Now, I have always loved that city, its stench, the colour, bustle and noise, the way the blood beats ever faster through your veins. I had worked there many years before as a footman in one of old Mother Nightbird's molly houses, from where she sold plump, perfumed flesh to the great lords and merchants of the city. Now things were different. At nineteen Shallot was virtuous, a prosperous man soon to be a merchant prince who would show both Master Benjamin and the great Wolsey that he could rise without their help. I rode through Cheapside, greedily drinking in the sights and sounds. I noted with envy the gold-embossed timber mansions of the merchants, the stalls in front of them piled high with goods of every kind: rich cloth of gold, rolls of murrey, silks and satins, leather bottles, Spanish riding boots, gold cord and testers, blankets of pure wool, and tapestries heavy with silver needlework and gold filigree.

The air dinned with the cries of the apprentices, the roar of the crowd, the curses of carpenters, whilst in every corner hawkers and tinkers shouted their wares. Young nobles from the court, their horses' harness shining in the sunlight, rode through with hawks, falcons and peregrines perched on their wrists, cruel faces hidden by small leather hoods, jesses tinkling like the bells of a tiny church.

I found the Golden Turk where it nestled in a small alleyway, just beneath the great mass of St Paul's. A fine, well-kept establishment, three storeys high, made all the more welcoming by horn-glazed windows, the beams smartly painted and the white plaster glowing like freshly laid snow. The landlord knew me, for Benjamin and I often lodged there when we came up to town. I did think of going down to Syon House but remembered Benjamin's instructions never to approach Johanna without him being present for she dwelt in a twilight world where every man, except Benjamin, was her seducer. So I made myself at home at the Golden Turk; the two-faced landlord greeted me civilly enough, providing a chamber on the second floor with a pallet bed and a few sticks of furniture.