Paul Doherty: Herald of Hell

‘Master?’

‘A good evening’s work, Albinus. Now there goes a man who thinks he controls the game but doesn’t.’

‘Master?’

‘My Lord of Gaunt and his eldest son Henry of Lancaster will go north. If the rebels are defeated he will turn swiftly south to be in for the kill. If the rebels succeed, he will then sit, wait and watch. If Master Tyler’s plot comes to fruition, my Lord of Gaunt will be the only royal prince with a standing army behind him. If Tyler’s plot fails, my Lord of Gaunt will return to crush all flickers of rebellion. In the end, our master will be safely removed from the season of slaughter and be free to plot and take action as he thinks appropriate. So yes, Albinus, in all an excellent night’s work.’

‘And the cipher?’

‘I want to unravel that for my own reasons, apart from my nagging curiosity. For that we need Whitfield, once he has finished wallowing in the squalid pleasures of the Golden Oliphant.’

Sir Everard Camoys, mercer and leading banker in Cheapside, was dreaming. He was locked in a nightmare about boiling the flesh from the corpse of his former comrade, Simon Penchen, killed whilst fighting alongside the Teutonic Knights against Slav intruders on the eastern marches of the Holy Roman Empire. Sir Everard, and more especially his brother Reginald, had been determined to bring their comrade’s remains home for a proper burial in St Mary Le Bow. They would not leave Simon’s corpse out on those frozen plains dotted with dark, sinister-looking forests: a desolate landscape, a Hell on earth, where the spirits of the departed, in their own dead flesh, roamed the countryside with their coffins held aloft. Such monstrosities could only be despatched by being dug up and decapitated, their rotten hearts roasted until they cracked open and the evil angel which had animated them, fled in the form of a crow. This malignant spirit would join the other demons yelling in the air: grotesques with flames dancing in their eyes, their mouths crammed with noxious fumes. Fighting alongside the Teutonic Knights, Sir Everard and Reginald had learnt all about the living dead, which had made them even more determined not to leave Simon’s mortal remains in that ghastly land.

They had dressed Simon’s cadaver in an ancient chapel which also served as the treasure house for the Teutonic Knights. At the time Sir Everard should have realized something was dreadfully amiss, and that Reginald was bent on committing heinous sacrilege. Satan, unbeknown to Sir Everard, had been there sticking out his tongue whilst holding his fork in the crook of his arm, with Death sidling beside him, his quiver full of fiery arrows. Satan had certainly struck. Oh, Reginald had always been hungry for riches, determined to return and strut the streets of London, garbed in a puffed tunic bounded by a belt with precious studs to match the gold and black of his sheath and hose, a bejewelled chaperon on his head. Reginald, a self-proclaimed artist, was always taken with any exquisitely precious object, be it a ring, a brooch or, as in this case, a holy relic. Sir Everard wished he had paid greater heed to one of the wall paintings in that ancient chapel. The fresco depicted a man in a blue gown and red hose, seated on a flesh-coloured chair, a harp with golden strings resting on his lap. At first glance a picture of serenity, except, in the bottom corner, lurked Death in the guise of a skeleton, drawing his bow fashioned out of bone and taking careful aim at the harpist. Of course, Reginald would have ignored any warnings, as well as the advice scrawled beneath the painting: that any violator of that hallowed place would have his body consumed by furry rats. Reginald was never a man to be warned …

Sir Everard jerked awake from his half-sleep and pulled himself up against the feather-filled bolsters. They had eventually brought Penchen’s corpse back for burial in St Mary’s, then he and Reginald had gone their separate ways. Sir Everard had joined the Goldsmiths’ Guild and soon prospered. As for Reginald … Sir Everard sighed. His brother had become involved with the whore Elizabeth Cheyne. Only years after they had returned from Prussia did Reginald confess that he had stolen the precious relic, the Cross of Lothar, with its antique cameo of the Emperor Augustus, a miniature but exquisitely carved cross, carved and decorated with gold, gems, pearls and precious enamels. Reginald had cheerfully admitted, rogue that he was, that he had filched the relic from the treasury in the ancient chapel of the Teutonic Knights not simply for profit, but because he truly lusted after the cross’s delicate beauty and its links with an ancient past. Reginald also viewed the cross as part reparation for the death of his comrade Simon. He had refused adamantly to restore it and had taken the secret of the relic’s whereabouts to his grave. Did the whore Elizabeth Cheyne now possess it? That might explain why she seemed to have little or no interest in where it could be. And it might be the real reason why Sir Everard’s own scapegrace son Matthias frequented that brothel, especially now with its Festival of Cokayne. Sir Everard snorted with annoyance – Cokayne! Why were they celebrating at a time when London teetered on the abyss, with the threat of revolt growing ever more imminent? Out in the surrounding shires, the Commonwealth of the Peasants plotted furiously under their leaders like the hedge priest, John Ball, who warned that God’s wrath would envelop them all.

