Tombland

THE GREAT SQUARE of Tombland was crowded with men, though all the houses, including the Maid’s Head and Reynolds’s house, had their courtyard doors firmly closed and windows shuttered, while the gates to the cathedral were also shut. Beside the cathedral gates a couple of dozen men were being treated for wounds by barber-surgeons from the city. I recognized the dark-robed figure of Dr Belys, who had looked after me so well when I had fallen from the gallows. The focus of attention, though, was on the opposite side of Tombland, where Robert Kett stood at the bottom of the steps of the house two doors up from Reynolds. I recognized, too, Alderman Augustine Steward, with his tall figure and curly white hair, standing at his door. At the foot of the steps were several well-dressed gentlemen, probably city councillors, guarded by some men from the camp carrying halberds. As I watched, another gentleman was dragged along the cobbles and shoved into the group. There were cries from the crowd: ‘Traitors!’ ‘Kill them as they killed our men!’

‘No!’ Kett shouted back. ‘The gentlemen of Norwich shall stand trial at the Oak as did those from the countryside, and if found guilty they will be imprisoned!’

One of the amateur preachers shouted from the crowd, ‘The Bible says, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!’

‘No!’ Kett roared back again. ‘Christ himself said that passage from the Old Testament should not be followed! To the camp with them, we can hold them at Surrey Place till we bring them to the Oak! Not Master Steward, he is to stay behind.’ Kett nodded to the armed men, who began leading the prisoners away. There was angry murmuring from some in the crowd. Kett’s powers of leadership – and his knowledge of the Bible – had prevailed, but not without difficulty.

I heard my name called and turned to where the wounded men were being treated. Natty sat leaning up against the Erpingham Gate, Hector Johnson beside him; Hector was unhurt, but Natty had a nasty wound on his forearm, a piece of cloth forming a makeshift tourniquet. Both were trying to control a shuddering, weeping Simon Scambler. We crossed to them. ‘Thank God,’ I said. ‘You are all alive. Simon, what happened? Are you injured?’

‘He’s gone sappy,’ Hector Johnson said. ‘He was only asked to help lead our horses into the city, to fetch the enemy cannon. But at the sight of the bodies he hulluped up his stomach and now he’s all quavery.’ He shook his head.

‘I was near sick at the sight myself,’ Natty said. ‘But everything – everything comes to the surface with Simon.’

I bent and looked the boy in the eye. My presence seemed to calm him a little. I asked, ‘What was it, Simon?’

He said, ‘I never realized – people could just – come apart, like the sheep being cut up at the camp!’

I said, ‘You must know it is so, that in our bodies, if not in our souls, we are built as the animals.’

He whispered, ‘Always I have feared I might suddenly fall apart.’

‘Good men died out there today, brave fighters,’ Hector Johnson admonished him, though his tone was pitying rather than angry.

Meanwhile a group of Norwich men had come to join the crowd around Kett. He gestured to them and called on the camp-men to go with them and find all the stores of weapons in the city. As they dispersed with cheers, one young man nudged another and said, ‘Look! It’s Sooty Scambler. They said he’d gone to Mousehold. He’s the same nonny as ever he was!’

Hector Johnson turned on them with unexpected fierceness. ‘Why don’t you go fuck your mothers, brats!’

I jumped slightly at a hand on my shoulder; looking up, I saw Dr Belys, staring at me with astonishment. ‘Serjeant Shardlake,’ he said. ‘I would not have recognized you. I thought you long gone.’

I hesitated. ‘I have been at the Mousehold camp.’

He looked at me, then at Barak and Hector Johnson and Natty, and fell silent.

‘You are treating the wounded?’ I asked.

‘I have been brought here to do so,’ he said, his tone indicating that he had not come willingly. He looked at Simon. ‘What ails this lad?’

‘The sight of the dead unmanned him,’ Hector replied.

‘Shock,’ Dr Belys said in his matter-of-fact way. ‘I can give him something to drink which will quiet him, if you wait a little.’ He looked at me. ‘Your bodily movements seem much changed, Serjeant Shardlake. More fluid.’

I smiled. ‘Rough living seems to suit me.’

He leaned in close. ‘You should be careful, sir, there is talk in Norwich of a hunchback lawyer helping Kett at the trials at the Oak of Reformation.’

‘Mayor Codd and Alderman Aldrich themselves helped at the Oak.’