They were swept along to the vast bridge across the Thames, which led into London town itself. ‘Look at this, Tilda,’ said Thomas. ‘I can’t believe the bridge is open. I thought they would close the gates as we approached. Is this a trap?’

  The bridge was an unbelievable sight. Other than the huge cathedrals, which were so vast and tall Tilda found it impossible to imagine they had been built by mere humans, London Bridge was the most astonishing thing she had ever seen. As well as crossing the wide river in a series of arches, it also had buildings on either side – houses and shops, for heaven’s sake. Tilda wondered what it would be like to live in a house overlooking the river. She didn’t know whether it would be the most exciting thing in the world or whether she would spend her time wondering when the whole edifice might collapse into the river if there was a terrible storm.

  As they passed under the gatehouse she felt grateful that the gatekeepers had decided to let the peasant army in. Those sturdy gates looked like a formidable obstacle. She also noticed a collection of heads on spikes staring sightlessly on the rebels. She shuddered and looked away. Would any of their heads be up there in a few days’ time?

  ‘Perhaps King Richard agrees with our cause,’ they heard people say. ‘Perhaps he is holding back his soldiers.’

  As they poured over the bridge, Tilda could see they were being greeted as friends rather than enemies. Londoners flocked out to join them. Some even came with baskets of fresh-baked bread and flagons of ale. On the north side they found there were rebels from Essex, arriving at the same time. As the crowds gathered in the narrow streets, their bodies became increasingly packed together and Tilda began to feel afraid.

  ‘We need a big space to gather,’ said Thomas.

  They were carried closer to the centre of the city and a large market square. Tilda noticed the mood of the crowd was growing tense. The voices she heard around her were now a mixture of London and country people.

  Someone threw a bottle at the upper window of a fine house. As bottle and glass window shattered, everyone cheered. Almost at once Tilda no longer felt part of something good and right. This crowd were sensing their power and the prospect of unleashing their anger on the capital city.

  Over the excited conversations that surrounded her, Tilda heard other more alarming noises. There was splintering and crashing and smoke could be seen rising over the rooftops and spires. ‘They’re breaking into the prisons,’ she heard someone shout. ‘Come on…’

  Some of the crowd gleefully hared off, obviously looking for trouble. Most stayed where they were. She looked at their faces and guessed they felt like her – wondering what on earth they were going to do now they were here.

  But there was worse to come.

  *

  The change of mood in the crowd was frightening. Now people seemed dangerously excited – almost like young children up to gleeful mischief. Maybe it was because they were all packed so tightly together, especially as there seemed to be a great swathe of people coming down from the streets leading north out of London.

  ‘Must be more of the Essex crowd,’ said Thomas. ‘We’ve all got here at the same time.’

  Tilda noticed a lot of the rebels were drinking ale and wine. She could smell it in the air. She had seen what drink did to people at village fairs and how wild and reckless it made them behave. She was pleased to have her father and his brother there to protect her.

  In the distance, over the boisterous noise of the crowd, Tilda continued to hear more disturbing sounds. Smashing of wood and the crackle of flames. Now, over the rooftops, she could see several plumes of black smoke and the smell of burning timber filled the streets.

  ‘I want to go back to Southwark,’ she said, suddenly really afraid. Then she stumbled, almost falling to the ground in the crush of people pushing further into the centre of London. Thomas quickly pulled her to her feet then picked her up and carried her on his back – something he had not done for several years. Tilda was a big, strapping girl, and she was quite surprised he could still do this.

  ‘Hold tight, dearing,’ Thomas said. They came to a crossroads and one of the streets was almost empty. ‘Quickly,’ he shouted to them both, and they found a doorway to stop and sit to rest. There was more noise – that smashing of wood and crackling flames.

  Tilda could see John was looking white with fear. ‘If a fire takes hold and spreads, we’ll all be burned alive in the crush,’ he said. ‘I want to get back home too.’

