The Devil's Domain

the gentleman?’
    ’Come on, Brother. Let’s visit Sir Thomas Parr. While we walk I’ll tell you a story about the nun, the friar and the lecherous goat.’ They entered the city, taking the path through Martins Lane down to Cheapside . It was now early afternoon. Some of the stalls had closed so their owners could take refreshment in nearby taverns and cookshops. Sir John gazed hungrily at these but Athelstan urged him on.
    ’Sir Thomas might offer us good wine,’ he coaxed. ’We must have our wits about us, Sir John.’
    On the corner of Westchepe a crowd had gathered. A man dressed in gaily coloured rags, his hair white as snow, eyes gleaming in his sunburned face, was declaiming to the crowd: ’Woe to the rich! To those who feed upon soft meats! Fill their bellies with sweetened wines! The day of reckoning is about to come! Circles of fire will fall upon the city! The highways will swarm with the worms of the earth! In their thousands and their tens of thousands!’ He paused to draw breath.
    Athelstan recognised this wandering preacher as one who supported the Great Community of the Realm. The ’worms of the earth’ was a common term for the peasants, the oppressed serfs, the landless labourers.
    ’They will be led by angels!’ the preacher continued. ’And they will ring the bell of doom!’ He started to clang the handbell he carried.
    The crowds of shopkeepers, apprentices, chapmen and tinkers, the pedlars, the beggars and cripples from the alleyways gathered round, heads nodding, eyes gleaming. A group of market beadles stood on the fringe, nervously plucking at the daggers in their belts, tapping their staffs of office against the ground.
    ’And what have we to fear?’ the preacher continued. ’Death? We live a living death!’
    A growl of approval rose from the crowd.
    ’Hey there, Pig’s Arse!’ Sir John grabbed a scruffy little man running through the crowd, a long thin dagger jutting out from the sleeve of his jerkin.
    ’Ah, Sir John, good day.’ The beggar looked fearfully up at the coroner.
    ’Now, Pig’s Arse,’ Sir John breathed quietly. ’I would not start cutting purses here. This merry lot will turn ugly in a while and they’d hang you out of hand!’
    Pig’s Arse scuttled off. Sir John looked over the heads of the crowd. A group of soldiers were coming up Westchepe, wearing the livery of John of Gaunt and Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel.
    ’Here they are!’ The preacher had also glimpsed them. ’Come to silence the Voice of Truth!’
    The crowd turned as a man. Daggers were drawn and, as if from nowhere, a group of men dressed in dark-brown leather jerkins appeared. They carried bows with quivers full of arrows slung over their backs.
    ’Lord have mercy!’ Athelstan said. ’Sir John, this will turn ugly.’
    Sir John drew his sword and advanced, waving it as if he were Hector of Troy.
    ’Hey there, my beauties! Lovely lads all! This is Cheapside, not Poitiers !’
    ’Bugger off, Sir Jack!’ someone shouted.
    Cranston ’s hand went behind his back as he drew his dagger. The preacher had vanished like a wisp of smoke. Sir John advanced threateningly upon the archers.
    ’We’ve no quarrel with you, Jack Cranston!’ one of them shouted, face hidden deep in a hood.
    ’If you don’t piss off, you will have!’
    The archers slung their bows and disappeared among the stalls. The rest of the crowd began hastily to disperse. Sir John resheathed his sword and dagger.
    ’Come on, Athelstan. time we moved on.’
    They continued up Cheapside just as the soldiers arrived. Athelstan glimpsed Pig’s Arse running like one of Ranulf’s ferrets towards the mouth of an alleyway, a small purse clutched in his hand.
    ’You were very brave, Sir John!’
    ’Like a hawk swooping for the kill,’ he replied. ’Now, for real trouble!’
    They turned into a lane leading up to Goldsmith’s Hall. The thoroughfare was broad and swept, the sewer had been cleaned and filled with fresh water from a conduit. The houses on either side were large and spacious with red-bricked bases and black and white timber upper tiers. The gables were ornate and gilt-edged, the doors squarely hung. Pots of flowers hung from the walls and the air was sweet with the fragrance from the gardens laid out in front of the houses. The sun glinted and shimmered in the mullioned window glass: some of these were even coloured and decorated with heraldic devices.
    Sir Thomas Parr’s was the stateliest of these