The Bleeding Land Read Online Free PDF Page A

confronted by a wall of uproarious noise that took him aback, making his head spin. Three hundred or more souls, men and women both, had crammed into the chamber, all eager to get near the rails at the east end of the place where the business was being done. A poor view, it seemed, did nothing to blunt their passions and they bellowed, crowed and squawked, their voices making the loudest sound that Tom had ever heard. And yet he would not retreat, not until he had seen for himself the object of the crowd’s rage, and so he thrust himself into the maelstrom.
    Being the son of a knight and looking like one too still had its advantages, he realized, even in a city where ‘the embers of reform’, as his father had put it, were beginning to glow, and men instinctively shuffled aside so that Tom was drawn inexorably through the clamorous, damp-smelling array and was soon spat out at the other side. Where he found himself face to face with a grim-looking soldier who hefted his halberd towards him in warning, the wicked-looking, rust-spotted blade gleaming dully in the candlelight. Tom showed his palms, a gesture that said he had no intention of coming any closer. And nor did he. Some of the soldiers were no older than he and nervous-looking, their eyes flicking across the boisterous throng, bloodless hands gripping their halberds a little too tightly. Glancing around, Tom saw scorn and malice twisting every face whether yeoman, journeyman, apprentice, or gentleman. To his right was a woman who had left her head uncovered to show off her elaborate coiffure; Tom suspected she was a beauty but could not be sure with her face warped by the squawking of obscenities that would make a sailor blush.
    In sconces along the oak-panelled walls candles, whose wicks needed trimming, were failing against the dark and miserable afternoon, so that with all the people, smoke and noise, Tom was reminded of the rowdy gaming houses in the Bankside and Montague Close that Mun enjoyed telling him about.
    A shoulder struck him square in the back, shoving him forward.
    ‘Stay back, sir!’ the soldier yelled and Tom replied that he would if only he could. Wearing an iron helmet and back- and breastplate over a thick buff-leather coat, the soldier was one of twelve tasked with keeping the crowd from encroaching on the Lords and the man before them: an old grey-bearded priest who Tom perceived was being accused of some crime, though he could not yet say what.
    ‘Who is he?’ he asked the soldier, but the man ignored him to glare threateningly – but do no more than that – at an apprentice who had spat a wad of phlegm at the priest. So Tom asked the same question of a man beside him whose face bore the pitted scars of the pox. Like many around him the man was smoking a pipe, its fumes thickening air already acrid with burning tallow, wet cloth and sweat.
    ‘He’s a Scot,’ the man spat, nodding towards the priest. ‘Name’s Robert Phillip. He’s the Queen’s confessor, a damned papist.’
    Insults cut through the fug, most of them aimed at the elderly priest, but if they were arrows he was suited in plate armour and seemed oblivious of them.
    ‘This is all because he is a Catholic?’ Tom asked, staring at Phillip and straining to hear what the Speaker for the Lords was saying to him.
    ‘It is crime enough if you ask me,’ the pockmarked man said, eyebrows arched. Then he pointed the stem of his pipe at the priest. ‘But worse than that they say he’s the Pope’s bloody spy , sent here to spread his filth and pervert His Majesty.’
    Tom watched Phillip’s lips move but could not hear his words, though whatever they were had the Lords scowling and shaking their heads. ‘He looks harmless enough,’ he said, wondering how the old man could remain so calm in this bubbling cauldron of hatred.
    ‘That’s what makes the bastard dangerous,’ his neighbour muttered through tight lips as he drew on his pipe. ‘His type are a bloody canker