Their women were no better, with their plucked eyebrows and white pasty faces, their soft sensuous bodies clothed in lawn and samite, their heads covered with a profusion of lacy veils. He knew that only a coin's throw away a woman, pale and skeletal, sat crooning over her dying baby, begging for a crust to eat. Athelstan felt his own soul dim, darken with depression. God should send fire, he thought, or a leader to raise up the poor. He bit his lip. If he preached what he thought, he would be guilty of sedition and the prior had kept him under a solemn vow to remain silent, to serve but not to complain.

Cranston and Athelstan had to stop and wait a while. The entrance to the bridge was thronged with people preparing to cross to the northern parts of the city to the great market place and shops in Cheapside. Athelstan pulled his hood over his head and pinched his nostrils against the odour from an open sewer full of the turds of nearby households, dregs from the dye houses and wash houses, and rotting carrion which had been dumped there. The area was thick with the foul, tarry smell from the tattered cottages where tanners and leather workers plied their trade. Cranston nudged him and pointed across to where an inquest was being held over a dead pig, and two constables in striped gowns were scurrying about trying to discover whether there were any bawds, strumpets or scalds in the area in order to arrest them.

'Are there hot houses, sweat houses, where any lewd woman resorts?' one of the constables bellowed, his fleshy face red and sweaty.

'Yes,' Athelstan muttered, they are all here. Most of them are my parishioners.'

He watched a milk seller, buckets strapped across her shoulders, come up hoping to ply custom, but turned away as Crim, son of Watkin the dung-collector, crept up and without being noticed spat in one of the buckets. The urchin suddenly reminded Athelstan of duties he had overlooked in his haste to join Sir John Cranston.