Tombland

We rode on. There were more buildings now, houses and shops with glimpses of courtyards behind them. A small, malodorous stream ran down the centre of the road. Many shops were selling leather goods, and there was a strong smell of new-tanned skins in the air. The streets were busy, though not as thronged as London, with the same mixture of workmen in leather or wadmol jackets, blue-coated apprentices, goodwives in their coifs and the occasional gentleman with decorated doublet, codpiece and sword. I noticed the gentlemen were accompanied by a good retinue of armed servants, while many citizens looked poor; shoeless, their clothes ragged and dirty, their cheeks hollow. Beggars and workless men leaned on walls, watching those who passed by. Some gave us hostile looks. I thought of Josephine and her husband, and wondered how they fared.

To our left, atop artificial grassy mounds built one on top of another, stood a Norman castle, a gigantic battlemented cube of stone, faced with flint at the lowest level, the higher levels of limestone, dirty with age. Like all the Norman castles it was a brutal, solid statement of power. Most now served as gaols. Toby pointed to one of the smaller buildings beside it. ‘That’s the Shire Hall, where the Assizes will be held.’

‘And Master Boleyn is in the castle prison.’

‘No escape from there,’ Nicholas said, staring at the huge, solid block. ‘His only road is to trial.’

‘And from there,’ Toby said, ‘to freedom or to the gallows on hanging-day afterwards. You are right, Master Overton, there is no other road.’

I did not answer, but thought of the Lady Elizabeth’s application for a pardon in my pocket, and again hoped desperately it would not be needed.

We rode on, into the largest market square I had ever seen, rectangular and with a downward slope towards the river. We passed a magnificent church, where I noticed that the stained-glass in the east window, beautifully coloured, was still in place. ‘St Peter Mancroft,’ Toby said. ‘Where the rich city fathers gather on Sundays.’

On the grassy mounds leading up to the castle a cattle market was in preparation, the beasts in a series of pens, men walking around, inspecting them. The marketplace itself, with permanent booths and shops at the top and an open cobbled space at the bottom, was closed; men in leather aprons were clearing rubbish from the cobbles. ‘Wednesday and Saturday are market days,’ Toby said. ‘On Saturday, there won’t be room to move here.’

We rode through the marketplace. In its centre stood a huge, ornate market cross, two storeys high. At the top of the square I saw an impressive building of flint and limestone, one wall decorated in an alternating pattern of black and white squares. ‘The Guildhall,’ Toby said, ‘where the city business is done, the tolls are added up, and the guildsmen meet.’ By the doors I noticed a small group of gentlemen in richly decorated gowns attended by armed retainers, looking down over the marketplace and talking quietly. ‘The city aldermen and sheriffs,’ Toby explained. ‘Representatives of the great city families. The Stewards, the Anguishes, the Sothertons. That fat little fellow in the red robes is this year’s mayor, Thomas Codd.’ I noticed that next to the Guildhall another gibbet stood, though without a dangling corpse this time, and beside it were the town stocks and a canopied well.

‘You said John Boleyn’s father-in-law was an alderman.’

‘Yes, Gawen Reynolds. But he and his wife have shut themselves up in their house in Tombland since the news of their daughter’s murder. Reynolds is well known as a haughty old fellow with a vicious temper, but if you attend him in your serjeant’s robes, he may speak to you.’ Toby smiled wryly. ‘He married his daughter to John Boleyn when Anne Boleyn was set to become Queen; he thought association with her name would add to his status. But of course she didn’t last.’

Before I could reply a crowd of beggarly children appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and surrounded our horses, lifting stick-thin arms with cries of ‘Charity, gemmun!’, ‘We’re clammed half ta dead!’

To my surprise it was Toby who waved them away, calling fiercely, ‘Shut that rattock! Begone!’ We rode on, followed by a stream of insults. ‘Bent hunchback! Doghearts! Snudges!’ I looked at Toby. ‘You have to be firm here, sir, even more than in London,’ he said quietly. ‘If you are marked out as charitable, you’ll get no peace. It’s hard, though, many of them are truly near starving. The city set a new poor rate last month, but what they raise makes little difference.’ There was an angry tremor in his voice.