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maw of another angry horde. But when these men saw naked swords amongst them they scattered, hurling insults and curses from out of range.
    And there, beyond an angry mob of twenty or more apprentices, was Tom.
    ‘What happened to you?’ Mun asked as the three Rivers men drew together and Lunsford waded amongst the mob, berating, yelling at them to disperse unless they wanted a taste of what their companions had got inside the great hall.
    ‘They wouldn’t let me in,’ Tom said, nodding towards another cluster of petitioners who yet lingered by St Stephen’s Porch. ‘I knew there was trouble but they were not for letting me through. It’s time I wore a sword, Father,’ he complained, ‘then I’d have been able to help.’ Sir Francis’s arching brows told them what he thought about that, but Tom’s attention was elsewhere. ‘That’s Colonel Lunsford, isn’t it? I heard them talking about him.’ There was a flash of steel in the dimming light and then a scream as Lunsford cut another apprentice and his men barked madly, waving their blades at any who would not withdraw. Tom was staring, his wide eyes full of something that looked to Mun like admiration. ‘They say he eats children,’ Tom said. A mob of sailors had turned up now and seemed set to help the apprentices. Some gripped truncheons and others clutched stones and none seemed afraid of Lunsford’s band.
    ‘A rumour I’d wager he spawned himself,’ Mun said through a grimace, following his father’s lead and sliding his blade back into its scabbard.
    Two burly sailors looked over belligerently and Mun eyeballed them back, but Sir Francis raised his palms to show the men that they meant no harm. ‘Come away, boys,’ he said, taking one last look at Lunsford, ‘before that bloody fool gets someone killed.’ And with that they strode off down Margaret’s Street into the gathering dusk, leaving Lunsford and his cronies to the mob.
    London’s streets made Tom think of spider webs laid one on top of the other and he marvelled at how his father and brother negotiated their complex patterns, turning this way and that until he felt quite dizzy and completely lost. The rain, driving now, bouncing off the streets and flowing in streams along the gutters, did nothing to help him get his bearings and so he followed helplessly as his clothes grew sopping and heavy. The wind had picked up too and had a wintry bite in it, so that it was a relief every time they turned into a street running obliquely to it. At least the weather seemed to have thinned the crowds a little, making progress easier, and with Sir Francis’s guidance they soon came to the bridge, where they joined the throng of folk crossing over to Southwark or beyond to the farmlands of Surrey, Kent, Sussex and Hampshire.
    ‘I cannot imagine living here on this bridge,’ Tom said, looking up at one of the many grand houses that lined the street running across the bridge. There were shops, too, and expensive ones at that, affirming that the bridge was home to some of the most valuable real estate in London. ‘The stench would finish me off.’ He raised the back of his hand to his nose. ‘It’s foul.’
    ‘I suppose you’d get used to it,’ Mun suggested, almost stumbling into a beggar who had set up at the busiest part of the bridge, where the multitude had bottle-necked and slowed to a forlorn shuffle. The beggar swore at Mun, who apologized, fishing a copper coin from the waistcoat beneath his soaked doublet and dropping it into the man’s empty dish.
    London’s beggars were another thing Tom thought he could never get used to if he lived here. Many were the victims of disease, but some, including this one Tom suspected from the missing leg and the bitter dregs of pride in his washed-out eyes, were veterans of the Dutch wars.
    They take ship brimming with vainglory
, Tom remembered his father saying once,
but they come back empty, broken vessels. And that is war, boys, remember that
.