Hildegard felt like sinking into the ground. His words had drawn in the rest of the drunk’s cronies. Now, high on a horse and with his massive war sword and glittering breastplate, the banner of the Earl of Derby cracking in the wind beside him, he momentarily managed to transcend his usual insignificant demeanour.
Before she could reply, her loutish attacker stepped up. ‘She calls herself a nun?’
‘She does indeed, master.’ His tone was unctuous. ‘We can imagine how rigorously she keeps her vows, eh?’ Swynford looked down at her. ‘Plying for trade in the stews, Domina?’ He laughed and his own men followed suit as if he had cracked a particularly witty joke.
‘Keep a civil tongue in your head, Swynford,’ she replied.
‘Or what?’ He gazed down with contempt into her face.
The lout had stepped up behind her and now, encouraged by Swynford’s manner, put an arm round her waist. ‘Come on, bitch, show us what they teach you in that nunnery of yours.’ He tried to drag her into his foul-smelling embrace but she slipped her knife from her sleeve and held it in front of her.
‘Try it!’ she warned.
He stepped back with an oath. ‘You, a nun? You’re no nun, you’re a bloody witch.’ He glanced back for support from his accomplices who were now beginning to goad him on. ‘We know what they do with witches in Paris!’ he shouted for their benefit. When they staggered closer, asking what the fun was, he shouted to them, ‘What do they do? They burn the bitches!’
One by one they took up the cry. ‘Burn! Burn! Burn the witch!’
Hildegard stood her ground with the knife still in her hand but Swynford drove his horse right up against her so she was trapped between the two groups. He snarled, ‘Neville’s not much use to you now, is he?’
She tried to duck under his horse’s head to make her escape but he drove the animal forward again and she stumbled back to avoid being trampled and bumped into the drunk, giving him the opportunity to grab hold of her round the waist.
‘Come on, lads!’ he bellowed. ‘Let’s have a bit of fun. Let’s burn the witch!’
They began to drag her back the way she had come, up Ludgate Hill towards the city. Swynford, roaring with laughter, shouted encouragement. His men, a gang of ill-kempt ruffians, their livery typically obscured, started up an excited chant and began to follow. It was plain they had been riding out looking for trouble and now they had found it. Swynford took out his sword and held it aloft.
‘A witch! A witch!’ he roared. ‘Let’s make this city clean! Out with witches!’
His yells, augmented by those of his henchmen, brought people running. Soon there was an excited crowd. Some took up the chant, not caring what it was about so long as they could join it; others stood dumbly, staring with a kind of horror at the witch who had been caught and was now being dragged along the street towards her just desserts.
The gates of the city lay in the distance but it was a place where the King’s writ did not run. And far behind, receding, lay the fields, gardens and orchards of the great houses along the Strand and, even more distant, Westminster, the seat of government where the rule of law was supposed to hold sway, and close by, on both sides of the lane, were the shuttered houses of the friars, the courts of the lawyers, the scribes and clerks, and no help anywhere.
A cart was found and was being dragged into the arena that had formed round her. She looked at it in horror. She knew that if she allowed them to force her into it she would be as good as dead. They may not be able to build a fire before help arrived, as it must, but they could tie a rope around her neck, sling one end over the nearest branch then whip the horses on.
This is the end of my life, she thought in cold fury. Among a rabble of drunks urged on by a traitor to the King. She turned on her captors. ‘You’ll regret this to the end of your days and beyond! Take your hands off me. At least permit me to walk to my fate!’
The idea of prolonging her ordeal appealed to Swynford and he encouraged them to make her walk step by step up the hill, and as they goaded her with jibes of witchcraft and naked orgies at the full of the moon and
other obscenities their thwarted lusts could summon, the crowd grew so dense they had to use cudgels to carve a path for her. ‘Here comes the Queen!’ went the shout. ‘Behold the bitch, the Queen of Hell! Make way!’
People pinched her and snatched at her clothing, and tried to tear it. They crossed themselves, gazed in horror at what they saw as the embodiment of their worst fears. They spat and pulled her hair, the headscarf long since lost along with her knife. And she thought in despair: This must be my punishment for loving Rivera.
They were nearing the summit now, in a tumult of noise, when she felt someone hanging onto her sleeve, and glancing down, with the intention of shaking herself free, she saw that it was the very small man, Jack Kelt. He had wriggled his way to the front of the mob and was clinging onto her arm, and such was the pace that was being forced, he was having to run to keep up as Swynford’s henchmen quickened their speed in their eagerness to reach the top of the hill where the old gods were worshipped at the ancient place of sacrifice dedicated to the pagan king, Lud.
Now her captors were further pleased to discover that she was to be accompanied by a creature spawned by the Devil, as they saw it, and it confirmed their view that she was a witch, unnatural, a monster, and deserved to die.
The chanting increased to a frenzy.
Kelt was unbothered. The kicks and shoves now bestowed on him as well as on Hildegard were received as if to lighten her punishment. ‘Do not despair,’ he shouted above the tumult. The separate elements of the mob had meanwhile turned into a single entity, a devouring beast,
a dragon with its head approaching the top of the long slope, its body bulging as more and more people flocked to join it, its tail tapering back down to the Fleet.
Then Kelt shouted, ‘Look!’
She followed his pointing finger.
Where the crowd opened out, there, striding down the hill, came a figure in white.
Without altering his pace he broke through the vanguard like a spear, scattering folk right and left, driving straight towards her through the thickest part of the crowd until he was brushing aside Swynford’s men-at-arms, shouting, ‘Back! Get back, you bloody animals. I claim this hostage!’
He grabbed the reins of Swynford’s horse and dragged him to a halt. Swynford still held his sword and was about to bring it lashing down when he realised it was Rivera who gripped the reins. ‘What the hell do you want, Brother?’
