The Bleeding Land Read online

  ‘I cannot imagine living here on this bridge,’ Tom said, looking up at one of the many grand houses that lined the street running across the bridge. There were shops, too, and expensive ones at that, affirming that the bridge was home to some of the most valuable real estate in London. ‘The stench would finish me off.’ He raised the back of his hand to his nose. ‘It’s foul.’

  ‘I suppose you’d get used to it,’ Mun suggested, almost stumbling into a beggar who had set up at the busiest part of the bridge, where the multitude had bottle-necked and slowed to a forlorn shuffle. The beggar swore at Mun, who apologized, fishing a copper coin from the waistcoat beneath his soaked doublet and dropping it into the man’s empty dish.

  London’s beggars were another thing Tom thought he could never get used to if he lived here. Many were the victims of disease, but some, including this one Tom suspected from the missing leg and the bitter dregs of pride in his washed-out eyes, were veterans of the Dutch wars.

  They take ship brimming with vainglory, Tom remembered his father saying once, but they come back empty, broken vessels. And that is war, boys, remember that. And yet still Tom admired, envied even, men like Colonel Lunsford, because wars happened overseas, meaning those Englishmen who fought in them got to see something of the world. Unlike those who suckled the warm, ample bosom of the Church and never got to taste glory. And that will be me soon enough, he thought sourly.

  He pointed out to Mun a yellow-painted shop that sold fine leather boots and another that offered broad hats of felt or, for the wealthy, beaver fur at three pounds. His brother smiled, clearly enjoying Tom’s excitement.

  ‘Get your fill of it while you can, Thomas,’ Sir Francis said, greeting an acquaintance with a nod and a polite smile. ‘We ride home at first light.’

  It had taken them nine days to ride more than two hundred miles from Shear House in Parbold to London and Tom was not ready to face the return journey just yet. Furthermore, the weather had worsened since their arrival, meaning it would take longer on the way back.

  ‘I want to stay, Father, at least for another day or two,’ he said.

  ‘Out of the question,’ their father replied, waving a gloved hand as he marched on.

  ‘I’d keep him out of trouble,’ Mun put in, removing his hat to sweep the water from it. His hair, a shade fairer than his brother’s, was lank and plastered to his head. ‘You could ride home tomorrow and we could follow on once I had shown Tom a little more of London. He ought to see the Tower at least.’

  Sir Francis stopped and turned to his sons, glowering, rain dripping from his beaver’s brim. The black-caped crowds flowed around them like a dark river past a boulder.

  ‘Listen to me, you young fools,’ he hissed like a lit black-powder fuse in a damp cellar. ‘London is not safe. Discontentment swells like a boil and will soon grow too large for the surgeon’s knife. We do not want to be here when the boil bursts.’ Then he sighed, his face softening. ‘We came for the debate, did we not? And I did my duty. But now we must get home. Before your mother begins to worry and comes to London looking for us.’ He tossed his head. ‘Can you imagine her around all this?’ he exclaimed, gesturing to the shop fronts with their coloured silks, embroidered fabrics and fine tableware of pewter, glass and silver. ‘We would be ruined!’

  Mun smiled and slapped Tom’s saturated back. ‘London will still be here in a few weeks, little brother, when all this has died down and the Puritans go back to snuffing out candles in country churches and sniffing out witches.’

  Tom felt crestfallen, but there was nothing he could do and so he nodded as they set off again with the human tide.

  Once across the bridge they came to Long Southwark Street, where the crowds dispersed as folk went their separate ways. Some headed west towards the Bankside where, Tom had heard, you could find entertainment in all its forms. Others went east towards St Olave’s Street and an area inhabited by lesser tradesmen and craftsmen and, towards its eastern end, the poor. They three continued south along the cobbled way, the stones arranged to slope towards a channel in the centre down which water now coursed, at times red with the blood and waste flung in by butchers. Now and then they were forced to stand aside to let carts and wagons and the public and private coaches rumble past: a luxury Sir Francis did not allow himself, much to Tom’s disappointment, even on such a foul day as this. And all the while Tom let his eyes gorge themselves on the sights of the city, which was now falling under night’s cloak. The candles usually put out on doorsteps were absent because of the rain, and the air was thick with sweet wood smoke and the dirty, pungent stink of coal. Grey-brown plumes belched from countless chimneys and hung in thick, noxious clouds so low as to obscure the tops of some of the buildings and smear the dark November sky.

