The Anger of God

sightlessly from their poles across the river. The man cursed then grinned.
    ‘What a night to choose,’ he whispered to himself. The river stank like a privy because the dung barges, full of dirt and human refuse, had been busy all eventide unloading their mounds of muck into the water; the stink would last for days. Nevertheless, the thief had to move quickly: the French pirate had been executed the previous afternoon and his head would still be fresh, the skin clean and the eyes not yet pecked out by crows. Nonetheless, he had to be careful: rumours were already rife of how the civic authorities, particularly that fat giant Sir John Cranston, King’s Coroner of the city, were becoming suspicious about the number of amputated limbs and severed heads being moved from London Bridge.
    The thief, garbed all in black, with heavy boots to give him a firmer grip on the slippery rails, reached the balcony just under the blood-soaked poles. He crouched in the darkness, straining his ears to distinguish the differing sounds: a barge full of revellers, drunk as lords, making their way from the stews in Southwark back to Botolph’s Wharf; the slop and murmur of the river, faint cries from its banks; the noise of ships being prepared for the morning tide; and, above all, the heavy footfalls of sentries as they walked backwards and forwards near the entrance to the bridge.
    The thief waited for a while, breathing carefully, and at last, it seemed, the sentries grew tired and went back to warm themselves over their small brazier. He eased himself on to the top of the bridge and padded soft as a cat to where the long poles jutted out against the sky, each bearing its grisly burden. He stared up into the darkness. He had to be careful. So many executions, so many severed heads. He did not want to choose the wrong one. He had been there the previous evening when the head had been displayed but it could have been moved since. Then he saw the small pool of blood at the end of one pole. He smiled, carefully eased it out of its socket, plucked the severed head from the end, put it into his bag and climbed back over the rails down to his waiting skiff.

    On the Southwark side of the Thames, in its maze of dingy, squalid streets, the taverns still blazed with light as the thief-masters and their gangs of rogues went about their nefarious business: the foists, naps, pickpockets and thugs all intent on seeing what profit the night would bring. Others, too, worked: the cat-hunters looking for cheap pelts and meat they could sell; the collectors of dog turds who would sell their smelly bags of refuse for the tanners to use; and the casual labourers, moving from ale-house to ale-house, seeking employment before the day even began. The streets hummed with noise but in a great, half-timbered, three-storied house which had definitely seen better days... all was darkness and silence.
    The householder and his wife stood in petrified silence at the door to his daughter’s room. They could see her by the light of a single candle, sitting up against the bolsters, the curtains of the bed pulled well back. As they waited for the terror to begin, the man looked beseechingly at the girl.
    ‘ Elizabeth , will it come again?’ he pleaded.
    His white-faced daughter just stared back, her eyes glassy and unseeing.
    ‘Oh, Elizabeth ,’ the man breathed. ‘Why are you doing this to us?’
    ‘You know why!’ the girl suddenly shrieked, leaning forward. ‘You killed my mother to marry that bitch!’ Her hand was flung out, finger pointing at her father’s golden-haired, pretty-faced, second wife.
    ‘That is not true,’ he replied. ‘Elizabeth, your mother sickened and died. There was nothing I could do.’
    ‘Lies!’ the girl shrieked.
    The man and his wife stared in horrified silence at this young girl who, when darkness fell, became another person. A veritable virago, a hag of the night, who claimed that the ghost of her own mother visited her to denounce both of them as murderers, assassins, poisoners.
    ‘Listen!’ she hissed. ‘Mother comes again!’
    The man let his arm fall from his wife’s shoulders as a shiver ran up his spine, the hairs on the nape of his neck curling in terror. Sure enough, throughout the house the tapping and knocking began. First downstairs, then further up as if something was crawling between the wall and the wainscoting, slowly, cautiously, like a creature spat out by Hell, making its loathsome way towards this