Tombland

I said, ‘Kett is firmly in charge, and took care to follow legal forms. Do not mistake him, Nicholas. He wants no violence if it can be avoided. He is a born leader, and a skilled and experienced politician. But also a man of sincerity, who means what he says.’

Nicholas kicked a flint at his feet. ‘Perhaps. But rebellion is no way to achieve it.’

‘He’s no rebel,’ Barak said. ‘He’s only working to bring justice. Can you say he’s wrong?’

Nicholas shook his head. ‘I no longer see anything clear. Last night I had a conversation with one of the Swardeston men who served in the Scottish war. It has been so badly run, and so brutal, with killing of civilians, it affected the soldiers, who were told the Scotch would welcome us. Now I do begin to doubt its justice.’ He sighed, and looked over the camp. ‘This place, who could ever have imagined it?’

We followed his gaze. There was activity everywhere. Shoemakers and tailors had set up stalls. Nearby cuts of butchered sheep had been set out to dry, while not far off, live sheep had been penned in, some cattle too, often with the very hurdles the landowners had used, while some thirty horses were penned into a large paddock with a strong wood fence. A wooden building was being erected nearby, which I guessed might be an abattoir. How these men had laboured these last few days. Most men in the camp would not have eaten so well in a long time, which would help. As ever, peddlers traversed the huts, doing a good trade in pins with the women. Some way off I saw a blacksmith and his assistant working hard in a newly erected brick forge, where they were turning agricultural implements into bladed weapons under the supervision of a soldier. Nicholas watched them. ‘Turning ploughshares into swords,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s the other way around in the Bible.’

There were cheers as a cart with a large cannon on a wooden mount passed by, pulled by carthorses taken, no doubt, from a country house. We walked on, to where another large brick structure was being erected, a bakery. Some distance away perhaps fifty young men were practising archery, shooting at earthen butts with longbows, arrows arcing through the air.

‘By God,’ Barak said, ‘how many are there now?’

‘Too many to count. Eight thousand?’

Barak nudged Nicholas. ‘Hey, look there, the men are getting all their needs met.’ He pointed to where two young women, adjusting their skirts, were leaving one of the huts. ‘The Norwich whores will be doing a roaring trade.’

‘The people don’t seem to notice us as different any more,’ Nicholas said. ‘I suppose because now we wear scruffy clothes, and are dirty and smelly.’

Barak looked at him. ‘That should remind you we are all made of the same common clay.’

‘And all come to the same end,’ I agreed. ‘Let’s hope it’s later rather than sooner.’

We walked on, up slightly rising ground, skirting one of the deep old quarries dotting the heath – there was one near the escarpment where the ground suddenly dropped perhaps a hundred feet; people had to be careful. We took a position from which we could see across the camp; to the western escarpment, where guard posts stood. To the east it stretched further than we could see.

‘Come on,’ I said, ‘people will be finishing work soon. Let’s get back.’ Barak and Nicholas agreed; in the close weather we were tired and sweaty. Over at Thorpe Wood the sound of sawing had stopped and people started returning to their huts. A man in a white surplice mounted a box and raised a bible. One of the camp prophets, waiting to harangue the workers going home. Yet they seemed popular, few mocked them as they did in London. I drew the pamphlet I had found earlier from my pocket and showed it to Barak and Nicholas. ‘What do you make of this?’

Nicholas grimaced. ‘Stupid prophetic nonsense.’

I said, ‘But this is an age of prophecy – look how the Protestant radicals prophesy about everything – I believe John Knox prophesied that the English and Scotch were God’s new chosen people, and together would destroy their popish enemies. That’s not come to much. I remember the time of the Pilgrimage of Grace, when people prophesied the king would fall on the basis of prophecies in ancient books about Merlin and the like. Those seem to have got all mixed up with calls from writers like Mors and Crowley for radical change by the rulers such as Kett wants.’

We passed an area where two small groups of men, each holding a village banner, were demanding the other move their huts further away so that an extra cesspit could be built.

‘You move instead of yagging us!’

‘We were here first, we got further to go to take a shit!’

‘Not all stand solidly together,’ Nicholas observed wryly.

I smiled. ‘That’s just people being people.’

Further on, a group of men were digging a pit in the sandy soil, already four feet deep. A man in his forties, probably one of the Hundred representatives, was supervising. ‘Sorry, bors,’ he said, ‘but the cesspit must be deeper.’