  Mun smiled, nodding towards the rows of tenements lining both sides of the street, which had commanded Tom’s attention for the last fifty paces. ‘I expect you must come to know your neighbours very well, eh?’ he said. Tom knew his brother was trying to cheer him and felt embarrassed for sulking.

  ‘Some of them must go back eighty feet or more,’ he said, shaking his head in wonder. Most were two or three storeys high, the ground floors serving as shop fronts for cobblers, bakers, grocers, butchers, fishmongers, weavers, tailors, leatherworkers and smiths. Above the shops and clustering in the yards and alleys off the main street were the residential dwellings, home to the rougher sorts, Tom thought, from the looks of the characters lingering under dripping eaves, clouds of grey pipe smoke billowing from beneath tilted brims.

  A little further on he tugged on Mun’s cape, nodding towards two rakers who, their brimming refuse cart abandoned, were roaring drunk, swinging ale jacks and yelling abuse at passersby. Nearby, a well-dressed man was paying a black-toothed whore, and in the next corner an old woman, her sopping white hair so thin you could see her sore-covered scalp, sat with her face turned up to the rain, laughing like a lunatic.

  ‘Why does Father stay all the way out here?’ Tom asked in a voice Sir Francis, who was striding out in front, would not hear. They were into the commercial heart of Southwark now, where St Margaret’s Hill became Blackman Street, from which branched countless alleys, yards, and dead-end lanes.

  Mun shrugged, shaking his head at an urchin who had appeared from nowhere to offer some service or other. ‘He says it is his duty as a Member to know the people’s mood.’ He thumbed at the urchin to be on his way.

  ‘And so it is, boys,’ Sir Francis called behind him. ‘I already know how rich men think, most of them anyway. I believe I can better serve my king – my country, too, come to that – if I can understand what the common sort are thinking.’

  The street urchin was persistent and it took a growled curse from Mun to finally send him looking for custom elsewhere.

  ‘But the truth is, of course,’ Mun said, ‘that Father’s purse is a little light these days. That’s why he boards in Southwark whilst his friends dine on roast veal and venison in the town. He has spent too much money on horses. Isn’t that right, Father?’ His teeth flashed white in the gathered gloom and Tom braced for their father’s anger.

  But Sir Francis threw both arms out, palms catching the rain that was lashing down and bouncing off the cobbles and seething in the dark.

  ‘We all have our vices, boys,’ he said, never slowing. ‘We all have our vices.’

  The Ship Inn in St George’s parish was nothing special. But it was warm and clean and Sir Francis was a creature of habit. Having lodged there on a friend’s recommendation when he first became a Member of Parliament, he’d stayed there at least a dozen times since and told Mun and Tom that he saw no good reason to try another inn. Furthermore, he trusted the landlord’s weights and measures, which, he warned them, was not something a wise man took for granted in city or market town these days. Once, some years ago, he had broken with tradition and stayed at the Tabard Inn on Long Southwark where it fed into St Margaret’s Hill. It was from the Tabard Inn that the pilg
rims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales had set off and this made the place famous, which was why Sir Francis had decided he ought to give it a try. But fame drew crowds and the Tabard took, in Sir Francis’s opinion, too many guests, so that the landlord recalled neither his name nor what he drank from one day to the next. He had been relieved when his work was finished and he could go home, leaving the Tabard to the wide-eyed country folk, the French and the endless stream of skilled labourers from the Low Countries who came to London looking for work.

