Driven on by the drover's boys, the lowing cows plodded along after the cart, the sour grassy smell and the dust of the road rising up thick around them. Their shillings and tried patience bought them an easy entry into the city: the French sergeant on duty brightened at the sight of the cattle and waved them in with only a cursory question or two for the farmer, swiftly pointing them towards Smithfield and the slaughterhouses. Laurence and Tharkay stayed in the cart until it had turned into the maze of streets, and the herd and the boys had slipped momentarily out of sight, then quick and unannounced they slipped into a narrow alleyway between two houses.

They went to Whitechapel. A few coins at a pub bought Laurence a healthy dose of gossip and rumour, most of it worthless and irrelevant, but for the information that Bonaparte was staying in Kensington Palace, and that his unnatural white beast, with its horrid red, eyes was lying in Hyde Park like some overgrown eel.

Tharkay had better fortune at the docks, among the polyglot mass of men with no allegiance to anyone but the sea, and those who would pay them. Prisoners were being kept at Newgate, but there had been no new arrivals. They had also, without prompting, mentioned Iskierka. She had been seen eating two cows in Hyde Park, and had also set the entire city ablaze, if some of the reports were to be believed; but one street-sweeper swore that no British aviators or crew had been brought to Newgate that day.

‘In consolation,’ Tharkay said, ‘neither have they been shipped to the coast. No large dragons have left, either, since she came in, and he has certainly not sent anyone by boat.’

‘He might have Granby in Kensington Palace,’ Laurence said after a moment.

‘It would be very convenient for us, certainly,’ Tharkay said, dryly.

‘It sounds like folly, I know,’ Laurence said, ‘but if I may be pardoned for forming an opinion on the grounds of one meeting, I would say that Bonaparte is unreasonably fond of seduction, to the point that he likes to believe he has a chance of persuasion where rationally there is none. He will never miss a chance for a grand gesture, if he thinks he might coax Granby into service.’

Tharkay listened and shrugged. ‘We may as well take the chance; the trail is cold otherwise.’