Men are still joining the column as it marches west, and each evening the scurriers return with the news that such and such a place has declared for the Duke of York and the Earl of Warwick instead of King Henry. Soon the men no longer cheer as one after another the towns and villages along their way send archers and billmen to join them, each contingent led by mounted men-at-arms under a new flag, a new banner. Even those men raised by order of the King join them, and the army drifts along the road like a flock of sheep, numbering many thousands.

As the numbers grow, food becomes steadily more scarce. Despite the wealth of the land about them, ale isn’t to be had. Not even in Rochester itself, where they camp under the stern walls of the castle before crossing the river. By then the column stretches for more than ten miles, and those at the back have less of everything than those at the front; everything, that is, except mud and shit, both horse and human.

Every night the column stops and a camp is built, earthworks and staves enclosing a town of tents. At the camp’s centre a watch fire is lit and the lords compete to have their tents erected as close by it as they can. The camp is divided into four quarters by two roads that intersect in the centre by the fire, and these roads quickly become impassable because of mud and drifting soldiery. In the morning the camp is struck. Tents packed up, staves collected, fires doused and everything thrown into carts and off they move, leaving the earthen walls and ditches, soot-blackened fire pits and a telltale cross of mud to mark their passage.

And every day it rains.

On Sunday they say Mass in the open air outside Gravesend and the priest calls on the Lord to send them a let-up in the weather. It rains all that day, too, but the next day is bright, and they take this as an omen, and by evening they wind their way through the hills above Southwark and in the fading light, they see London for the first time.

The city is dominated by the spire of the Cathedral of St Paul, finer than an arrow’s bodkin head, and so high Katherine thinks it must be a trick of the light. It is such a sight that the rest of the men line the hill and stare in silence for a while. The usual pall of wood and coal smoke hangs above the city, and the river is busy with all manner of boats, toing and froing on its dimpled surface or moored against the wharves that line both banks. Downstream on the other side is the Tower, a massive complex behind its serried walls and moats.