‘How long do you think we’ll wait?’ Pike broke in.

Watkin stretched out his legs and cursed. The ale in his belly was turning sour. He had seen the warning look in Joscelyn’s eyes and quietly cursed his growing involvement in Pike’s madcap schemes. All of Southwark knew about the Great Community of the Realm! The Secret Council of peasant leaders and their ruthless agents who slipped like shadows along the wards, bringing in messages and instructions which could not be defied. Once you were part of the Community, you either supported it or you died.

‘Do you think this is wise?’ Watkin asked. ‘I mean to be waiting here? If Athelstan found out he’d lash us with his tongue or worse,’ he added morosely. ‘Just stare at us so sorrowfully until we confessed everything.’

‘I am a part of it,’ Pike declared defiantly, looking up at the sky. ‘And, Watkin, so are you!’

Watkin moved his great rump and scratched his bulbous nose. He and Pike used to be rivals on the parish council but now Pike had drawn him into these secret matters. Had he done it deliberately? A surety against Brother Athelstan’s anger if their parish priest ever found out?

‘Remember what happened to Ricaud!’ Pike said, enjoying himself.

Watkin shivered. Ricaud was a pedlar who used to sell his gewgaws on Shoemakers Lane. Gossip said he also sold secrets of the Great Community to the Regent’s spies: one morning, Ricaud, or rather his head, was found fastened to a pole on the mud flats above the Thames.

‘When Adam delved and Eve span,’ Pike sang softly, ‘who was then the gentleman? Just think of it, Watkin.’ Pike stretched out on the grass. ‘Think of a kingdom, no princes, no bishops, no great lords of the soil, where the meek truly inherit the earth.’

‘Sometimes,’ Watkin interjected drily, ‘I think all we’ll earn, Pike, is what you are lying on. A twisted neck at Smithfield and a shallow grave.’

Pike smacked his lips. Watkin knew this was a sign for one of his speeches.

‘I’ve got to piss,’ he grumbled and, staggering to his feet, walked through the grass to the great sycamore tree which stood next to the boundary wall of the cemetery. Watkin undid the points of his breeches. He had relieved himself and was about to turn away when he heard a sound above him.

‘Good evening, dung-collector!’

Watkin gaped up into the dark branches.

‘My name is Valerian.’ The voice was low but harsh. ‘With me is Domitian!’

Watkin stumbled backwards.

‘You won’t recognise those names,’ the voice hissed, ‘but we bring you fraternal greetings from the Great Community.’

‘Don’t run away!’ Another voice spoke up.

Watkin heard the click of a crossbow.

‘Just call your friend across.’

‘Pike!’ Watkin urged. ‘Pike, come over here!’

The ditcher got to his feet and lumbered across, the wineskin still in his hands.

‘What’s the…?’

‘Greetings, Brother Pike.’

The ditcher dropped the wineskin.

‘We’ve been here some time,’ the voice continued. ‘Listening to you burping and farting. You are still handfast to the Cause, are you not?’

‘Of course,’ Pike stammered. ‘You know we are!’

‘Not like Ricaud.’ The voice was laughing. ‘He squealed like a pig when we took his genitals off. Valerian here wanted to stick them into his mouth after he cut off his head but…’

‘What do you want?’ Watkin tried to keep his voice steady.

‘We want you to dig,’ the voice continued. ‘Dig and ask no questions.’

‘Dig!’ Pike exclaimed. ‘Where?’

‘Why, here.’

‘In the cemetery?’ Watkin responded.

A click and a crossbow bolt skimmed between him and Pike, thudding into the ground behind them.

‘You don’t question,’ Valerian’s voice continued. ‘You carry out the orders of the Great Community. Go down on your knees, both of you!’

Watkin and Pike obeyed with alacrity.

‘You will dig a ditch nine yards long and three feet deep along the cemetery wall.’

‘Brother Athelstan will ask why.’

‘Well, you can say it’s for draining or you want to ensure the foundations of the wall are strong. That is your problem, not ours.’

‘Why a ditch?’ Pike asked defiantly.

He stared up into the darkness. He could see two shapes sitting on one of the outstretched branches. Pike turned away in disgust as urine splattered on to his face. Watkin stretched out and grasped his arm.

‘We will do what you ask!’

Pike wiped his face on the soiled sleeve of his jerkin.

‘You will begin? Well, today is Friday, the feast of St Oswald. So, tomorrow will be soon enough!’

‘Do we dig the ditch in its entirety?’

‘No, in the evening after work. The following day you will fill it in and dig some more. Do you understand?’

Watkin glanced longingly up at the glow of fire on the church tower.

‘Oh, and by the way, Watkin and Pike, you do have lovely children. Now, go back to your wineskin, sit under the yew tree, at least for another hour. By then we’ll be gone!’

Hawkmere Manor was a lonely, gloomy dwelling place built, so it was said, in the time of cruel King John. It stood behind its high curtain wall to the east of the Priory of Clerkenwell. Once owned by a robber baron who’d preyed upon travellers on the roads to and from Cripplegate, Hawkmere had fallen on sad times. A doleful, haunted place now used by the Regent John of Gaunt to house French prisoners captured either in France or during the bloody battles waged between English and French ships on the Narrow Seas. For the men who dwelt there it was truly a time of tribulation, even more so for Guillaum Serriem, formerly captain of the French man-of-war the St Sulpice, taken off Calais six weeks earlier. Serriem had been brought to Hawkmere as a captive and hostage while his friends in France tried to raise the huge ransom demanded by the English.

Lying in his narrow cot bed, Serriem knew in his heart of hearts that he would never again see his manor house outside Rouen, stroll in its gardens, kiss his wife or play with his sons in that lovely apple orchard which ran down to the river Seine.

Serriem was dying. He could feel the poison coursing through his body yet he had no strength to call out or crawl to the door and scream for help. His body was coated in sweat, the pain in his stomach sending arrows of agony up into his chest and making him twist and turn. He pushed back the dingy sheets and stared helplessly at the barred door. What was the use? The walls were thick, the door was locked and Sir Walter Limbright, his gaoler and custodian, would have retired to his own chambers to drown his sorrows in cup after cup of claret.

Perhaps someone was out there along the gloomy gallery, a guard, a servant? Serriem dragged himself off the bed, rolling on to the dirty rushes. He tried to pull himself towards the door but his strength failed him and he lay gasping. Serriem realised he had been poisoned by some secret, subtle assassin but who, among his companions, would want him dead? And surely the Goddamns, the English, for all their cruelty, would not want to forfeit the ransom money? Serriem’s mind wandered. He had always hoped he would die in his own bed, his family around him or, if not there, on his ship at sea like a true warrior, sword in hand with the oriflamme of France fluttering above him. Now he was to die here in this lonely, smelly chamber, a prisoner of the English, forsaken and forgotten even by his own kind.

Serriem rolled over on his back and stared up at the cobwebbed rafters. His mind wandered. The pain was so intense that he slipped in and out of consciousness. He was at home, the windows open, the fragrant scents of the garden filling his chamber. He could hear the cries of his servants and the shouts of his sons as they played in the courtyard below. Serriem opened his eyes. Nothing! Only a foreboding stillness. He tried to move again but he felt as if the floor were shifting under him and his mind went back.