  So the Ship it was. Mun knew that some of their father’s friends, especially those in the Lords, teased him for lodging in Southwark at all. Surely a man in his position could afford to maintain a residence in London’s West End, they said, a mere stroll from the institutions of government at Westminster. But Sir Francis despised those who flaunted their wealth in plain sight of others who had nothing, and Mun admired him for it. Indeed, it was said that Sir Francis Rivers had even warned the King against the excesses of his court, a thing few men would dare. ‘You must spend more time at court, Sir Francis,’ Charles had supposedly replied in his quiet voice, suppressing his famous stammer, ‘and then I warrant you would not be so quick to preach reform. We do things as they ought to be done.’ Their father had never corroborated the story, but neither had he denied it, which to Mun was proof enough. He knew their father was proud that His Majesty counted him as a friend, but in truth it was a role that Sir Francis was clearly finding ever more difficult to play, and that afternoon’s debacle at Westminster Hall was a case in point. Now, as they sat together eating a pie stuffed with pigeon and rich gravy, Mun sensed the burden of worry in their father. The events of the last days and what it all might mean weighed in his eyes, loomed darkly behind the façade of amusement he had put up at Tom’s recounting of London’s wonders.

  For if his brother had said little earlier in the day, letting his eyes soak up the city’s countless extraordinary sights, he was making up for it now, babbling about the endless choice of goods available, the pickpockets he had seen at work amongst the crowds of the Bankside, the stink of the place, particularly the acrid reek of coal fires, the unashamed pleasure-seekers, the heads spiked on London Bridge and the endless parade of beautiful girls that had almost made him forget it was raining.

  ‘I remember my first time walking through the piazza of Covent Garden,’ Sir Francis said, eyes glinting at the memory. ‘Nearly twisted my damn head off there was so much to look at.’ Tom grinned mischievously, then went on relating more of London’s wonders, his voice rising above those of a fiddle and two flutes that had struck up somewhere amongst the noisy press. It was a popular tune that soon had folk singing along as Mun sat listening to his brother, feeling a smile warm his own lips. He had once felt like Tom: awestruck and amazed by the city and all it had to offer. It still excited him, but there was nothing like your first trip to London. Now through Tom he was seeing it all afresh. Then Tom came to the part about Robert Phillip, telling of how he had watched the House of Lords committee accuse the old priest of spying for the Pope, how they had scorned his pleas for protection and, worse still, how some of them had publicly insulted Queen Henrietta Maria.

  Sir Francis took the napkin from his shoulder and leant forward, dabbing his lips. ‘They spoke out against Her Majesty?’

  Tom nodded. ‘They called her a whore,’ he said, wide-eyed.

  Sir Francis flicked a hand, disregarding that report. ‘Never mind the mob, Thomas, they go where the loudest of them leads and will say anything in the heat. What did the Lords say?’

  ‘I was talking about the Lords, Father,’ Tom said, glancing from one to the other.

  Mun clenched his jaw, feeling something dark and cold pass through him, like a cloud portending a storm.

  ‘God preserve us,’ Sir Francis said, eyes riveting onto Mun’s, ‘but things are going from bad to worse.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘BUILD UP THE fire, isaac, it’s getting cold,’ Lady Mary said, taking off her thick wool coat and draping it over a chair. Bess did the same, her face stinging now that she was inside.

  ‘Yes, m’lady.’ Isaac nodded curtly and limped off to fetch more fuel, leaving them huffing into cupped hands that were red and thrumming with the pain of cold flesh warming. Sir Francis was behind his desk, his quill scratching away busily.

  His hand stopped and he looked up at his wife. ‘Everything all right out there? You have had them all working twice as hard as they’d like, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Lady Mary raised an eyebrow at the implied suggestion of her tyranny and Bess felt herself grin.

  ‘I feel better for knowing that the hedges are mended and the ditches dug clean again,’ her mother replied, her eyes watery from the cold. ‘And I made sure the men kept their limbs moving so as not to have them freeze and fall off.’ She glanced at Bess. ‘I think they were grateful, don’t you, Bess?’

  ‘It was frightfully cold, Father,’ she said, refusing to fully commit to either side. Her father nodded soberly, dipping the quill in the silver ink pot and writing some more.

