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carcasses about. “Ho, Crispin!” called the man congenially. Crispin raised his hand in answer but did not reply. The fact that he was acquaintances with butchers and tavernkeepers always put him in a sour mood, and even the friendliness of such associates could not assuage that.
    He inhaled the cold, hoping that the thickness of the autumn air could stifle the smell. Not so. As he walked deeper into the Shambles, the stench of death and offal and the coppery scent of blood permeated the stones and timbers of the tightly clustered buildings leaning into the streets. Beef carcasses, stripped of their skin, hung in stalls. Farther down the row were the poulterer’s stalls. Flightless bodies of birds, their wings frozen outward to mock their captive state, hung beside the glassy-eyed corpses of rabbits and suckling pigs. Crispin ignored the cries of the merchants, the thud of cleavers cutting through bone, the clatter of chickens in stick cages. His only thoughts were of home, or what at least constituted the place he slept and ate.
    The tinker shop stood wedged between a butcher and a poulterer. It was a small house. The timbers had aged to gray long ago and the daub between was colored a dull and flaking buff. The ground floor boasted one door and one window that folded down into a stall. Above that was the jutted first floor, easing meekly over the ground floor, cradling an iron kettle that hung on a rod, announcing to all and sundry that this was a tinker shop. Though the second level seemed bigger, the inside was cut in half by a wall, one side being Crispin’s entire lodgings, and the other the bedchamber of the tinker and his wife. Though it was not usual to have a tinker situated on the Shambles, it was good business sense on Master Kemp’s part. For there was profitable industry in repairing pots for melting tallow and for making hooks.
    A narrow stairway led upward to Crispin’s first-floor room. The rickety stairs were the only thing separating the tinker shop from the butcher’s house beside it. And though it was always dark in the shadow of the neighboring structure, at least it was a private entrance. It was one of the reasons Crispin chose to live there. That, and the rent was cheap.
    He plodded to the tinker shopfront and encountered his landlord’s plump wife, sweeping off the beaded rain from the unfolded counter. When Alice Kemp spied him withdrawing his key, she placed a pink fist into her ample hip and leaned on the broom. “Well now. If it isn’t our lodger. The one who forgets when the rent is due.”
    Crispin sighed. One day Alice would be found murdered, and no one, including himself, would look too hard for the culprit. “I am aware of how late I am, Madam. Here, then.” He reached into the purse hanging from his belt and took out the last of his coins and placed them into Alice’s damp, open palm. She closed her fingers over them and popped them into her scrip.
    “I should charge you more for that boy that calls himself your servant.”
    Crispin did not look back while he trudged up the dim stairway. “I do not see why. He is rarely here.”
    “All the same,” she shouted after him, voice like ice. “It’s not proper for Master Kemp and me to go uncompensated. Mark me. I shall talk with my husband about it!”
    “No doubt,” he grumbled, and put the key to the lock, but before it kissed the metal she shouted again.
    “I let that woman into your room. She claimed she was a client.” She hurled the last shrill words with disdain. “She had better be, Master Guest.”
    Crispin grabbed his dagger’s hilt in frustration. Did she need to shout her insults across the entire lane? He positioned himself before the door as if to block the sound from the client within, but of course it was far too late. Everyone on the Shambles surely heard her mocking voice. How could they not?
    He looked down and realized his hand was still on his dagger hilt. How dearly he wanted to use it on Mistress