By Murder's bright Light

PROLOGUE

    The great storm that had ravaged the south coast of England had now swept over the northern seas towards the ice lands where men, clad in deerskins, lit fires to nameless gods. The monkish chroniclers from London to Cornwall commented in detail how the storm was God’s judgement on a sinful kingdom. Indeed, God’s anger had been more than apparent in the last few months. A great French fleet under its pirate captain, Eustace the monk, had pillaged and plundered towns along the south coast. At Rye , in Sussex , the villagers had fled for sanctuary to their church. The French privateers had simply locked them in then burnt the place to the ground; they ignored the cries of those within as they loaded stolen carts with the silver objects, tapestries and food-stuffs looted from the ransacked houses.
    The French fleet had withdrawn. Now London and its defences rested quietly as bleak autumn turned into freezing winter. Ships rode at anchor in the Thames , straining at their hawsers, their seamen resting and revelling in the city, leaving only skeleton crews on board to cry out the hours. But one ship, the big cog God’s Bright Light, was silent. The lantern high on its mast winked and blinked in the cold, grey light of dawn. The ship moved and creaked, floating gently to and fro on its anchor rope in the black, sluggish Thames . The cranes along St Paul ’s Wharf opposite the ship were silent, the warehouse doors shuttered and padlocked. Only the occasional cat, foraging for fat-bellied mice and sleek rats, padded across the coils of oil-soaked ropes, the stacks of wood and the great hooped barrels of salt left there.
    For the mice and rats it had been a night of plunder as they moved from the mounds of refuse and slipped under the doors of warehouses to nibble at sacks of grain and large, juicy hams wrapped in linen cloth. Of course, the vermin had to run the gauntlet of legions of cats who also hunted there. One rat, more daring than the rest, scuttled along the wharf, slithered down the wet, mildewed steps and swam out, its oily body bobbing on the river, towards the anchor rope of the God’s Bright Light. The rat was a keen hunter, so skilled and sly that it had survived three summers and grown grey around the muzzle. Cautiously it crept up the rope, using its small claws and tail, and slipped through the hawsehole on to the deck. There it paused, raising its pointed head to sniff. Something was wrong - its keen nose caught a sweaty odour mingled with perfume. The rat tensed, the muscles in its small black body bunching high in its shoulders. Its jet-black button eyes peered through the mist that trailed like a ghost around the deck; its ears strained into the silence, listening for the gentle swish of a cat’s tail or the harsh creak of timber as some other predator stalked the boards. But it saw or heard nothing untoward and began to edge forward. Then it stopped abruptly as it heard noises — the bump of a boat as it pulled alongside, followed by the sound of human voices. Recognising danger, it turned, went back to the hawsehole and scurried down the anchor rope. It slipped quietly into the water and swam back to shore and the waiting jaws of a mangy tomcat.
    It was a small bumboat that had disturbed the rat; the voices were those of a sailor and his companion, a young doxy from the fishmarket just outside Vintry. The sailor was trying to persuade the prostitute, her blonde hair already soaked by the river mist, the garish paint on her face now running, to climb the rope ladder. He swayed drunkenly and rather dangerously in the boat.
    ‘Come on,’ he slurred. ‘Up you go! And, when you have pleasured me, you can have the rest! Each will pay a coin.’
    The girl looked up at the precarious rope ladder and swallowed hard. The sailor had already been generous, paying her a whole groat. Now he had brought her back here for more tumbles with him and those poor unfortunates who had been left on guard as the ship’s watch. She watched him twirl a piece of silver in his fingers.
    ‘Marry and be damned!’ she cursed, using her favourite oath. She grasped the rope ladder and, with the sailor behind her pushing his hands up her skirts to urge her on, clambered over the bulwark and on to the deck. The sailor followed, tumbling alongside her, breathing heavily in a mixture of curses and subdued giggling. The girl got up.
    ‘Well, come on!’ she whispered. ‘Business is time and time is money. Where