Toby could see the book, he could see the priest’s mouth moving, and for a second or two the urge was on him to smash the window, climb through, draw the sword at his side and hack blindly at Campion’s captors.

Church bells struck in the city, the bells of Southwark answering with their hourly chimes, and the sudden cacophony distracted Toby and calmed his anger. He would gain nothing by blind fury. He would be cut down before he was half-way through the window, and he remembered the idea suggested to him by the pitch fire.

Two things, even more than war, gave fear to London. Fire and the plague. Plague was the worse of the two killers, but fire the more frequent. Much of London was still built of timber, the houses crowded together with thatched outhouses crammed into small yards. Fire often threatened the destruction of London, the sudden flames and smoke billowing above the rooftops. The citizens were practiced in their response. Nearly every street corner was decorated with long hooks to haul down burning thatch or timbers and with axes to break into houses so that gunpowder charges could be laid. The powder would flatten a ring of houses about the fire, making a cordon over which the flames could not pass. Despite the new hand-driven pump that had just been invented, which could force water a full thirty feet into the air from its canvas hose, a fire was usually well alight before the parish could deploy it. London’s gravest enemy was fire, yet tonight it would be Toby’s ally.

Fire would bring the watch running. It would bring men with axes against the gates of Scammell’s yard. It would fill the yard, the street outside, even the river, with people and confusion, and in that confusion Toby reckoned lay his best chance of rescuing Campion.

It was a terrible thing he planned, and he knew it, but he worked with a blind disregard of the damage he might do to the city. He was in love, and the distorting glass of love saw only one thing; that his loved one was in danger and he must split his enemy’s forces and take her from them.

Toby moved between the two sheds, working quickly, though taking care to make little noise as he thrust bundles of unravelled rope and wood shavings into the space beneath the great timber stack. The space had been made by putting the bottom layer of timber on blocks to keep the wood from dampness, and it was there he planned his major fire. The rope strands, used for caulking, were dry. He glanced constantly at the small, lit window, but no one looked out.

When he was satisfied with the preparation, he picked up two long strakes, ready curved to become the ribs of a boat, and took them to the stone hutch that kept the pitch fire safe at night. He thrust them into the coals, feeling the wood grate on the lumps. An immense heat radiated from the glowing coals. The strakes caught immediately, the wood burning bright, and he drew them out. He carried them to the timber stack, the flames licking back toward his hands, the sudden light in the yard making him nervous. Yet no one shouted as he moved, nor as he knelt and pushed the two strakes deep into the tangle of rope and wood-shavings.