Those at the head of the column are met by cheering crowds as they enter Southwark. Men and women and children and pigs and dogs stream out to greet the Earls who are riding with the Archbishop and the Legate, but by the time Thomas and Katherine file between the lines of inns two hours later, boredom has set in and only the pigs remain.

They buy ale from a woman who lives next to an inn called the Tabard.

‘Normally sell it to folk heading east,’ she says. ‘Pilgrims and that.’

They follow the cart across the drawbridge and on to the bridge itself, packing together to pass through the gatehouse, a squeeze so tight they are thrust together and men are injured. All eyes are involuntarily drawn to the grisly lumps on poles that line the battlements.

‘Expect we knew half of ’em,’ Walter says.

Birds mob the heads, pulling at what soft flesh they can find under the tar in which they are dipped. Farther along Walter points to the beams of the houses that are scorched and the stonework marked with the distinct pits left by arrows.

‘From Jack Cade’s time,’ Walter mutters.

And Katherine sees that among the crowd there are some serious expressions, and that not everybody is pleased at the thought of having an army of Kentishmen march through the city. Once across the bridge the crowds thicken again. They are all so strange, these Londoners, not just to her, but to one another, from the finest merchants in their budge-lined cloaks on fine palfreys, right down to the roughest gong farmers with shit-caked feet. There are so many foreigners, too, terrifying men with dark skins and outlandish clothes who may not even be Christians, and men with pale skins, dark clothes and odd hats, watching them from narrow-set eyes as they follow the street up towards the spire of St Paul’s.

Hereabouts the friars stand in groups: their grey, black, brown and white cloaks signalling their orders. Katherine seeks the shelter of Thomas’s arm and she huddles in her cloak.

‘It is all right, Kit,’ he says. ‘They are only friars. You are a soldier.’

Behind the crowds all manner of shops are shuttered against temptation, and every few paces a vintenar in Warwick’s red livery stands looking grim. Each carries a pollaxe or a hammer or a sword, making sure the various companies keep their hands to themselves.