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ate one right there. The crust crumbled deliciously against her teeth, and meaty juices bespattered her chin.
    The peddler nodded toward Meggy's sticks. "My old gran had such. For whipping me as much as for walking." The girl grinned a friendly grin.

    While putting the other pie in her sack for later, Meggy asked, "Know you Pudding Lane where there be a butcher?"
    The girl nodded. "Down the hill here to St. Magnus Church at Thames Street and then east to Pudding Lane. Likely you will smell it afore you see it." The two girls nodded to each other and walked on, the peddler in search of another penny and Meggy toward the butcher on Pudding Lane.
    Louise hissed and spat and tried to pull away, but Meggy pulled harder. A pack of dogs wrangling over a bit of refuse left off their tussling to follow them, barking and nipping at Louise and at Meggy's walking sticks. They attracted several onlookers, cheering and calling, "Is there to be a show?" and "I wager tuppence on the goose!" It seemed that even more of an entertainment than a crippled girl was a crippled girl leading an angry goose.
    Finally they turned onto Thames Street, where the crowds were more interested in their arguing, drinking, buying, and selling than in following a girl and her goose. Louise, tired of tuggling about London, sat herself down, her mighty wings trembling with outrage. "Come, Louise, cease your drumbling," Meggy said, pulling on the leash. But the goose only sat and squawked.
    "Fie upon you, Louise Goose. 'Pon my honor, you are a true-bred nuisance," the girl said, leaning against a wall to rest.
    A shepherd hurried past with his dogs and a herd of sheep, followed by a woman with a crowd of quarreling children. The woman could use a dog or two to manage that herd of hers, Meggy thought.
    "Come buy a ballad newly made," a passing ballad seller called. "Mayhap 'The Ballad of Good Wives' or 'The Lover and the Bird.' Or come to me for the tale of a monstrous child born this very month to a weaver in Derbyshire. A child with one head but four arms and four legs. Printed at the Sign of the Jolly Lion this morn. Here to me. Come and buy." He waved the broadside about as he moved on. "Or buy a ballad newly writ.
God send me a wife that will do as I say,
" he sang. "Come buy a ballad. Ha'penny, only a ha'penny." A sack holding a great number of the printed ballads hung down his back, and the man's arms passed through two handles, leaving his hands free to grab at passersby.
    Meggy watched the ballad singer go and an idea blossomed. She took the second pork pie from the sack, shared it with Louise, and wiped her hands on her kirtle. Then, while Louise was distracted by the taste of pie, Meggy put the goose into the empty sack and tied the leash around the sack and the goose as if it were a package. Once she understood her predicament, the goose began to wiggle and hiss and try to free herself, but Meggy crouched down, placed the sack on her back over her shoulders, put her arms through the handles, just as the ballad seller had done, and carefully stood up, taking the weight on her shoulders. If she leaned heavily on her sticks and ignored the grumbling of her legs and Louise's frantic
hwonk-hwonk-hwonk,
she would be able to walk carrying the goose.
    A blue-capped apprentice called out as he passed, "By my master's brick oven, I have never seen an uglier sight than a two-headed—"
    "Cease your bibble-babble, you gleeking goat's bladder!" Meggy shouted at him as she turned onto Pudding Lane.
    Pudding Lane was reeky, sticky with blood that ran red in the rain, and clamorous with the cries of animals on the way to becoming chops and sausages. In front of shop after shop, carcasses of headless beasts hung from great metal hooks through their necks. Treading carefully, Meggy wabbled past the great gobs of pigs' innards that apprentices were heaving into the street. Pudding indeed, she thought.
    Near halfway up Pudding Lane was a nasty, foul, and odorous shed with