Sir Everard thanked God that heaven had taken his beloved Eleanor to itself: his wife would not witness the bloody mayhem which would soon drench the city. Cheapside turned into a corpse-strewn battleground. Pitched battles outside the Tower. The rebels storming across London Bridge, seizing the Gatehouse and fortifications which, if their doggerel proclamation proved prophetic, would be swiftly decorated with the severed heads of their opponents, especially that of John of Gaunt, self-styled protector, uncle and regent of the boy king, Richard II. Others would soon join him, such as Master Thibault, Gaunt’s Master of Secrets who now huddled with his henchmen behind the grim fortifications of the Tower. Already many of the court party were preparing to flee; even members of Master Thibault’s own household were drawing their gold and silver from the bankers of Cheapside and slipping into the night, well away from London and the doom which threatened.

Fiery preachers, garbed in horse- and goatskin, stalked the streets warning citizens that the iron seats of judgement had been set up amidst a swarm of serpents. The skulls of London’s citizens would be split and, with the parting of the sutures, their souls would fly out to mingle with a host of spirits in the air. A dark, dank yet glittering mist would encase the city like a funeral shroud, and through this would prowl all the demons of Hell. The preachers, undoubtedly sent by the Upright Men, foretold that London would undergo the blood-splattered pangs of rebirth to emerge as the New Jerusalem with silver ramparts and gold-encrusted doorways fashioned out of pure white crystal and blue marble. Gaunt had hanged a few of these self-proclaimed prophets on moveable four-branched gallows, pushed up and down Cheapside so all could gaze on the strangled remains of his enemies. However, terror piled upon terror did nothing to curb the fear creeping across the city like a thick river mist which swirled and curled its way through everything.

Sir Everard pushed back the thick woollen rug and crisp linen under-sheets. He glimpsed the early dawn of this late May morning piercing the gaps between the shutters, shimmering in the light of the polished floorboards. He gazed round his bedchamber with its empty cloth poles hanging from the ceiling, the polished aumbry with cleared shelves, the great chestnut coffer now stripped of its contents: the high-backed settle before the hearth bereft of cushions, the empty spaces on the walls where paintings, triptychs and coloured cloths had been taken down. Gathering up his cloak from a stool, he dragged the candle-table closer. He took some comfort in the fact that he had removed all the costly items as well as his great iron-bound coffers with their triple locks. A former comrade in arms, now Constable of Leeds Castle, had indentured to protect all of Sir Everard’s movables. The goldsmith wondered whether he should also leave, but he was not sure if Matthias would accompany him. And what would happen if the revolt was crushed, its leaders torn to pieces, their dead flesh hacked into bloody chunks to decorate the spikes of London Bridge and the Lion Gate at the Tower: would Gaunt and Master Thibault then begin to sift amongst those who had fled? Would they adopt the line from scripture, that whoever was not with them was against them? Sir Everard let his vein-streaked legs dangle over the side of the bed, then lowered his feet and felt the crushed herbs which dusted the floor planks. He wondered if Matthias had returned home from his roistering or if he was still at the Golden Oliphant, searching for the Cross of Lothar. Then his heart skipped a beat at the sound of a horn braying outside. He sat, the breath catching in his throat, as he waited for what he knew was coming. One blast, two, followed by a third. The Herald of Hell was outside this house! Pierced by a dart of chilling fear, Sir Everard crumpled on to the bed as he heard the voice, powerful and carrying, like a blast from a hollow trumpet: