King's Gold

‘There are two more up there,’ Alured said. ‘This man saw their killer. Come on, have you sent for the coroner?’

‘No,’ Bill said.

But the drunk had dropped to his rump by the body. He stared at the man lying there with an expression of curiosity on his old, wrinkled face. ‘Why’s he here?’

‘Someone killed him,’ Bill said shortly.

‘But he’s not dead.’

And Matteo Bardi coughed weakly, retched, and closed his eyes from the pain, as he muttered in his native tongue: ‘The King’s Gold . . . He’ll take the King’s Gold . . .’

‘Christ’s ballocks!’ Bill sprang away as though the man was a ghost.

‘What did he say?’ Alured asked.

‘He’s raving,’ Bill said. ‘He needs a physician.’

CHAPTER THREE

Fourth Friday after the Feast of St Michael

Newgate Prison

The mob had taken over the prison. All those accused of supporting the King or his friends were thrown in here, and as Dolwyn was servant to a banker, he too was incarcerated.

Another man had died in the night, Dolwyn saw, glancing at the men huddled in the filth below the long shaft of light. There was a window twenty, thirty feet above them, and the prisoners clung to each other beneath it as though it offered escape. It didn’t.

They had thrown the body to lie in the shadow towards the middle of the room, only a scrap of linen about his groin. All his other clothes were gone. Not that he had been dressed for a night here when he came. Dolwyn remembered thinking that his thin clothing would be no protection against the chill and the foul miasma that pervaded this place. Even those who squeezed together for warmth against the cold and damp suffered. That man wouldn’t be the last to die here.

They would all die soon enough.

The dank cell was fifteen feet square, with curved ceilings like an abbey’s undercroft. Blackened stone glistened in the darkness, running with moisture, and in the gloom the only sound was a constant, maddening dripping. It went on at the same slow rate all through the day and night. If water could tear at a man’s soul, this did.

There were plenty of other noises vying to drown it out, but without success: screams from those demented enough to think their voices could interest the gaoler; the low mumble of the utterly lunatic; the sudden shrieks of a man being beaten by his cell-mate; the sobbing; the pathetic wailing of the boy in a chamber farther along the passageway; the scurrying of rats’ paws . . .

Dolwyn had been in gaol before and the thought of death did not frighten him: rather, it was the manner of death that concerned him.

Hunger and thirst were the two constants of his exixtence here in Newgate Prison, but at least he could slake his thirst with a sip at the brackish, water-soaked walls. It tasted foul from the urine of the men in the chamber above them – but he didn’t care; not now. The hunger was much worse.

Newgate Prison. It was hard to believe that he was in the foulest gaol in London because of a misunderstanding. He had escaped the rope before, only to come to London and be caught in the same predicament!

Only a few feet or yards up there was the sunlight. Out in the world, men lived, laughed, rutted on their women, ate, walked in the open air, free. How many would even give a thought to the poor devils incarcerated, justifiably or not, down here in the cells? All too few.

He could see the gate in his mind’s eye. The great age-blackened timbers, the square stone towers rising up on either side. And beyond the gate: life. A short roadway that gave out to the shacks and rough buildings thrown up towards Holeburnstrete⁷, where those who worked in the city but couldn’t afford a room congregated. These were no great mansions like the houses on the road to Westminster where he’d been caught: these were shabby hovels for workers and beggars, sprawling out on either side of the street all higgledy-piggledy, to the Fleet River and beyond.

And beyond were trees, he remembered. For a while he could almost taste the clean air, and his lungs seemed cleansed of the filth that encompassed this city of fools and fiends.

It was on La Straunde⁸ that he’d been taken, hard by St Clement Danes. The mob was sacking a rich man’s house – someone said it was the Bishop of Exeter’s, but Dolwyn couldn’t give a clipped farthing for that. All he knew was that there were bodies in the street, and behind them, men savaging the building. There were flames in the window, and three men came from the house’s main entrance dragging a huge tapestry. Behind them was a churl with a leather jug, from which he refreshed himself regularly. Catching sight of Dolwyn, he started to point and shout.

In a moment Dolwyn was surrounded by scruffy youths, the raggle-taggle of London’s streets, all of them armed with knives, cleavers and hatchets.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Dolwyn of Guildford.’

‘Well, “Dolwyn”, only spies and traitors come past here.’