"More fire?" she said, looking at the smoking Temple. "How strange!" The sunny green fields, the fires, the little church were all to her like scenes woven upon a tapestry.

Cob slackened pace, rubbed his sweating face on his sleeve and looked up at her curiously. "Ye don't remember nothing o' this morning, do ye?"

"Why yes," she said courteously. "When I got up and looked out of the window, there were fires on the Surrey bank. I was quite frightened. That was at dawn." She stopped and, frowning, glanced back at the sun. Through the smoke haze it shone high above and a little towards the west. But it's afternoon now, she thought in confusion. What happened to the morning? She tried to pierce through the blankness, and gave it up. "Is the peasant army still at Blackheath waiting for the King?" she said.

Cob shrugged and did not answer. A head blow often wiped out memory of all that had gone before it - for a time. And just as well, poor lady. He wondered what had happened to the Damoiselle Blanchette. A fearful thing the little wench had cried out about her mother, but then the lass had gone mad from horror when the Grey Friar's blood spattered on her and knew not what she said. There had been no sign of her when they carried Lady Swynford out, though Cob had looked. It seemed likely that in her madness the girl had been trapped somewhere back in the Savoy, like those whose screams he had heard. God rest her soul, he thought - she had been a fair sweet little maid once, some ten years ago, at Kettlethorpe.

He and Katherine plodded north through the field and reached Holborn street, where a hundred of the rebels came marching four abreast and singing "Jack Milner."

A fellow outlaw whom Cob had known in the Essex camp spied him and called out, "By God's belly - ye little Lincoln cock! What be ye doing wi' a woman? 'Tis no time for sport!"

"Nay - true," Cob shouted back, grinning. " 'Tis a poor affrighted country serving-wench has got lost, I but take her to the City; Then I'll join ye. Where are ye bound?"

Several of the rebels answered him at once. They were off to burn all Robert Hales' property, his priory at Clerkenwell, his manor at Highbury. Though the base treasurer himself still lurked in the Tower, protected by the King.

The rebels veered off to the left on the lane for Clerkenwell, and Katherine started walking again when Cob did. They entered the City at Newgate, which was open and unguarded. They walked down the shambles past the slaughterhouse with their stench of offal, and on West Chepe came to the edge of a tremendous crowd who were watching what took place on a block in the centre of the crossways.

Some forty Flemings had been rounded up along with two richer prizes, the detested merchant Richard Lyons, who had escaped the justice of the Good Parliament, and a sneaking informer that the mob had dragged from sanctuary in St. Martin's. They were all tied arm to arm in a line that had reached way down the Chepe, but was now diminished as one after the other was dragged forward and flung to his knees beside the block. A man stood there with an axe, and he worked fast. Already a dozen heads had rolled into the central gutter, which ran crimson. Vultures and kites perched high above on the house gables, watching as intently as the crowd did.

Cob shrank. "We must get out o' here," he whispered, grabbing Katherine's arm. He shoved her down an alley until they reached Watling Street, which was near deserted. Peaceable citizens were all at home behind barred doors.

"Lady," cried Cob, "where is this Billingsgate to which ye'd go?"

Katherine stopped and stared about her. Those crosskeys on a tavern sign, that bakeshop on the corner of Bread Street, the small squeezed-in Church of All Hallows, all were familiar to her. She had passed through here before, running with someone, running from something, from a great roaring mob. Riots in St. Paul's - the Duke in danger. Danger. That day long past slid into now. The two states intermingled, shifting.

"Where's Billingsgate?" repeated Cob, and now his urgency touched her with fear.

"There!" she cried, pointing towards the river. "There's rioting again. That crowd on the Chepe. Warn the Duke! We must warn him - run to the Pessoners', Dame Emma'll help!" She seized Cob's hand as once she had seized Robin's, and began to run - around the corner and down Bread Street, beneath the dark overhanging gables.

As they passed through the Vintry they saw three hacked and still-bleeding corpses on the steps of St. Martin's. "Sweet Jesus," Katherine gasped, "why does the whole world smell of blood and fire? Why?"

Cob said nothing. He hurried her on. They were not molested again. In Billingsgate she saw near St. Magnus' church the half-timbered house and the gilded fish that flapped from a pole over the shop. " 'Tis here," she said with a deep sigh of relief and pulled the door-knocker. There was no answer.

Katherine leaned against the oaken door-jamb, and pressed her hand to her head. Cob reached up and banged the knocker again.

