Tombland

I got up carefully to stretch my legs. Our Swardeston camp was sited near where Barak and I had stood looking out over Norwich two days ago. He rose and joined me, though Nicholas stayed where he was, sulkily pulling the yellow flowers off a stalk of ragwort. We walked a little way towards the escarpment. Behind us, huts continued to go up as far as the eye could see across the flat plateau of the heath, stretching miles to the east. Each evening beacons were lit on the fringes of the camp, to guide new people arriving, and more were coming in, and setting up their camps, all the time. Mousehold was alive with movement, the bright colours of parish banners marking individual encampments, carts bringing in fresh supplies trundling along the sandy tracks. One of the amateur prophets who had come to the camp stood in a cart nearby haranguing a crowd about the imminent coming of the Kingdom of Christ. Peddlers had also been drawn to the camp, some with donkeys, others with trays round their necks, calling, ‘What d’ye pick, from my pack!’, and passing on news of other camps. Some way off, people were unloading bricks from a cart, together with the implements of a blacksmith’s forge. There were cheers as a cart full of barrels of small beer appeared. Mousehold, apparently, was bone-dry, even the old gravel and lime pits dotting the landscape. Rainwater simply soaked into the sandy soil.

There had been a church service that morning, but afterwards, despite it being Sunday, the camp-men worked in the heat as hard as any I had ever seen. I turned and looked over the escarpment, at that extraordinary view down to the river and Norwich. That morning men and boys had descended the steep hill to swim in the river – everybody was filthy, and stank – and some city constables on the Bishopsgate Bridge gatehouse had shot arrows at them, making them move downstream. All the city gates were closed against us.

‘How many do they say are in the camp now?’ I asked Barak.

‘With all the new people arrived from the country, five or six thousand now.’ He laughed incredulously. ‘Remember the old king’s Progress to York? Puts that in the shade, doesn’t it?’

‘It puts everything I have ever seen in the shade.’ I smiled, adjusting the brim of my broad hat. ‘Not that there’s much shade up here.’ Barak and I both now had deep tans and wore wide-brimmed hats and dirty shirts; Barak had removed his artificial hand for comfort today and one sleeve hung empty; physically, at least, we now blended well into the camp. Nicholas, though, stood out with his pale skin, now peeling with sunburn, and his yellowing bruises. Together with the growing number of gentlemen who had been brought in as prisoners, he had been held in the Earl of Surrey’s old palace, Surrey Place. It stood on the crest of the hill a little way off, next to the road leading up from Bishopsgate, near a few ruins that remained of the dissolved priory it had replaced. It was guarded by Kett’s men now, the Ionic columns of the great house and the temple-like pavilions at each side visible through the open gates, looking more incongruous than ever beside the camp. The Boleyn twins were in there, and Flowerdew’s sons. The gardens between the ornamental gateway and the house were occupied by camp-men who had brought out canvas tents from the palace. The great building was being used for storage, too, and as I watched, a large cart trundled up the drive, full of assorted weapons – bills, halberds, swords and crossbows.

‘Why so much emphasis on weaponry?’ I asked Barak quietly. ‘If they think the Protector and the commissioners will grant their demands?’ I looked along the escarpment, where groups of armed men had been placed at strategic posts, as well as a couple of cannon.

‘Maybe they fear the gentlemen who escaped their clutches will return with armed men. Besides, if you’re negotiating, it’s good to have steel at your back. Apparently, an area’s being set aside for archery practice.’

I frowned. ‘Who’s running this camp, Kett or the ex-soldiers?’ I looked to where, some distance away, another man in half-armour – the mark of the soldiers – was supervising the digging of a latrine pit, the sun glinting on his breastplate. It was necessary work; with all the remains of slaughtered sheep, and the piss and shit of thousands of people, if precautions were not taken disease could spread fast, and I had seen before what dysentery could do to an armed camp.

‘Kett, I’m sure,’ Barak answered. ‘Remember last night, when a bunch of people got pissed? Some soldiers stopped them running wild, but when Kett came over and told them keeping order and discipline was the way to show they could govern themselves, you could see it put them to shame.’