I nodded. 'They shall each have sixpence, and here are three shillings for your help.' I counted out the contents of my purse. The children grabbed the coins eagerly; the father and mother looked as if they could not believe their good fortune. Overcome with sudden emotion, I turned and left them quickly, mounted the horse and rode away.

The pitiful scene at the house haunted me, so it was a relief to turn my thoughts back to what I had discovered. It made no sense. The person who had inherited the sword, the only person with a family motive for vengeance, an old woman? There were no women over fifty at the monastery, apart from a couple of old serving women, tall thin old crones who did not answer the young man's description. The only person who did that I had encountered in my time at Scarnsea was Goodwife Stumpe. And no short old woman could have dealt that blow. But Singleton's papers had been definite there were no male relatives. I shook my head.

I realized that in my preoccupation I had let the horse wander and it was heading down towards the river. I did not feel like going home yet and let the nag take the lead. I sniffed the air. Was it my imagination, or was it, at last, getting warmer?

I passed an encampment on a snowy piece of waste ground, where a group of workless men had made a camp. Presumably they had lighted here in the hope of finding casual labour at the docks; they had built a lean-to from pieces of driftwood and sacking and sat huddled round a fire. They gave me unfriendly looks as I passed, and a thin yellow cur ran from the camp and barked at the nag. She tossed her head and neighed, and one of the men called the dog to heel. I rode away quickly, patting the horse until she calmed.

We were down at the riverside; ships were drawn up and men were busy unloading. One or two were as dark as Brother Guy. I brought the nag to a halt. Directly ahead a great ocean-going carrack was drawn up at the quay, its square prow ornamented with an obscenely grinning naked mermaid. Men were hauling crates and boxes from the hold; I wondered from what far reach of the round globe it had come. Looking up at the great masts and the mesh of rigging I was surprised to see mist curling round the crow's nest. Wreaths of fog, I now saw, were floating up the river and I could feel distinctly warmer air.

The nag was showing signs of anxiety again and I turned and headed slowly back towards the City, through a street of storehouses. Then I paused. An extraordinary babel of noise was coming from one of the wooden buildings; screeches and yells and a host of voices in strange tongues. It was bizarre, hearing those unearthly sounds in the misty air. Overcome with curiosity, I tied the nag to a post and went across to the warehouse, from which a sharp smell issued.

The open door showed a dreadful sight. The warehouses was full of birds, in three great iron cages each as tall as a man. They were birds such as the old woman had had, which Pepper had reminded me of. There were hundreds of them, of all sizes and innumerable colours: red and green, golden and blue and yellow. They were in the most miserable state: all had had their wings cut, some right to the bone and badly done too, so that the mutilated ends were covered with raw sores; many were diseased, with half their feathers gone, scabs on their bodies and eyes surrounded with pus. For every one that clung with its claws to the sides of the cages another lay dead on the floor among great heaps of powdery droppings. The worst thing was their shrieking; some of the poor birds simply made harsh piteous cries as though appealing for an end to their suffering, but others cried out over and again in a variety of tongues; I heard words in Latin, in English, in languages I did not understand. Two of them, clinging upside down to the bars, shrieked at each other, one calling out 'A fair wind', over and again, while the other answered 'Maria, mater dolorosa' in the accent of a Devon man.

I stood, transfixed by the horrible scene, until I was interrupted by a rough hand on my shoulder. I turned to find a sailor dressed in a greasy jerkin eyeing me suspiciously.

'What business have you here?' he asked sharply. 'If ye've come to trade ye should go to Master Fold's rooms.'

'No – no, I was passing, I heard the noise and wondered what it was.'

He grinned. 'The Tower of Babel, eh, sir? Voices possessed by the spirit and speaking in tongues? Nay, just more of these birds the gentry all want now for playthings.'

'They are in a most pitiful state.'

'There's plenty more where they came from. Some always die on the voyage. More will die from the cold, they're weak brutes. Pretty though, ain't they?'

'Where did you get them?'

'The isle of Madeira. There's a Portuguese merchant there, he's realized there's a market in Europe for them. You should see some of the things he buys and sells, sir; why he ships boatloads of black Negroes from Africa as slaves for the Brazil colonists.' He laughed, showing gold-capped teeth.

I felt a desperate urge to escape from the chill, fetid air of the warehouse. I excused myself and rode away. The harsh cries of the birds, their unearthly simulacra of human speech, followed me down the muddy street.

I rode back under the City wall into a London suddenly grey and foggy, full of the sound of water dripping from melting icicles on the house eaves. I halted the nag outside a church. I normally attended church at least once a week, but had not been to a service for over ten days. I was in need of spiritual comfort; I dismounted and went inside.

It was one of those rich City churches attended by merchants. Many London merchants were reformers now and there were no candles. The figures of saints on the rood screen had been painted over and replaced by a biblical verse:

The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgement to be punished.

The church was empty. I stepped behind the rood screen. The altar had been stripped of its decorations, the paten and chalice standing on an unadorned table. A copy of the new Bible was chained to the lectern. I sat down in a pew, reassured by these familiar surroundings, a total contrast to Scarnsea.

But not all the accoutrements of the old ways had gone. From where I sat I could see a cadaver tomb of the last century. There were two stone biers, one above the other. On the top one was the effigy of a rich merchant in his fine robes, plump and bearded. On the lower tier lay the effigy of a desiccated cadaver in the rags of the same clothes, and the motto: 'So I am now; so I once was: as I am now; so shall ye be.'

Looking at the stone cadaver I had a sudden vision of Orphan's decomposed body rising from the water, then of the diseased rickety children at Smeaton's house. I had a sudden sick feeling that our revolution would do no more than change starveling children's names from those of the saints to Fear-God and Zealous. I thought of Cromwell's casual mention of creating faked evidence to hound innocent people to death, and of Mark's talk of the greedy suitors come to Augmentations for grants of monastic lands. This new world was no Christian commonwealth; it never would be. It was in truth no better than the old, no less ruled by power and vanity. I remembered the gaudy, hobbled birds shrieking mindlessly at each other and it seemed to me like an image of the king's court itself, where papists and reformers fluttered and gabbled, struggling for power. And in my wilful blindness I had refused to see what was before my eyes. How men fear the chaos of the world, I thought, and the yawning eternity hereafter. So we build patterns to explain its terrible mysteries and reassure ourselves we are safe in this world and beyond.