He was not exaggerating. As he steered her into a much narrower byway, the cobbles underfoot gave way to a mixture of mud, slime, straw, and an array of rotting vegetation. A ditch filled with sluggish grey water ran down one side, containing bobbing bits of flotsam she decided it would be prudent not to examine too closely. The air seemed to thicken, the stench from the Thames playing second fiddle to the sweet, sickly smell of decay and the stale, musty reek of unwashed bodies. Margaret tightened her grip on her escort’s arm as the grimy, soot-blackened buildings on either side of them closed in. Now she understood Lochiel’s initial reluctance to bring her here.

“We can turn back at any point, you know,” he said, slowing, but she shook her head.

“Absolutely not. Mr. Scott is expecting me.”

If Lochiel thought there was a genuine risk of harm befalling her, nothing she said would have persuaded him to bring her here. Buoyed by this, and trusting that the boots she had thankfully had the presence of mind to put on would protect her feet from the worst of what she was treading in, she sneaked incredulous glances at her surroundings.

It was as if they were walking a tight-rope strung between two worlds. On her left she could still see the clock tower of the Palace of Westminster peeking up over the Abbey. A large rectangle of green, followed by some sort of public edifice, perhaps another government department, occupied the left hand side of the thoroughfare. On the right, a warren of much lower, more-primitive buildings huddled together, as if seeking warmth and safety in numbers. Ladders and terrifyingly flimsy bridges were suspended between the roofs. The alleys between were so narrow that virtually no sunlight penetrated the gloom. Brown and grey were the predominant colours, from the sky to the buildings, the pallor of the people, and the contents of the carts that fought for space. Silent figures stood wide-eyed and staring in doorways, their clothes not much more than rags, their bare feet filthy. Though no-one approached them, almost everyone gazed with a kind of blank curiosity that Margaret found unsettling. Despite the air being filled with the calls of the costers pushing their barrows, with men hailing each other across the narrow street, coupled with raucous laughter blaring from what she assumed, from the smell, to be a gin shop, she had the strangest feeling that she and Lochiel were walking in a bubble of silence.