to quit the Hall, though he suspected that had more to do with the soldier having already been a guest of Newgate and knowing that the death of one of these petitioners might lead to his calling on the prison’s hospitality again. Yet kill one he still might, for some of them were now hurling singlesticks at them as they made for the open door of St Stephen’s Porch. Holding his sword arm in front of his face and with his father behind him, Mun followed Lunsford and heard one of the colonel’s men yell with pain as something struck his head. Then he was through the door and into the maw of another angry horde. But when these men saw naked swords amongst them they scattered, hurling insults and curses from out of range.

  And there, beyond an angry mob of twenty or more apprentices, was Tom.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Mun asked as the three River
s men drew together and Lunsford waded amongst the mob, berating, yelling at them to disperse unless they wanted a taste of what their companions had got inside the great hall.

  ‘They wouldn’t let me in,’ Tom said, nodding towards another cluster of petitioners who yet lingered by St Stephen’s Porch. ‘I knew there was trouble but they were not for letting me through. It’s time I wore a sword, Father,’ he complained, ‘then I’d have been able to help.’ Sir Francis’s arching brows told them what he thought about that, but Tom’s attention was elsewhere. ‘That’s Colonel Lunsford, isn’t it? I heard them talking about him.’ There was a flash of steel in the dimming light and then a scream as Lunsford cut another apprentice and his men barked madly, waving their blades at any who would not withdraw. Tom was staring, his wide eyes full of something that looked to Mun like admiration. ‘They say he eats children,’ Tom said. A mob of sailors had turned up now and seemed set to help the apprentices. Some gripped truncheons and others clutched stones and none seemed afraid of Lunsford’s band.

  ‘A rumour I’d wager he spawned himself,’ Mun said through a grimace, following his father’s lead and sliding his blade back into its scabbard.

  Two burly sailors looked over belligerently and Mun eyeballed them back, but Sir Francis raised his palms to show the men that they meant no harm. ‘Come away, boys,’ he said, taking one last look at Lunsford, ‘before that bloody fool gets someone killed.’ And with that they strode off down Margaret’s Street into the gathering dusk, leaving Lunsford and his cronies to the mob.

  London’s streets made Tom think of spider webs laid one on top of the other and he marvelled at how his father and brother negotiated their complex patterns, turning this way and that until he felt quite dizzy and completely lost. The rain, driving now, bouncing off the streets and flowing in streams along the gutters, did nothing to help him get his bearings and so he followed helplessly as his clothes grew sopping and heavy. The wind had picked up too and had a wintry bite in it, so that it was a relief every time they turned into a street running obliquely to it. At least the weather seemed to have thinned the crowds a little, making progress easier, and with Sir Francis’s guidance they soon came to the bridge, where they joined the throng of folk crossing over to Southwark or beyond to the farmlands of Surrey, Kent, Sussex and Hampshire.