  But the stream of people, densely packed and agitated, continued to pour past them. Another couple of stragglers, both young men from London, took refuge in the next doorway.

  ‘They’ve attacked the Courts of Justice,’ said one of them. ‘Broken in they have. And now they’re carrying out all this paper and parchment.’

  The other said, ‘They’re setting fire to great piles of them – must be everyone’s tax records.’ He laughed with savage glee. ‘If they don’t know who we are and where we live, they won’t be able to tax us.’

  Thomas asked them if they knew how to get back to Southwark.

  ‘This street’s a dead end,’ said the younger of the two. ‘You just gotta wait for this lot to thin out, then you can go back the way you came along Fleet Street.’

  Three others joined them in the side street – a man and his daughters. They seemed to know the other two Londoners and immediately sparked up a conversation. ‘They broke into King’s Bench,’ said the man. ‘Set it on fire.’

  John looked worried. ‘That place has got some ugly, evil people in it,’ he said. Tilda and Thomas looked at him for an explanation. ‘It’s a prison,’ he added.

  ‘Yeah? Well, they let them out,’ said one of the new arrivals. He gestured at the procession of people still streaming along the top of the street. ‘And they’ll be in among that lot.’

  Tilda began to wonder what she had done, coming here. She had encouraged her father to join the rebels, and now she was feeling guilty. They had certainly not expected this to happen.

  The smell of burning seemed to be getting closer. ‘Sparks from the prison fire,’ said John. He pointed up at a house across the narrow street. ‘Look. The roof is smouldering.’

  The new arrivals went at once to bang on the door of the house. A worried-looking woman opened an upper window. ‘Your roof’s on fire!’ they shouted.

  ‘Come on,’ said John. ‘We need to go. No point staying here and getting burned alive.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The three of them went to the top of the narrow street. It still seemed impossible to go back the way they had come – there were simply too many people pushing past them along Fleet Street. So they joined the crowd and soon they found themselves swept along to another long street of grand houses.

  Tilda was amazed at everything she was seeing. These houses were all made of stone, rather than wood and straw. They were on several levels – three or four at least – with glass windows all the way to the top. And they all looked like they would stand up to any sort of dreadful storm God chose to throw against them. She could barely understand the sort of wealth you would need to build a house like that. But clearly there were many, many people with that sort of wealth in London.

  ‘This is the Strand,’ said John. ‘I know who lives here. That John of Gaunt.’

  Even Tilda and Thomas had heard of him. John of Gaunt was King Richard’s uncle, and supposed to be the richest man in England, aside from the king of course. Everyone in Aylesford was convinced that half the taxes they paid went straight into his pocket. He was also Richard’s chief general and had led the English army in a succession of failed campaigns in France. If he’d been successful, Tilda once joked, maybe people wouldn’t mind him being so rich.

  The crowd were collecting around one building that sat squat on the river, a great stone fortress – part castle, part palace, it was easily the grandest building in the street. People were already throwing rocks at the windows and battering on the door. Faces occasionally appeared at upper windows, wide-eyed with fear.

  ‘That’s Gaunt’s palace,’ said John ‘They call it the Savoy.’

  The entrance to the palace looked formidable – a great wooden door reinforced with sturdy iron bars. ‘How are they going to get past that?’ said Thomas.

  John shrugged. ‘Set it on fire?’

  But in that day full of surprises came the greatest one yet. The doors began to creak open. Two men sprang out and fled into the crowd. Their action was a clear invitation and the crowd began to pour into the palace.

  Tilda and her father and uncle stood amazed as upstairs windows were flung open and brightly coloured clothes were tossed out of them. Then chairs and ornaments began to rain down on the street, causing the crowd outside to back away. But no one ran forward to steal a fine red tunic or a fur-lined cape, nor any of the silver and gold ornaments – instead they began to make great piles of them and set them on fire.

