‘It looks more like a prison than a hospital,’ Yori remarked, craning his neck upwards to see the small barred windows high in the wall.

‘And so it should be,’ said Rose. ‘You wouldn’t want any of the nutters inside it roaming London’s streets. I pity poor Mrs Winters. If she wasn’t crazy before, she will be by now.’

Jack stopped in his tracks. ‘Are you telling me Mrs Winters is mad?’

Rose twirled a forefinger against her head. ‘As a cuckoo!’

He frowned in dismay. ‘I thought when you said she was in Bedlam that you meant she was helping to care for the patients. Not that she was one of them!’

‘Sorry,’ said Rose with a shrug. ‘Thought that was obvious.’

Jack’s shoulders slumped. How would he get any sense out of a madwoman?

‘Perhaps her time in hospital may have helped her?’ Akiko suggested hopefully.

Rose gave a dismissive snort. ‘More likely made her worse! I hear they treat ’em worse than animals.’

Akiko’s lips thinned in barely concealed annoyance at Rose’s off-hand reply. The two of them had hardly exchanged a word since they’d first met, but Jack put that down to a clash of cultures. Rose couldn’t be any more different from Akiko. Bold, brash and uninhibited, she was a typical London city girl; whereas Akiko behaved in the more reserved, calm and thoughtful way of the Japanese.

As they approached the asylum’s front gate, a squat man with a balding head stepped out. Resembling a toad more closely than a gatekeeper, he had a large red boil on his neck and a bulging left eye that gave him a permanent squint. He studied the four of them with curiosity, evidently unsure what to make of this disparate band of a monk, a warrior girl, a serving wench and a boy in foreign dress. ‘Are we visiting … or staying?’ he chuckled.

‘We’re here to see Mrs Winters,’ replied Jack.

The gatekeeper sniffed. ‘You family?’

‘No,’ said Jack. ‘Friends.’

The gatekeeper licked his dry lips. ‘Then it’s tuppence each for entrance.’

‘Entrance?’ queried Yori, leaning on his staff. ‘Isn’t this a hospital?’

The man nodded, limp strands of hair falling aside. He combed them back with his fingers. ‘Aye, it is, but if you wanna have a laugh at the patients, you gotta pay.’

‘We’re not here to laugh,’ said Jack indignantly.

With a dismissive snort the gatekeeper thrust out a greasy hand. ‘That’s what they all say. Now cough up.’

Reluctantly Jack paid the money. The gatekeeper gave them a black-toothed grin and waved them through.

Jack and the others entered the courtyard. They weren’t the only visitors. A group of well-to-do young gentlemen stood round a bare-chested man, who was repeatedly knocking his head against a post.