The wooden peephole opened and a wrinkle-lidded frightened eye looked out. "What is't?" quavered an old man's creaking voice. "There's no one here. Go 'way."

"Dame Emma!" cried Katherine. "Where's Dame Emma? Tell her Lady Swynford's here, and I've need of her."

"The mistress's not here - no more the master," said the voice. "Be off wi' ye!" The shutter began to slide across the peephole.

"Stop!" Cob rammed his knife between the shutter and its frame. "Nay, don't squeal like that in there, I'll not harm ye. But ye must open the door and let us in!"

"I'll not, nor can ye force me to - the door's iron-barred," the old voice rose high and shrill.

Cob cursed roundly while he thought. His lady looked near to fainting, but that was by no means his chief concern. In this prosperous house there would be far better fare than at the rebel camp they had all been told to rejoin in its new position near the Tower. No doubt tomorrow his lust for revenge and rioting would revive, but for now, he'd had his bellyful of wandering the bloody streets.

Then an idea struck him. "Wait, old gaffer!" he cried as he heard shuffling footsteps retreating. "Wait!" He grabbed Katherine's purse, yanking it from her girdle, and opening it breathed "Holy saints!" as he saw jewels and gold. He fished out a gold noble and waved it through the peephole, snatching it back as a hand reached for it.

" 'Tis yours an ye let us in!" Cob shouted. "I'll get it again for ye later," he whispered to Katherine.

"No," she said faintly, "it doesn't matter."

The door opened. Cob shoved it wider, and palling Katherine with him walked in. Cob shut and barred the door. "Here ye are then," he said roughly, dropping the noble in the old man's shaking outstretched bind.'

The old man was called Elias, and usually he worked around the fishhouse as night-watch. He had been left here alone this afternoon to guard the house, for Master Guy had gone to an emergency meeting in Fishmongers' Hall called by Walworth the mayor, who was also a fishmonger and who had hurried from the King in the Tower to confer with his fellows on the rebel crisis which was getting more serious each moment.

"Where's Dame Emma?" said Katherine sinking down on the settle. The kitchen fire was unlighted, the low-raftered room that had always shown a homely cheer was now empty and gloomy behind its drawn shutters.

The old man bit the gold noble between his wobbly remaining teeth before slipping it in some hidden cranny of his stained and fishy tunic. "She's gone," he said, eyeing the two intruders with bleak suspicion.

Master Guy, alarmed at last, had packed Dame Emma and the maids off to St. Helen's priory for safety when at dawn the Kentish rebels had poured over the Bridge, but no need to tell this strange tousled wench that - or anything. Elias folded his arms around his shrunken chest and mumbled with feeble malevolence, as Cob who had been rummaging came back with his finds.

"Ye best eat, lady," said Cob breaking a juicy hunk off a meat pie and holding it out to her. As Katherine shook her head, he thrust out his mug of ale. "Drink then!"

She lowered her lips and swallowed thirstily. Cob held the mug and suddenly chuckled. "Here's something warms me cockles," he said, "to see the Lady o' Kettlethorpe a-drinking from the same mug as her serf - ay, there's a sight would dumbfounder 'em back home!"

Katherine raised her head from the mug. "Cob," she whispered, looking at him wonderingly. Cob, the runaway from Kettlethorpe - -she knew him now. It was no squire had guided her this day, had told puzzling lies for her. It was her own rebellious serf. Yet not long ago she had dreamed that he was going to kill her. She had dreamed that she saw him chopping the emblems from the marble mantel in the Avalon Chamber. He had given her a strange sideways glance when a question had been asked. What question? "Who are you then?" Had someone asked that? There were others there in the dream: men - and Blanchette. But Blanchette was sleeping in the Duchess' bower - nay, in the! Monmouth Wing.

"Cob?" she said. "Do you know where is Blanchette?"

"Nay, lady," replied the little outlaw quickly, and crossed himself. "For sure now ye must rest. Old gaffer." He prodded Elias who was crouching on a stool by the dead fireplace. "Where can the lady rest?"

The old man hunched himself. "On the floor, forsooth."

"I know where to go," said Katherine, not hearing him. Why did Cob cross himself? she thought. Behind a flimsy wall a sea of horror surged and pounded, but the wall still held.

"The chamber above the fish-shop," she said to Cob. 'Tis where I've always gone. Ay - I must lie down a while." Her head spun as she rose, and she dragged herself towards the stairs.