CHAPTER ONE
The autumn wind blew east along the river, fretting the surface into rolling, broken ripples, rocking moored barges so that their timbers creaked and groaned, eating into the bones of the old men who slept where they had scavenged, in the shelter of London Bridge, their huddled bodies stinking, under rags they used for cover.
The moon drifted in and out of tossed clouds. Inn signs protested, swinging on rusty hinges. Shutters clacked on crumbling plaster walls. Dried leaves blew into drifts in doorways and made little heaps beside house steps. Along the dark and narrow alleys the rats ran, eyes shining, on silent feet, whisking from the rotten warehouses, through secret runs, to the tenements and houses of the city.
The watch plodded, yawning, from street to street, their lanterns a moving circle of yellow light, watching the sky for signs of coming rain, and in the gabled houses around them the citizens of London coughed and fanned the air as the wind blew down their chimneys, sending gusts of oily smoke into their faces, from their fires of sea coal.
A door opened in Rood Lane, north of the fish market at Billingsgate.
Candlelight made a flickering pattern on the cobbled street. The silence was broken by hushed laughter, voices making their farewell.
Then the door closed and bolts clattered home.
The departing guests walked close together, two women, their servant a little ahead, holding a swinging lantern so that they might see where they placed their feet. Their shadows moved with them along the house walls, the old servant’s stooped and broad, those of the two women merging now and then.
Their clogs clicked on the cobbles. A small black rat fled across their path from where it had been feeding in the overflowing gutter, on refuse left for the scavengers to collect.
The younger of the two women gasped.
‘It was only a rat,’ said her mother, mildly. ‘Thomas, is your cudgel to hand?’
‘Aye, Mistress Brent,’ the old man nodded, but he grinned, for, after all, rats were harmless enough, especially along the river, where they grew fat on mouldy grain left too long in the warehouses whose rotten timbers, breaking down under the lash of rain, allowed the grain to swell and ferment. Thomas could remember seeing a horde of drunken rats, bellies swollen with bad corn, swarming along an alley, attacking all they met. But it was rare for them to turn upon human beings.
As they walked, London breathed around them, a pest- house of tiny, cramped dwellings. The west wind, blowing a fierce and cleansing draught through the foul streets, carried off to the east the stench of Pudding Lane, where heaps of decaying offal awaited the scavengers, alive in the hours of darkness with feeding rats.
Once it had been called Red Rose Lane, though why nobody knew. Now, on slaughter days, the earth was puddled with black hogs’ blood, and passers-by walked with an orange to their nostrils, to disguise the foul odour.
They passed the Golden Lion tavern, quickening their steps for fear of meeting late revellers issuing forth. The sound of voices hummed behind the windows.
‘It was a merry evening,’ Mistress Brent said contentedly. ‘I like to meet with my friends and make music for an hour. It was a great pity that your father could not come.’
‘Whenever we play in company I wish I had practised more upon my lute,’ Cornelia sighed. ‘I always meant to do so.’
‘You played very prettily tonight,’ her mother said easily.
‘I struck a great many bad notes,’ Cornelia smiled, knowing that her mother would see no wrong in her playing.
‘Master Peppercorn praised your playing highly. He is such a worthy young man.’
‘Yes, he will make a hard-working mercer when he takes over his father’s business,’ said Cornelia, ignoring the look her mother gave her. ‘But his hands are clammy. I hate him to touch me.’
‘Child, that is not kind. He is so shy.’