The father of Jimmy and Danny went the long way round to the east side of the platform. A spyglass emerged from his pocket and snicked out to length. He scanned some third of a mile of London, stretching from the square at the base of the Monument to the vast killing-ground of Tower Hill. Fifty years before, this had all been smoking cinders and puddles of liquefied roofing-lead. It followed that all the buildings standing there today were Stuart, and all of ’em were brick, except for a few Wren-churches, which had a lot of stone to them. Closest was St. George’s, so near by that he could jump from here and splatter on its roof. But he had no use for St. George’s today, save as a landmark to establish a heading. Raising his glass then brought him straight to a view of St. Mary-at-Hill, five hundred and some feet from the Monument’s gaudy plinth. A bloke with a spyglass was perched in its cupola; he took the instrument from his eye and waved. It seemed a cheerful gesture, not a warning, so he did not let his gaze linger there, other than to verify that there was a crossbow-man on the roof of that church, standing next to a copper tun and facing across the street (St. Mary Hill) toward a block of buildings on the eastern side. Beyond those, a few degrees to starboard, was a great hulk of a church, St.-Dunstan-in-the-East. Unauthorized personnel had likewise gained access to roof of same. It lay all of a hundred yards from St. Mary-at-Hill; and another hundred yards to the east of it was another bulky fabrique whose roof too was infested with crossbow-men and other unlikely trespassers. This would be Trinity House, the Guild or Clubb of Thames river-pilots. The lower floors would be sparsely occupied with retired tillermen drunk on sherry and wondering what all the confounded fuss was about.

Diverting now a bit to port, and some five hundred feet down-range, he found All Hallows Church, easily picked out by Barking Churchyard, which wrapped around it north, east, and south. Other than a sole sentry in the steeple, the place looked innocuous; the only activity was a funeral-procession making its way into the churchyard from Tower Street.

Beyond that was Tower Hill, an open glacis between the buildings of London and the moat of the Tower. It was put to diverse uses, viz. site of public decapitations, place for drilling of troops, and picnic-ground. Some ventured to name it a green. Today it was wholly brown, but enlivened by stripes of red. The garrison of the Tower used it as a place to rehearse their tedious drills and maneuvers. This explained why it was brown, for the grass had not been able to maintain a grip on the pounded mud. The troops were drilling at this very moment, which explained the red stripes; for the Queen’s Own Black Torrent Guard, despite their name, wore red coats. They were grouped by company, which made it easy to number them even without aid of a spyglass. Indeed their orderly battle-lines looked like nothing so much as tally-marks scratched in red chalk on a clay tile.

“I make them a dozen! There are fourteen companies in all; the First is downriver; twelve are there on Tower Hill; one, as is customary, standeth watch over the Tower. Of those, how many are out on the Wharf? Have you tallied them yet? No, never mind, ye’ll be assembling a certain Device…where is my damned bagpiper? Ah, now I see him, strolling on Water Lane…why, I phant’sy I can even hear his Heathenish Strains. Too bad for the Lieutenant! Now, where’s my Fire?” He twitched the glass hard to port, sweeping it across the whole expanse of the Tower. The northern wall and the moat flashed by, and then the stretch of Tower Hill that lay due north of the complex. This was but a narrow patch of open ground, for the city stretched out a lobe toward the Tower here, nearly pinching the Tower Hill green in half. At its closest approach, some of the buildings along Postern Row came within a stone’s throw of the Moat. These belonged not to the city of London but to the Tower of London itself; they were called the Tower hamlets, they had their own militia, their own Justices of the Peace, and their own Fire Brigade. Which was not merely a pedantic observation. For one of the buildings in the Tower Hamlets was on fire. The trail of smoke above it told that it had been smouldering for a long time; but just now, orange flames began to billow from its windows. The Fire Brigade had been called out from the taverns where they patiently waited, day in and day out, for an excuse to do their duty, and they were hastening out of the hamlets’ diverse courts and culs-de-sac, out of Distiller’s Yard and Savage Gardens into Woodruff Lane. But they were outnumbered, and generally out-run, by persons who merely wanted to see a building burn down. This was the ever-present Mobility; or, for short, the Mobb.

