Doctor Who_ The Roundheads - Mark Gatiss [1]
She bent down so close that her face almost touched the glass.
It was so distant now. Almost like a dream.
CHAPTER 1
When the snow began to fall, it fell so densely that it covered the old city like a neat cotton shroud. Every low building, mean little alley, and cramped and crooked house was obscured beneath its blanketing silence.
People hugged themselves to keep warm, wrapping their heavy coats more tightly around them, pulling down their broad-brimmed hats over narrowed, suspicious eyes. The bleak white sky seemed to lower over them, planting a heavy ceiling on their daily lives, depressing and oppressing them.
It was a sky only an English winter could conjure and beneath it a despairing mood of fear was palpable.
An onlooker might sense it, despite the bustle of commerce and the shouted cries of street vendors.
On one corner, beneath the black-and-white-beamed houses, there was cloth and wool for sale, available in heavy bolts of plain, rather drab colour. The ammonia stink of horse manure vied for attention with the sweeter perfume of cloves and lemons, which a little man with one arm was doling out in pewter mugs for a ha’penny.
He shivered beneath his ragged old coat and shot a nervous glance down the narrow, vile-looking street in which he stood. The snow around him had been churned into ruts by the passage of carts and carriages and the footprints of the Londoners who daily passed him by.
At the end of the lane stood an inn, a grim, black-fronted pile, its eves shoddy and dilapidated, its brickwork crumbling gradually into fine brown dust. A sign, hanging from one old hinge, proclaimed it as the World Turn’d Upside Down and there was a faded picture of just such a catastrophe as imagined some years previously by an artist friend of the owner.
William Kemp, for such was the owner’s name, emerged from the doorway of the inn and shot a vicious look at the drink-seller and then a worse one at the snow-heavy sky.
A thick-set man of some forty years, Kemp wore his hair shoulder-length in the fashion of the day. He had a pale, rather dangerous-looking countenance with a mean rat trap of a mouth and wide green eyes. Dressed in a bulky jerkin with hooped sleeves, fawn-coloured breeches, white stockings and buckled shoes, he had a greasy leather apron, splashed and stained with old beer, hanging around his neck.
Despite the snow, the little street hummed with life.
Somewhere a dog was barking incessantly, punctuating the rhythmic roll of barrels over cobbles as the tavern’s coopers went about their work. Their hammers slammed and knocked, iron on wood, followed by a satisfying hiss as a new red-hot hoop was plunged into a bath of water. They cried out to each other as they worked, cracking filthy jokes or humming tunes in time to the beating of their tools.
The one-armed man sidled up to Kemp and proffered a cup of his winter grog.
‘A drink, sir? Would you help me? I have lost my livelihood ’cause of the wars.’
Kemp looked down at him, his brows beetling over his green eyes. ‘How much?’
‘Ha’penny, master,’ said the vendor hopefully. ‘To keep out the chill.’
Kemp scowled at him. ‘Is there gin in it?’
The man grinned. ‘Aye, sir! My little toddy is packed with the juniper!’
Kemp grunted. ‘Well then, you scoundrel. You’re taking my custom away from me, ain’t you? So get along before I rip out your lights!’
The one-armed man tipped his hat and scrambled backward, the drink sloshing on to his shoes.
‘Sorry, sir. No offence, sir,’ he gabbled, grabbing the pail in which he carried the drink. He abandoned his makeshift brazier and took to his heels, his shoes ringing off the road as he put as much distance as possible between himself and the ominous-looking Kemp.
Kemp kicked the brazier over and watched the hot coals roll away over the snow-covered cobbles, then coughed and felt a ball of phlegm rise in his throat. He spat it out and watched it hit the road, thudding into the snow among the rubbish and the yellow pissholes.
Crippled fool, he thought,