A Murder on London Bridge

Finally, the coach reached the Stone Gate, where the Earl of Clarendon’s gaze was drawn upwards, to the severed heads impaled on spikes above the arch – traitors, all executed since the monarchy had been restored. Some were men the King would have spared, but the Earl had urged him against clemency, lest it was seen as a sign of weakness. He felt no remorse, though, as he stared at the blackened, unrecognisable features. It was hardly his fault they had backed the wrong side. As his carriage passed under the arch, there was a sudden violent thud that set his heart racing. Immediately, people started to shout, the laugh. It did not take the Earl long to realise what had happened. One of the heads had come off its pike, and bounced off the roof of his coach. The vile things dropped not infrequently, especially during windy weather, but the Earl was seized by the immediate and unshakeable sense that it was an omen of evil to come. He could not prevent a shudder as the head was brandished outside his window by a grinning apprentice. He told himself that he was being fanciful – that the falling skull was a chance event, and meant nothing at all. But his stomach continued to roil, and gradually he accepted what he knew to be true, deep in his heart – it was an omen, and it bode ill for him, for the people who knew him, and for London.