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souls and was privy to dark secrets that no one else could know, Ellie had told her.
    In his teeth, stained mottled amber, Topcliffe clenched a long wooden stick, which he drew on every so often, and then blew out smoke. She looked at it astonished, as if he were breathing sulfur from the fires of Satan, for she had never seen such a thing. He laughed at her bewilderment. It is a pipe of sotweed, from the New World. He called in a servant to bring drink, then another to stoke the fire in the hearth and—as the man crouched to the grate with bellows and logs—cursed him for letting it go so low.
    He asked her questions. How she survived, where she lived. She told him she was a malkin—a kitchen drudge—in the buttery of a great lady. She had left service when she married Edmund, but on his death she had been received back into the household in her old serving job.
    As she talked, Topcliffe smiled at her with his hard, dark teeth. Eventually he put down the sotweed pipe. Well, Rose, I should like to help you if I can. We must find the mother of this changeling you have brought us.
    Again he put his arm around Rose Downie’s shoulders, drawing her to him. We must look after Her Majesty’s subjects, must we not, especially the widow of a fine young man who died for his sovereign. Tell me, Rose, where was your baby stolen?
    She recalled the day precisely. It was a week past, when the child was just twelve days old. She had gone to the market for cheeses and salt pork. Her son was swaddled and she held him in her arms. But there was a disagreement with the stallholder and she had put the baby down for just a short moment because her arms were full of groceries and she was counting out the farthings to pay for them. The argument became heated and the short moment of leaving little Mund in a basket by the stall became a minute or two. She was still angry when she went to pick him up, but then her anger turned to horror, for her baby was no longer there. In his place was this monster, this creature, this Devil’s spawn.
    Well, we must find little William Edmund, Topcliffe said. But first, let us become better acquainted, Rose.
    His arm was strong around her now, and he pulled her down. She did not resist, as if she half expected this as part of the price. In one movement, he lifted her kirtle and smock, turned her with a strength she could not defy, and, without a word, entered her with the casual indifference with which a bull takes a cow.

Chapter 5

    I N THE CRYPT OF ST. PAUL’S, THE SEARCHER OF THE DEAD stood in his bloodstained apron over the unclothed carcass of Lady Blanche Howard. For a long while he was silent. With his strong hands he moved her poor head this way and that with practiced gentleness, examining her wounds; he did the same with her paps and with her woman’s parts; he held up the scarce-formed baby, still attached to her womb by its cord, and looked at it from all sides. He ran his fingers through the woman’s flaxen hair and he explored inside the pits of her arms, the backs of her legs, and the soles of her feet.
    The stone walls of the crypt glistened with trickles of water. The Searcher parted the legs of the cold body and examined further. He removed objects and put them to one side dispassionately. He moved his face near the fair V of her womanhood and sniffed.
    Above them, in the nave of the great cathedral, the throngs of people went about their business, dealing, conspiring, laughing, fighting, robbing each other, or simply passing the time of day. But down here, the only sound was the shuffling of soft leather soles on stone and the occasional drip of water from the walls and ceiling. Shakespeare stood back and watched. The Searcher, Joshua Peace, was so intent on his work that he seemed unaware of his presence. Shakespeare liked Peace; he was a man of knowledge, like himself, the type of man to shape the new England now they were almost rid of the superstitions of the Roman church.
    Peace was