  ‘Come on, let’s go and have a look!’ said John. Tilda felt reluctant. This was trespassing. This was the sort of crime a peasant would be hanged for, or have their hand cut off. Her father stayed where he was too. ‘Come on,’ said John, grabbing them both by the arm. ‘Let’s just have a look.’

  They ran through the main doorway into a great courtyard with doors and stairways into the interior. All around, hanging from the walls in massive rooms and halls, were magnificent tapestries. The luxury of the interior made William Laybourne’s manor house back in Aylesford look like the humble residence of a provincial clerk. Tilda had never seen anything like it in her life. She was torn between feeling outraged that one man could have so much wealth and humbled by her own ant-like station in the world.

  Inside was pandemonium. On the first floor up from the courtyard a great room overlooked the River Thames. The windows here were also open, and groups of peasants were ransacking cupboards full of gold and silver plates and then spinning them out into the river, seeing how far they would skim across the water. Another man was kneeling on the wooden floorboards methodically going through a jewellery box and smashing up the gemstones with a hammer. All around him on the floor were piles of green, red and blue fragments.

  There was a mantelpiece containing small gold and jewel-encrusted ornaments, and Tilda picked up an egg-sized paperweight and placed it in the pocket of her skirt. Thomas saw her doing it and grinned. They were both thinking the same thing. We could buy something with that…

  Behind them, fierce, angry shouting caught their attention. A group of three burly peasants were dragging a scrawny young man down the stairs. The peasants had a look of grim determination on their faces and the young man looked both bewildered and terrified. ‘Let me go. I ain’t done nothing!’ he shouted.

  Tilda and Thomas rushed to the front of the building to see the peasants and their prisoner emerge out on to the street. There were now three large bonfires blazing away. The crowd outside grew silent and one of the peasants announced, ‘This man has been caught looting jewellery. We are not here to steal. We are here to send a message to the king and his advisors.’

  With that he stabbed the terrified man through the heart and then the three of them cast his lifeless body on to the largest of the bonfires. Tilda watched with mounting horror and felt faint and nauseous as the smell of burning human flesh filled the building. Thomas could see she was about to collapse and came to hold her.

  Inside the house, someone near to them pointed directly at her, a corpulent man of middle years with a large wart on the side of his chin. ‘That wench stole too,’ he said to no one in particular, but loud enough for anyone around to hear him. ‘I saw her put a trinket in her gown.’

  Tilda took three or four deep breaths then ran to the riverside of the building. Standing by the window she cast the ornament in her pocket as far as she could throw it into the Thames. They watched it sail through the air and land with a small splash in the river.

  Thomas towered over the man. ‘I’ll gladly stab you in the heart if you say another word,’ he said. The man shrank before him then ran off down the stairs. Thomas went to join his daughter. ‘That could have changed our life,’ he said quietly.

  Outside they could hear further screaming.

  ‘Have soldiers arrived?’ Thomas asked. Tilda felt her legs turn to jelly. Here they were in the house of one of the richest men in England. They had no possible excuse for being there. They would be arrested and executed as sure as night turned to day. They might even be hanged, drawn and quartered.

  Tilda looked at the open window over the Thames and wondered whether to take her chances in the river. But it was flowing fast and she was no swimmer. ‘If we grab a chair maybe we can throw it in and hold on to that,’ she found herself saying. Surely it was better to risk drowning than a grisly public execution?

  Thomas rushed to the front of the house and looked out on to the Strand. Another looter had been killed by the rioters. This one had had his head chopped off, the blood now running in rivulets along the cobbled road. His body had been cast on to one of the bonfires and a smell, disconcertingly like roasting pork, wafted up through the windows.

  ‘Don’t look,’ said Thomas, now white as a sheet. ‘But there are no soldiers.’

  Tilda didn’t like this at all. One minute she was doing something she knew was forbidden, something she had believed her whole life to be bad. But she had been enjoying it, and quite ready to justify her actions to anyone who asked. The next minute she was in mortal fear of torture and execution. All at once she wished she was safe back home in Aylesford.

