VIII

back again.
    He must be the captain of the guard; a moment later I hear the same voice bark an order, and every horse quickens its pace.
    Through chattering teeth I manage to say, “W-will we be killed, Mama?”
    “No, of course not.” She sounds faintly impatient. “Where we’re going, we’ll be very safe.”
    But, as the man said, it only takes one.
    Pushing the blanket back from my face, I keep a lookout – through gaps between the soldiers on either side of us – for doorways and alley entrances. Anywhere where the mist collects and thickens – anywhere a man could hide. As we pass a monstrous lump of a building the mist thickens in what looks to me like a human shape, crouching at the corner of the wall. My heart’s in my throat. Do I yell to my mother? Scream to the guard? But then the shape rolls and thins and vanishes into the black air. Just mist – no assassin. I can breathe again.
    A gap in the buildings yawns suddenly on our right: the entrance to the docks. The river looks oily-black and vast – and then it disappears as buildings again block the view. Rats scatter from a rubbish heap as we pass it. Shops and townhouses, now, are showing chinks of light between the shutters of their overhanging upper storeys; servants are lighting fires in their masters’ bedrooms, as Compton does for me. But shabby people are already in the streets. I catch glimpses of them – filthy, like the rats, slipping in slimy gutters to stand flat against the house-walls as we pass. They frighten me, with their blank stares and pinched faces.
    A bell begins to clang. It doesn’t stop. Dogs, chained in unseen yards, bark and yelp. Now there’s another bell, somewhere further off. And a man’s voice, thin in the cold air: “Every man to arms!”
    Running feet, somewhere behind us. Another voice, closer: “To arms, to arms! Man the walls!”
    My mother mutters something I don’t catch. She uses her crop and our horse lurches forward. The guards around us match her pace.
    I don’t see him at first – the man who runs in from our left, straight in amongst the riders as if he’s crossing clear ground. But when I turn my head, a face looms; he’s close enough for me to see his bloodshot eyes and his grabbing hand with its grimy, broken nails. He reaches for me, saying something urgent, bellowing.
    My mother’s horse tosses its head in alarm and tries to veer away; I cling to the saddle, hunched low, desperate not to slide. At the same moment the nearest soldier lashes out with the butt of his spear.
    The man’s down. Down and half-trampled and we’re past him, already half a dozen buildings on.
    “Who was that?” I squeak.
    “Drunken beggar, sir,” says the captain. “That’s all.”
    But I feel so frightened I want to be sick.
    The guards ride in closer formation around us after that. Reaching the top of this long street at last, we turn left past some old stone ruins. The sky is streaked with orangey pink now; against it, on our right, I see grey walls, layers of them, rising one behind another and, beyond, the turrets of a vast white-washed fortress. And I know where we are. This is London’s ancient stronghold: the Tower.
    Ahead of us, the street runs uphill and widens into a huge grassy space. We turn to the right, crossing the lower reaches of the slope, and then my mother says, “Here. Thank God.”
    We come to a gateway made of brick, its edges all sharp and new. We stop. The captain of the guard speaks to the gatekeepers. Then the horses move again, and we pass through, across a small space, to the next gate. It’s older, this one: an arch made of huge lumps of worn stone, sealed by an ancient wooden door.
    “See how thick the walls are, Hal?” my mother says, as the door is dragged open for us. Her voice sounds lighter, almost cheerful.
    I look.
    “Count the drawbridges. Count the gates. No one can harm us here.”
    I count them. At gate number three, a drawbridge stands lowered, but so do two portcullises. The warders raise only one portcullis at a time, and we have to wait in the space between, while with loud grating noises the cranks are turned – to shut the portcullis behind us and then open the one ahead.
    Gate number four. It looks like a big black mouth as we approach – and I think of being swallowed by a monster. Again there’s a drawbridge, again a lowered portcullis, screening
    a great nail-studded door. We wait in front of it, and I see through its chinks the orange