The King's Evil

Prologue

September, 1666.

The month of September had scarcely begun when a new disaster struck an already beleaguered city. London had been savaged without mercy by the Great Plague, frozen to the marrow by a cold winter then blistered in a hot, dry, unrelenting summer which bred drought, discontent and fresh outbreaks of virulent disease. Even the oldest inhabitants of the capital could not recall a more intense period of suffering but they consoled themselves - between weary curses at a malign Fate - with the thought that they had now endured misery enough and that their situation could only improve.

Then came the fire.

It brought Jonathan Bale awake in the middle of the night. He sat bolt upright for a few seconds then clambered unwillingly out of bed.

'What ails you?' asked his wife, stirring in the dark.

'Nothing, Sarah,' he said.

'Then why have you got up?'

'Go back to sleep. I did not mean to wake you.'

'Are you unwell, Jonathan?'

'No,' he said, putting a reassuring hand on her arm. 'I am in good health - thank God - though it is as much your doing as the Almighty's. I am blessed in a wife who cooks and cares for me so wondrously well. You have earned your rest, Sarah. Take it. Sleep on.'

'How can I when you are so disturbed?'

'I am not disturbed.'

'Then why did you wake up with such a start?'

'I must have had a bad dream.'

'You never have dreams of any kind,' she said, sitting up in bed and stifling a yawn. 'I am the dreamer in the family. Every night is filled with them. But not you. Your mind seems to have no fancies. Now tell me what is going on.'

'Nothing that need upset you,' he soothed.

'Tell me.'

'In the morning, perhaps. Not now.'

'Stop trying to fob me off.'

'Sarah—'

'And I'll not be Sarah'd into silence,' she warned with a tired smile. 'I have not been married to you all these years without learning your ways and your moods. You are a man who sleeps soundly in his bed. Much too soundly at times for I have had to rouse you more than once of a morning. Only something very unusual could have made you wake up of a sudden like that. What was it?'

'I do not know,' he said with a shrug, 'and that is the truth of it, Sarah. I simply do not know.'

Jonathan Bale was a big, solid, serious man whose frame seemed to fill the small bedchamber. Now in his late thirties, he still retained the muscles which he had developed during his years as a shipwright and, despite the excellence of his wife's cooking, there was not a superfluous ounce of fat on his body. The same could not be said of Sarah. Motherhood had rounded her hips and filled out her thighs, buttocks and breasts. A good appetite helped to complete the transformation of a slim, attractive young woman into a plump but still comely matron. Jonathan had marked no change in her. To his loving eye, she was still the same Sarah Teague whom he had met and married nine years earlier.

He sat on the bed and slipped a comforting arm around her.

'There is no point in the two of us losing sleep,' he said.

'Neither of us need lose it. Come back to bed.' 'No, Sarah. Not yet. You lie down again.'

'Not until you tell me what this is all about.'

'I have told you. I honestly do not know.'

'When you came awake, you let out a little yell.'

'Did I?'

'What provoked it?'

'I have no idea.'

'Was it fear? Pain? Foreboding?'

'I wish I knew,' he sighed. 'It was almost as if someone shook me awake. There was a sense of alarm. I felt that I was being summoned.'

'You are not on duty now, Jonathan.'

'A constable is always on duty.'

'Even in the middle of the night?'

'If he is called, Sarah.'

'But what on earth has called you?'

'That is what I intend to find out.'

He kissed her gently on the forehead then eased her back down on the pillow before crossing to the window. Opening the shutters, he looked out into the unrelieved blackness of Addle Hill. Familiar smells assaulted his nostrils and the open sewer which ran down the lane was especially pungent on a warm night. Dogs roamed and foraged, cats fought a distant battle over territory. Footsteps dragged laboriously as a drunken reveller tried to stagger home. But there was nothing to be seen beyond the vague outlines of the buildings opposite. All was exactly as he would have expected to find it at such an hour yet Jonathan Bale remained quietly perturbed. Instinct told him that something was amiss. It troubled him that he could not detect what it was. He stayed at the window until his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness and allowed him to take a fuller inventory of the lane. He could even pick out the inn sign of the White Swan now and the massive bulk of Baynard's Castle emerged from the gloom like a cliff face.

But nothing untoward came into view. The city was peaceful.

Sarah was torn between fatigue and impatience.

'Well?' she asked.

'Nothing,' he said, closing the shutters. 'I was mistaken.'

'Good.'

'It must have been a dream, after all.'

'Just come back to bed.'

'I will.' He climbed in beside her and pulled the bedsheet over him. 'I am sorry that I woke you,' he said, giving her an affectionate peck on the cheek. 'Good night, Sarah.'

'Good night.'

Nestling into him, she was asleep within minutes but her husband remained wide awake. He had an overwhelming sense of being needed to fight some undisclosed emergency. It made him fretful. London, his birthplace and home, the sovereign city which he loved so much and helped to patrol so conscientiously, was in grave danger yet he was unable to go to its aid. His frustration steadily grew until he had to fight to contain it. London was imperilled. While his wife surrendered once more to the sweetness of her dreams, Jonathan Bale's fevered mind was restlessly pacing the streets of the capital in search of the latest terror.