After that bloody business at the Tower in the summer of 1523, Benjamin Daunbey and I, now released from the services of Cardinal Wolsey, returned to our manor outside Ipswich. Benjamin took over the management of the estate and the running of the school he had set up for the ungrateful, snotty-nosed imps from the nearby village. I, of course, true to my nature, returned to villainy as smoothly as a duck takes to water. I was bred for villainy. I was reared on it. People shouldn't really object. I am not an evil man. I just like mischief as a cat does cream. 'Ill met by moonlight!' You could wager your last farthing that I was. When Benjamin slept, I'd quietly slip out to meet young Lucy Witherspoon. She was a comely wench who worked some time in the White Harte tavern and, at others, as a chamber maid for the Poppleton household across the valley. I have mentioned these Poppletons before: spawns of Satan! The family was dominated by a woman I called the Great Mouth, Isabella Poppleton, and her cantankerous, flint-faced sons led by Edmund. She hated me and I reciprocated in kind. May her lips rot off!

Now Lucy and I would spend those early, balmy autumn nights lying in the cool grass beside the river. Lucy was a lovely lass who, when I cradled her in my arms, would whisper, 'My cup overflows with happiness!' It was a quotation she'd learnt from the wall of the parish church. She said it always tickled her fancy and, I suppose, I did the same. When she left, with my sweet words ringing in her ears and a silver piece in her purse, I'd stay to pick mushrooms, herbs and plants. I still had a deep, abiding desire to be a great physician and make my fortune with miraculous cures. I'd always be back by dawn, sleeping like an angel in my bed, and would awake later in the day to wash, shave, dress and plot fresh mischief.