He moved to the parapet and let others pass him. He looked back up Ludgate Hill, to the great square tower of St. Paul’s. People were coming from the church to cross Fleet Bridge. When they reached its midpoint, the more sharp-eared heard what he had heard. Faces changed. Men and women each took the sound differently—with a wince, with a curse, with—if they were papist—a furtive sign of the cross. Most shrugged it off. London had become a city of screams and you could not think too long upon each. Simeon left the bridge and cut riverward beside St. Bridget’s Churchyard. Soon, he thought. Soon every citizen’s ear will be filled with nothing but the weeping of the ungodly, the gnashing of their teeth, the lamentations of the judged. Ignore those, if you can. Then he turned into Bride Lane, and the sound hit him full, halting him again—for the screams were coming from the very house he was making toward, and it was not the ungodly who dwelt there but one of God’s true Saints.
