Leaving the docks behind, they entered the city and wended their way through the backstreets, Jack guiding them by memory. But London wasn’t exactly how he remembered it. In his head the city had been a gleaming jewel – but now he was confronted with a grim and desperate scene. Overhanging houses cramped the narrow alleyways and cast the lanes into permanent shadow. The stink they’d first smelt on their arrival intensified in the listless air to eye-watering potency. And most of the busy thoroughfares were little more than rivers of clay and mud, with only the main routes laid with gravel. People pushed rudely past amid a hubbub of noise and chaos, the calls of hawkers selling their wares competing with the yells of the city criers delivering news and public announcements. Starving beggars in filthy rags filled the street corners and gangs of young vagrants loitered in darkened passageways like packs of wild dogs. From the ship, London had appeared the heavenly dream he’d held on to for so many years. But up close the city was a hellish nightmare.

‘People actually live here?’ asked Akiko, gazing round in astonishment at the dire conditions.

Jack nodded. ‘London’s the place to be!’ he said heartily, not wishing to admit his disappointment. Either the city had changed remarkably in his absence or his memory of it had been softened by the years.

A casement window overhead suddenly opened and there was a cry of ‘Look out below!’

Pedestrians scattered as a chamber pot was emptied and a pile of human excrement splatted on the ground at their feet. Only Akiko’s nimbleness prevented her from being covered in the muck. She stared aghast at Jack. ‘I thought you said London was civilized!’

‘It is,’ he assured her, keenly aware that his home capital was not comparing favourably with the cleanliness and order of Kyoto’s city streets. ‘We’re just in one of the poorer parts, that’s all.’

Then, as if to prove his point, the alley opened out on to a wide paved street lined with splendid five-storey buildings, their timbers brightly painted and crystal-clear glass glinting in all the windows. Gentlemen and ladies, dressed in their finery, strolled up and down the thoroughfare. They browsed round the goldsmiths’ shops and through the latest fashions in the milliners’, the newest titles in the booksellers’ and the gleaming goblets and bowls in the glass-sellers’ stores. There was even a row of handsome houses decorated in real gold leaf.

‘See?’ said Jack, relieved to find the London of his dreams.

Akiko nodded appreciatively. ‘Yes, far more civilized.’

Yori, with a wry smile, said, ‘I guess, like the plume of a peacock, London is far finer in front than from behind.’