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rehearsing in the Palace of Whitehall. Ned would be there too, nervously preparing for his debut. He would join them. He had no coin for a wherry, so he must take the bridge and make the long walk to Whitehall.
    Yet almost without willing them, his feet did not keep straight. With the bridge’s gatehouse ahead, the traitor’s heads spiked upon it in plain sight, his feet turned him left on to Long Road.
    He was making for another inn, the Spoon and Alderman. Not to drink – even if he had the coin, he had long since been banned from doing so within those premises. No, all he wished was a glimpse of the proprietress. Maybe the briefest of conversations. Enough to ascertain if what had been true was no longer so . . .
    . . . and that on the third Sunday after Lent in the parish of St Mary Overies, Tess Morton, Spinster, would not be marrying Sir Samuel D’Esparr, Baronet.

III
    A Garden
    His scheme to walk in the front door for a quiet word was thwarted in his first glance.
    The two men at the inn’s door were not the usual cut of doorman retained by Tess to keep out the excessively drunk each Shrove Tuesday. These two were bigger, leaner, with a martial way of resting their hands on their pommels. Yet the most disturbing thing about them was that each sported a tangerine sash across his chest.
    Stepping deeper into the shadows of the alley, only now did he hear the sounds of traded lust further up it. ‘Tangerine,’ he muttered. ‘A plague on’t. Why does it have to be tangerine?’
    He’d worn it himself. He’d been unaware that his rival for Tess had – for those had to be D’Esparr’s men at the door. A new convert to the cause, perhaps? Not surprising with Essex’s star waxing again. John may have been drunk for a month but not so far gone – at least until the last week – that he had not heard the rumour that the earl, down so long, was up again at court. And with Essex up, two things were certain: the dogs of war would soon be unleashed; and the earl would be looking for his old comrade to ward his back, as he had done in the Netherlands, in Calais, in Cadiz. Those other two men, sent to seek him at Peg Leg’s tavern, spoke to that.
    ‘I’ll meet him in hell first,’ John muttered as, behind him, business concluded in a prolonged squeal. Shortly, a grinning apprentice staggered past, fiddling under his blue apron, followed a moment later by a woman old enough to be the lad’s mother, the paint on her face scarcely concealing the pox marks beneath. She was tucking a coin up beneath her skirt so did not see John until she bumped into him. She yelped when she did, staggered back a pace. ‘Peace, punk,’ he said, holding up his palms to show they were empty of cosh or blade.
    ‘Oo you callin’ a punk, you bull’s pizzle?’ Her accent located her birth within a few hundred paces of where she laboured.
    ‘I meant no insult,’ he replied, ‘seeing as I am a bit of a punk myself.’ He smiled. ‘Can you tell me, fair one, if those orange men yonder have fellows within?’
    She squinted across the street, then up at him. ‘What’s it worth ya to know?’
    ‘My undying love, sweet maid.’
    She laughed. ‘Well, no skin offa my teats.’ She nodded across. ‘One more inside, just as ugly. They stopped me going in, not ’alf-hour since. Spurned me favours too.’
    ‘I am astonished. My thanks.’
    As he stepped away, she called after him, ‘Come on, Romeo. You can thank me better’en that. A last one before you lay off for Lent? ’Alf price, ’cos yer ’andsome?’
    John did not pause to answer. Two very drunk men were trying to enter the inn and being roughly refused. The distraction covered him across the street. Slipping into the alley opposite, unoccupied for once, he ran between two high brick walls. Though its air was rich with piss and other savours, he knew he would not have to hold his breath long. For the wall beside him concealed one of the finest gardens in the realm and so one