The King's Evil

Начало книги

Monty Montee of Phoenix, Arizona.

Good friends and bibliophiles supreme.

Prologue

September, 1666.

The month of September had scarcely begun when a new disaster struck an already beleaguered city. London had been savaged without mercy by the Great Plague, frozen to the marrow by a cold winter then blistered in a hot, dry, unrelenting summer which bred drought, discontent and fresh outbreaks of virulent disease. Even the oldest inhabitants of the capital could not recall a more intense period of suffering but they consoled themselves - between weary curses at a malign Fate - with the thought that they had now endured misery enough and that their situation could only improve.

Then came the fire.

It brought Jonathan Bale awake in the middle of the night. He sat bolt upright for a few seconds then clambered unwillingly out of bed.

'What ails you?' asked his wife, stirring in the dark.

'Nothing, Sarah,' he said.

Читать дальше →