Fear No More

Начало книги

A wailing March wind was blowing from the northwest along Bankside, causing the Thames to move in choppy wavelets and froth an angry white around its quays and the massive piles of the great London Bridge. Wisps of thatch were being blown hither and thither among the debris of the streets, plucked from the houses and even from the roof of the stately Globe Theatre.

The wind howled down Pepper Street, causing the painted wooden sign of the Pilgrim’s Wink Tavern to rattle and shake in spite of its iron fastening.

Screwing up his eyes against the icy smack of the wind, Master Hardy Drew, Constable of the Bankside Watch, opened the lattice window on the first floor of the tavern. He held it ajar a fraction in order to lean out, pull closed a loose, banging shutter, and fasten it before, thankfully, securing the window latch again.

It had been a cold winter and the elderly queen, insisting on going for her walk in the February chills, had caught cold and had been ailing since. In fact, the talk was that the poor lady would not recover. She lay in her palace at Richmond surrounded by members of her privy council and attended by her physicians and even the elderly Archbishop John Whitgift of Canterbury. All that day, Sunday, the nation had offered prayer for her recovery. Master Drew himself had gone to the church of St. Saviours to offer his supplication, but it seemed a forlorn hope. Yet, after forty-five years, it seemed impossible to imagine England without Elizabeth upon its throne.

Читать дальше →