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“Especially ones carrying poisoned daggers-?”
“Rumors of assassins in the garden are absurd,” Eliza said, “They are chim?ras, figments of her royal highness’s fevered brain. Even if they did exist, they would face grave difficulties gaining entrance to the place to which we are taking her, which, as you know if you have been studying your family history, was built on a rock in a lake by a rich Baron so concerned for his personal security that he believed that even the birds of the air were wind-up toys invented by hashishin to fly in his windows and put anthrax into his beer.”
“Oh, was he the chap who invented beer-mugs with lids on them?” Daniel wondered aloud.
But Eliza was in no mood. “I should like it very much, Dr. Waterhouse, if you were to fall down and suffer a medical crisis.”
“I am here to serve, my lady,” Daniel returned gallantly, and began looking round the pantry for a comfortable place to hit the floor.
“Might I spend a moment with ‘Gertrude’ first?” Joha
“There is no time,” Eliza said, “and your advice is of little value, as ‘Gertrude’ does not expect to participate in any sword-fights.” And Eliza drew breath as if to expound upon this theme at greater length. But Daniel’s withered hand suddenly lay gentle on her arm. She faltered. “Gertrude” and Joha
“Let’s to London, then,” Daniel said.
Between Black Mary’s Hole and
Sir John Oldcastle’s, North of London
DAWN, 18 JUNE 1714
Enlisting Soldiers without Authority. An ingrossed Bill from the Lords, intituled, An Act, to prevent the listing of her Majesty’s Subjects to serve as Soldiers, without her Majesty’s License, was read a Second time.
Resolved, That the Bill be committed.
Resolved, That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.
Resolved, That this House will, To-morrow Morning, resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House, upon the said Bill.
-Journals of the House of Commons, JOVIS, 1° DIE JULII; ANNO 13° ANN? REGIN?, 1714
IT WAS SAID THAT Mahomet had ba
The tolling conveyed several meanings. First that the day had begun-a fact that most Londoners could only have determined with careful use of ephemeris and chronometer, as it was still dark. Second, that London was still there. The buildings, despite appearances, had not drifted away from one another in the night-time, like ships of a fog-bound fleet. Though invisible, they were still where they had been the evening previous, and a cockney with a good ear might even find his way round town by them, triangulating from the distinct voices of St. Mary-le-Bow, St. Thomas Apostle, St. Mildred, and Be
Heard from these fields, the sounds of the bells came not only from the south, but from east and west as well, simply because London was that big and Clerkenwell that close to it. Once he had scrambled out of his tent, stuffed Egyptian cotton into his ears, and struck his camp, the offended sojourner would therefore head north to get away from the infernal bonging. But in this he would be balked at every bridge and crossroads. For all of the traffic-mostly pedestrians-was south-bound.
Many had slept rough on these fields and greens the night before, and when the bells had begun to ring, they had arisen and begun to shuffle through the fog, like a whole battle-field of dead soldiers resurrected and ordered to march upon their respective parish-churches. All of them moved southwards, toward High Holbourn. For the tolling of so many melancholic bells had a third meaning: this was Hanging-Day. It happened eight times a year.
The people tromping southwards through the fog were common at best. Honest folk among them tended to move in packs, keeping purses stuffed deep inside their cloaks, and supporting themselves on walking-sticks that were strangely oversized. For there was a stiff proportion of Vagabonds and worse in this throng. They all hoped to make it to Holbourn before broad daylight, so that they could claim places in the front of the crowd, affording them clear views of the condemned journeying to Tyburn Cross. Failing that they might withdraw to side-streets, and execute great westward flanking maneuvers, converging finally on the vast open parks and fields surrounding the Treble Tree.
To a foreign visitor-or even to a good many Englishmen-there would be so much in these sights that was odd, and so much about the atmosphere that was gloomy, eldritch, and macabre, that he might easily over-look one or two peculiar ph?nomena. But the sort of person who attended Hanging-Marches eight times a year would note an anomalous gathering near an elbow in the road between Sir John Oldcastle’s (a compound of stately buildings and trees, about to be enveloped by Clerkenwell) and Black Mary’s Hole (a tiny alienated settlement on the banks of the upper Fleet).
Stopped by the roadside, harnessed to a team of four horses who were all in their feedbags, was a coach. The driver, with his whip, and two footmen, with cudgels, prowled around it, discouraging Vagabond-boys from coming up to ingratiate themselves with the beasts. A stone’s throw away, in a field strewn with human turds and other evidence of last night’s hanging-jamboree, an old man bestrode a horse. Too much horse. It was feeding selectively on whatever grew in the field, and wandering wherever it pleased to find the choicest herbs. The rider, who was wrapped in a cloak, arms crossed over his torso for warmth, occasionally unfolded himself, grasped the reins, and compelled his mount to repent of its latest wanderings. It was a big gray gelding, obviously military, with simple tack.
The old man on the gray gelding was accompanied by four other horsemen. Of these, two rode mounts similar to the first, but they kept theirs under better control. These men were big and young, dressed in very plain common garments such as yeomen might wear to venture forth on a long cross-country errand.
Even through dimness and fog, everything about the other two riders-save one detail that shall be attended to in a moment-marked them as youths of a privileged class. They had small-swords (actually not all that useful on horseback). Their horses were to the gray geldings as f?ries were to fishwives. In short, either one could have ridden direct to St. James’s Park and gone for a genteel trot up and down Rotten Row and not drawn a second glance from the toffs and fops who frequented that place.
But first they’d have had to don wigs. Bewigged, they’d have blended in perfectly. Dis-covered, they looked more at home in the wilds of North America. For each of these young swells had carefully shaved all of his hair-all, that is, save in a longitudinal stripe, three fingers wide, ru