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spent the rest of the day, or as much of it as I could bear until the sole topic of conversation – the death of the king, with its ceaseless, fruitless speculation as to what might happen next – drove me back to Redcliffe and an early bed (the pile of brushwood by Margaret’s hearth) where I slept soundly until morning.
    The sun was just showing its face above the city rooftops when an excited Elizabeth, a drowsy Hercules and I – full of porridge and with Margaret’s parting admonitions still ringing in our ears – presented ourselves outside Jack Nym’s cottage in the neighbouring street. But early as we were, Jack was up and about before us, busy tucking an extra layer of sacking over the bales of red cloth that filled the body of the cart. Elizabeth and I mounted the box beside the driver’s seat, with Hercules curled up on my daughter’s lap, where, for the moment, he seemed content to settle down.
    â€˜But watch out,’ I warned her, ‘for other dogs, sheep and, above all, his pet hatred, geese. If you don’t hold on to him tightly, he’ll be off the cart, chasing them and barking like a fiend.’
    â€˜Yes, and I’ll be having summat to say about that,’ Jack said crossly as he climbed up beside us, plainly not in the best of tempers and obviously regretting that he had agreed to let us travel with him.
    He had just given his horse the office to start when he had to pull the animal up short as Goody Nym – as slatternly a woman as you could hope to find in a month of Sundays – erupted from the cottage and handed him an evil-smelling parcel wrapped in wilting, brown-edged dock leaves and tied around with a bit of twine so filthy it might just have been fished out of the central drain. (As indeed it was more than likely it had.)
    â€˜You forgot yer dinner,’ she said, tossing the parcel into her husband’s lap. And without acknowledging either Elizabeth or me, she bounced back indoors, shutting the door with unnecessary force behind her.
    Jack handed me the parcel. I sniffed it cautiously and then recoiled. ‘Hell’s teeth, Jack! What’s in it?’
    He shook his head vigorously. ‘Dunno. An’ I don’t want to know, either. Don’t waste your time opening it. Just throw it overboard and leave it to poison some poor stray or other.’ He turned his head to look me fully in the face for the first time since our arrival. ‘I take it you’ve got money in your purse, chapman?’
    â€˜I . . . I’ve had quite a successful trip these past few weeks,’ I admitted cagily.
    â€˜Right, then,’ he said, flicking the reins. ‘No need for us to stint ourselves on the journey. There’s plenty o’ decent inns and taverns along the London road.’ He grinned, his good humour suddenly restored. ‘We can sample ’em all.’
    Fortunately for me, he was only joking. Well, half-joking. We did indeed stay at a couple of small alehouses during our journey in order that Elizabeth might have a good night’s rest. But, the April weather having suddenly turned warm in the way that it does at that time of year, more often than not we all bedded down in the cart, the bales of red cloth with their protective covering of sacking proving a comfortable enough mattress. Elizabeth, of course, thought this much more fun than a conventional bed, even though our slumbers were frequently broken by Hercules’s barking as he took exception to the cries of the nocturnal creatures all around us, and by his constant excursions into the surrounding countryside to relieve himself.
    â€˜Damn dog,’ Jack grumbled, but without rancour.
    The fact was, as we soon discovered, that even had we wished to pass each night in some hostelry or another, we should have been hard put to it to find enough empty beds to accommodate us. There were so many people on the move that most inns seemed