“Bollocks!” shouted Edmund, as he pulled the sword back to slash.

Mary screamed. I flipped a dagger in the air, caught it by the blade, and was readying to send it to Edmund’s heart when something hit him in the back of the head with a thud and he went bum over eyebrows into the wall, his blade clanging across the floor to my feet.

Drool had stood up in the cauldron and was holding Mary’s laundry paddle—a bit of dark hair and bloody scalp clung to the bleached wood.

“Did you see that, Pocket? Smashing fall he did.” All of it a pantomime to Drool.

Edmund was not moving. As far as I could see, he was not breathing either.

“God’s bloody balls, Drool, you’ve kilt the earl’s son. We’ll all be hung, now.”

“But he were going to hurt Mary.”

Mary sat on the floor by Edmund’s prostrate body and began stroking his hair on a spot where there was no blood. “I was going to shag him docile, too.”

“He would have killed you without a thought.”

“Ah, blokes have their tempers, don’t they? Look at him, he’s a fair form of a fellow, innit he? And rich, too.” She took something from his pocket. “What’s this?”

“Well done, lass, not so much as a comma between grief and robbery, and much the better when he’s still so fresh his fleas have not sailed to livelier ports. The Church wears well on you.”

“No, I’m not robbing. Look, it’s a letter.”

“Give it here.”

“You can read?” The tart’s eyes widened as if I had confessed the ability to turn lead into gold.

“I was raised in a nunnery, wench. I am a walking library of learning—bound in comely leather and suitable for stroking—at your service, should you fancy a bit of culture to go with your lack of breeding, or vice versa, of course.”

Then Edmund gasped and stirred.

“Oh fuckstockings. The bastard’s alive.”