It seemed the day was nearly over when Elizabeth ran to the door, banging and screaming. ‘Unlock us, you bastards,’ she yelled. ‘There’s a dead man here, babies what won’t stop whimpering and all of us hungry. Come take out the corpse at least.’
No one came.
In the candlelight Tyballis could not see if George Switt’s face had become discoloured, but there was as yet no stink of decay. The body was no longer stiff, but lay a little crooked, eyelids closed gently over their pretty blue. The heat did not enter the storeroom, so whether the day was hot or cold made little difference. It would, Tyballis hoped, be some time before the remains began to rot.
Elizabeth came eventually and sat beside her. ‘Them kids,’ she whispered. ‘Driving me mad, they are, with that bloody noise, on and on. No wonder that bugger Spiers sleeps all day and night.’
‘You might have some of your own one day,’ Tyballis murmured. ‘Wouldn’t you like Ralph’s child?’
‘After ten bloody years on the streets?’ Elizabeth shook her head. ‘Got rid of too many and don’t reckon I’ll get that way again. Jumped down the stairs twice, under a horse’s hooves once. Lost all the poor little bastards, thank the Lord. Olly, my brother that is, he roughed me up and I lost the last one. That were four year ago. Ain’t been no more since.’ She smiled, unrepentant. ‘What about you, then?’
‘I can’t have children,’ Tyballis said. ‘At least, after five years married I never even got pregnant.’
‘Think yourself lucky,’ Elizabeth told her. ‘Don’t reckon Drew would want none neither.’
Tyballis lowered her eyes. ‘I suppose not. So, perhaps I should be glad. But there is always that sentimental thought. His baby in my arms. Him proud, standing beside me.’
‘Oh pooh,’ Elizabeth said. ‘All the little bastards do is whine and whimper and puke. Your belly gets flabby and you feel old enough to start praying for a way out.’
A solitary candle, placed on a stool in the centre of the room, had almost burned away and the shadows were lengthening, like mouths awaiting the gluttony of darkness. Tyballis said, ‘Is it night yet, do you think? Should we sleep?’
‘Night? I reckon it’s only midday,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Though sleep, if you want. We’re not doing no good anyhow.’
Tyballis had started to reply, when she was interrupted. The noise from outside their door was unmistakeable. Ralph strode to the doorway and listened. ‘More arriving,’ he said gloomily. ‘Weapons, clanking, orders shouted. There’s a whole new troop of them.’
Jon moved to stand beside Ralph and Casper. ‘They’re shouting that the king’s dead,’ he said, white-faced. ‘Done at last, they say. King Edward is gone – official – and the queen has taken over the royal council.’
‘She can’t do that,’ whispered Felicia. ‘It isn’t legal.’
‘Nor is poisoning your monarch,’ glowered Ralph. ‘But it seems that’s what some filth has finally achieved.’
Chapter Fifty-One
After many days of vomiting and the flux, his highness King Edward had finally seemed on the point of recovery, sufficient to eat a hearty dinner and inform his doctors he intended leaving his bedchamber the following day. But by three of the clock on a sunny spring afternoon, everything had changed. With a bellow of pain, the king doubled over and vomited across his sheets. Then he lurched back against his pillows and called for ale. His tongue burned, he said, his lips stung him as though swollen by bees. His servants rushed to pour him a brimming cup, but when his highness drank, he spat and moaned, saying the beer was a foul brew. The doctors were called at once. But no royal purge was needed, for the king’s body was racked with pain and he could not control either the diarrhoea or the spasms.
It was a slow death. By seven of the clock, his highness finally rolled back his eyes and slumped over. His great bed was a pit of excrement and vomit, his legs convulsed, his tongue was too swollen for his mouth, and he could neither speak nor see. At a few minutes past seven on the ninth day of April, the king was pronounced dead.
Her highness had been excluded from the sickroom for fear of contagion. Apart from doctors and servants, only the Lord Hastings had been permitted entrance. King Edward died in his friend’s arms, and William, Baron Hastings wept and closed his sovereign’s eyes, and knew that life would never be the same again. He left the chamber far older than when he had entered it, and went immediately to inform the queen. She had taken refuge in the royal antechamber, and was clinging to her son the Marquess of Dorset for comfort. She looked up, red-eyed, as Lord Hastings entered. He nodded, face pale. Her highness screamed. The marquess embraced her, murmuring comfort. Hastings turned on his heel and left the chamber.
Far across London’s shadowed alleyways and beyond the eastern confines of the city wall, Cobham Hall stood amongst its wild and tangled gardens, light blazing from every downstairs window. Smoke puffed busy and black from the highest chimney but there was no peaceful domesticity around the fireside. The upper floor was dark and empty, but in the principal hall twenty men and more discussed and argued, determining what each should do, would do and hoped to do. The four men previously occupying the hall now held no authority, stated the newly arrived captain. His was the only right to leadership, and he would give the orders and expect to be obeyed. The king was dead. They would soon follow the wishes of the Marquess of Dorset, who intended raising an army, and until Lord Feayton could be apprehended and restrained, the house and Feayton’s friends and servants within it was to be guarded, its doors kept locked.
‘You’ll do as I say, Murch,’ the captain said, hand to his sword hilt, ‘or my men will round up yours and execute the bloody lot. Now, who’ve you gone and got locked up here? And how do you know one ain’t secretly Feayton? You’ve never met the man. I have, but all I noticed was that bloody big broken nose.’
Murch glowered and stuck his thumbs through his belt. ‘They say he’s a huge ugly bugger not easy forgot, with eyes black as coals. None here like that, nor none dressed fancy like no lord neither. We got one skinny fellow, a trio o’ trollops, a parcel of snivelling brats, some ancient bugger, a quiet pallid fool what fathered them kids, and a one-eyed street fighter with a foul mouth. A right barmy household for a lord, I reckon.’
‘Could be in disguise,’ muttered the captain.
Murch objected. ‘How’s a large gent going to disguise hisself as a little ’un, then?’ He sniggered, looking back for approbation to his three remaining ruffians. ‘This lord is unusual tall. Big as the king, I were told.’
‘The late king,’ the other man corrected him.
‘With big shoulders, strong as an ox, they say, dark as a heathen, and a face all squashed nose like some wrestler from the Southwark slums. We’s no one locked up in there looks even a close shave to that.’
The captain nodded. ‘I’ll take over now, then. You lot can bugger off. Spread the word through the city at first light. Tell how the king’s dead, the Marquess of Dorset is in charge, the mighty Lord Marrott by his side, and a new rule’s on its way.’
Those in the adjacent storeroom heard tramping feet as Murch and his men left the house, slamming the doors behind them. Meanwhile Captain Hetchcomb organised his troops. ‘You, sweep up this mess. The place stinks of charred wood, blood and shit. I want it clean if I’ve to camp here for God knows how long. You, into the kitchens and sort out food and drink. There must be something stored there worth the taking. Meanwhile I’ll be checking on the prisoners.’