monarch

As promised by the Lord Protector, the marriage application of Catherine Parr and Sir Thomas Seymour quickly passed the consideration of the Privy Council. Although it caused a few small disturbances, it did not attract too much attention.There is no doubt that the influence of His Excellency the Protector of the Kingdom is indispensable, but the more important point is that the attention of the entire country is now focused on another matter. Compared with it, the marriage of the former queen is at most a gossip That's all.

As summer approaches, the political climate in England is getting more heated as the temperature rises.Everyone seems to be getting more irritable with the heat and sun.

At the beginning of July some appalling news came from the North and Midlands: a Catholic quarter in a county was burned to the ground by mobs; In Yorkshire, a Catholic monk was punched by a group of drunks on the road and thrown into the river.The entire kingdom is like a volcano that is about to erupt. The crater is already emitting thick smoke, and sometimes you can even see the magma splashing out, just waiting to erupt at the destined moment.

Yet at this fateful moment, the kingdom's authority was paralyzed.The parliament is noisy every day, but it is unable to pass any valuable bills; the members of the Regency Council have their own ulterior motives, making up their minds to plan before making a move, quietly waiting for their opponents to show their flaws.Everyone knew the volcano was about to erupt, and all they did was sit there and wait for the fire to burn their opponents to ashes.

The East End of the City of London is only a few miles away from the parliament in Westminster, but it is quite another world.Different from those elegant mansions built with red bricks and marble in the West District, the materials used to construct this unbearable slum are gray bricks and broken planks, which are randomly mixed together to form some kind of weird structure, like a piece of A messy shrub grows like a wanton.

Under King Henry VIII, the size of London's slums tripled.Those farmers who lost their land in the enclosure movement had to come to the city to find a job that was enough to make a living, driven by the notorious "Anti-vagrant Law".On the wet land beside the Thames, they built the original slums with waste bricks, and over time, this area grew bigger and bigger like a tumor on a patient.Even some great aristocrats saw a business opportunity in this. They drove out the peasants in their territories, and used the leftover materials of the demolished farmhouses to build houses in the city and rent them out to those unfortunate people.

In one corner of this slum, on St. Angels Street, stands a Catholic church.The church, which had once been little more than a country parsonage, was swallowed up, along with the whole village, by the rapid growth of the City of London.

Around the chapel is a Catholic community.When the wave of religious reform swept across Europe, there were still some people who would rather stick to the Catholic beliefs of their ancestors, even though the corrupt image of the Holy See had long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.Under King Henry they were more oppressed than the Protestants, and even among the slums this neighborhood was considered the worst.

It was midnight on an August day, and a heat wave was scorching London.It hadn't rained for almost half a month, and even though it was late at night, there wasn't even a trace of coolness in the air.The bells of Westminster Abbey in the distance muffled through the dry air, not only unsettling, but even more disturbing for those lying in bed struggling to sleep from the heat.

When the last bell rang and disappeared into the air tremblingly like an old lady on crutches, several figures in black appeared beside the low wall of the above-mentioned chapel.In such hot weather, they still wrapped themselves tightly in black robes, like a flock of crows that augured ominously.

In the shade of the linden trees, the chapel looks like a veiled old woman, its walls covered with vines and creepers, the inadvertent insertion of a country priest decades ago. , Now those blackened old branches have completely covered the cracked wall, and the leaves on it are a little dry and yellow due to the heat wave, hanging weakly on the branches.

The few people walked along the alley to the small door leading to the garden behind the church. The dilapidated wooden door creaked into pieces with a slight push.

Strawberries and nectarines are planted in the garden, and every spring the fruity fragrance wafts around with the warm spring breeze, causing children from poor families around to lie on the low wall that is half the height of a person and look around pitifully. The old priest, who is already completely white, will come out of the church, pick off the fruit, and put it in a small bag.

"Come on, children, come one by one and line up." The kind old man waved his hands and greeted the children with a smile.So the children cheered and climbed over the low wall, and surrounded the old priest.

A path in the garden, paved with broken bricks and stones, leads to the church's back door, which is opened with little effort.

If the outside of the church looks a little old, the inside of the church is completely dilapidated.The walls of the corridor have turned black, and the broken glass windows are covered with dust. In those corners that have been neglected for a long time, spiders have used their silk to build complex projects.

