'Anything for us?'

'One letter, sir.'

'Well? Let us have it, then.'

'He made me pay tuppence for it.'

'Pardon me?'

'The clerk.' He extended his hand. 'He said it was undertaxed, sir. Not a paid letter, he said. So I had to pay tuppence.'

'Very well.' I set Don Quixote aside, remunerated Monk with a show of irritation, then seized the letter. 'Now off with you. Go fetch the coal.'

I was expecting to hear from Monsieur Grimaud, my factor in Paris, who had been instructed to bid on my behalf for a copy of Vignon's edition of the Odyssey. But I saw immediately that the letter, a single sheet tied with string and embossed with a seal, bore the green stamp of the Inland Office rather than the red one of the Foreign Office. This was peculiar, because domestic mail arrived at the General Letter Office on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. For the moment, however, I thought little of this oddity. The Post Office was in a state of upheaval like everything else. Already many of the old postmasters-Cromwell's busiest spies, so the rumours went-had been relieved of their positions, and the Postmaster-General, John Thurloe, was clapped up in the Tower.

I turned the letter over in my hand. In the top, right-hand corner a stamped mark read '1^st July', which meant that the letter had arrived in the General Letter Office two days earlier. My name and address were inscribed across it in a secretary hand, slantwise and hectic. The writing was blotched in some places and faint in others, as if the ink was old and powdery or the goose quill splayed at the nib or worn to a stump. The oblong impression of a signet ring on the reverse bore a coat of arms with the legend 'Marchamont'. I cut the frayed string with my penknife, broke the seal with my thumb and unfolded the sheet.