Roseblood Read Free Page B

a great war mastiff; its huge jaws were tightly muzzled, though the fury raging in its red-brown eyes was frightening enough. ‘I witnessed that,’ the chief bailiff repeated, his words being chorused by his companions.
    No one objected. Those sharp-eyed and keen-witted enough glimpsed the chancery ring on Sevigny’s left hand, as well as his silver-gilt-embossed sword in its embroidered scabbard. The crowd drifted away. Black-robed members of the Fraternity of the Hanged moved in to place Lazarus’s corpse on a stretcher and take it to the waiting paradise cart for burial in some poor man’s lot. Sevigny went back to studying the thronging crowd. He lifted a gloved hand, beckoning the chief bailiff closer.
    ‘I cannot see our quarry,’ he murmured, ‘but he must come here. Sir Philip is sure of that.’
    ‘And the scavenger?’
    ‘Lazarus?’ Sevigny wiped the blade of his dagger on Skulkin’s sleeve. ‘He may have intended to kill me, or just rob me. I have recently arrived here, Master Skulkin. My reputation is not yet known.’ He grinned boyishly. ‘Though it is time it was. Lazarus was a help in that. He drew a dagger and crept up on me. You, Master Skulkin, were sent to guard me. Next time,’ Sevigny leaned down and patted the mastiff on its huge bony head, ‘next time it may be
your
throat. Now tell your comrades to keep strict watch. Four of the gang are to be executed as traitors; however, their leader Candlemas and two of his henchmen escaped.’
    ‘And the Lord Sheriff thinks they will come here to watch their comrades being turned off?’
    ‘Sir Philip does think that, and I tend to agree,’ Sevigny retorted, standing on tiptoe, eyes on the great wooden scaffold on its dais. The fires in the braziers either side of the soaring four-branched gallows were now being blown fiercer by a blacksmith with his bellows. ‘They will come,’ Sevigny declared. ‘Felons always do, as a last courtesy to their comrades. Most of the gangs of London are represented here.’
    ‘But they have not been seen in the city, whilst Simon Roseblood would not dare shelter them.’
    ‘Oh they are in the city all right!’ Sevigny laughed softly, staring across the shoal of people thronging the spacious marketplace. ‘Oh yes, they are here, Skulkin.’ The clerk tapped his boot on the hard-packed earth. ‘I suspect they are very close. Perhaps even beneath us. Stay vigilant. Candlemas will come like a thief in the night.’
    ‘How will we recognise him?’
    ‘Look for three Friars of the Sack who go cowled, faces down, hands in the sleeves of their gowns.’
    ‘Master Sevigny?’
    ‘I know. Such friars are common at executions, but these three will be different. They will not seem as interested as they should be in the people around them.’
    Sevigny fell silent and stared around. Lazarus’s corpse had now been removed. The noise of the marketplace had grown to a true babel of clamour, shouts and screams. Somewhere horns blew and bagpipes shrilled as malefactors were led to the great stocks, thews and pillories on the far side of Smithfield. Traders and hucksters bawled out the sale of spiced bread, custard suckets and portingales. There were shouts about spices and salt from Worcester being available, along with pepper mills, hot oatcakes, brooms, the latest mousetraps as well as the best protection against fleas. Vendors offered stopples for garderobes in order to keep the feet warm whilst sitting on the jakes. These raucous boasts and invitations rang above the lowing of cattle and the bloodcurdling scream of hogs being driven down to the slaughter pens.
    Sevigny, a mailed clerk who had stood in the shield wall of York’s forces in France, carefully studied the shifting currents among the crowd. He noted the various colours and watched any individual who caught his curiosity: the black-robed monk with his shaven pate blistering in the sun; the juggler with his pet monkey sitting on his shoulder; the moon man