“Get back! Don’t look at it!” One young mother scooped up her toddler son, burying his head against her dress so that he would not see the offending papers, and pushed her way through the crowd.

“What do we do, heap earth on it so it doesn’t get away?”

“The Stationers! Fetch the Stationers! They’ll know what to do.”

The wind picked up, and the paper rolled itself back into a scroll, and tumbled gently toward the kennel ditch of the street, the crowd clearing before it with a scuffle of frightened feet. One larding pin seller, bolder than the rest of the throng, stepped forward, one hand shielding his eyes, and kicked a clod of horse manure onto the wicked paper. After this it lay, weighted to the cobbles, but still curled and uncurled its corners in a lazy, beckoning motion.

Five minutes later, a small cart racketed up, with two men in Stationers’ livery gripping their hats to their heads and their writing boxes to their chests. They dismounted, and with great care one used tongs to put the dangerous paper on a curious long-handled spade, held by the other. The Stationer with the spade took a moment to clean his spectacles, then surveyed the crowd sternly.

“Did anyone look at it?”

“He did! He did!” The manure kicker was pushed to the front.

“No I never! Well, not hardly . . . ’sides, I can’t read.”

“Ooh, what a lie. I saw his eyes moving from side to side like they was following words . . .”

“We’d better take him along too, then. Come on, sir, into the cart, don’t make a fuss. If it turns out you can’t read after all, then you’ve nothing to worry about, have you? Otherwise . . .” The paper scooper and the hapless larding pin seller were loaded into the Stationers’ cart, and the bay mare nodded sleepily at a twitch of the reins and ambled into motion.

The cart had just reached the corner when a rock flew from somewhere in the crowd, and struck one Stationer solidly on the back of the skull.

“That’s for Mr. Pertellis!” A youthful shout with no apparent owner.

The crowd turned for the source in vain. Amid the gasps of outrage could be heard murmurs of approval.

“Radicals!” bellowed one man, and “Locksmiths!” another. Both calls were taken up, but pell-mell, so that it was impossible to tell if they were accusations or rallying cries. The Stationer who had been struck cried, “Call the constables!”

Soon the rim of the crowd was buckling before a handful of men in the Duke’s colors who strode in shouldering muskets.

“A rock . . .”

“Locksmiths! Somewhere in the . . .”