The Whispering Swarm (65 page)

The noise of the fair was distant now. But the church bells still boomed from Camden to Kennington. The continued tolling from the towers confirmed that Londoners now fully understood how the old world had died when King Charles's head was held up for all to see.
A traitor and a tyrant
. The only concession the Puritans made to the feelings of his family and followers was to let them stitch the head back on the body. In future, republicans would see this as Cromwell's first mistake.

The thunder and the lightning still roiled and flickered, signalling still another storm marching eastward to the Thames from the Medway. If the storm reached us it would be much harder to get Master Elias aboard the boat. The water was going to be rough. The ice would begin breaking up below London Bridge. We would be in danger of being crushed to death.

I kept looking back. The musketeers signalled they saw no danger but I was certain the Puritans and their rather impure captains must have defeated the monks by now. I listened for sounds of their pursuit. Marvell knew we headed for the river but we couldn't be sure what bad information he had gleaned with the good. He might be searching for us between the Temple and Lambeth in the thick of the Frost Fair.

Every so often a squall swept up fragments of ice and flung them into our eyes. For a while we were doubly blind to what lay ahead. We needed to regroup. Turning, I counted our party. Six rabbis, one Chief Rabbi, four French musketeers, one Prince of the Blood, two highway robbers following one formerly sceptical, deeply conflicted journalist. I have to say it was no real contest: I didn't want to go to Amsterdam and discover the wonders of her secret city, or go to Paris before she had anything like her modern appearance. Paris of Notre Dame and Quasimodo was full of tremendous wealth and obscene poverty. Out of it had come the likes of Molière, Racine, Corneille and that great creator of other worlds, Cyrano de Bergerac. But I was not going to cross a gulf of Black Aether with the chance of never seeing my children again, or, indeed, of being killed a couple of hundred years before my time!

And then I had led us through the silvery fog and we took tally of our numbers. Hearing no pursuit we judged it a good plan to rest for five minutes or so and renew our energy. Several of us had flasks and shared them generously. The rabbis appreciated the warmth the brandy brought them.

The old Chief Rabbi winked at me as he handed me back my flask. ‘Nothing like strong grog to renew the spirits.'

I had brought the half pint of twenty-year-old Hine from home and was amused to hear it called ‘grog'.

Then, as we pressed on past Blackfriars, with distant Southwark to our right, a stretch of deep darkness suddenly surrounded us. Hidden in the shadows we saw armoured horsemen at the trot on both banks, light glancing off their helmets, cutlasses and breastplates. Cromwellian cavalry, riding in good order, led a squadron of musketeers marching at the double. They couldn't see us, but they seemed to know where we went. Which meant we travelled as fast as we could towards confrontation with many well-trained soldiers whose leaders desired to stop us at all costs. They wanted Rupert but they might also want our Treasure—the old gentleman currently being slid across some fairly bumpy ice. Who knew what Cromwell and his advisors knew about the Alsacia? And the redcoats were led by Marvell. Whatever else did the poet-turned-soldier-turned-intelligencer know about the Sanctuary, the Chief Rabbi and the rest of us?

Mordecai, a round-faced, innocent young rabbi, had seen the horsemen, too. ‘Do they mean to stop us reaching the ship, Master Michael?'

‘That's their hope,' I said. ‘My guess is their horses will be useless on the ice. They'll not have that advantage at least. Every man here is prepared for them.'

‘Prepared, but no match.' With long fingers Rabbi Esau combed at his thick black beard. ‘Think you, meinheer, that we could be in some danger of being slaughtered?' He spoke with the resigned irony of a man for whom calamity is constant. ‘Might a little prayer perhaps be in order?'

‘By all means,' I said. ‘Anything is worth trying at this stage!' In the circumstances it seemed to me that this was not unrealistic. As the Jews prayed for us all, Prince Rupert, Duval, Nevison, the musketeers and I discussed our strategy. We had few options. Six of us were experienced, capable soldiers, familiar with all our available weapons. One was an expert general. I had a little training. Rabbi Solomon could shoot the musket he carried. Looking ahead I saw the light grow brighter around London Bridge. I was not sure what that meant.

