"The Swan with Two Necks." Will read the warped sign with a fastidious nose-wrinkle. "This is not a tavern I mind ever to have visited before."

"It is quiet," Ben said, leading the way into noise, stench, striding over a vomit pool, between knots of swarthy men with daggers. "We can talk in peace and quiet." They sat on a settle before a rickety much-punished table whereon fat flies fed amply from greasy orts and a sauce-smear unwiped. A girl with warty bosom well on show showed black teeth and took an order for wine. "Red wine," Ben said. "Of your best. Blood-red, red as the blood of our blessed Saviour." Some villains turned to look with surly interest. A man with an eyepatch nodded as in friendly threat at Ben. "Buenos días, señor," Ben said.

"For God's sake, Ben, what manner of place is this?"

"A good place, though something filthy. Good fellows all, though but rogues to look on. Now let me speak. A great change is come into my life."

The wine arrived. Will poured. "Change? You have fallen in love with some pocked tib of the Clink and think her to be a disguised angel?"

"Ah, no. By heaven, this is good wine, red, aye, red as the blood that is decanted daily on the blessed holy altars of the one true faith."

"For Christ's sake, Ben."

"Aye, for Christ's sake, you say truly. What I do I do for Christ's dear sake. Let me tell you, my dear friend, what befell. In this noisome stinking rathole behold the word of the Lord came to me."

"Oh Jesus the word of the."

"Aye, a good old priest of the true faith, aye, though earning his bread as a dancing-master, thrown into jail for debt, spake to me loving words and told where the truth doth lie. It was by way of being in the manner somewhat of a revelation." Ben drank fiercely and then said: "Good wine. Enim calix sanguinis. Drink a salute to my holy happiness."

"Keep your voice well down, man," Will said, his voice well down. "See how they all listen."