All lovely people! Most of them would have sold their mother's knuckle-bones for dice. They lived on a knife-edge, fearful of the chatts, their slang term for the gallows, yet ever ready for a free peck or meal, their fingers itching to cut a purse or rob a shop. I laughed, drank and gambled with the best of them. They conned me, I conned them. One little foist, who cheated me at cards, I treated free, giving him live spiders to eat, covered in butter to help his cough. Another who boasted about ill-treating a poor widow, was told to mix blood from a black cat's tail with cream from a slaughtered cow and drink it to cure the pox. (The stupid bugger did, but still scratched his private parts.) To honest folk I tried to be honest. The taverner who gave me a free drink was told that, to gather the fleas of a chamber into one place, he should put a staff on the floor covered with the grease of a fox or hedgehog, and all the fleas would gather on it. And, if that didn't work, to fill a dish with goat's blood, put it by the bed, and every flea in the tavern would drink and drown itself there. (By the way, this worked, you should try it!)

When the day's work and enjoyment were done, I travelled back to the manor and supped with Benjamin in our dark oak-panelled hall, decorated with banners and tapestries, and with large wooden shields bearing the devices of Daunbey and Shallot which had been devised and painted by me. Of course, I’d always return a little fearful. After all, here we were enjoying the idylls of life, but London was not very far away and Wolsey never forgot us. When the Cardinal turned and snapped his fingers for us to come running, he'd always send that strange creature, black-garbed, sinister Dr Agrippa -to collect us.

I have mentioned Agrippa before. He was Wolsey's familiar.