I looked at him. ‘Do you feel no fear at the thought?’
He stared back with his usual blank expression. ‘None.’
‘The heartstone he wears protects him.’ David said, a touch of mockery in his voice.
‘How so?’
‘It’s supposed to prevent a stag from dying of fear,’ Hobbey said wearily.
‘Perhaps it does,’ Hugh said.
I looked across the boys’ close-shaven heads to Hobbey, who raised his eyebrows. On this matter we were on the same side.
WE RODE up to the town walls, joining the end of a queue of carts waiting to get in. I noticed a gallows a little way outside the walls, a body dangling from it. On a patch of slightly higher ground between the road and one of the large ponds flanking the city was another soldiers’ camp, near a hundred conical tents. Men sat outside. I saw one man repairing a brigandyne; he knelt, sewing the heavy armoured jacket, which lay on the ground. Away from the shore the air was muggy again: most of the men had cast off their jerkins and were in their shirts. One small group, though, wore short white coats, each with two red crosses stitched on the back; some village had evidently put together a home-made version of the official costume.
Hugh and David’s attention had been caught by a sight familiar enough to me now; a couple of hundred yards away mounds of earth had been thrown up to make butts and some soldiers were practising with their longbows, shooting at oyster shells.
‘Come along,’ Hobbey said warningly and reluctantly the boys looked away.
We approached the city walls. They were thirty feet high, surrounded by a moat-like ditch and to my surprise built not of stone but of packed mud. Only the small crenellated battlements on top and the large bastions set at intervals were of stone. Men were still working on the walls, some hanging by ropes from the top, piling up new layers of mud and stabilizing them with hurdles and wooden planks. The stone bastion enclosing the main gate was massive, its circular top bristling with cannon. Soldiers patrolled the fighting platform running along the top. Close to, Portsmouth seemed more like a hurriedly erected castle than a town.
We joined the end of a long queue of carts waiting to enter the gate, which stood on a little rise, approached by a bridge across the moat. This town was, indeed, a fortress.
‘This earth wall is a far cry from the walls of York,’ I said to Barak.
‘It’s part of the fortifications Lord Cromwell built everywhere along the coasts in ’39, when it seemed the French and Spanish might attack together to bring us back under the Pope. They were cobbled together in a hurry. I know that it kept him awake at nights,’ he added sadly.
‘By heaven, this place stinks,’ Hobbey said. He was right, a cesspit smell hung heavy in the air. He looked across to the tents. ‘It’s the soldiers, using the mill pond as a sewer. Pigs.’
‘Where the fuck else are they supposed to go?’ Barak muttered under his breath. I thought, he is right; the ordure had nowhere to go in the flat marshy land around the city. The foul odours would only get worse as time passed, threatening disease.
We all turned at the sound of a loud, angry animal bellow. Behind us a heavy wagon drawn by four great horses had pulled up. The sound came from an enormous, muscular bull in a heavy iron cage.
‘There’s going to be a bull-baiting,’ I said to Barak.
‘With dogs probably, for the soldiers.’
Looking ahead, we saw that inside the gate was a complicated enclosed barbican, and that a cart loaded with barrels had got itself stuck. More carts pulled up behind us.
‘We’ll be here for ever,’ Dyrick said impatiently.
‘Master Shardlake!’ I turned as I heard my name called. A young man was running across from the tents. I smiled as I recognized Carswell, the recruit in Leacon’s company who hoped to be a playwright. His mobile, humorous face was as tanned as leather now. He bowed to our company. ‘You have come to Portsmouth then, sir?’
‘Ay, on business. We have just seen the ships in the harbour. We wondered if you might be on one of them.’
Carswell shook his head. ‘We haven’t been out on a ship yet. We’ve been stuck in camp. Captain Leacon’s around. I can take you to him, I am sure he would be glad to see you. You’ll be a while here,’ he added, casting an experienced eye at the men struggling with the cart inside the gate.
The bull gave another angry bellow, rocking its cage. One of our servant’s horses reared and plunged, the man desperately trying to control it. People in the crowd laughed. ‘Your horses will be happier if they wait beside the road till that bull is past,’ Carswell observed.
Hobbey nodded, dismounted, and led his horse out of the queue. The rest of us followed, leaving a servant to keep our place. ‘I think Carswell here is right,’ I told Hobbey. ‘I will go and see my friend, just for a few minutes. We are still in good time for our meeting with Sir Quintin.’