‘Newgate is truly the gateway to Hell.’ So preached John Ball, hedge priest and leading captain of the Upright Men. ‘The very antechamber of Satan and all his fallen angels, the deepest pit of brooding despair and the veritable anus of this wicked, filthy world …’
Reynard, principal courier to the Upright Men, could only agree. He had been lodged in Newgate three years ago over the question of a pyx stolen from a church. In the end he had managed to escape the gallows, though he had been branded as a suspect felon. He lifted his manacled hands and traced the outline of the ‘F’ burnt deep into his right cheek. Leaning against the slimy wall, he felt the flies and lice crumble between the stone and his back. He moved his bare feet and curled his bruised toes against the muddy mush of rotting straw, decaying food and the filthy contents of the common close-stool which had brimmed over to drench the floor with its slops. The air was thick with corruption. The stench would have offended a filthy sow, whilst the only light came from a needle-thin window high in the wall and the flickering cheap oil lights which exuded more foulness than light. Shapes lurched through the gloom to the clink and heavy scrape of chains. Other prisoners, groaning and cursing, were groping their way to the common hatch for their bowl of scraps and stoup of brackish water. Reynard could not be bothered. His entire being ached from the beatings he had received, the burn marks to his legs and the scalding to his arms where the Newgate gaolers had poured boiling water; his back was one open wound from being wedged under that heavy door in the press yard.
Reynard was now lodged in the condemned hold which lay at the very heart of the grim, battlemented, soaring mass of dark dwellings built into the ancient city wall and given the mocking title of Newgate. There was nothing new, clean or fresh about the prison. However, Reynard ruefully conceded, he would not be here for long. Master Thibault had given him a choice. He could stay and rot in the condemned hold until the Hangman of Rochester came with his execution cart for that last, grim journey to Smithfield or Tyburn. He would be dragged up the steps of mourning into the chamber of the damned, where a priest would offer to shrive him before being thrown into the execution cart. Or … Master Thibault had made him another offer. Confess! Confess to everything he knew. Well, he had been caught red-handed over the slaying of Edmund Lacy, the bell clerk at St Mary Le Bow, whose death the Upright Men had ordered for their own secret purposes. Reynard had tried to discover what these purposese might be, but found nothing. Lacy had to die and Reynard had been instructed to make sure this happened. He had done so, knifing Lacy in the Sun of Splendour tavern, and had then fled to Whitefriars, only to be recognized there and arrested. He had slipped whilst trying to escape; a filthy pool of ale had brought him down! If this had happened to anyone else, Reynard would have scoffed and jeered, but all he felt was shame that the great Reynard, famed for his cunning and guile, had been trapped so easily. And as for the documents he’d been carrying, he’d been told to leave them at St Mary Le Bow within a cleft in the window of the chantry chapel dedicated to St Stephen, which housed the tombs of Sir Reginald Camoys and Simon Penchen. He had failed to do so, being arrested before he could complete his task. Reynard, despite his pain, smiled to himself. Who, he wondered, were these documents for? Reynard could not say, nor did he understand the cipher. He could read, of course, educated in his previous life before he had fallen from grace, never to rise again. Reynard, or Peter Simpkins as he had been baptized, had been a friar at the Order of the Sack, but now …
Reynard moved restlessly as one of the huge rats, a swarm of which haunted this hideous place, slunk out of a congealed mass of dirt and refuse. Nose twitching, its ears flat against its knobbly head, back haunched as if ready to spring, the rat sloped across a pool of light. One of the feral cats brought in to contain such vermin as well as provide fresh meat for the prisoners, sprang out from the dark. Reynard watched the life-and-death struggle reach its inevitable bloody climax in a long drawn-out screech. The cat loped away, prey in its teeth, and Reynard returned to his reflections. What could he confess to? He could provide the names of the leading Upright Men of Essex, yet Thibault knew these already. Reynard had been asked for other names, including the identity of the Herald of Hell. Reynard could not reply to that. All he could say was that the Herald was a will-o’-the-wisp with no true substance.
He glanced up at a shrill yell. Dark shapes milled around Benedict Bedlam, a hedgerow priest sentenced to hang for the murder of a doxy outside St Bartholomew’s the Less. Bedlam was defending himself against Wyvern and Hydrus, wolfsheads hired by the Upright Men to attack a convoy of weaponry Thibault had organized at Queenshithe. Brutal scavengers, Wyvern and Hydrus had decided to take Benedict’s bowl of filthy pottage. They had returned too late to the condemned hole to collect their own meagre meal after they had been taken to a separate chamber to be searched for any knife or dagger. Reynard looked away. Perhaps he could advise Thibault how wrong the Master of Secrets was about the timing of the impending revolt? Indeed, it was already beginning. The black and red banners of anarchy, along with longbows, quivers crammed with arrows, swords, clubs, maces and spears were being taken from their secret hiding places behind parish altars or dug up in village cemeteries. Soon, very soon according to John Ball, the Armies of God would be marching. Finally there was that scrap of parchment Reynard was still carrying, hidden in the stitching of his clothing. Was that the key to the cipher? Would it make the other document intelligible and so provide Thibault with valuable information? If it did, Reynard could buy his life and his freedom. He would receive the promised pardon, be escorted to the nearest port with food, weapons and licence to be taken across the Narrow Seas. Once there, like the fox he was, he’d lie low until the storm blew over.
‘Brother! Brother!’ Reynard glanced up. Hydrus and Wyvern were crouching on either side of him. In the gloom Reynard could not make out their ugly faces, yet a spurt of fear gripped his belly.
‘Brother?’ Hydrus leaned forward. ‘The turnkeys who searched us support the Great Community.’
‘Liars!’ Reynard replied, his mouth turning dry, his tongue seeming to swell.
‘They say you are here to reflect, that you have been offered a pardon by Thibault the turd.’ Hydrus laughed at the crude joke. ‘You wouldn’t be thinking of leaving us, would you, Brother?’
‘No, of course not.’ Reynard pushed himself back against the wall.
‘Look up to the hills, Reynard,’ Hydrus exclaimed, ‘from whence our salvation comes. Look up! Look up!’ Reynard had no choice and Wyvern swiftly sliced his throat with the razor-edged dagger Benedict the Bedlam had slipped to him during their pretend quarrel.
Cranston and Athelstan left the death chamber. The friar was insistent on walking around the Golden Oliphant. They first visited the garden strip beneath Whitfield’s bedchamber. Both of them scrutinized the black-soiled flower plot but could find nothing to suggest a ladder or anything else had been placed there, or that anyone, though God knows how, had slipped down from Whitfield’s chamber. They then visited the kennels. Athelstan warily inspected the mastiffs, smooth-haired dogs with long legs, bulbous faces and powerful jaws: red-eyed with anger, the hounds threw themselves against the stout oaken palings, foam-flecked teeth snapping the air.
‘In the dark, certainly,’ Cranston murmured, ‘they wouldn’t distinguish friend from foe. Perhaps we should accept the obvious and the inevitable, Brother: Whitfield hanged himself.’