‘But if you don’t kill your enemies, they oft times get up and fight you again.’

‘Then I will improve the odds. Next time I’ll take four thousand.’

‘Then we’d better find a way to pay for them.’

So they write to her brother Salisbury, who is with the King’s Parliament in Leicester. Richard hopes his is one of the reasonable voices that the King will listen to now de la Pole is gone.

‘Don’t hold back,’ says Cecily.

He does not. He asks for the money he is owed, so that he can wage men to put down insurrection. He exaggerates a little when he suggests the threat is great enough that Ireland may otherwise be lost. Less so, when he says he’d rather die than see that happen.

They wait a month for a response and, when it comes, it changes everything. Letters from Salisbury and Oldhall arrive within a week, each with the same tale to tell.

‘You’ll get no money now, Richard,’ writes Salisbury. ‘The violence that took down de la Pole has become a contagion. The men of Kent have risen.’

‘Jack Cade’s mob was fifteen thousand strong when he brought it to Blackheath,’ says Oldhall. ‘God knows who he is, but men follow him. He swears no quarrel with the King, but denounces his evil counsellors; those who sold off France, who oppress poor men and set aside law and order for gain. According to Cade, de la Pole was the first of them, but not the last. Though they swear they did not kill him.’

‘I rode with Henry to Blackheath,’ says Salisbury. ‘We were twenty thousand when we got there, Henry swearing he’d see every rebel dead. Cade backs off into Kent and we think we’ve got him on the run. But when the men Henry sends after them don’t come back, and their bodies start showing up in ditches and trees, he takes fright and buggers off to Kenilworth. And he takes half the army with him. The half he’s left behind thinks Cade to be much in the right and seems of a mind to join him.’

‘Now Cade’s back, with a rebel army,’ says Oldhall. ‘They came up through Southwark. The sneaky bugger had the bridge ropes cut in the night so it couldn’t be raised against them, so they clopped over it and were in the city straight. There’s been no looting, mind. It’s the King’s men they’re after – and who can blame them? Corrupt bastards to a man. But you’ll get no money, Richard, for Treasurer Saye is pulled from the Tower and his head rolls down Cheapside. They say Lord Scales will lead a force against the rebels tomorrow and drive them out of Southwark.’