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the big city.'
    'That is true.'
    'With no money and no place to sleep?'
    'You have me in summary. But not all of me. I am also alert, angry and armed.'
    The boy smiled again. 'And rightly so in these parts. But you need have no fear of me.'
    'I have none, I assure you.' A woman about the age of my mother, with the upper part of her chest shamelessly exposed, approached with two plates of stew, bread and cutlery. I hardly knew where to look for embarrassment. She looked at my pike with some alarm but said nothing. I began to eat hungrily. I noticed that my companion, while eating, glanced at me surreptitiously from time to time. The leather holster of the dagger was comforting against my forearm.
    'Armed, you say.' He nodded at my boarding pike. 'That is of little use at very close quarters.'
    I wondered if he had seen my work with the dagger in the near-dark. 'For close quarters I have other devices.'
    He grinned again; a happy one this, I thought. 'I do not doubt it. Are all Scotch such warriors?'
    My companion waved and shouted to a man in the far corner of the room. The man was completely bald and had dark skin, the likes of which I had only seen in Dominie Dinwoodie's illustrations of the travels of Sir John Mandeville. He was wearing a green blouse, of a sort which I had only ever seen on women at the markets in Lanark and Biggar. His arms were muscular and painted. His face was dominated by a large nose and he had a row of decaying yellow teeth. He sat down at our table, putting his jug of beer on the table.
    'This is the Turk.'
    I returned the man's nod warily.
    Michael leaned forward, although his voice would scarcely carry above the din. 'This is a Scotchman. He killed a man not ten minutes ago. I saw it with my own eyes.'
    The Turk's eyes widened.
    'He may not be dead. And I was defending myself.'
    The Turk looked at my pike. 'What fool thinks he can walk into a crowded tavern with that and attract no notice? Why are you not fleeing? Do the Scots kill with such impudence? And do you not see curious eyes on you from every corner?'
    'In truth, sir, I have seen so much that is strange in this town that I am paying them little heed.'
    'Did others see this killing?' The Turk was still wide-eyed.
    'The man had three companions, who fled for their lives.'
    'I am not surprised.' The Turk drank from his jug. 'Describe them.'
    'They wore fine tunics with white frills around their necks, flat feathered caps, they carried swords and were little older than me.'
    'Not cutpurses,' the Turk said. 'The sons of gentlemen.' He made a hissing noise through a gap between his teeth and then shook his head. 'You have put your head in a noose, my little Scotch. Even now you are surely being hunted. And before the night is out, perhaps even within the hour, you will be found and imprisoned in Newgate. And then, unless you are rich...' He made a throat-cutting gesture and grinned.
    'But I did nothing wrong,' I said in dismay. My thoughts went to the heads I had seen aloft on poles.
    The Turk continued to grin. 'You understand nothing. They may have wealthy fathers. The magistrate will know where his duty lies, and if not, a pouch of gold will remind him.'
    Fear and despair began to seep into my bones. I pushed my bowl away. 'Then I must get away from here,' I said, glancing fearfully at the door which, as it happened, opened that second. I snatched at my pike in fright, but only two women of middle age came in, their faces thick with powder and paint, and their dresses gaudy and stained, the hems lined with the filth of the street.
    'Aye,' said the Turk, imitating my accent crudely, 'but where to?'
    'Back to Scotland. From what I have seen of this dunghill, I wish I had never left.'
    'But can you outrun horsemen? You are, forgive me, what is the word? Visible. Yes, visible.' The man looked up and down at my clothes and grinned unpleasantly.
    'I have a better idea,' said Michael.
    I sensed a trap, but did not know what to do.
    'The Scotch man