'I understand,' Corbett replied. 'But assist you in what, Lavinius?'

Monck shrugged, rolled the parchment up and slipped it up the sleeve of his leather jerkin. He leaned back, steepling his fingers, and stared into the fire.

'Ah!' he sighed. 'That's the problem, Sir Hugh. It's best if we each plough our own furrow. My Lord of Surrey was most insistent on that.'

'I thought you were here because of the Pastoureaux?' Gurney interrupted.

Monck smiled. 'Perhaps, Sir Simon, perhaps not. Only time will tell.'

Corbett steeled his features and sipped from the posset, kicking Ranulf gently on the ankle lest his angry-faced servant take up the cudgels on his behalf.

Gurney and his wife sat back in their chairs, Alice's eyes pleading with her husband to remain silent. Corbett tensed in fury. He couldn't abide Monck's smug secretiveness and he was angry with the king, who had despatched him here after telling him as little as possible. Corbett could hardly believe he was here because Monck's servant had been murdered or because a baker's wife had been hanged from a scaffold. The Pastoureaux, however, were a different matter. They were dangerous. His agents in France had reported how these fanatics, with their strange dreams and eerie visions, walked from city to city prophesying the end of the world and launching violent attacks upon Jews, foreigners and all of society's poor outcasts. Now groups of Pastoureaux, literally by the shipload, had arrived in England. Harmless at first, they lurked in the wild and waste places. The group here in Norfolk, however, had grown and attracted the attention of the royal commissioners and, ostensibly at least, Monck had been sent north to investigate.