I RODE BACK under the Great Gatehouse of Lincoln’s Inn, once again in my robe, coif and cap. I left Genesis at the stables and crossed to my chambers. To my surprise, there was a flurry of activity in the outer office. All three of my employees – my assistant Jack Barak, my clerk John Skelly, and my new pupil, Nicholas Overton – were searching frantically among the papers on the desks and shelves.

‘God’s pestilence!’ Barak was shouting at Nicholas as he untied the ribbon from a brief and began riffling through the papers. ‘Can’t you even remember when you last saw it?’

Nicholas turned from searching through another pile of papers, the freckled face beneath his unruly light-red hair downcast. ‘It was two days ago, maybe three. I’ve been given so many conveyances to look at.’

Skelly studied Nicholas through his glasses. It was a mild look but his voice was strained as he said, ‘If you could just remember, Master Overton, it would narrow the search a bit.’

‘What is going on?’ I asked from the doorway. They had been so busy with their frantic search they had not seen me come in. Barak turned to me, his face an angry red above his new beard.

‘Master Nicholas has lost the Carlingford conveyance! All the evidence that Carlingford owns his land, which needs to be presented in court on the first day of the term! Dozy beanpole,’ he muttered. ‘Bungling idiot!’

Nicholas’s face reddened as he looked at me. ‘I did not mean to.’

I sighed. I had taken Nicholas on two months before, at the request of a barrister friend to whom I owed a favour, and half-regretted it. Nicholas was the son of a gentry family in Lincolnshire, who at twenty-one had, apparently, failed to settle to anything, and agreed to spend a year or two at Lincoln’s Inn, learning the ways of the law to help him run his father’s estate. My friend had hinted that there had been some disagreement between Nicholas and his family, but insisted he was a good lad. Indeed he was good-natured, but irresponsible. Like most other such young gentlemen he spent much of his time exploring the fleshpots of London; already he had been in trouble for getting into a sword fight with another student over a prostitute. The King had closed the Southwark brothels that spring, with the result that more prostitutes had crossed over the river to the city. Most gentry lads learned sword fighting, and their status allowed them to wear swords in the city, but the taverns were not the place to show off such skills. And a sharp sword was the deadliest of weapons, especially in a careless hand.