But he cared little for that, the more there were to help, the quicker would be the act of vengeance and destruction. He knew by now that the Duke had escaped them, but they would wreak what vengeance they could on his possessions, as they had on those of other traitors.

Already on the way here they had torn open the Fleet prison. And they had fired the Temple, burning the legal roles and records on which the cursed ink strokes gave leave to strangle all the rights of common man. A detachment of Wat's force remained there now to watch the razing of the Inns of Court, to see that no vestige remained of that Temple of Iniquity.

Here at the Savoy, Wat saw that his predecessors had achieved but little yet. The Essex peasants had broken into the famous cellars and broached the vintage tons and vats. They gulped and sloshed the wine, wandering stupidly and singing, bemused by the feel of this rich liquid in their gullets that had never known anything but small ale.

Wat took command at once. Some of the Londoners still pounded at the iron-bound Treasure Chamber door. Wat and his men added their strength to the timber battering-ram, until the hinges burst, and they were free of Lancaster's treasure. They dragged out coffers full of gold and silver and piled them unopened in the Great Hall. They took the coronets, the jewelled chains, the diamond-crusted scabbards and broke them up in the courtyard, then ground the jewels to powder beneath great paving-stones.

"We be not thieves!" roared Wat, as he spied a lad who stuffed a silver goblet in his jerkin. He killed the lad with a thrust of his sword and threw the goblet on the mangled pile that grew in the centre of the Great Hall. Some of them, as the frenzy grew, ran into the gardens trampling on the flowers, uprooting the rose bushes. The place was accursed, no part of it should remain.

When Wat seized a torch and set fire to the Hall, they roared with joy. It burned but slowly at first, and they threw in the records of the chancery and pieces of furniture that they brought from more distant rooms. They scattered to the outer buildings. Someone fired the Monmouth Wing, another threw his flaming torch into the Beaufort Tower.

They turned to the Duke's privy suite. They had left it to the last for it was nearer to the Outer Ward and gate where they must leave in safety themselves. The fires smouldered behind them, licking at the massive timbers of the floors and vaultings, daunted for a while by thickness of stone wall and coldness of tile.

Wat stayed by the Great Hall to see to the burning of its massed treasure.

It was a slobbering whey-faced Londoner who led a band up the great State Staircase. A weaver by the badge of trade on his arm, his nose was smashed, his jaw had been knocked awry and stuck out comically beneath his left ear, so that they could understand little of his furious gabbling; but they followed him gladly for he seemed to know the way.

A short and meagre little man in tattered leather jerkin went in this band too, his flaxen poll was matted thick with sweat and dirt. A branded F was on his cheek, half-hidden by grime. He was one of the outlaws who had crept down from the north and joined the Essex men.

They swarmed up to the Presence Chamber, hacked at the furnishings, flung silver sconces and candlesticks out of the window. They found the Duke's garde-robe where some of his surcotes hung from the perches. Jack Maudelyn grabbed one down, a cloth-of-gold cote, emblazoned with the Duke's arms. They stuffed it out with folded cloths, they set it on the Duke's throne in the Presence Chamber, and put a silver basin, on its head for a crown. They fired arrows at it, they spat on it. They shouted that here was a fine king called John. The weaver danced and jibbered round the effigy, and the little outlaw from the north emitted a burst of shrill excited laughter.

Tiring of that, they slashed the surcote into shreds and stuffed the tatters down the open hole of the latrine, where they fell into the Thames below.

And still Jack urged them on with gestures. They swarmed down a passage past a shut door to a suite of empty rooms where they destroyed the furnishings, but the weaver was not satisfied, he pointed back and made them see that they must get inside the shut door they had passed.

They began to batter at the door, but they had scant room to exert leverage in the passage and the door held firm. The weaver beckoned again and they ran into the Duchess' bower and heaved against the small door with the massive headboard of the bed.

Inside the Avalon Chamber, the friar prayed on, through the pounding and the shouts outside the doors, but Katherine rose from her knees, pulling herself up by the bed curtains. She saw the little door begin to give and that the table that was shoved against it, quivered.

She walked to Blanchette and put her arm around the huddled shoulders. "Don't be afraid, darling," she whispered. Blanchette started and recoiled. She twisted out from under her mother's arm and sprang back, in her eyes there was a look that caused Katherine to cry out in anguish.

