The Anger of God

PROLOGUE

The man waiting in the corner of the derelict cemetery between Poor Jewry and Sybethe Lane jumped as an owl in the old yew tree above him hooted and spread ghostly wings to go soaring like a dark angel over the tumbled grass and briars. The watcher saw the bird plunge on its shrieking victim then rise effortlessly as a puff of smoke up against the starlit sky. The man shivered and cursed. He remembered stories from his childhood of the Shape-Shifters, those witches, crones of the darkness, who could change their appearance and haunt such deserted, lonely places. The night was warm yet the man felt cold. These were troubled times. During the day he laughed at the gossip, the stories about an anchor and rope which hung down from a cloud and lay fixed in an earthen mound near Tilbury. Or how the king of the pygmies, large-headed and fiery-faced, had been seen riding a goat through the forests north of the city. Whilst devils, small as dormice, laughed and leaped like fish in a net in the grass around the gallows at Tyburn. Such stories merely mirrored the times and echoed the words of the prophet: ‘Woe to the kingdom where the king is a child!’

A prophecy now coming to fruition in England: golden Richard was only a youth and the affairs of state rested in the grasping hands of his uncle, the Regent, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who seemed unable to pour balm on the kingdom’s wounds. French galleys were raiding and sacking towns along the Channel coast. In the north the Scots spilled over the border in an orgy of burning and looting, whilst in the shires round London, the peasants, taxed to the hilt and tied to the soil, bitterly protested against the lords of the earth and plotted bloody rebellion.

Gaunt, however, was as slippery as a fish: unable to raise taxes from a rebellious Commons, he had now performed the miracle of uniting the warring Guilds of London to obtain money from the wealthy burgesses and merchants. This had to be stopped. The watcher in the shadows just wished there was an easier way to do it. He bit his lip. Gaunt had to be destroyed, it was necessary. When the revolt came, a new order would be established in the kingdom and the Great Community, the name the peasant leaders had given themselves, would decide who would live and who would die, who would wield power and who would exercise trade. The prudent ones in the government of the city were already preparing to make such men their friends.

‘I am here.’

The man jumped. Was he hearing things?

‘I am here,’ the voice repeated, low and throaty.

‘Where are you?’

‘We are all around you. Don’t move. Don’t run. Just listen to what I have to say.’

‘What is your name?’ the man asked, trying to control the quick beating of his heart and the panic curdling his innards.

‘I am Ira Dei,’ the voice replied from the darkness of the cemetery. ‘I am the Anger of God. And God’s wrath will spill out against those who reap where they have not sown, who gather profits where they have no right, and who oppress the poor men of the soil as if they were worms and no more.’

‘What do you want?’

‘To make all things new. To take this kingdom into an age of innocence for:

“When Adam delved and Eve span,

Who was then the gentleman?”’

The man nodded. He had heard this doggerel verse chanted like a constant hymn by the peasants who wished to march on London, reduce the city to red-hot ash, seize the King’s uncle, strike off his head and march in procession with that same head on a pike.

‘Are you for us?’ the voice asked.

‘Of course!’ the man spluttered.

‘And do the Regent’s plans move apace?’

‘The banquet is tomorrow night.’

‘Then you must act. Do what we want and we shall consider you our friend.’

‘I have a scheme,’ the man replied. ‘Listen…’

‘Silence!’ the voice rasped. ‘If you wish to be one of us then thwart Gaunt’s ambitions. How you do it need not concern us but we shall watch. Adieu.’

The man strained his eyes against the darkness. He heard a twig snap, an owl hoot but, when he called out, his words rang hollow in the silence.

A mile to the south, on the black, stinking waters of the Thames, another hooded, cowled figure moved his small skiff between the starlings of London Bridge. He tied the rope carefully through a rusting ring and began to climb up the wooden beams, on to the blood-soaked trellis towards the decapitated heads gazing sightlessly from their poles across the river. The man cursed then grinned.

‘What a night to choose,’ he whispered to himself. The river stank like a privy because the dung barges, full of dirt and human refuse, had been busy all eventide unloading their mounds of muck into the water; the stink would last for days. Nevertheless, the thief had to move quickly: the French pirate had been executed the previous afternoon and his head would still be fresh, the skin clean and the eyes not yet pecked out by crows. Nonetheless, he had to be careful: rumours were already rife of how the civic authorities, particularly that fat giant Sir John Cranston, King’s Coroner of the city, were becoming suspicious about the number of amputated limbs and severed heads being moved from London Bridge.

The thief, garbed all in black, with heavy boots to give him a firmer grip on the slippery rails, reached the balcony just under the blood-soaked poles. He crouched in the darkness, straining his ears to distinguish the differing sounds: a barge full of revellers, drunk as lords, making their way from the stews in Southwark back to Botolph’s Wharf; the slop and murmur of the river, faint cries from its banks; the noise of ships being prepared for the morning tide; and, above all, the heavy footfalls of sentries as they walked backwards and forwards near the entrance to the bridge.

The thief waited for a while, breathing carefully, and at last, it seemed, the sentries grew tired and went back to warm themselves over their small brazier. He eased himself on to the top of the bridge and padded soft as a cat to where the long poles jutted out against the sky, each bearing its grisly burden. He stared up into the darkness. He had to be careful. So many executions, so many severed heads. He did not want to choose the wrong one. He had been there the previous evening when the head had been displayed but it could have been moved since. Then he saw the small pool of blood at the end of one pole. He smiled, carefully eased it out of its socket, plucked the severed head from the end, put it into his bag and climbed back over the rails down to his waiting skiff.