Prince Rupert and the other soldiers took stock. Snow still lay pretty thick on much of the ice. There were no stalls or tents there. Duval said the river flowed faster once past the bridge. About twenty narrow arches, necessary to hold the weight of so many buildings, slowed the water and allowed the ice to form, but once the Thames left London Bridge and continued on towards the Pool of London, where a good many great seagoing ships were anchored, the ice became thinner. Where it had frozen into heavier slabs, it tended to split apart and crash together again, forming miniature icebergs as hazardous to us as their larger relatives of the Arctic. We had no spyglass with us and so were unable to get a better picture of what we faced.

As we drew closer to the bridge we heard a gurning and groaning as huge pieces of colliding ice crashed together, threatening the sturdy stonework of the arches. Again I turned and begged the rabbis to say if they had any experience with any weapon!

Once again only Rabbi Solomon raised his hand, holding up his heavy flintlock musket. Like a number of other Jews he had fought with the Dutch against the Spanish and had risen in the ranks to captain his own men. ‘I can handle all firearms and the sword', he said, grinning from his heavy beard with a certain boyish pride. Two of the others then chimed in to tell us they, after all, had some small experience with axes. So, somewhat sceptically, we dragged the remaining muskets from under the sedan chair and armed them. Duval muttered that we were wasting scarce powder. But Prince Rupert knew how best to keep up morale.

While the courage of these men was impressive, we were still vastly outnumbered, though the redcoat cavalrymen would have to dismount if they were to be any use against us on the ice.

Prince Rupert, used to mustering confidence in his troops, congratulated everyone on their bravery. He did not for a moment express his own understanding of our situation. But we had no choice. We had to keep going until we could rendezvous with Captain Sprye's boat, assuming that the ship herself had not been already captured or crushed.

There was now nothing for it but to press on towards London Bridge as the great winter storm, which some already said showed God's displeasure at Cromwell's deed, rolled rapidly nearer, seeming to follow the course of the river.

I felt there was something distinctly supernatural about that storm. I had witnessed weather as bad and at this time of year, but never in London. In England I'd known it only once, when I had celebrated my birthday in the Lakes on an evening excursion from Ingleton.

I found it difficult to keep my spirits up as I took my turn at pushing the sedan chair while trying to sound confident. At that moment we became aware of the tolling of a singular bell.

The deep-throated measured sound resonated slowly through the night and found an echo in my chest. I barely had time to reflect on the strangeness of this before London Bridge loomed out of the billowing blackness ahead of us.

Seen in reality, the architecture cramming the structure overhead was very impressive. Many houses backed directly out above the Thames. You could see tiny faces peering from candlelit windows. I could even hear the odd shout from above. Some buildings were of half-timbered brick, like much of the city, but most of them were made of stone like the bridge itself. I then realised that the source of the tolling bell was a church built in the middle of the bridge itself. We heard it clearly from below. Looking up I saw more figures peering down. I guessed they were not just idle sightseers. Luckily they were also not marksmen. Nobody shot at us as we came through, though a few odds and ends were thrown down on us. We slid, pushed and carried that old sedan chair and its precious human cargo under one of the arches nearer to the city side. I was pretty sure no regular soldiers saw us clearly. I heard voices overhead but the darkness made it impossible to make out any detail. The creaking and cracking of the ice not far downriver let us know that the river thawed there. Did I hear raised voices, too?

And then came a massive, deafening crash.

The Chief Rabbi uttered a high, surprised cry followed by a string of Hebrew I couldn't follow.

A monstrous flash of golden lightning burst over us. Instinctively I lifted my arm to protect my eyes. There came an unexpected pattering of ice which stopped almost instantly. I thought at first I heard broken glass. Another crash. Cold winter lightning. Underfoot I felt the ice shivering and above us I heard screams.

No doubt some of the people living on the bridge thought the whole structure was threatened. I must say I didn't blame them. My own dim memories of the V-bomb raids on London towards the end of World War II came suddenly into play. Chills shivered up and down my bones. Not for the first time I reflected on the terrible situation I was in. What on earth was I doing there? I had tried to save a king who was in my opinion guilty of his crimes. I was now helping a handful of European rabbis carry one of their elders to what we all supposed was a safer place for him. I wished I had read more of this period of history. It had never particularly engaged me until now. I preferred fictional accounts. At that moment, of course, it was too late to start wondering about steps down to the water from other parts of the bridge. We kept as low as we could. I remained watchful, searching for a way off the river which didn't involve moving closer to the bank on our left. If one existed, I couldn't see it.

