"Is this really necessary?" the Doctor asked, looking at the blindfold held in questioner's assistant Unoure's grubby hands. He wore a long butcher's apron of blood-stained hide over his filthy shirt and loose, greasy-looking trousers. The black blindfold had been produced from a long pocket in the leather apron.

Unoure grinned, displaying a miscellany of diseased, discoloured teeth and dark gaps where teeth ought to have been. The Doctor winced. Her own teeth are so even that the first time I saw them I naturally assumed they were a particularly fine false set.

"Rules," Unoure said, looking at the Doctor's chest. She drew her long jacket closed across her shirt. "You're a foreigner," he told her.

The Doctor sighed, glancing at me.

"A foreigner," I told Unoure forcibly, "who holds the King's life in her hands almost every day."

"Doesn't matter," the fellow said, shrugging. He sniffed and went to wipe his nose with the blindfold, then looked at the expression on the Doctor's face and changed his mind, using his sleeve again instead. "That's the orders. Got to hurry," he said, glancing at the doors.

We were at the entrance to the palace's lower levels. The corridor behind us led off from the little-used passage-way beyond the west-wing kitchens and the wine cellars. It was quite dark. A narrow circular light-well overhead cast a dusty sheen of slaty light over us and the tall, rusted metal doors, while a couple of candles burned dimly further down the corridor.

"Very well," the Doctor said. She leaned over a little and made a show of inspecting the blindfold and Unoure's hands. "But I'm not wearing that, and you're not tying it." She turned to me and pulled a fresh kerchief from a pocket in her coat. "Here," she said.

"But-" Unoure said, then jumped as a bell clanged somewhere beyond the flaking brown doors. He turned away, stuffing the blindfold into his apron, cursing.