Sara Douglass - The Crippled Angel

The only indication of what he saw within was a very faint tightening of the muscles along his jaw line.

Whittington could feel the corpse roiling about within, feel the hate and injustice and vengeance reaching up to seize Bolingbroke by the throat. He wanted to rush to Bolingbroke’s side and tear him away, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t so much as twitch a muscle.

This was between Bolingbroke and Richard alone.

Something spattered on the stones beneath the bier, and Whittington’s eyes looked down, as did everyone else’s in the cathedral save Bolingbroke’s, who kept his eyes firmly on whatever was happening within the coffin.

Fat drops of thick, black blood oozed from the joints of the coffin, soaked into the material covering the bier, then dripped onto the flagstones where it pooled in a mess of foulness.

The entire cathedral took a great breath of mixed fear and awe.

The corpse bled in the presence of its murderer.

Bolingbroke’s face twisted, and he lifted his hands and stepped away from the coffin.

He looked to the priests standing frozen to one side. “Take this coffin and its contents and burn it,” he said. “Richard was ever adept at fouling up the realm.”

He started to say something else, to address the crowds present, but as he opened his mouth, a low, vicious growl interrupted him.

Everyone’s eyes, now including Bolingbroke’s, swept to the open doors of the cathedral, from where the sound emanated.

There stood a hound of such vast size that most instantly assumed it was of a supernatural origin.

Richard’s soul, perhaps, come to exact its vengeance.

The hound stalked forward, its legs stiff with fury, its hair raised along its shoulders and spine. It was entirely black, its body covered with weeping sores. Its head it kept low, its yellow, unblinking eyes fixed on Bolingbroke, fetid strings of foam dripping to the floor from its snarling snout.

Bolingbroke moved his cloak slightly away from the sword he wore at his hip, but made no other movement.

The hound’s snarling increased both in volume and in viciousness. As it progressed up the centre of the nave, the very path Bolingbroke had just walked, the hound lowered its body until its belly almost scraped the flagstones, creeping now, rather than stalking.

Its eyes shifted slightly from Bolingbroke to the coffin behind him.

Bolingbroke stepped to one side.

All down the nave, as the hound crept past, people shrank back, making both the sign of the cross and the sign against evil. Many clutched charms, some whispered hasty prayers, all wished they had chosen some other time to view Richard’s corpse.

The hound was now close to Bolingbroke.

The king took another step away. The hound ignored his movement. Its attention was all on the coffin, and on the spreading pool of black, clotting blood beneath it.

Slowly, slowly it crept closer, growling all the while, until its head was under the bier.

Then, suddenly, it lowered itself completely to the floor, gave a small yelp, and lapped at the blood.

As it did so, the sores that covered its body swelled and then burst, scattering great gouts of pus over the floor.

Someone in the crowd screamed: “ It is the black Dog of Pestilence! ” There was a shocked silence, then someone else screamed, formlessly, terrified, and suddenly there was panic as people stampeded for the doors.

The Dog continued to lick at the pool of blood, and its sores continued to swell and burst.

Whittington forced himself forward, and grasped Bolingbroke’s arm.

“Sire. We must away. Get away from the Dog! ”

“It is already too late,” Bolingbroke said softly, and Whittington was not surprised to see tears rolling down his cheeks. “Too late.”

He turned and looked Whittington directly in the face. “The pestilence has returned. Sweet Jesus Christ help us all.”

Then he pulled away from Whittington’s grip and walked down the nave and out the doors.

The Dog of Pestilence continued to lap.

Margery Harwood lived with her husband William and their three children in a comfortable house on Ironmonger Lane off Bishopsgate Street. Margery was proud of her house—she spent an inordinate amount of time polishing, sweeping, washing and straightening—but her pride in her house formed only one part of her general satisfaction with life. She and William had emigrated to London when they were just married, and Margery pregnant with her first child. They’d come from a small village just east of Gravesend, where there was little prospect for an ironworker of William’s calibre. So to London they had come, and if the first years establishing William’s business were hard, then all the effort had been worthwhile. Now Margery was in charge of a house of ten rooms, a pantry, cellar and wine store that was stocked with far more goods than those of her neighbours, and three servants and a cook. William not only had a thriving business, but he also had five apprentices, as well as two guildsmen, working under him. Margery and William’s children—three sons, praise be to God!—were healthy, and well ahead of their classmates at the guild school in learning their sums and letters. Their future was assured. Life was good.

Margery was in the kitchen at five of the clock that afternoon when everything fell apart. She’d been busy all day, supervising her servants as they cleaned out the cellar in preparation for the crates of spring-fresh vegetables that would soon fill it, consulting with the cook about that evening’s fare, and then helping her to strip the eels and baste the vegetables for William’s favourite pie, and thus Margery had enjoyed no free time at all in which to stand in her doorway and gossip with the neighbours.

She had no idea of what had happened at St Paul’s that day, and, by virtue of the fact that her home was tucked right at the end of Ironmonger Lane, a reasonable distance from Bishopsgate Street which was itself on the far side of London from St Paul’s, she’d heard none of the fuss that had carried up and down most of the city’s main thoroughfares. Both William and her sons had yet to come home, and in any case, Margery wasn’t expecting them for another hour or so.

So when the scraping at the kitchen door came, Margery merely muttered her displeasure at the interruption, told the cook and the kitchen girl that she’d see what was about outside, wiped her hands on her apron, and walked to the door that opened into the kitchen courtyard.

Ironmonger Lane was a quiet part of London, rarely visited by the beggars and criminals seen in so many other streets, and so Margery had no hesitation in throwing open the door.

A massive black dog stood not three feet away, staring at Margery with yellow eyes, snarling so viciously that ropes of saliva spattered across Margery’s apron.

Margery gave a small shriek, and slammed the door closed.

“Mistress?” asked the cook, staring up from the table where she’d been rolling out pastry.

Margery took a deep breath. “A dog. A stray,” she said. “Nothing to be concerned about.” And she walked back to the table to her duties, resolving to ask William to speak to the local alderman about the problem of stray dogs.

At that moment she heard their front door open, then, after the shortest of intervals, slam closed. Footsteps thudded down the corridor towards the kitchen.

William, their three sons, and two of his apprentices. William’s face was shiny with sweat, his pale blue eyes wide and panicked.

“Lock the doors,” he said, his voice hoarse and breathless. “Shutter the windows!”

“William—”

He ignored her, brushing past the cook and the kitchen girl to bolt closed the shutter over the kitchen windows. “Harry!” he said, looking at his eldest son. “Upstairs—the windows!”