Chapter 1
IN THE HEAT OF THE EVENING, JUST AS DAYLIGHT began to drift into dusk, Joe Jaggard took Amy Le Neve’s hand in his and pulled her willingly away from her wedding feast.
Amy was slight, little more than five foot and less than a hundredweight. Her fair hair shone in the last of the light, and her skin was as clear and soft as a milkmaid’s. She was sixteen, yet her hand in Joe’s great right hand was like a child’s. He was eighteen years, six foot or more, lean and muscular and golden. In his left hand he clasped a wine flagon.
They ran on, breathless, until her bare foot struck a sharp flint and she faltered, crying out in shock and pain. Joe stopped and laid her down in the long grass. He kissed her foot and sucked the blood that trickled from the sole.
Tears flowed down her cheeks. Joe cupped her head in his hands, his fingers tangling in her tear-drenched hair, and kissed her face all over. He held her to him, engulfing her.
She pulled open his chemise of fine cambric; he pushed her wedding smock away from her calves, up over her flawless thighs, crumpling the thin summer worsted. It was lovemaking, but it was warfare, too: the last delirious stabbings in a battle they knew to be lost.
Joe took a draft from the flagon. “You know what, doll,” he said, and his voice became high-pitched, “I do believe you are an abomination. Get you behind me, daughter of Satan, for you are profane and impure and as frail as the rib of Adam. Verily, I say you are fallen into corruption.”
She jabbed him sharply in the ribs with her elbow. “I’ll abominate you,” she said, laughing with him. She sobered. “The funny thing is, though, he really talks like that.”
“Winterberry? Winter-turd is what I call him. He’s a dirty, breech-shitting lecher of a man, I do reckon. Puritans, they call them. He’s as pure as swine-slurry, steeped in venery and lewdness. He’s got a face like a dog that’s never been out of the kennel and a suit of clothes so black and stark they’d scare the Antichrist back into hell. He’s buying you, paying for you as he might bargain for a whore at a Southwark stew.”
They were silent a few moments. In the distance, they could just hear the occasional whisper of music caught on the warm breeze.
“We’ll go,” said Joe. “We’ll go to London. I’ve got gold.”
“I can’t leave my family. They’ll get the law on us. You’ll be locked away and whipped. Strung up at Tyburn. I don’t know what.”
He turned to her, angry now. “Would you rather go to his bed? Would you have him play with you?”
“You know I don’t want that! They forced me to marry him.”
He turned his gaze from her. “I’ll kill them all, Amy. I’ll do for them—your kin, the lot. I’ll scrape the figs from Winter-turd’s arse and push them down his throat.”
She kissed him. “It’s hopeless. I’ll have to go back there tonight. I’m a married woman now.”
His eyes were closed. Then he opened them and smiled at her. “No, doll,” he said. “There’s stuff we can do. I can do. I promise you I can make it so we can be together forever. Trust me. Now kiss me again.”
They kissed, long and lingering. It was the last thing they ever did. They had not heard the creeping footfalls in the grass.
The first blow killed Joe. He knew nothing of it. Amy had no more than two seconds to register the horror, before the second blow came.