Roseblood Read Online Free Page A

kicked, feet fluttering for the ground.
    Sevigny did not watch; he never could. It reminded him of his own swift, brutal brush with death’s dark cloak on that lonely moonlit road in Normandy. Even now, years later, he could recall the Jacquerie, the rebel French peasants, milling about him, the noose tight about his throat, hands bound behind his back, his horse moving perilously beneath him, the rope tightening. His breath had choked until those goose-quilled arrow shafts came whipping out of the darkness… He opened his eyes, trying to ignore the hideous choking sound coming from the scaffold above him. The air reeked of blood, fire and iron. Plumes of dark smoke eddied. Sevigny recalled a grotesque vision of Hell on a church wall outside Formigny. ‘Stop, stop!’ he whispered to himself. He tried to concentrate on the crowd. More shrill screams from the scaffold as the condemned had their bodies split open.
    ‘Jesu miserere!’ a woman shouted. A Franciscan began to recite the absolution. Horses neighed and reared at the stench of fresh blood. The city archers guarding the scaffold plucked at their bowstrings. People shoved and pushed; a few turned away to vomit.
    Sevigny stared around and glimpsed three friars, cowls pulled forward to shield their faces, dressed in mud-coloured robes, sandals on their feet, hands hidden in their sleeves. He and his bailiffs started forward. A relic seller, bearing scraps of parchment that had allegedly touched the True Cross, was pushed aside. The man screeched. One of the hooded figures raised his head, his cowl sliding back to reveal the fiery red hair and thin, candle-white face that gave Candlemas his nickname. He stared at Skulkin and Sevigny, then plucked the sleeves of this companions and all three turned and fled, even as the first of the condemned screamed his last.
    Sevigny burst into a run, followed by the bailiffs, knocking aside everyone in their path. They pursued Candlemas and his coven up the slight hill, the Compter on one side, Cock Lane on the other. The mouth of this notorious alleyway was packed with prostitutes, faces painted under fire-red wigs, bodies garbed in garish gowns. They hooted and hurled all kinds of obscenities at the fleeing felons. Candlemas and his two companions turned down a runnel, a stinking narrow alleyway, a black tunnel that twisted beneath the decaying houses leaning over either side. At the sound of pursuit, windows were shut, shutters pulled fast and doors slammed.
    At the bottom of the alleyway stood a tavern; the peeling sign above a narrow doorway proclaimed it to be the Key to Heaven. The fugitives disappeared inside. Sevigny, following, kicked the door open and entered the dingy low-beamed taproom. Rush lights gleamed on overturned barrels. An oil lamp, slung on a wall hook, glittered through the gloom. Shadows jerked and vermin scuttled through the mush of filthy reeds on the floor.
    ‘Where?’ Sevigny walked across to the common table squeezed between stacks of barrels.
    ‘Where what?’ replied the lean-faced tapster.
    ‘Hang him!’ Sevigny stepped back. ‘Put a rope over the rafters and hang him for being caught red-handed sheltering fleeing traitors. Hang him!’ he repeated, pointing to one of the rafters.
    Skulkin hastily found a rope; one end was sifted over a blackened beam, the onions and hams dangling there knocked aside. A noose was slipped around the hapless tapster’s neck as he struggled, fighting the bailiffs who hoisted him on to one of the barrels. Skulkin kicked this away, and for a few heartbeats the man danced in the air. Then Sevigny sliced the rope with his sword and the fallen tapster, face all red and sweaty, eyes popping, gestured at a door across the tavern.
    ‘There,’ he gasped. ‘I will take you.’
    Skulkin hustled him to his feet. They went through the cellar door, down stone steps. The floor below was sloppy with wine and ale seeping from barrels and casks. A filthy cobwebbed path ran