No one did look hard, because armed men in livery meant trouble. And these eight men were archers. They carried neither bows nor arrow bags, but the breadth of their chests showed these were men who could draw the cord of a war bow a full yard back and make it look easy. They were bowmen, and they were one cause of the fear that pervaded London’s streets. The fear was as pungent as the stench of sewage, as prevalent as the smell of woodsmoke. House doors were closed. Even the beggars had vanished, and the few folk who walked the city were among those who had provoked the fear, yet even they chose to pass on the farther side of the street from the eight archers.

“Sweet Jesus Christ,” Nick Hook broke the silence.

“Go to church if you want to say prayers, you bastard,” Tom Perrill said.

“I’ll shit in your mother’s face first,” Hook snarled.

“Quiet, you two,” William Snoball intervened.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Hook growled. “London’s not our place!”

“Well, you are here,” Snoball said, “so stop bleating.”

The tavern stood on a corner where a narrow street led into a wide market square. The inn’s sign, a carved and painted model of a bull, hung from a massive beam that was anchored in the tavern’s gable and reached out to a stout post sunk in the marketplace. Other archers were visible around the square, men in different liveries, all fetched to London by their lords, though where those lords were no one knew. Two priests carrying bundles of parchments hurried by on the street’s far side. Somewhere deeper in the city a bell started to toll. One of the priests glanced at the archers wearing the moon and stars, then almost tripped as Tom Perrill spat.

“What in Christ’s name are we doing here?” Robert Perrill asked.

“Christ is not telling us,” Snoball answered sourly, “but I am assured we do His work.”