On the Southwark side of the Thames, in its maze of dingy, squalid streets, the taverns still blazed with light as the thief-masters and their gangs of rogues went about their nefarious business: the foists, naps, pickpockets and thugs all intent on seeing what profit the night would bring. Others, too, worked: the cat-hunters looking for cheap pelts and meat they could sell; the collectors of dog turds who would sell their smelly bags of refuse for the tanners to use; and the casual labourers, moving from ale-house to ale-house, seeking employment before the day even began. The streets hummed with noise but in a great, half-timbered, three-storied house which had definitely seen better days… all was darkness and silence.

The householder and his wife stood in petrified silence at the door to his daughter’s room. They could see her by the light of a single candle, sitting up against the bolsters, the curtains of the bed pulled well back. As they waited for the terror to begin, the man looked beseechingly at the girl.

‘Elizabeth, will it come again?’ he pleaded.

His white-faced daughter just stared back, her eyes glassy and unseeing.

‘Oh, Elizabeth,’ the man breathed. ‘Why are you doing this to us?’

‘You know why!’ the girl suddenly shrieked, leaning forward.’ ‘You killed my mother to marry that bitch!’ Her hand was flung out, finger pointing at her father’s golden-haired, pretty-faced, second wife.

‘That is not true,’ he replied. ‘Elizabeth, your mother sickened and died. There was nothing I could do.’

‘Lies!’ the girl shrieked.

The man and his wife stared in horrified silence at this young girl who, when darkness fell, became another person. A veritable virago, a hag of the night, who claimed that the ghost of her own mother visited her to denounce both of them as murderers, assassins, poisoners.

‘Listen!’ she hissed. ‘Mother comes again!’

The man let his arm fall from his wife’s shoulders as a shiver ran up his spine, the hairs on the nape of his neck curling in terror. Sure enough, throughout the house the tapping and knocking began. First downstairs, then further up as if something was crawling between the wall and the wainscoting, slowly, cautiously, like a creature spat out by Hell, making its loathsome way towards this bed chamber. The knocking grew louder and began to fill the entire room. The man clapped his hands to his ears.

‘Stop!’ he yelled. He plucked the crucifix from his belt and held it towards his white-faced daughter. ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to stop!’

But the knocking continued — a rattling clatter which threatened to beat him out of his wits.

‘I can take no more,’ the woman beside him hissed. ‘Walter, I can take no more.’

And she ran down the stairs, leaving her husband transfixed in terror. Suddenly, the knocking ceased. The girl leaned forward, the skin of her face not only white but so taut it gave her a skull-like appearance, heightened by the raven-black hair tied tightly in a knot behind her head. The man took a step forward and looked into his daughter’s face, so pale, so chilling: her eyes were lifeless, two spots of black obsidian, glaring hatefully towards him, the red, soft lips curled in a bitter sneer.

He was about to take another step forward when the rattling began again, a quick juddering noise, then fell silent. The man caught that dreadful, well-remembered stench. His courage draining from him, he fell to his knees, staring pitifully at his daughter.

‘Elizabeth!’ he pleaded. ‘In the name of God!’

‘In the name of God, Walter Hobden, you are a murderer!’

The man lifted his head. His white-faced daughter was staring at him, lips moving, but the voice was that of his dead wife. Her precise intonation, the way she would emphasize the ‘R’ in his first name.

‘Walter Hobden, a curse on you for the wine you gave me and the red arsenic it contained — a deadly potion which rotted my stomach and cut short my life to leave you free to indulge your filthy lusts and hidden desires. I was your wife. I am your wife. And I come from Purgatory to warn you! I shall haunt you for as long as your soul is stained with my blood. Believe me, I have seen the place in Hell prepared for you. You must confess! I must have justice, and only then will you receive absolution!’

Walter Hobden crouched, shivering in terror.

‘No! No! No!’ he murmured. ‘This is not true! This is a lie!’

‘No lie!’ the voice shrieked.

Hobden could take no more. He turned and crawled like a beaten dog from the room, running down the wooden stairs as his daughter shivered, closed her eyes and fell back against the bolsters.

Hobden closed his own chamber door behind him, leaning against it sucking in air as he stared, wild-eyed, at the fear-filled face of his second wife. She thrust a cup of claret towards him.

‘Husband, drink.’

He staggered across, snatched the cup from her hand and gulped the rich, cloying wine.

‘What shall I do?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Why does Elizabeth do this to me?’

He came and sat beside her on the edge of the bed. She grasped his hand as he gulped the wine; his fingers felt like slivers of ice.

‘Eleanor?’ He stared over the wine cup. ‘What can be done? Is she possessed? Has some demon taken over her soul?’

Eleanor’s sharp eyes flickered in contempt. ‘She’s a liar and a mummer!’ she jibed. ‘She has taken to her bed with the vapours.’ She wiped the sweat from her husband’s brow. ‘Walter, she is tricking you, playing some evil game.’

‘How can she be?’ he replied. ‘You hear the knocking. I watch her hands. They are above the blankets. How could she arrange that, eh? Or the terrible smell or that voice? I have searched her room when she has been asleep and I can find nothing.’

‘In which case,’ Eleanor replied sharply, ‘she is possessed and should be removed, together with that aged beldame her nurse, to some other place. A hospital, a house for madcaps. Or…’

‘Or what?’ he asked hopefully.

If this is true, if her mother’s ghost returns, then it must be a demon in disguise to spit out such lies. And both she and the room must be exorcized and blessed.’

‘But who can do that?’

Eleanor prised the wine cup from his fingers. ‘Priests are two a penny.’ She put her arms round his neck and kissed him gently on his cheek. ‘Forget these ghosts. Your daughter is a trickster,’ she whispered. ‘And I’ll show her up for the liar she is!’