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good to me.”
    Kit, it turned out, had been less lucky. He had broken his bond with a Bristol master and had come home to look for another place.
    “We’re out to drown his sorrows,” said Jake, flinging an arm around the other lad’s shoulders. “Come with us?”
    “On Sunday?” All the taverns I knew of were closed today.
    Jake gave me a mocking glance. “You’re an innocent, Will. Always were.”
    He took us to a place in Fish Alley, where a door opened into a house that served beer and food in a back room. Illegal, of course, and crowded. It amused me to think that my father probably had the power to close it down; and yet he might be happier to find me here than at the Quaker meeting.
    We ate oysters, and beef; and we drank too much, each matching the others with offers to pay for all. We talked loosely, boasted, laughed at nothing. Kit told of the master he had left, who had regularly beaten him for the smallest fault and kept him half-starved by the sound of it. “A holy mister,” he said bitterly, “all preaching and praying and no charity.” Jake, by contrast, seemed to have an easy life: the daughter of the house ready to fall into his arms, the maids already done so; good meals of beef and pork, white manchet bread, wine; and free time in the evenings to spend drinking and gaming or betting on dogs.
    “And you, Will?” he asked. “Are you in work?”
    “Looking for a master,” I said. “I’ve been at school these three years past. In Oxford.”
    “Oxford,” said Jake. “Now there’s a place. Are those Oxford whores as good as they say?”
    “Better.” I could not admit that I didn’t know.
    Kit, already well gone in drink, said, “A scholar. Been studying whores.”
    We laughed, loud enough to make others turn round.
    A maid came to clear the dishes. Jake put his arm around her waist. “Here’s Kate.” He pulled her close.
    “You’ve had too much.” She wriggled free.
    “What have I had? Not enough of you!”
    She laughed, and cast a glance at me. “You’ve brought a friend.” And as she leaned across to pick up the plates I caught the scent of her sweat and saw her breasts moving inside her bodice.
    We grew more boastful as we drank. I told stories, much exaggerated, of drinking and gaming in Oxford, and I guessed how their stories must be equally false. But my news of a possible bond with Nicholas Barron impressed them. “Don’t hesitate,” said Jake. “Take it if it’s offered.”
    At last we stepped out into the fresh air of early evening, arms around each other, still laughing. I’d enjoyed their company, and yet, as I bade them goodnight with promises to meet again, I knew that I had little in common with these two, less than we’d had as boys. And even then I’d been an outsider.

Susanna
    I was homesick at first. I’d been used to sharing a mattress in the loft with Deb, and I missed her warm little body beside me. Mary slept in a four-poster bed with curtains. My bed, a smaller one, was open to the room, but Mary had put a cloth-covered screen around it – “In case a naked bed feels strange to thee.” I was grateful for her kindness but still stifled tears in my pillow that night.
    Mornings in town were all noise and clatter. I’d wake early to the rattle of cartwheels over cobbles, the shouts of traders, and the sounds of counters being let down and shutters opened.
    My chamberpot had to be emptied into the cesspit in the cellar. The first morning, on my way down the narrow stairs, I met Nathaniel Lacon also carrying a chamberpot, and was overcome with embarrassment until he made a joke of it.
    I’d never before lived among people who were not family. But Nat (as I soon learned to call him) lived in; he had the room next to ours. He was a young man of twenty or so, short, curly-haired, and with a teasing way about him that unsettled me, for I had been brought up soberly.
    The other men arrived around six thirty and did an hour and a half’s work before