‘Listen to me!’ Those nearest fell silent. ‘I claim your hostage,’ he repeated in a strong voice that carried deep into the crowd.
The men-at-arms came to a confused halt. People began to quieten down to hear what was going on and their silence rippled all the way back to the most distant fringes of the onlookers until there was scarcely a sound. ‘What’s happening now?’ somebody asked.
Hildegard stood trembling with astonishment. Jack Kelt held her sleeve.
‘You owe me a debt, Sir Thomas,’ said Rivera in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘I’ve done you good service. Now I demand payment.’
‘Service?’ Swynford’s glance darted from side to side and he looked as if he was about to deny it but then he lowered his voice. ‘I’ve paid you—’
‘There is still one account outstanding. If you want blood in payment, take mine. I demand the release of this woman in exchange for myself. My saint commands and expects it.’
‘Rivera, no!’ Hildegard pushed forward.
He ignored her.
To Swynford he said, ‘I have your secrets. Release her or take the consequences.’
Swynford was busy working it out. His secrets? The look of fear on his face was abruptly replaced by cunning. ‘If that’s your wish. You? Instead of her?’
‘A heretic,’ one of his men helpfully suggested. ‘May as well burn one as another, Captain.’
Swynford glanced nervously at the crowd. Their mood was on a knife-edge. Outrage that their bloodlust was to find no outlet was simmering dangerously beneath the surface and Swynford was quick to read it. He made the decision to save his own skin, shouting, ‘You heard the heretic! His life for hers! What shall it be? Yea or nay?’
‘Death to the heretic!’
Swynford smiled. ‘So let it be!’
Raising his sword he spurred his horse forward, making sure his men had grasped what was happening. ‘Drag the heretic to the block!’
‘Death to heretics!’ came the response.
They held a more illustrious scapegoat now. Swynford began to lead the procession to its destination.
The crowd had started braying for a victim again and when news that the witch had been bartered for a heretic friar reached the outer fringes they howled with the desire to see his blood. No mere witch for them. Now they had a bigger prize. And the Pope had ordered heretics to be burnt and the King had taken no notice, but now they could put the matter right. Superstitious fervour drew in the doubters. Their own sins could be wiped clean by doing the Pope’s will. If he willed it, they would fulfil it and make sure of their place in paradise.
Hildegard stumbled, picked herself up, ran alongside Swynford on his horse, grasped the saddle. Her voice was harsh with fear. ‘You have no right of life and death, Swynford. You’ll hang if you do this. The law will punish you!’
‘There is no law.’
‘Then you’ll burn in hell! He’s innocent. You know he’s no heretic.’
He sneered down at her. ‘The Londoners, it seems, think otherwise.’
Hildegard turned to the people nearest. ‘Stop him, someone!’ But their bloodlust was not to be thwarted. There were jeers, more vicious jostling. Swynford rode on.
It was then Rivera turned back and reached out through the crowd for her, pulling her to his side. He put his arms round her and for a moment they seemed to stand in a vortex of silence with themselves at its centre. Nothing could touch them.
‘Rivera, he’ll take you at your word!’
‘Yes.’
‘You are wronged,’ she whispered passionately.
‘I am doomed,’ he replied.
The crowd churned on all sides but he seemed oblivious to them. ‘Medford released me. The name you want is Harry Summers. Follow the trail. It leads to the Queen.’
Oblivious to the jeers, he held her tightly in his arms. ‘Forget me, Hildegard. Don’t grieve. Death is the purpose of our existence.’
With one hand he quickly unpinned the red and gold emblem of St Serapion from his cloak and folded her fingers round it. He rested his lips briefly on her mouth. The mob forced itself between them. He looked back over their heads as if he wanted to say more but they were pulling him away up the hill.
Their hatred was redirected to a better target, to an alien friar, a man who could read books, who spoke languages, who probably practised the black arts and wove spells to destroy his neighbours. He was everything they were not.
Rigid with dread, Hildegard tried to find a way along the darkening street to summon help.
‘Where are they taking him?’ she shouted to someone being carried along in the surge beside her.
‘To Ludgate block.’
‘Axe the bastard, whoever he is!’ a voice shrieked.
‘He’s a French spy, like as not,’ another one claimed with malevolent satisfaction.
‘No!’ Hildegard’s voice was lost in the tumult.
The sun appeared in a lurid slant of light between the narrow tenements, painting everything the colour of blood. Armed gangs with lighted torches were still
forcing a path up the hill but the procession had come to a halt there, people pressing so thickly to see what would happen next they formed a wall, blocking the street and allowing no one past. Jack Kelt had vanished long ago. Hildegard fought and shoved to get as close to the front as she could. She could just make out the figure of Rivera across a sea of onlookers. His white garments blazed against the deepening shadows as the sun sank behind the rooftops.
The torch-bearers were gathering round the place where he had been dragged by the guards and she thought some of them were trying to build a fire but then she saw Swynford, still astride his horse, gesture to one of his followers. A burly man built like a blacksmith stepped out from among the rest of them and drew a war sword.
Rivera seemed not to be aware of anyone. He was staring out across the heads of the crowd towards the river. He was standing quite still.
While the onlookers chanted and jeered and told them to get on with it, Swynford was giving instructions, nervously looking up and down the street. A lawyer’s clerk was found from somewhere, a priest was pushed to the front of the crowd. Rivera seemed oblivious to everything and went on standing without moving. Then she realised he was praying.
His expression transcended the hellish scenes around him. She remembered the icon in his chamber and realised she was seeing the same look of resigned compassion.
Swynford reached down from his horse and tapped him on the shoulder but even then it took a moment before Rivera made a move.