‘He’s a villain,’ he says rudely.

I raise an eyebrow at Richard. He shgs as if to say that I have done my best to give this most nervous commander an idea of the enemy, and if he is too afraid to listen then I need do no more. ‘I’ll take my wife to my rooms and get her something to eat,’ he says to Lord Scales. ‘Then shall I come back and we can plan an attack? Perhaps tonight when they have wined and dined? While they are celebrating? Or as they march back to Southwark? We could catch them in the narrow streets before the bridge and push them over?’

‘Not tonight! Not tonight!’ Scales says quickly. ‘Besides, I am expecting reinforcements from the king. He will send us men from the Midlands.’

‘They can’t come for days, if they come at all,’ my husband says. ‘Surely we should attack them now, before they expect it, while they are drinking.’

‘Not tonight,’ Scales repeats. ‘These are not Frenchmen, Rivers. Our experience is no use here. These are treasonous peasants, they fight around back streets and in hiding. We should wait till we have a great force to overwhelm them. I will send another message to the king and ask for his command.’

I see my husband hesitate, and then he decides not to argue. He throws his cape around my shoulders and takes me to his lodgings. We have our usual rooms near the royal apartments in the Tower, but it feels strange, with the king and queen so far away, and the drawbridge up and the portcullis down and us besieged among the people who are our countrymen.

‘It’s damnable,’ my husband says shortly, snapping his fingers for the serving man to leave the tray of food. ‘Damnable. And the very men who should be putting down this unrest are either too half-hearted or too afraid to act. Get you to bed, sweetheart, and I will join you after I have posted a watch. That we should be all but besieged in the Tower of London? At war in England with Englishmen? It beggars belief.’

* * *

We live under siege in the Tower, at war in our own country, besieged in our own capital city. Every day my husband sends out men and even the kitchen girls to get news in the market place and at the City gates. They come back saying that Cade’s army is camped south of the river with more joining them every day. Richard’s great fear is that the uprising will spread and the men of Hampshire and Sussex will join the men of Kent. ‘What about our home?’ I ask him, thinking of the children in their nursery. ‘Should I go back to them?’

‘The roads aren’t safe,’ he says, scowling with worry. ‘I’ll send you with a guard as soon as I know what is happening. But I don’t even know if the king is safely at Kenilworth. We have sent messages but heard nothing back yet. If he’s besieged . . .’ He breaks off.