The Book of Fires Read Online Free PDF

posed, with their marshes, morasses and narrow-snaking shallows hidden by reeds that sprouted in thick clusters. The Fens were fast becoming a fortress, a mustering place for all those ready to wage war against the Crown. Gaunt had ordered the construction of a vast flotilla of punts – flat-bottomed, easily assembled barges which could thread the needle-thin waterways of the Fens. The barges were being built on the Southwark side and would soon be transported by land and sea in time for a great
chevauchée
once spring broke.
    Meanwhile, the harsh mills of justice had to grind on. Gaunt had asked the coroner to investigate the bloody, tangled mystery surrounding the execution of the city beauty, Lady Isolda Beaumont. Cranston had met her on a number of occasions and he knew something about the woman’s hideous death and its equally horrific aftermath. The coroner glanced at the hour candle on its copper stand. The flame was approaching the ninth ring – time for him to be gone! Cranston hurriedly strapped on his warbelt and seized his cloak and beaver hat before bellowing instructions and farewells to Simon and Oswald, who were crouched over their chancery desks in the adjoining chamber. The coroner stamped down the stairs and out into the freezing cold of the grey day. The business of the Guildhall had now begun, its dungeons and cells being swiftly emptied. A long line of city bailiffs garbed in the red and murrey livery of the city led by Flaxwith, Cranston’s chief bailiff, with his constant companion, the ugly-faced mastiff Samson, were herding out a gaggle of prisoners for punishment. The felons would be taken down to the different stocks, pillories and thews to be exhibited and mocked until their sentences were complete. The prisoners, manacled and dazed, staggered about. To drown their cries, a few of the bailiffs carried drums, trumpets, cymbals and three sets of bagpipes. Cranston walked down the line of hapless miscreants, reading the placards slung around their necks which proclaimed their offences. A woman had created a vile nuisance by constructing a pipe from her own privy chamber to her neighbour’s garden and ignored a court writ to remove it. The justices had ruled that she was to carry part of that pipe for a half a day in the thews of Poultry. A counterfeit physician had fed a patient a nostrum so noxious the poor man had found it almost impossible to urinate for a week. The counterfeit physician was being mounted on the back of a bony street nag. He would face the rear with the horse’s tail in his hand for a bridle. Around his neck hung two dirty urine flasks and a pisspot. Behind him a vintner would be compelled to drink, wry-mouthed, the corrupt wines he had attempted to palm off on others. There was a fisherman who had freshened a stale catch with blood; a milk-seller found guilty of mixing chalk with his drink; four strumpets caught drunk and soliciting beyond Cock Lane; and finally two wrestlers who had decided to engage naked in a raucous fight on the steps of a London church. Cranston walked down the line. He had a swift word with Flaxwith and strode off to the gateway just as the bagpipes began to screech and the punishment procession moved off.
    Once in Cheapside, Cranston walked purposefully, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other close to the purse beneath his cloak. Cheapside was busying for another day’s frenetic trading. War might come. Revolt might threaten but trade was London’s blood. Shop shutters rattled up and sheets were removed from the great broad stalls that ranged in long lines down the mercantile thoroughfare. Church bells chimed the hour of divine office as market horns brayed to commence business. Apprentices scurried as swift and nimble as monkeys to set out wares, all quick-eyed, searching out passers-by for any potential customer. A songster had already set up his pitch on a broken barrow and trilled loudly about a maiden with ‘skin white as snow on ice’.