‘Come, lad,’ said Coke, setting out, ‘it’s Shanks’s pony for us.’
From Deptford, which they soon reached, through Bermondsey and all the way to Southwark, the south bank of the Thames had become one sprawl of industry – dockyards, tanneries, distilleries, breweries, glue and paint factories, all jumbled together with the tenements for those who worked in them, and the many alehouses and ordinaries which fed the workers. The road took them parallel to, but a little way from, this crowded riverbank. The closer they got to Southwark, the louder the noise of fire grew – the cracking of timbers, the whoosh of some structure collapsing, with people’s cries, like distant birds, caught up in it. The light grew as well, a dawn an hour before it was due. Above the roofs, the vast cloud of smoke was
