Hugh Corbett 17 - The Mysterium by Paul Doherty Page A

miscreants had been issued by the catchpoles from the steps of the Guildhall. The two riffler leaders, with no real evidence against them, were to be released immediately. Everyone recognised the truth. Lord Evesham’s murder meant the Crown’s case against them had collapsed, whilst no proof could be lodged that either gang-leader had been party to the recent bloody riots at the prison. In fact both rogues had been lodged deep in Newgate’s pestilential pits and had nothing to do with the malefactors whose tarred and pickled heads now decorated the spikes high on the prison walls. The hour had been set. Waldene and Hubert were to be released after the bells proclaimed terce. Gossips talked of reconciliation between the two factions after the recent riot. Already a chamber had been hired for the consequent festivities in the spacious pink and black-timbered tavern the Angel’s Salutation, which stood on the corner of a crooked alleyway close to the prison concourse.
    The Teller of Tales had tried to divert the attention of passersby with a spine-tingling story of the Strigoi, the undead, trooping, according to miraculous report, along the old Roman road to the north of the city. No one had really been interested; indeed neither was the Teller of Tales, for his heart was intent on murder. He’d chosen the time and place most carefully. Newgate was a surge of colour and noise. Silversmiths’ apprentices paraded a gorgeous mazer to entice would-be customers to visit their masters’ shops in Cheapside. Butchers yelled the price of sweet duckling, pigs and fat juicy capons. Whoremongers, taken up by the bailiffs, heads all shaven and carrying their breeches, were being paraded to the strident wailing of bagpipes towards the stocks. A night-walker who had kidnapped a child so as to enhance her begging had been fastened to a punishment post, her filthy skirts raised so that burly baileys could lash her grimy buttocks. The belled pigs of St Anthony’s hospital, the only pigs allowed to wander, snuffled the piles of ordure heaped close to a horse trough. Nearby a jackanapes was being ducked for daring to pass through the Skinners’ quarter saying ‘meow’, a public insult to that worthy guild. Once he was punished, a line of drunks and roisterers also waited to be drenched in the filthy water.
    Shouts and cries, the crash of gong carts and the clip-clop of hooves drowned the prayers of the Fraternity of Salve Regina processing solemnly with bell, candle and incense to the Lady Chapel at St Mary le Bow. Merchants and aldermen garbed in glowing robes of samite and velvet lined with expensive fur, fat necks and fingers glittering with jewellery, strolled arm in arm with their plump, richly dressed wives. Market beadles shouted warnings about how the sale of charcoal was forbidden in sacks weighing less than eight bushels. The Goodmen of St Dunstan, led by a Friar of the Sack, threaded their pardon beads as they made holy pilgrimage to St Paul’s to pray at the tomb of Thomas à Becket’s parents. A group of knights, escorted by their pages and squires, brilliantly embroidered pennants glistening in the sharp morning light, pushed their way down towards the tourney field at Smithfield. Fripperers, dragging their handcarts piled with second-hand clothes, shouted abuse at the group as they tried to force their barrows through. Enterprising vendors were already moving amongst crowds of the poor offering mouldy bread, rancid pork, slimy veal, flat beer and stale fish to those hungry and desperate enough to eat such rotten food. The Teller of Tales watched all this and quietly rejoiced, for he knew that such clamour and bustle would help to conceal his murderous plans.
    The bell in one of the Newgate towers tolled, and the ribauds noisily thronged closer to the great gates. These swung back and the riffler leaders swaggered out to the cheers and shouts of their now much-depleted followers. Waldene was a giant of a man with shaggy