Excerpt from Revelation by C.J. Sansom, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

‘Do you know what I saw in the street today?’ another guest said. ‘Outside one church people were laying branches in the snow for the Palm Sunday ceremonies tomorrow. Then a rabble of apprentices appeared and kicked the branches away, calling out that it was a papist ceremony and the Pope was the Antichrist!’

‘This religious radicalism gives apprentices another excuse to run wild,’ Loder observed.

‘There could be trouble tomorrow,’ Roger said.

I nodded. On Palm Sunday the traditional churches would be having the usual ceremonies, the churchwardens dressed as prophets and a child riding in on a donkey, while the radical preachers in their churches would be calling it papist blasphemy.

‘There’ll be another purge,’ someone said gloomily. ‘I’ve heard rumours Bishop Bonner is going to crack down hard.’

‘Not more burnings,’ Dorothy said quietly.

‘The city wouldn’t stand for that,’ Loder said. ‘People don’t like the radicals, but they like burnings less. Bonner won’t go that far.’

‘Won’t he?’ Roger said quietly. ‘Isn’t he a fanatic too? Isn’t the whole city becoming divided?’

‘Most people only want a quiet life,’ I said. ‘Even those of us who were once radicals.’

I smiled wryly at Roger. He nodded in acknowledgement.

‘Fanatics on both sides,’ old Ryprose said gloomily. ‘And all we poor folk in the middle. Sometimes I fear they will bring death to us all.’

Excerpted from Revelation by C.J. Samson Copyright © 2008. by C.J. Samson. Excerpted by permission of Viking. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.