The man waiting in the corner of the derelict cemetery between Poor Jewry and Sybethe Lane jumped as an owl in the old yew tree above him hooted and spread ghostly wings to go soaring like a dark angel over the tumbled grass and briars. The watcher saw the bird plunge on its shrieking victim then rise effortlessly as a puff of smoke up against the starlit sky. The man shivered and cursed. He remembered stories from his childhood of the Shape-Shifters, those witches, crones of the darkness, who could change their appearance and haunt such deserted, lonely places. The night was warm yet the man felt cold. These were troubled times. During the day he laughed at the gossip, the stories about an anchor and rope which hung down from a cloud and lay fixed in an earthen mound near Tilbury. Or how the king of the pygmies, large-headed and fiery-faced, had been seen riding a goat through the forests north of the city. Whilst devils, small as dormice, laughed and leaped like fish in a net in the grass around the gallows at Tyburn. Such stories merely mirrored the times and echoed the words of the prophet: ‘Woe to the kingdom where the king is a child!’

A prophecy now coming to fruition in England: golden Richard was only a youth and the affairs of state rested in the grasping hands of his uncle, the Regent, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who seemed unable to pour balm on the kingdom’s wounds. French galleys were raiding and sacking towns along the Channel coast. In the north the Scots spilled over the border in an orgy of burning and looting, whilst in the shires round London, the peasants, taxed to the hilt and tied to the soil, bitterly protested against the lords of the earth and plotted bloody rebellion.

Gaunt, however, was as slippery as a fish: unable to raise taxes from a rebellious Commons, he had now performed the miracle of uniting the warring Guilds of London to obtain money from the wealthy burgesses and merchants. This had to be stopped. The watcher in the shadows just wished there was an easier way to do it. He bit his lip. Gaunt had to be destroyed, it was necessary. When the revolt came, a new order would be established in the kingdom and the Great Community, the name the peasant leaders had given themselves, would decide who would live and who would die, who would wield power and who would exercise trade. The prudent ones in the government of the city were already preparing to make such men their friends.

‘I am here.’

The man jumped. Was he hearing things?

‘I am here,’ the voice repeated, low and throaty.

‘Where are you?’

‘We are all around you. Don’t move. Don’t run. Just listen to what I have to say.’

‘What is your name?’ the man asked, trying to control the quick beating of his heart and the panic curdling his innards.

‘I am Ira Dei,’ the voice replied from the darkness of the cemetery. ‘I am the Anger of God. And God’s wrath will spill out against those who reap where they have not sown, who gather profits where they have no right, and who oppress the poor men of the soil as if they were worms and no more.’

‘What do you want?’

‘To make all things new. To take this kingdom into an age of innocence for:

“When Adam delved and Eve span,

Who was then the gentleman?”’

The man nodded. He had heard this doggerel verse chanted like a constant hymn by the peasants who wished to march on London, reduce the city to red-hot ash, seize the King’s uncle, strike off his head and march in procession with that same head on a pike.

‘Are you for us?’ the voice asked.

‘Of course!’ the man spluttered.

‘And do the Regent’s plans move apace?’

‘The banquet is tomorrow night.’

‘Then you must act. Do what we want and we shall consider you our friend.’

‘I have a scheme,’ the man replied. ‘Listen…’

‘Silence!’ the voice rasped. ‘If you wish to be one of us then thwart Gaunt’s ambitions. How you do it need not concern us but we shall watch. Adieu.’

The man strained his eyes against the darkness. He heard a twig snap, an owl hoot but, when he called out, his words rang hollow in the silence.

A mile to the south, on the black, stinking waters of the Thames, another hooded, cowled figure moved his small skiff between the starlings of London Bridge. He tied the rope carefully through a rusting ring and began to climb up the wooden beams, on to the blood-soaked trellis towards the decapitated heads gazing 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.