The curate of this church, Mr. Bridget, is now 62 years old, which happens to be the same age as the reigning dynasty.When King Henry abandoned the Catholic faith and ordered the Church of England to sever ties with Rome, he was already in his forties, and he was covered with diseases. Whenever the rainy day came, every joint in his body made him miserable.The priest who felt that his life was not long decided to ignore the king's crazy behavior. As a person who is about to leave the world, the afterlife is more important than this world.However, what he didn't expect was that he lived for more than ten years after that, even after King Henry had passed away, he was still alive in this world.

Mr. Bridget had said his prayers and gone to bed.Like other elderly people, his sleep has always been light.Therefore, when there was a slight sound from the direction of the sacristy, the old priest opened his eyes at once.

He lifted the quilt, supported the bed board with his hands, and struggled to get up.

Mr. Bridget groped around on the bedside table and finally lit an oil lamp.Holding the oil lamp in one hand, he took out an iron rod from the side of the bed with the other.That voice was probably a mouse, but who could tell?No one can turn a blind eye to the recent political atmosphere, and in the past two days, I have also heard that some mysterious men in black are sneaking around in this area.Religious vendettas are already taking place in the countryside, and there's no reason why they shouldn't spread to the cities.

The priest pushed open the door of his bedroom, and the old hinge made a creaking sound. He walked through the long corridor, the glass on both sides of the corridor was mostly broken, and the moonlight shone into the room through the gap, making it look desolate and gloomy .

The old priest stopped and rested after walking for a while, but even so, he was out of breath when he reached the door of the sacristy.He took out a bunch of keys from under his shabby robe, found the one he needed by the moonlight and the trembling light, and inserted it into the keyhole.

With a "click", the door was opened.The priest opened the door and entered the room.

The sacristy looked empty, and there were not many precious things in this room in the church's heyday, and it looked even more desolate now.There are only a few deformed silver utensils left in the whole house, and the surface of the silver utensils has turned slightly black.The candlesticks are covered with wax oil accumulated over the years, and the statue of the Virgin is also stained with stains that are difficult to wash off.

Holding the oil lamp, the priest walked around the room and heaved a sigh of satisfaction when he saw that everything was in place.He turned around and walked towards the door of the room without noticing that a black figure emerged from the shadows behind him like a ghost.

There were two polished stone steps at the door of the room. When the priest stepped on the first step, the figure rushed in front of him.The priest's eyes were wide open, and he saw that the figure stretched out an arm, and in that hand was holding a dagger.

The dagger sank into the priest's chest without difficulty, and Mr. Bridget had no time to struggle.

The priest lowered his gray head and watched the blood soak the white pajamas on his chest.He didn't feel much pain, just tired.He reached out to the figure standing in front of him, and the figure jumped back to avoid it.

Mr. Bridget fell to the ground with a feeble groan in his throat.

The murderer stepped forward, knelt down, and put his hand under Mr. Bridget's nose.

"Solved." He nodded towards the shadows in the corner of the room.

Several figures emerged from the shadows, "Now it's time to do what we should do." One of the tall people said.

All but the priest's murderer left the sacristy.

The murderer took a bottle from his bosom, poured its contents all over the house, then went back to the door, and poured what was left in the bottle over the priest's body.

He took the priest's oil lamp and walked to a wooden frame at the end of the room, which he had already filled with liquid.He put the oil lamp on the wooden frame.

The wooden frame immediately caught fire.The flames jumped and ran along the pillars all the way to the top of the wooden frame.

The man threw the oil lamp on the ground and walked out of the room.Behind him, flames quickly occupied the entire room like a devil running out of a bottle.

Several people met at the entrance of the church. They nodded to each other and walked out of the church along the path. Behind them, through the broken glass window, they could vaguely see the flames devouring everything in the church.Flames came out from the cracks that had been in disrepair for a long time, and those creepers and vines seemed to foresee their own doom, trembling desperately in the heat.

The tall man in the lead watched the scene from the alley, his eyes reflected brighter and brighter firelight.He glanced around at the surrounding slums, the residents inside were still in a daze, unaware that they were about to be wiped out.