The dust of Knollys’ company of spears drifted eastwards before them, and hung like a haze among the elm trees beside the road. The silver loops of the river came and went, until the towers of Westminster rose from among the orchards, fields, and gardens. A great silence held everywhere, and even as they rode towards Ludgate past the great houses on the river bank and John of Gaunt’s palace of the Savoy, the people who loitered thereabout looked mute, and sullen, and watchful. The purple edge of a thundercloud was looming up over the city, deepening every patch of colour in the streets, and making the vanes and steeples shine like gold. The air was close and ominous, like the spirit of the people. As they passed the Savoy, Knollys cocked a thumb at it. “See your duke’s house. I’d not give a penny for it if those wolves cross the river.” Fulk had a need of silence, for his head was like a skin full of new wine. All was strange, and vast, intricate, and grotesque to him, and the great city itself was like a forest with its spires and towers and gables and narrow winding ways. It was a world of new sights, new sounds, new smells, new colours. He looked at the houses and the people through the bars of the vizor, and felt a strange unrest stirring in him, a yearning to play a mighty part, to strike some blow that should make all these heedless and unfamiliar faces gape and stare. The pride of mastery cried in his blood—the cry of a heritage that yearned in him. They saw the spears ahead of them winding through Ludgate with the clangour of iron-shod hoofs on the cobbles. A trumpet blared, and people crowded out of courts and alleys to see Knollys’ war-dogs ride past. To Fulk these people were like sheep crowding at gaps in a hedge. The trumpet’s cry wailed for a something that England lacked, a voice like a trumpet’s cry and the mien of a lord. They came to Knollys’ lodging, and by noon Fulk found himself in a little attic under the tiles, with thunder rumbling overhead. The window looked out over roofs and gables through a sheet of drenching rain that glimmered when the lightning flashed. There was food and wine, and a truckle bed in the room, and the door was barred on the inner side. Knollys had left him there to the thunderstorm and his own thoughts. “Let the sword lie hid in the sheath,” he had said; “trust me, good lad. Perhaps I have dreamed a dream!” CHAPTER XV