Peter Ransley: Plague Child

‘St Mary-le-Bow,’ Will said. ‘It means –’

The end of his sentence was drowned by a great tumult of bells, spreading through the City from the east. Like a fire leaping from roof to roof the noise swelled, the deep-throated boom of St Katharine by the Tower, the clangour of St Dunstan-in-the-East, sparking into life the carillons of St Lawrence Jewry and St Giles’ Cripplegate, St Paul’s, St Martin’s, St Dunstan-in-the-West and St Clement Danes until the whole warehouse shook in one huge cauldron of sound.

Luke was inaudible, but no one needed to hear him. ‘The King,’ were the words he formed.

The King had arrived to talk to Parliament! All our arguments were forgotten as we joined the great crowds pouring along Thames Street, past Fishmongers’ Hall and up Fish Street Hill. Shouting questions and holding our ears close to people’s mouths, we gradually made out that the King had met the Lord Mayor and aldermen at Hoxton, in fields just beyond the sprawl of new building, which (if it was anything like Poplar) had come to an abrupt halt in the present crisis with half-built houses and littered wood left in muddy pools.

‘The King knighted the Lord Mayor on the spot,’ someone told Will.

Will groaned. ‘Knighthoods for gold – the King wants the City to buy him an army!’

A burst of cheering silenced him. I wondered why the crowd, after the demonstrations last night, could be so happy about it until we reached the corner of Gracious Street. We could not move for the press of people round the fountain. Men and women staggered from it with what looked like blood on their hands and clothes.

Even Luke had lost his coolness and was shoving his way through the crowd. He yelled at me, but I could not hear a word. The bells near us stopped, others petering away, and Luke’s voice boomed into my ear.

‘Drink to the King! And damn his bad advisers!’

He vanished among the heaving mass, reappearing with his fine lace collar stained with crimson, his hands running red.

‘The best Bordeaux!’ he yelled. ‘When the King favours you – you’re all for him!’

I could not believe it. The fountain was running with wine. A woman carried away a pot of it. Most held out their hands and slurped it into their mouths before it dribbled away then, having lost their places, fought to get back for more before the casks that were supplying it ran out. I wriggled on my hands and knees under a drayman’s apron, catching the wine that ran through his fingers, sucking it up then turning my head to the sky to catch the red rain until I lost my balance and was in danger of being trampled into the crimson mud. Whether it was the best Bordeaux or vinegar I did not know, and I did not manage to swallow very much of it, but I was certainly drunk. Drunk on the press around me, then, turning like one towards Cornhill, on the thunderous roar of the crowd coming from there. He had arrived! We were missing him! The thought was on everyone’s faces as they pushed and elbowed past Leadenhall Market.

People must have been in their places for hours. The route for royal entries to the City had been the same for over a hundred years. The King had entered at Moorgate, the procession doubling back on the route of the old Roman wall, turned again at Bishopsgate and was now approaching Merchant Taylors’ Hall, rising in front of us. Spectators were pressed together as solidly as a brick wall and no matter how I dodged and jumped I could see little but fluttering banners brightening the grey November day and people leaning perilously from windows shouting with one voice:

‘Long live the King! Long live the King!’

Tall as he was, Will had to stretch on his toes to see. He was flinging his hands in the air, shouting with the rest of the crowd. I was pressed against a half-timbered house. Above me was a cross-beam beneath the upper-storey windows where people were leaning out. Later I heard they had paid an angel for the privilege.

‘Will, for the Lord’s sake – give me a step.’

He linked his hands together. I slotted my foot into them, swung my other foot on to a stud, scrabbling for a hold in the loose herringbone brickwork. Plaster dribbled on me as a hand above grabbed me and pulled me up. I clung on to a cross-beam to cheers from the people round me. When I took in the sight below me, I nearly fell back again. The streets were lined with City liverymen. A great rainbow of colour made it as bright as midsummer as another entourage passed down Cornhill, followed by the City Artillery Company, pennants flying from their pikes, pistols at their saddles. I had thought them radical, but it seemed that they had joined the crowds in succumbing to the King.

Two by two on magnificent horses, which trod so exactly to the beat of the drums it looked as though they too were awestruck by the occasion, came the great peers. Constantly in danger of falling, I kept calling out like a small child: ‘Who’s that, who’s that with the sword?’ and someone from the window, or more often Luke, who had managed to worm his way to the front, shouted the answer.

‘That’s the Marquess of Hertford with the Sword of State . . .’

He seemed to know who everybody was, and the significance of who had been chosen and of his position in relation to the King.

‘That’s Manchester . . . Lord Privy Seal . . . and that’s the Marquess of Hamilton . . . fancy choosing him to be Master of the Horse . . . they’re all moderate reformers . . . You see? You see?’ he yelled at Will. ‘The King is sending a message – he’s got rid of his evil counsellors!’

I thought that wonderful news. Then I had to cling to the cross-beam as the crowd below me flung up hats and the people in the room above drummed with their feet on the floor so that the whole house shook. There he was!

‘The King! The King!’ the crowd roared.

I never again in my life used a woodblock of that oval face, long curling hair and pointed beard without thinking how totally inadequate it was, and without remembering that moment. He seemed to float rather than ride on his magnificent black horse, saddle embroidered in silver and gold, his gossamer-light riding cloak fluttering like wings behind him, embroidered with the insignia of the Garter, a star emitting silver rays.

Every time he raised his hand or smiled, the crowd erupted. Already from mouth to mouth the word had spread that at Hoxton he had vowed not to be swayed by popery but to protect the Protestant religion of Elizabeth and James. He looked up as he passed. He seemed to smile and lift his hand directly at me. I was near to fainting, my fingernails scrabbling as I hung on, the crowd a continuous roar in my ears. I loved him. There is no other word. The Divine Right of Kings? Of course he was divine! Were not people all along the route struggling to get close to him, held back by the liverymen – the halt, the lame, beggars trying to get relief from their sores? A woman pressed forward, holding up her blind child in the hope that for a moment he would breathe the same air.

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