When darkness falls, candles are lit. More of them, swears Rose, than there are stars in the night sky. The Yule log blazes merrily in the taproom hearth. Measures are danced to the accompaniment of cittern and tambour, songs lustily sung, games of Hoodman Blind and Hot Cockles played.
For the holiday, a king of Bankside is required. It’s traditional. So Timothy is duly enthroned. Anointed with a crown of laurel, he goes about the tavern like a tyrant, waving his sceptre – a pig’s bladder on a stick – and sentencing even the wholly innocent to dreadful and bloodthirsty punishments, redeemable only on immediate payment of a rosewater and sugar-paste sweetmeat.
Nicholas joins in as best he can, though he feels as if he’s watching a play being performed in a language he doesn’t understand. When the Jackdaw has emptied and they’ve cleaned up, he offers to tamp the fire and set the locks. After all, Bianca and Rose are all but exhausted, and as Timothy is now king of Southwark, however temporary his reign, he is to be excused such menial tasks. They all wish him happy Christmas. Bianca gives him a chaste kiss on the cheek. The firelight turns her amber eyes to brilliant gold; but only Rose wonders if the way they gleam when Nicholas is around might be due to something more than just the season’s cheer.
Later, alone, Nicholas sits by the fire, fighting the desperate desire to drink himself into stupefaction. He cannot face the climb up the stairs to the attic while sober, but fears what will happen if he weakens.
When he’s sure everyone is asleep, he takes the key that Bianca has now entrusted to him and slips out into the lane, locking the door behind him. There’s a crescent moon in the sky, glimpsed fleetingly beyond scudding clouds that threaten more snow. The wind off the river bites like a snapping terrier. From the lanes around the Jackdaw come the occasional muffled cries of revellers. The watch will have its work cut out tonight. Nicholas heads north towards the bridge, his stride purposeful, his heart resolved.
When the priest of Trinity church in Grass Street ward wakes with the dawn on Christmas Day, he sees through the window a figure huddled in the porch, still as a statue, staring out at the churchyard. In the dark, Nicholas has been unable to find the correct grave and, in keeping his uncertain vigil, he’s damned near frozen to death.
‘I went for an early walk,’ he tells Bianca on his return.
‘Of course you did,’ she replies, as she helps him peel off the frost-hardened buffin coat. And she lets her hand linger on his arm to let him know she understands.
One year slips into another. Epiphany approaches. On Twelfth Night the Jackdaw is witness to celebrations that outdo even Christmas. For Bankside, there is only one disappointment this year: the river has failed to freeze. The jugglers, fire-eaters, rope-walkers, acrobats and dancing bears must remain firmly on dry land.
There have been no more bodies washed up on Southwark’s disreputable shore, save for a drowned cat and an ancient pike that the less scrupulous inhabitants of St Saviour’s parish try to pass off as a sea monster. They charge a penny a peep through an aperture cut into a dark cloth. Inside, the head with its fearsome teeth has been set before an ale cask that some enterprising fellow has painted with scales to suggest the monster’s body. They do quite well until the pike begins to rot.
Has the killer’s appetite been satiated at last? Nicholas wonders. Where is he? What is he doing? Is he at home, watching his children play with their New Year’s presents – just an ordinary man? Is he helping his wife to take down the garlands of holly and ivy, swearing on his soul that whatever he’s done, he’ll never again let Lucifer make him embrace such terrible evil again?
Or is he merely waiting for the weather to change?
For Joshua Pinchbeak there has been no Christmas, no Twelfth Night, only periods of half-waking from the slumber of the ages. He has lost almost all coherent memory of his life before he came to the Cross on Cheapside. Even the time between then and now – is it days, or years? – is little more than a procession of vague fragments, dreams almost.
Is he dreaming now? He’s not sure.
He is bound to a Cross, pinioned by leather straps around his wrists and ankles. What remains of his senses tells him he is upsidedown, for his insignificant weight is being taken by the muscles in his calves and thighs. He can hear the soft, familiar cadences of prayer, a man’s voice very close by. His mind tells him it will be an easy thing to untie the straps and rise to heaven. All he has to do is give himself up to the desire.
He turns his head, and the blur of his vision eases just enough for him to see a table with strange implements on it: spirals of iron, razor-sharp blades, an old hourglass with the lower bulb full of white sand…
Then a sudden icy fire floods through his body. He cannot move his head enough to see where the blade is piercing his flesh, but what little remains of his reason tells Joshua the pain is coming from somewhere on his left leg. He tries to pull away, but he can’t. The limb is held fast against the timber. He screams as the blade cuts deep down towards the bone.
Almost as quickly as it comes, the pain vanishes, replaced by a warmth that seems to cover his knee in a pulsing tide. He can hear a splashing sound, like the falling of raindrops.
Just before his eyes close for ever, Joshua Pinchbeak – itinerant preacher, carrier of God’s warning that the end of days is coming – again turns his face to the table.
His gaze comes to rest on the hourglass.
The bulb has been turned. The grains of sand are flowing.
18
Epiphany, the formal end of Christmas. Nicholas is at his place in the cloisters of St Tom’s, expecting to be kept busy with the aftermath of the Twelfth Night festivities. What he gets is the first chink in the curtain.
As the chapel bell strikes midday he’s summoned to the foul ward. It is here that patients afflicted by the pox are cared for, a disease rife this side of the river. Bankside even has its own language for it: French gout… flap-dragon… The whores who suffer from it are fire-ships and blowers.
A woman has been brought in. Nicholas can only guess her age. Her ruined face is covered in ulcers; she’s blind, delirious. A dreadful noise comes from the hole where her nostrils used to be before the disease ate away the cartilage. It’s far too late to treat her. All he can do is try to ease her pain with a decoction of guaiac, and call a priest to comfort her when the end comes. What he is looking at is the human cost of what Southwark likes to call its ‘liberty’.
A heavyset woman of about fifty sits on a stool beside the patient, watching her anxiously while singing a calming repetitive ditty. She wears a simple woollen kirtle, her grey hair spilling from beneath her coif. At first Nicholas assumes she’s the bawd, and the poor creature on the mattress is one of her drabs. The anger rises in him like a fire. Why has she waited so long before bringing her to a physician? She can’t possibly have been making any money out of this miserable wretch for a good year or more. He’s about to tell the bawd harshly that she’s lost her investment and, if that’s the only good thing to come out of the poor woman’s affliction, he’s glad. But then he sees that the woman on the stool is close to tears.
‘Who is this?’ he asks the foul-ward sister, indicating the patient.