'Master,' I replied, 'I have been milking the ducks.'

He grabbed me by the ear but I hit him hard under the chin and ran off like a whippet. I didn't go home – well, not to see my parents. I stole some money, packed a linen cloth full of food, and it was down to London where the streets are paved with gold. London I loved with its narrow alleyways, teeming Cheapside, many taverns, and, of course, well-stocked brothels. I will skirt over my many adventures but, eventually, I joined the household of old Mother Nightbird who ran one of the costliest brothels near the Bishop of Winchester's inn at Stewside close to the bridge in Southwark. I found out more about women in a month than some men would in a dozen lifetimes. I became a bully-boy, one of the roaring lads who drank deeply, and paraded the streets in a shirt of fine cambric linen, multi-coloured hose, high-stepping riding boots and a monstrous codpiece. I swaggered about, armed with hammer and dirk which I prayed I would never use.

I fell in with bad company, one especially, a lank-haired, cunning-eyed weasel of a man called Jack Hogg. We took to breaking into houses, taking the costly silks and precious objects back to Mother Nightbird who would always find a seller. Naturally, it was not long before we were caught. Two nights in Newgate and up before the Justices at the Guildhall. We were condemned to hang but the principal justice of the bench recognised me. I knew a little about him and made it obvious that if his sexual exploits were not to be part of my last confession, I should be given a second chance. Hogg died, swinging at Elms. I was given the opportunity of either joining him or enlisting in the King's Army now being gathered in the fields north of Cripplegate to march against the Scots.

Strange, isn't it, that even then the great mysteries of Flodden Field came south, like a mist, and changed my life? I didn't know it then.