The Bleeding Land Read Free Page A

face, it felt lumpy and puffed-up and he suspected only his mother would recognize him.
    Tom entered the clearing leading both of their horses and wearing a smile. Apart from a slight limp and a sore-looking graze at his temple he appeared quite unhurt.
    ‘Well that put paid to them,’ Mun muttered, wincing from a dozen aches and cuts, for Henry Denton and his cronies had gone, vanished into the trees with the last of the daylight. Now the clearing was streaked with the tarnished silver light of a waxing moon. ‘We taught those villains a lesson they won’t forget,’ he added for Martha’s benefit. In truth Mun knew they had lost. He suspected that not even Henry Denton would stoop so low as to fight a girl and so it was more likely that Martha had saved them by joining the skirmish. She was the hero, he realized, though there was no need to say as much, especially as his split lip made talking smart like the devil.
    ‘We squashed that fat toad, didn’t we, Mun?’ Tom said, bringing the horses up to his brother, who rose on unsteady legs and began to brush himself down with his hands, wincing because his knuckles were grazed.
    ‘I told you to ride home, Tom,’ Mun said sternly. Zachariah was on his feet now and seemed mostly unhurt, though you wouldn’t know it from the way Martha was fussing round him.
    ‘You were outnumbered, Mun,’ Tom said, ‘and they had sticks.’ Then he smiled again, gingerly touching the bloody graze on his head. ‘And anyway, we’re brothers.’
    Mun glanced at Zachariah again, knowing it would not be long before the poor boy took another beating. As for himself and Tom, they would receive one as soon as Sir Francis returned from London. That was as sure as night following day.
    ‘Tell them that we will see them home,’ he said, nodding towards Martha and Zachariah.
    ‘But we shall be home very late then,’ Tom said.
    ‘Yes, I know,’ Mun replied, patting his horse’s neck.
    Tom grinned and limped across to the others and Mun felt his own lips curl, stretching the bloody split so that it stung awfully. It had been some fight after all and even though they had lost, their cuts and bruises the proof of that, they had stood together until their enemies had fled.
    Because they were brothers.

CHAPTER ONE

    November 1641, London
    TOM RIVERS HAD spoken barely a word since breaking fast in the Ship Inn. There were too many questions; so much to say that he feared to start talking now would be to never stop. And so he kept his tongue still and let his eyes work, glutting themselves with each and every wonder they could cram in. And what a feast it was! At once wonderful and terrifying and like nothing they had ever known. Besides, though he was amongst more people than he had ever seen, he knew not one of them and did not imagine any would be the least bit interested in anything he had to say.
    Standing on the south bank he stared through the drizzle across the Thames, taking in the sprawled mass of humanity cloaked in November grey before him. The western end of the city was topped by the great mass of St Paul’s Cathedral, seat of the bishop of London. Tom recalled his father telling him that the church had once boasted an enormous spire, but that had been destroyed by lightning some eighty years ago – a sure sign of the Almighty’s displeasure with the papists, Sir Francis had said ominously. To the east at the opposite end of the city stood the Tower, England’s fortress. Arsenal, prison , government storehouse, royal palace and site of the national mint, its sprawling complex was London’s most important centre of state. Cathedral and Tower dominated the city’s skyline, but it was what lay in between them that sent Tom’s mind reeling, filled his nose with its stench with every gust from across the river. Market areas, wharves, guildhalls, monuments, myriad church spires, houses, and the city gates were linked by a tangle of meandering streets all crammed with people. So