“My people!” exclaimed the man mawkishly. Satisfied, he took the glass down from his eye, blinked a few times, and attended to the near-at-hand for the first time in several minutes. A huge Indian, blinded by sweat, was emerging from the stair carrying a bucket of silk thread. One of the Filipinos had scaled the stone knob at the top of the Monument, a good twenty feet above, and lashed himself to the base of the lanthorn. He caught a coil of rope underhanded to him by his partner. Tomba spliced away, wielding that fib like a scribe with a pen, and glancing up alertly from time to time. The four Jews had made a cabal in the southwest corner and were avidly speculating as to what the hell was going on. The only ones completely useless were Jimmy and Danny, still gazing, gobsmacked, down into the Tower.

“Wake up, ye bloody prats!” said the old man in the golden waistcoat. “Lest I come over and knock the dust out o’ yer skulls.” Then, before he could summon up any more such endearments, he was distracted by items of interest in the river Thames.

On the downstream side of the Bridge, a derelict-looking barge was tied up to the fourth starling from the near end. A short distance downstream, a sloop could be seen anchored in the Pool. She was in the act of weighing anchor. This was not remarkable. But she was running out her guns, which was; and to boot, some hands were busy on her aft end, preparing to hoist a blue flag covered with gold fleurs-de-lis.

But even more than these, what truly commanded his attention was a huge wagon coming across the Bridge from Southwark, drawn by a team of eight horses. It looked like the sort of wagon that might be used to convey great building-stones from rural quarries into the precincts of the city. But its burden was covered by worn-out sails, and it was preceded and followed by a swarm of jubilant Black-guards who, if they were keeping to form, were probably picking pockets, purses, and shop-windows clean as they went, like grasshoppers progressing through a field of ripe grain. As they crossed the Square-the open fire-break in mid-span-a man jumped off the wagon, darted to the downstream side, leaned over the parapet, and waved a swath of yellow cloth over his head a few times. His eyes were directed toward the fourth starling. There, a cutlass severed a painter. The barge began to drift down with the tide.

“My boys. My doves,” said the man in the golden waistcoat. “Every varlet in a mile radius is doing me a favor of some description, save you twain. Do you not wot how long it took me to hoard all of the favors I am spending in this hour? Favors are harder to get than money. Faith, what I am doing here now is like shoveling guineas into the sea. Why am I doing it? Simple, boys: ’tis all for you. All I want is to provide you lads with a proper Mum to look after you.” His voice had gone thick; his face had collapsed and now bore no trace of anger. “Starin’ at yon Tower as if you’d never seen the minars of Shahjahanabad. Remindin’ me of my own self, a wee mudlark boy, first time Bob and I sallied up the river. Fascinating it might be to you, who’ve been ’tending to other matters, and ’tending well, I might add. But I am so bloody sick of the place, e’en though I’ve ne’er set foot in it. A thorough study of the Tower of London your father has made. Where the Tower is concerned, I am, as our friend Lord Gy would say, a dungeon o’ learnin’. No small toil for one as unused to study as I. Spent many hours plying with drink your Irish outlaws who have garrisoned it, and know its odd corners and passages. Sent artists in to sketch me this or that tower. Stood up here on howling bitter days peering at it through a perspective-glass. Wooed the Tower’s maid-servants, bribed and blackmailed the Warders. To me ’tis now as familiar as a parish church to its aged vicar. I have traced through f?tid streets the invisible boundary of the Liberty of the Tower. I know which prisoners are close kept, and which have been granted that Liberty. I know the amount of the stipend that the Constable of the Tower is paid for looking after a Commoner-of-