  ‘Father, I want to get out of here,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be caught when the soldiers arrive.’

  Thomas nodded. ‘We’ll find John and get back to Southwark. Maybe he’s upstairs.’

  They ran up a great, wooden staircase but the scene on the next floor up was just as chaotic. Everywhere they looked peasants and Londoners alike were smashing up furniture and ornaments. A few dead bodies lay scattered on the landing. Perhaps they were John of Gaunt’s men, guessed Tilda. Servants who had been foolhardy enough to try to protect their master’s belongings from the mob.

  The next floor up was exactly the same. There were hundreds of people. John could be anywhere. Tilda began to wonder if they could remember how to get back. Then another smell assailed their nostrils. This was coming from inside the house and wafting down the stairs in billowing smoke. The upper floor of the palace was ablaze.

  Instinct took over and Tilda and Thomas joined a frenzied dash back to the street. Fortunately, they were among the first to flee and Tilda stood panting hard, trying to get her breath back, watching the crowd emerge from the palace. A strange memory from childhood came back to her – watching a cargo ship at Rochester harbour, which had caught fire. As the small crew gave up fighting the blaze and came to stand on the harbour side to watch as their ship was consumed by flames, so hundreds of rats fled, streaming along the gangplank and scattering the spectators in panic.

  Back then, Thomas had picked her up and fled. Now, as she got her breath back, Tilda began to take in the strange, hazy events happening all around her. There was something of a dream in all this. It felt so odd she had to keep asking herself if she was really there. The colours around her – the sunlight on the buildings, the red and black of the flames and smoke, the faces of the rebels – all seemed intense and vivid. Looking about, everything seemed to be happening in a slowed-down kind of way. The noise – the shouting and crackling of flames – all seemed quite distant.

  In her oddly detached state, Tilda realised the thing that frightened her the most was people’s faces. She couldn’t recall another occasion in her life when she had seen this wild abandon, this fierce glee in people’s eyes. Maybe it was like this in battle. But that didn’t seem right either – in battle you would expect to be killed, surely? So there would be fear mixed in with this savage exhilaration. She was surrounded, she realised, by people who could give in to their basest instincts and not suffer the consequences.

  Tilda reached instinctively for her father’s arm and realised with sudden panic that he was no longer by her side. Looking all around her she could not see him anywhere.

  She wanted to call out, but good sense told her that showing herself to be a panicky, abandoned young girl would be to invite trouble. She put on a brave face and picked up the leg of a chair that had shattered when it had been thrown from a high window. Tilda told herself she was a strong girl and if she looked determined, no one would be foolish enough to threaten her.

  A raised, columned porch in front of another grand house stood on the far side of the street and she pushed through the crowd to stand there, to see if she could spot Thomas Rolfe. The porch offered her a good view over the heads of the mob and she understood at once that finding her father in this milling mass of agitated people would be an impossible task. But she did feel safer up there and could take stock of the situation.

  Many of these people were Londoners, she guessed, by the cut of their clothes. They certainly didn’t look as drab and shabby as the peasants. Their faces too seemed fuller, less weathered and weary. This great crowd really was a mixture of locals and outsiders from the shires, and the Londoners seemed to hate the king and his government just as much as anyone else.

  The smell of burning wood was growing intense. The fire in the Savoy Palace had really taken on the top floor, and much of the roof was now ablaze. Tilda could see fire flickering inside the shattered windows of the lower floors too. Soon this great building was going to be a threat to the lives of anyone close by. Even if it didn’t collapse, the heat from the flames would be deadly. She had to get to safety…

  Tilda’s thoughts were snatched back to the present by the cry of a youth. She felt a tugging on her skirt and realised it was him. Tilda looked down at the leering young man, his face contorted by beer and lust, and tried to understand what he was shouting at her. There was so much other noise going on she could barely hear, but she knew enough to be afraid and disgusted. She snatched up her skirt and delivered a quick kick to his face, taking care that the youth should not grab her leather boot.