Revelation

I saw Reverend Meaphon in the crowd, his face redder than ever. We shouldered our way over to him. Another cleric was standing beside him, a tall thin old fellow with a beaky-nosed face and thick white hair, well combed and clean. How well these radical preachers all seemed to look after their hair, a peacock trait above the sober clothes. Minnie clasped Meaphon's arm. 'Oh, sir, you came!'

Meaphon turned to me, and I saw the cleric was frightened. 'He has to be got down,' he said urgently. 'If he's taken I will be questioned, the whole congregation will!'

'And mine!' the other cleric said. 'I am William Yarington, rector of the next church to Reverend Meaphon's.' He spoke to me in tones of portentous seriousness, evidently assuming I was a radical sympathizer. 'Our truth, our true faith, is under threat from papists and backsliders as never before. That mad boy should have been kept shut away and secure, with someone to pray with him all the time.' He glared at Meaphon.

'He manages enough prayers by himself,' I snapped.

Yarington looked me coldly up and down, then turned away. He muttered something that sounded like, 'Another unbeliever.'

I turned to Meaphon.

'Have you tried speaking with him?' I asked.

'Yes, yes! I have ordered him down, told him to stop his shouting. I said he could put his parents in danger. But he won't listen.'

'If they find us here, if they associate me with him . . .' the white-haired cleric muttered and cast his eyes around, as though looking for escape, then fixed them again on Adam as the boy cried out that he was suffering for them all, like Jesus on his Cross.

'Word will get to Bonner soon. He'll be here!' Meaphon shook his head.

'It might be better for everyone if he fell and broke his neck,' the other cleric said.

Minnie had broken down again and was sobbing on her husband's breast. 'Do something, sir,' Daniel implored me. 'Please!'

There was a fresh gust of laughter from the crowd. Some wretch had brought a dancing bear to entertain the crowd and the little bruin, chained and muzzled and with strips of coloured cloth sewn into its ears, stared at the crowd in fear. Its keeper thwacked it on the nose, called 'Dance!' and the poor creature began to shift from leg to leg. The keeper put his cap on the ground for folk to throw pennies.

'Here!' someone called up to Adam. 'You dance too! Come on, give us a dance!'

Two middle-aged men in the robes of the Cutlers Guild were next to me. 'This is blasphemy,' one said angrily. 'The Common Council should be fetched, he should be imprisoned, punished for this display.'

'Someone's gone to Bonner's palace,' his fellow said in tones of grim satisfaction. 'He'll be punished all right.'

'You are right, brother!' someone called to Adam from the crowd. 'You have the spirit in you!' The crowd, I saw, was mostly good-natured, seeing this as a spectacle, a joke. But as with the costumiers' arrests, this could turn nasty.

I stepped to the front of the crowd, directly underneath Adam, and looked up at him. He had paused and was taking deep whooping breaths. He was, I saw, shivering. If he fainted . . .

'Adam,' I called. 'Please come down! Your mother is sore upset!'

He looked down at me, then shifted his gaze to the crowd. 'The world is ending!' he yelled. 'The Antichrist is here! If you do not deny Satan and come to Jesus you will all burn! Burn!'

'Speak, parrot, speak!' someone called out mockingly.

'Cure the hunchback's arm, like Jesus healed the sick! Give us a miracle!'

I felt an angry despair. There was no communicating with Adam, one might as well try talking to a brick wall. None of the hot-gospellers listened, they only ranted, and either you took what they said for God's word or in God's name they casually condemned you to eternal torment. Adam was mad but that was where his madness had grown from. The killer's, too, perhaps, not only declaring God's bloody verdict but implementing it too. I clutched my throbbing arm, feeling utterly helpless.

There was a murmur behind me. Some men were shouldering their way through the crowd. With a sinking heart I caught a glimpse of raised pikes. A moment later Bishop Bonner, in black robes and cap and surrounded by his guards, appeared. The crowd stepped away and he moved through, short and stocky and powerful, leaving me, the Kites and Meaphon exposed. The other minister melted into the crowd. Above us, Adam had started declaiming scripture, and I recognized a garbled paraphrase of Revelation: 'The fearful, and unbelieving, and whoremongers and sorcerers, shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone...'

'Cease that blasphemy!' Bonner's thunderous roar silenced the crowd and made even Adam pause and blink. Close to, the face under the dark cap was round and jowly, the large dark eyes alive with anger.