Tombland

‘Shut your mouth, old beldame, or you’ll get a culp you won’t forget,’ the man with the bleeding arm shouted at her. He pointed to his wound. ‘See what he did to me!’ I looked round anxiously, hoping some figure of authority would be drawn to the scene.

‘What are you going to do with him?’ someone asked. ‘Put him in Surrey Place?’

The straw-haired man grinned nastily. ‘No, we’re going to hang him from the walls!’ Grinning at the Italian, he drew the shape of a noose with his hands. The mercenary’s eyes widened.

One of the man’s comrades looked doubtful. ‘We’ll get in trouble!’

The yellow-haired man turned on him. ‘How many good Norfik men have these bastards killed? Don’t go quavery-mavery on us, young Jimmur!’

An old man shouted from the crowd, ‘Captain Kett will be angry. We lock enemies up, not kill them.’

I was reluctant to interfere, afraid of the boiling violence of the Italian’s captors. Nonetheless, I forced myself to step forward. ‘That man was right. Captain Kett has instructed captives should be held prisoner, not killed.’

The man with the bleeding arm shouted, ‘I know who you are, you’re the fucking hunchback lawyer that got my friend Silas kicked out of camp for theft, you’re another gemmun for all you’re dressed no better than us now. So you favour him, do you, this fucking foreigner come here to kill us for money?’

‘Captain Kett will be angry.’

‘Captain Kett’s not here,’ one of the men answered brutally. ‘Hang the bastard!’

They led their prisoner away. A man darted out and stole the Italian’s shoes, another his torn doublet and hose, while a soldier took his steel breastplate. I could do nothing but follow and watch as the man was led, struggling, to Surrey Place. He and his captors disappeared behind the high walls. Some minutes passed and then the men reappeared, standing on top of the wall. The Italian now had a rope round his neck. The other end was tied to one of the decorative stone figures on the wall, and the naked man was thrown from the top, the noose tightening and breaking his neck at once. It all happened very fast. There were cheers from those who had come to watch. Mistress Everneke said to me, ‘Is this what war does to men?’

‘Some men,’ I answered. I looked downhill, where our men were lighting campfires now. Far in the distance, there was a faint roll of thunder.

Chapter Sixty-four

After what I had seen I could not sleep that night. I sat on a little grassy mound some way down the hill, looking down on Norwich. It was a dark night, cloud covering the half-moon and the stars. Occasionally, one of our guns fired into the city, with a flash and boom. I felt far now from the moment’s peace I had known at Communion that morning. I could just make out a huge bonfire which was lit, so far as I could judge, in the marketplace. And then I heard, rather than saw, the fighting that followed. There was a sudden loud bombardment of Bishopsgate Bridge from our cannon, making me jump, then distant yells as, I later learned, our men stormed across the bridge. I understood what had been planned; in the pitch-dark the men of Norwich would know the streets intimately, unlike Northampton’s forces. I put my head in my hands, thinking of Simon and Natty, Hector Johnson and Edward Brown.

After a while the distant noise ceased. I waited for the summer dawn, which seemed an eternity in coming, as did the threatened storm, for I heard only other, more distant, rolls of thunder. Perhaps it would pass us by this time.

When dawn finally broke, and I looked down the hill, my heart sank. I saw our charge had failed. There was a crowd of our men at the bottom of the hill. Many of us walked down almost to them, to get a proper view. We saw wounded men being tended, and the white faces of the dead laid out on the grass. But I realized that, as with the taking of Norwich, much of our army had been kept in reserve. To the north of the city, at Pockthorpe Gate, I heard a trumpet sound, and a stream of our men descended the hill; suddenly a new bombardment came from our men, mightier than before, aimed from what I could see at the walls of the Great Hospital, which I was near enough to see collapse. Several thousand men then crossed the bridge and ran into the city. I was puzzled at first but then understood the purpose of the bombardment – Holme Street was hemmed in by the Norman walls of the cathedral on one side, the hospital walls on the other. It would have been easy for Northampton’s army to trap us in Holme Street, but with the hospital walls down we had access to the fields beyond. People in the buildings near the hospital walls, though, would not have stood a chance unless they had been warned in advance.