The table rocked and slid. The small door burst open and a huge red-bearded Kentish peasant stepped in first, brandishing a sickle, which he lowered in confusion when he saw the two women and a praying friar. "Cock's bones," he muttered, but the other men shoved past him, Jack and the outlaw and twenty more.

The friar heaved himself to his feet, and grabbing the pike he had taken from the weaver, he backed tottering against the fireplace.

"Kill! Kill!" Jack screamed in a voice they all understood. He rushed forward with his sword. The friar parried the thrust feebly with the pike, which dropped from his hand. Jack raised his sword again, and the friar stood motionless. He looked past the weaver.

"God in his mercy help you Katherine!" he cried.

The sword swished like the spitting of a cat, came down with a dull thud. Blood and brains spurted high, then spattered on the marble and on Blanchette's skirt. The friar gasped once, fell down upon the tiles, and was still.

Again Jack lifted his sword; this Lancastrian friar's head would be carried on a pike to London Bridge with those of the other traitors. The men had held back watching silently, but now the outlaw ran forward and held Jack's arm. "Not in here," he said, "not afore them" He jerked his chin towards Katherine and Blanchette, who stood transfixed against the wall on either side of the fireplace.

Jack furiously shrugged off the restraining hand, but the huge red-bearded peasant seized the friar's feet, the outlaw shot back the bolts on the big door, and they dragged Brother William's body out into the passage.

Katherine did not look at what they dragged, she gazed at the flaxen-polled little outlaw. 'Tis Cob o' Fenton, she thought, my runaway serf. Soon he'll kill us too if Jack Maudelyn does not first. It seemed to her strange that Cob should be there, when she had last seen him in the village stocks at Kettlethorpe. It seemed to her almost ludicrous - cause for gigantic laughter. She felt the laughter swelling, choking in her chest. It rose into her mouth and she leaned over and vomited.

The men cast sideways glances at the two women but did not molest them. They set to work, running around the room, flinging open the hutches and cupboards, following the system which they had used in all the other buildings. They found the saints' figurines, and the lute and the gittern and game boards, and cast them into the river. They found the two hanaps,

Blanchette's and Joli-coeur. They shattered them with axes. Joli-coeur's crystal splinters gleamed like diamonds in the pool of jellied blood on the hearth, its garnet heart rolled loose into a comer.

Some chopped up the sandalwood chairs, some the gilded table. The ivory prie-dieu gave them more trouble, but they wrenched it apart and piled it in the centre of the floor with the rugs and the ruby velvet bed hangings and the wooden portions of the bed. They pulled down the Avalon tapestry and hacked it into strips for easier burning.

Soon the bearded Kentish peasant came back into the room with Cob, leaving Jack in the passage to finish with Brother William's body, The man from Kent seized the pike the friar had tried to use and amused himself with shattering each of the tinted windowpanes, one after the other, proudly counting as he did so, "Oon, twa, tree, four - -" He had learned no higher than ten, so he started over again.

He had still two panes left when they heard the shouts of their leader from the passage and Wat Tyler strode into the chamber crying "Come, lads, come. Get on wi' it. What's keeping ye so long?" The acrid smell of smoke came with him, charred grey flakes had floated from the fires and settled on his sweat-stained jerkin.

Jack Maudelyn slithered in behind the tiler, mumbling something through his broken jaw. He pointed to Katherine.

"Women?" said the tiler scowling. "What do they here? Who are they?" Not servants by their clothes, he thought, nor noble ladies neither.

Jack's uncouth noises rose to frenzy as he tried to tell who they were. "Kill - -" he gobbled again and he raised his sword.

"Nay, weaver - by the rood - ye've gone daft!" Wat gave him a great shove that sent him spinning. "I carina get a word this broke-jaw says."

"Who are ye then?" He turned impatiently to Katherine. The fires were catching fast in the buildings behind them, they must finish this business up, then on to Westminster, and after, hurry back to their camp by the Tower, where surely there would be word from the King.

Katherine could not answer. Her tongue was swollen thick in her mouth. The tiler's form blocked out the sunlight as the friar's had an hour ago. She stared down at the pile of broken furniture on the floor, the strips of the Avalon tapestry, the bed hangings, no redder than the blood pools on the tiles.