At ten in the morning, an hour before the constitutional trial was scheduled to begin, the High Boulevard outside the Charter Hall was blocked by three hundred armed Guild Marshals under the personal command of Deputy Kren. Kren had deployed his men in a double defensive line across the grand flight of fifty marble steps leading to the bronze doors of the King’s Bench, their axe-spears leveled at waist height. Their iron breastplates shone in the autumn sun.
‘No unchartered vagrants!’ Kren bellowed through an iron speaking trumpet. ‘The court hall is closed to all persons not holding an official parliamentary admittance card! Scatter or be charged with unlawful assembly against the Crown!’
The crowd of two thousand working citizens, led by Tomas Reed, Sile Rook. Hester Quill, came to a halt fifty paces from the base of the marble steps. Sile planted his oak tall body-shield into the street gutter, his scarred face grim. His hooked pruning blade was held across his chest. Behind him, the lightermen and dyers tightened their grip on their ash packing bats, their faces set like stone.
Before a single word could be exchanged, the sound of rhythmic, thundering cavalry hooves echoed from the Palace Archway.