  Despite her father’s teasing, Bess knew he appreciated how much it meant to the servants and groundsmen to see either him or Lady Mary out on a bitter day with the rest of them, inspecting the estate and helping where they could.

  ‘So how is it looking out there?’ Sir Francis asked, frowning at his writing as though displeased with his work. Bess knew he was writing a letter of reply to a copyhold farmer who had asked to extend the duration of his tenure. The man was a good farmer, albeit folk said he was older than Pendle Hill now, and Sir Francis was pleased to offer him another ten years so long as his son and heir agreed to pay the entry fine on the occasion of his father’s death.

  ‘Bleak,’ her mother said, rubbing life back into her arms. ‘Some of the sheep had got out and wandered almost as far as Gerard’s Wood, but we put most of them back. The boys are rounding up the last of them now.’ Sir Francis nodded, signing the letter with a neat flourish and then scattering sand across it to dry the ink.

  Isaac returned with a faggot and knelt by the fire and Sir Francis waited, patiently watching the servant feed the flames, not speaking again until the thin, silver-haired man had left the room.

  ‘Did you get a chance to speak to him?’ he asked, shuffling through some papers and straightening a pile of books.

  Lady Mary glanced at Bess, but Sir Francis wafted her concern away with the letter. ‘She’s his sister, Mary, and likely knows more of it than we do.’

  Her mother nodded as though that was true enough, and Bess felt her face flush hotly.

  ‘It wasn’t that sort of work,’ Lady Mary said, moving towards the fire and holding her hands before the flames, letting the building heat soak through the flesh into the knuckles and joints. ‘I did not get the chance.’

  Sir Francis made a hum in the back of his throat and sat back in his chair, leaning on one elbow, thumb and forefinger worrying his neat beard.

  ‘It’s not going to be easy,’ he said. ‘You know how headstrong the boy can be.’ He looked at Bess, his grey eyes softening. ‘Gets that from his mother, of course.’

  Mary turned, eyebrows raised as she removed her broad-brimmed hat and the coif beneath, shaking out her long red curls so that they fell past her shoulders. She is still beautiful, Bess thought. ‘Well, we will have to say something soon, for Martha’s sake as well as Tom’s,’ her mother said.

  Sir Francis nodded resolutely. ‘I’ll speak with him tomorrow on the way to the village. The pinner has one of our bulls in his pound, so I’m told.’

  ‘Speak to me about what, Father?’ Tom said, striding into the parlour and up to the fire, where he stood by his mother, warming his hands. His cheeks were red and the long, thick fair hair that was visible was unkempt, tousled by the icy wind and the ride.

  ‘Did you recover them all?’ Sir Francis asked.

  Tom frowned. ‘Yes, they’re all accounted for.’ He took off his hat and ran a hand th
rough his hair, glancing at Bess and their mother, then back to their father. ‘Now what is it you want to talk to me about?’

  Sir Francis looked at Mary, who gave a slight nod, then he pushed back his chair and stood, walking over creaking boards to the window. He stood looking out at the bleak day, hands clenched behind his back.

  ‘It is about Martha, Tom,’ he began, and Bess wished she had left the room but it was too late now.

  ‘I gathered that much, Father,’ Tom said, rubbing chapped hands together. ‘What about her?’

  ‘There is no easy way to say this, Thomas, so I shall be direct.’ Tom glanced at his mother again, but she kept her eyes on the leaping flames. ‘You are not to court Martha Green, nor will you see her any more.’

  ‘Father?’ Tom half laughed though the smile never reached his eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom, but you must not visit her,’ Sir Francis said.

  ‘But we are betrothed! We will marry next spring.’

  ‘Betrothed!’ Sir Francis blurted, glancing at Bess for any sign that she had known this. She avoided his eye. ‘And you have her father’s consent?’ he asked Tom. ‘For you do not have ours!’

  ‘Not yet,’ Tom admitted, ‘but I intend to call on Minister Green soon.’ He turned to their mother now, leaning into her line of sight. ‘What is this, Mother? Tell me what is going on.’

  ‘Listen to your father, Thomas,’ she said flatly.