Neither could I see Captain Marvell and his men. There was no sign of the redcoat cavalry we had seen earlier. Were they still riding along the bank? Perhaps they planned an ambush.

No ambush came. No shot was fired. We were increasingly nervous, expecting to see troopers in every shadow. I did hear a few rough voices calling from the top of the bridge. Some soldiers on the Tower side suddenly let off a musket fusillade until an urgent voice bawled at them to stop. So it was a trap of sorts, except they were as unsure of our position as we were of theirs. The guns had been aiming some distance behind us. If they thought we made slower progress, we had a slightly better chance of reaching our boat before they realised where we were. In a whisper I warned everyone to keep quiet. Prince Rupert confirmed this, murmuring into my ear: ‘Here is the point, Master Moorcock, where we rely not on our own wits but upon the witlessness of our enemies'. He grinned and winked at me. ‘Battles are never won by the strategists. They are always lost to he who makes the fewest mistakes'. And he grinned at me, a wild and reckless expression which immediately inspired me. I could see why his soldiers followed him so willingly. Death meant nothing when Rupert of the Rhine commanded the charge!

Another flash of lightning. A great clap of thunder. Almost on cue it began to hail. The hail at once turned to snow. Sheets of white whirled and hissed. The wind picked up the ice from the surface and flung it into our eyes and mouths, drawing blood as it struck exposed flesh. A deeper booming came from cannons positioned along the walls of the Tower on the riverside.

‘The devils are trying to break up the ice! They plan to drown us in this freezing water!' Aramis wiped sleet from his eyes, glancing around him for a means of escape.

‘They don't need to hit us, but they risk losing what they believe we carry.' Athos smiled that thin, grim smile of his. ‘When, I wonder, will someone remind them that we carry treasure with us.'

Porthos and Duval laughed heartily at this and sure enough, after a minute or two, the cannonade stopped suddenly. What its purpose was, if not to drown us, I had no idea. Perhaps a commander of the tower's guns had made a mistake, thinking he spotted a ship. Someone had clearly given the order to cease firing. At that moment an eerie silence descended. I heard nothing but the wind whispering like distant surf.

Still unsure of ourselves, we crept across ice growing thinner and less safe with every step. Great massings of dark troubled clouds formed above us on all sides, as if we inched along the bottom of a gigantic well. Then, with a tremendous noise, like heavenly cannon fire, the clouds split open. Lightning cracked down again with deafening strikes wherever it touched, illuminating vast pieces of jagged ice gathering like Titans to finish us off. For a minute or two, tired and terrified, we rested panting against stone piers. Then, with the next lull, we moved forward again.

There were no embankments as such running beside the river, so our pursuers were either on the shingle and mud of the bank or on the roads above them. Dimly, I saw the outlines of trees and buildings—a clump of poplars, a tall warehouse, a row of cottages. I smelled the filthy water and the snow. I heard horses trotting. A distant exchange of curses.

Suddenly the ice shifted underfoot. The movement felt like my feet being tugged from beneath me as I walked, except it was accompanied by the sound of fast running water! I recognised and feared that sound. I had once climbed a big glacier in Finland and experienced something similar. I'd heard a river directly below me and nothing but thin, creaking ice separating me from it. The difference being, of course, that then I was roped up to another climber and had no particular fear of dying. Prince Rupert called out a warning. Someone began to respond, then, with a yell, was suddenly silent.

‘I have him. Give me a hand someone!' called Nevison. A bright yellow light appeared briefly. I started to go to help him. Then, from the left bank, came a sudden fusillade. I saw Prince Rupert and Nevison with a rabbi between them. On the prince's orders we moved further towards the centre of the river. Then I saw the Jew fall again and shout. A confused cry from Nevison. He and Prince Rupert bent to pull the rabbi up. It was round-faced young Mordecai. He struggled to rise, fell back and sprawled on black ice creaking alarmingly beneath him. I heard him call a prayer.