Now Scawsby was a well-known doctor and a man of repute. In fact, he was a charlatan, responsible for more deaths than the town's headsman. He had concocted some rare potions and strange elixirs for my mother but the situation had worsened and within weeks she was dead. A wise woman, a herbalist who dressed her corpse, said the malignancy had not killed her but Scawsby's elixirs had. My stepfather could do nothing but I lurked in the taprooms of Ipswich, plotting my revenge.

I studied Scawsby most closely: his great black-and-white-timbered mansion which stood on the edge of town; his stables full of plump-haunched horses; his silken sarcenet robes; his ostentatious wealth and sloe-eyed, honey-mouthed, tight-waisted young wife. One day I struck, plunging for Scawsby as sure and as certain as a hawk on its prey. Scawsby used to like to dine at the Golden Turk, a great tavern which fronts the cobbled market square in Ipswich. He was a lean, sour-faced, avaricious man who liked to gobble his food and slurp his wines. He had not read his Chaucer or remembered the Pardoner's words, 'Avarice is the root of all evil', and I played on this. I dressed in my finest: a shirt of sheer lawn with embroidered bands at neck and cuffs, a doublet of rich red samite, dark velvet hose and a cloak of pure red wool. I also borrowed from my step-father a costly bracelet encrusted with precious stones very similar to one Scawsby wore.

At noon on the appointed day, I entered the Golden Turk, and espied Scawsby and a friend sitting beneath the open window conversing deeply, as men full of their own self-importance are wont to do. I went over, my clean-shaven face wreathed in a smile of flattery, and with kind words and honeyed phrases gazed round-eyed at the great physician Scawsby. My flattery soon won a place in his heart and at his table and, raising my hand, I ordered the taverner to bring his best, the costliest wine and the most succulent meat of roasted capon.