Michael Jecks: King's Gold

‘Thanks be to God you’re back. I thought you’d been killed too,’ Bill said nervously, eyeing the drunk without pleasure.

‘There are two more up there,’ Alured said. ‘This man saw their killer. Come on, have you sent for the coroner?’

‘No,’ Bill said.

But the drunk had dropped to his rump by the body. He stared at the man lying there with an expression of curiosity on his old, wrinkled face. ‘Why’s he here?’

‘Someone killed him,’ Bill said shortly.

‘But he’s not dead.’

And Matteo Bardi coughed weakly, retched, and closed his eyes from the pain, as he muttered in his native tongue: ‘The King’s Gold. . He’ll take the King’s Gold. .’

‘ Christ’s ballocks!’ Bill sprang away as though the man was a ghost.

‘What did he say?’ Alured asked.

‘He’s raving,’ Bill said. ‘He needs a physician.’

Fourth Friday after the Feast of St Michael

Newgate Prison

The mob had taken over the prison. All those accused of supporting the King or his friends were thrown in here, and as Dolwyn was servant to a banker, he too was incarcerated.

Another man had died in the night, Dolwyn saw, glancing at the men huddled in the filth below the long shaft of light. There was a window twenty, thirty feet above them, and the prisoners clung to each other beneath it as though it offered escape. It didn’t.

They had thrown the body to lie in the shadow towards the middle of the room, only a scrap of linen about his groin. All his other clothes were gone. Not that he had been dressed for a night here when he came. Dolwyn remembered thinking that his thin clothing would be no protection against the chill and the foul miasma that pervaded this place. Even those who squeezed together for warmth against the cold and damp suffered. That man wouldn’t be the last to die here.

They would all die soon enough.

The dank cell was fifteen feet square, with curved ceilings like an abbey’s undercroft. Blackened stone glistened in the darkness, running with moisture, and in the gloom the only sound was a constant, maddening dripping. It went on at the same slow rate all through the day and night. If water could tear at a man’s soul, this did.

There were plenty of other noises vying to drown it out, but without success: screams from those demented enough to think their voices could interest the gaoler; the low mumble of the utterly lunatic; the sudden shrieks of a man being beaten by his cell-mate; the sobbing; the pathetic wailing of the boy in a chamber farther along the passageway; the scurrying of rats’ paws. .

Dolwyn had been in gaol before and the thought of death did not frighten him: rather, it was the manner of death that concerned him.

Hunger and thirst were the two constants of his exixtence here in Newgate Prison, but at least he could slake his thirst with a sip at the brackish, water-soaked walls. It tasted foul from the urine of the men in the chamber above them — but he didn’t care; not now. The hunger was much worse.

Newgate Prison. It was hard to believe that he was in the foulest gaol in London because of a misunderstanding. He had escaped the rope before, only to come to London and be caught in the same predicament!

Only a few feet or yards up there was the sunlight. Out in the world, men lived, laughed, rutted on their women, ate, walked in the open air, free. How many would even give a thought to the poor devils incarcerated, justifiably or not, down here in the cells? All too few.

He could see the gate in his mind’s eye. The great age-blackened timbers, the square stone towers rising up on either side. And beyond the gate: life. A short roadway that gave out to the shacks and rough buildings thrown up towards Holeburnstrete 7, where those who worked in the city but couldn’t afford a room congregated. These were no great mansions like the houses on the road to Westminster where he’d been caught: these were shabby hovels for workers and beggars, sprawling out on either side of the street all higgledy-piggledy, to the Fleet River and beyond.

And beyond were trees, he remembered. For a while he could almost taste the clean air, and his lungs seemed cleansed of the filth that encompassed this city of fools and fiends.

It was on La Straunde 8that he’d been taken, hard by St Clement Danes. The mob was sacking a rich man’s house — someone said it was the Bishop of Exeter’s, but Dolwyn couldn’t give a clipped farthing for that. All he knew was that there were bodies in the street, and behind them, men savaging the building. There were flames in the window, and three men came from the house’s main entrance dragging a huge tapestry. Behind them was a churl with a leather jug, from which he refreshed himself regularly. Catching sight of Dolwyn, he started to point and shout.

In a moment Dolwyn was surrounded by scruffy youths, the raggle-taggle of London’s streets, all of them armed with knives, cleavers and hatchets.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Dolwyn of Guildford.’

‘Well, “Dolwyn”, only spies and traitors come past here.’

‘I am travelling home to Guildford — nothing more.’

‘I think you’re a spy.’

‘No. I’ve nothing to do with this.’

‘You’re spying on us!’

Dolwyn looked at the place. ‘My master is richer than this. You’re welcome to it. I am with the Bardi. .’ And then he could have cursed his stupidity.

‘You are a Bardi man!’ one of them snarled. ‘A pox on you and your money-lenders!’

The crowd gave an approving growl and edged nearer.

He said, ‘I’m only a servant.’

‘Just a servant, eh? God’s faith! Those usurers helped the old King ’aginst our city,’ the leader said, and spat into the street. ‘King’s gone now, though, and the Bardi won’t be coming back. The city’s ours!’

‘You treat your property with care,’ Dolwyn said, gazing at pillars of smoke rising into the sky.

‘The King’s running like a hare before the dogs. Him and Despenser.’

‘He can rot in hell,’ a voice muttered.

‘I have no business with you, or the King,’ Dolwyn said. ‘I’m just a traveller.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

‘I piss on you,’ he snapped. ‘I tell the truth!’

His words enraged someone, because in a moment he was on his knees, being struck repeatedly over the back with a stick. He endured it for a while, but then seized the stick and thrashed his assailant twice, but before he could climb to his feet, he felt a boot slam into his chin, and then fists and feet kept him down.

And he woke up here in the gaol, along with others the mob disliked.

There was a new noise. He could just hear it over the sobbing of the boy up the way and the constant drip-drip of water: a rumbling and thundering from overhead. There was a shout, and the sound of a door slamming. Rattles of iron, a quick scream, and then a crashing roar, as of the sea breaking on the shore. But he recognised it. It was the steady pounding of many booted feet.

Dolwyn moved away from the door warily, like the deer he had once pursued, until he was concealed inside a hollow in the wall. The group about the shaft stayed still, faces tight with renewed fear.

A party of guards might mean they were to be taken on the short march to Tyburn to dance their last, or perhaps London was on the rampage again. It was common enough in this changing world: there might be a new King, new advisers, a new council — but the mob was the mob.

There was a short cry, then cheering. Suddenly the noise was all around, as men poured into the passage between the cells. Faces appeared at the grille, lit by the fitful orange glare of torches, eyes flashing with disgust and horror as they stared into the cell, some dulled with ale, and all the while there was a cry of some sort, demanding to know where a man was held.