“Wait!” There had to be more to say. “They tried to make me say Mr. Pertellis killed the barge captain too, but I didn’t—”

“Doesn’t help Mr. Pertellis much, does it? Your goose is round the back—I led him out with a trail of barley.” The shutter closed with a sad but resolute little click. Mosca stared up at them for a few turbulent seconds before the injustice of it overwhelmed her.

“I’m never telling the truth again! It gets you hanged and locked out and starved and froze and hated . . .”

Then, I’ll get Saracen, she thought, and I’ll set him on their chickens.

When she found him, Saracen had finished his barley and was happily chewing at the corner of a sheet that had been spread across a hedge to dry. He had once discovered a tablecloth, and ever since had been optimistic about the effects of dragging cloths off the tops of things. The miserable-looking chickens had holed up in a bucket, suggesting that Saracen had preempted Mosca’s schemes against them.

“Come on, Saracen. The cakes are stale here, an’ the rooms are drafty, an’ there’s no sleepin’ with the endless marryin’ goin’ on.” Mosca was stooping to pick up Saracen when a roughly tied bundle landed in a cloth dollop at her feet.

“Kip the blankt genst the cold” read the little note pinned to the top. Inside the blanket the soft-hearted Cakes had stowed two small loaves and a shilling. Mosca stared up at the windows, but there was no sign of anyone watching to see her reaction so she settled for smiling reassuringly at the chickens.

Back in the street, she noticed that the marriage house was not the only building that had shuttered its windows. Outside a neighboring building two serving maids were hastily finishing their job of sweeping the front step.

“. . . a huge store of bullets they say the radicals have stored away in a cave, like a squirrel’s acorns,” Mosca heard one whisper to the other. “And no doubt muskets hid under flags in their cellars, all ready to storm the Duke’s spire.”

“Will they come to common sorts of houses after, d’you think?”

“Most likely. And when they do, master’ll go the color of custard and give them his money and anything else they’ve a mind to, and thank them kindly for taking it. Don’t you wish that we had a gentleman like that Captain Blythe on hand to keep us safe?”

The other serving maid answered with a sigh that spoke volumes.

Around the next corner a horse reared, startled by the flutter of paper amid the cobbles. Walkers recoiled, clearing a little round theater of space around two curling sheets of parchment. They were printed in heavy, black letters, but they did not bear a Stationers’ seal.

“What is it?”