The Devil's Domain

CHAPTER 1

    ’A time of bloody tribulation! Of horrid sights! The season of murder and subtle trickery!’ is how the chronicler of Westminster described the late summer of 1380. The old monk sat in his carrel overlooking the cloister garth, scratching the edge of his quill against his unshaven cheek. How could he truly describe these times? The King was only a boy; the Regent, his uncle John of Gaunt, that bloody man of war, ruled the kingdom. Some even whispered he wanted it for himself. The French were at sea, their war fleets attacking the English galleys and cogs along the sea lanes from Bordeaux to Calais . At home, the summer harvest had been good; prices, however, still climbed out of the reach of the poor who swarmed along the highways over Southwark Bridge and into the city.
    The kingdom was waiting! All the signs and portents were there. A coffin had been seen in the skies above St Paul ’s: draped in a ghostly pall, it had moved from east to west before disappearing into the low, threatening clouds to the north of the city. Many said that was where the danger would arise, from the fields and villages north of Cripplegate. The men of the soil, the earthworms, who laboured and spun so the great ones could clothe themselves in silk and ride great destriers, drink deep of the blood-red claret and count their silver and gold coins. In the streets of London , sepulchral voices were heard crying woe, prophesying disaster. Black-draped barges, rowed by ghostly hands, were glimpsed on the river shooting the turbulence under London Bridge . Were these, the gossips chattered, the ghosts of men who had defied the Regent and lost their heads which, salted and pickled, decorated pikes along the rail of that same London Bridge ?
    The chronicler’s brothers and monks at Westminster said such signs were mere trickery and foolish chatter. The peasants, now well organised and calling themselves the ’Great Community of the Realm’, were despatching troublemakers, traitors, inciters to rebellion and treason into the city, stirring up trouble along its foul alleyways and runnels. Others, less worldly, shook their heads. These signs, surely, were warning of horrors yet to come? Had not a holy man, who claimed to have wandered in the deserts of Palestine , had visions which he preached, at a penny a time, from the cross of St Paul ’s? How God was planning to sweep London with fire? To bring it as low as hell, to leave not one stone upon another?
    In the cemetery of St Erconwald’s, Pike the ditcher and Watkin the dung-collector reflected on these rumours. They sat beneath the old yew tree sharing a wineskin and staring up at the starlit sky. They were both drunk as hogs. They should have gone home. However, a few blackjacks of ale in the Piebald Tavern, followed by a cup of canary, a gift from Joscelyn the one-armed taverner, and Pike and Watkin had rolled out into the streets feeling like great lords of the land. They shared their pennies and, before they’d left, bought a bulging wineskin.
    ’Be careful,’ the taverner had warned, watching these two fellow parishioners sway backwards and forwards on their feet. ’You’ve drunk enough. You should go home and sleep it off!’
    ’We are not thrunk!’ Watkin scoffed. ’I just wisth your bloody floor would stay still. This is a tavern, not one of your bloody cogs of war!’
    Joscelyn had sighed in exasperation. The two men had wished him good night.
    ’Where are you going to?’ Joscelyn called curiously as he followed them to the doorway.
    He smiled at Cecily the courtesan who, arm in arm with a young fop, was strolling down towards the fields south of the Bishop of Winchester’s inn: a famous trysting place for the likes of Cecily and her customers. Cecily waved her fingers. Pike the ditcher watched her go and licked his lips even though his wife had warned him off.
    ’If I catch you with that trollop again,’ she’d screeched, ’you’ll be nothing more than a gelding!’
    Pike swayed and put one mud-covered hand on Watkin’s shoulder.
    ’We’d best be going,’ he slurred.
    ’Go where?’ Joscelyn repeated.
    Watkin tapped his fleshy nose and winked. ’Secrets,’ he slurred. ’Great secrets.’
    Joscelyn stepped back and glanced round nervously. Were the rumours true, he wondered? Were these two rapscallions members of the Great Community of the Realm? Plotting treason and rebellion against John of Gaunt? If that was the case he wanted no more of