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the ball. They dodged the occasional horse rider and the even more rare carriage, and their laughing and hollering echoed from the surrounding buildings.
    Other, more industrious children hawked wares of prepared foods, the odor of edibles mingling with the stench of filthymuck underfoot. Johnny Kirk and his sister Annie offered their usual pasties and sheep’s feet, but Suzanne declined today, having just eaten breakfast. The smells should have been unpleasant, but Suzanne had lived here so long it all now smelled of home to her.
    On Bank Side at the far end of the passage, Big Willie Waterman stood in his usual spot with his fiddle, dancing up a storm and playing the same lively tunes he’d been scratching at for the ten years she’d known him. Just as a large man might have been called “Tiny,” Big Willie was so named because he was very small and gaunt, even smaller than Suzanne, who weighed very little. Suzanne greeted him and dropped a farthing into his hat.
    “New stitches, I see,” she said. His remarkably white shirt had no discernible holes and sported all its ties, though few of them were actually tied. His breeches were old, but she could see they were fresher and less frayed than those he’d worn last she’d seen him.
    “Found ’em just this morning. Finders, keepers, say I, milady.” His grin was mostly toothless, but sincere, and his tune became just a little more lively for the cash. To him any woman who dropped money for him was “milady” and all the men “milord,” no matter how humble the actual circumstance. Children sometimes liked to toss him farthings just to hear him say “Thankee, little lord.”
    “Found them on a clothesline, did you?”
    Willie’s grin widened, and his eyebrows went up in feigned innocence. “I never steal, milady. Never! They was a-lying on the ground when I picked ’em up, they was! I swear it! And I’ll tell you for a fact, I was forever a-shaking that line. I thought they’d never fall. But I swear I never touched ’em on the line!”
    Suzanne laughed and turned eastward toward the bridge.
    Bank End Stairs had always been the meeting place for her and Daniel, as far back as when she had still lived in her father’s house. Back in the days before the war, when the world held bright color and hope. In the days before she’d learned how the world really worked. Today she went to meet Daniel once again, at the very spot where she’d seen him last more than half a lifetime ago, now to learn whether he’d changed as much as she had.
    At the top of the stairs, standing on the stone embankment, she gazed across the river at the jumble of old buildings and cobbled streets teeming with people. The spire of St. Paul’s Cathedral rose above the nearest structures, a tall, thin spire pointing the way to heaven. To the east the bridge squatted on the river, looking more like a spit of land than a bridge, so built up as it was with houses and offices. Crossing that bridge was little different from walking down any other street.
    From where she stood she couldn’t tell whether there were any new heads on the spikes at this end, but she assumed there would be a sufficiency before long, once the king caught up with those who had murdered his father. Oh yes, there were always executions whenever somebody new took the reins of power, and London would surely have public and bloody executions and rotting bits of nobility on display before the first day of summer. None of them would be William, to his disappointment, but for a brief moment she held a fantasy he could be among the dead. Then she shook off the evil thought and sought a more pleasant theme for her musing.
    It shifted from the king to the war, then to Daniel and the last time she’d seen him in this very spot, so that when his voice came to her it was nearly as if it had originated in her imagination. It gave her a start.
    “I’m surprised you came after all,” he said.
    Her heart leapt, and she had to