“Very good, sir.” Mason turned about, held out a hand for his sword. Ebenezer nodded to one of his guards and watched as the strange soldier went up the cellar steps. “Follow him!”

Mason seemed unconcerned by his follower. He walked to the Privy Stairs and there waited in the raw, wet wind for a boat. Both men, their craft in strange convoy, crossed to the Lambeth Stairs. In the squalid street of the small hamlet Mason grinned apologetically at Slythe’s man. A boy held a horse for Mason, on which he climbed and then galloped away, leaving Ebenezer’s bodyguard helplessly behind.

The Tyburn gallows was a great triangle, held aloft by tall supports, and two score victims could dangle from the three great beams.

That afternoon, as Ebenezer rode toward the crossroads, he could see three horsemen waiting within the triangle. Hanging from the beams were the rotting corpses of two felons, left there as a warning against highway robbery. A crow was perched on the shoulder of one hanged man, its beak busy, while a second crow was on a corner of the huge gibbet.

It was cold. Rain swept miserably from the west, soaking the scrubby bushes and thin grass. Oxford Street, the road that led to the gallows, was greasy with mud. The cows in the fields either side of the road turned their backs to the rain and stared mournfully east to where a great pall of chimney smoke mingled with the low clouds above London.

Ebenezer reined in ten yards from the gibbet. He was irritable because of the cold, hunched inside his great, black cloak. Beneath that, fearing treachery, he wore a breastplate over leather, while two loaded pistols were in his saddlebag. Not even the rain-laden wind could scour the stench of this place. Water dripped from the dangling, bare feet of the convicts.

One of the three horsemen walked his mount toward Ebenezer. The irritation vanished, replaced by astonishment and interest, for the approaching horseman was gray-bearded, and over half his helmeted face was a thin leather mask. The man nodded to Ebenezer. “Mr. Slythe?”

Ebenezer knew this man’s description. A whole army had hunted this man. “You took the witch out of the tower!”

The man grinned. “Guilty.” He tipped his helmet back, and then off, and peeled the mask from his face. Two gray eyes stared at Ebenezer. “My name’s Devorax. Vavasour Devorax.”

Ebenezer felt a chill of fear. He had dismissed the thought of a trap, but suddenly suspected he might now be caught in one. “What do you want?”

“A talk, Mr. Slythe, just a little talk.” A third crow flapped heavily overhead, giving a harsh cry of protest at the presence of the horsemen. It landed on one of the beams and stared at them. Devorax grinned. “My father used to say that Tyburn crows made a particularly tasty pie. Shall we move away, Mr. Slythe? Let them feed in peace?”

Ebenezer nodded and followed the evil-faced man across the glistening mud where the spectators gathered to watch the executions. There was a proposal to fill this space with tiers of public seating, but nothing had come of it yet.