He looked shaken. ‘I have never let someone provoke me like that before. Forgive me. It was unprofessional.’

‘It was dangerous, sir. Your preacher, did he – ’ I broke off as Vowell returned.

‘Please, sirs,’ the old servant said anxiously. ‘I think it better you leave as well, if you would.’

He accompanied us to the door. I said, ‘Thank you, Goodman Vowell.’

‘And to think that this was once a happy house,’ he replied, blinking tears from his eyes, then bowed and closed the door.

Coleswyn and I were left standing in the busy street, under the hot sun. He spoke quietly as we went round to the stables. ‘My preacher has said nothing against the Mass.’ He paused and added, ‘In public.’

I did not ask, And in private? Instead I looked down at my feet, where two large black beetles were fighting in the dust, head to head. Philip said, ‘How like our clients.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘They snap at each other, but each is protected by a carapace.’

‘But underneath there is softness, vulnerability, is there not? They are not hard right through.’

‘Beetles, no. But some humans, I wonder.’

‘After this morning, I would understand if you preferred not to come to dine tonight,’ he said quietly.

‘No, I will come.’ To refuse the invitation now struck me as ungentlemanly, cowardly, especially after the insults he had borne from my client. Obstinacy, too, would not allow me to let that poisonous woman determine whom I saw socially. ‘You said nothing actionable,’ I added reassuringly. ‘Only that you agreed with your preacher. Mistress Slanning was merely looking for a stick to beat you with.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I must return to chambers now.’

‘And I have to visit a client near the river.’

As I rode away I could not help but wonder whether Coleswyn’s preacher had said something dangerous to the wrong person, or whether Isabel was merely repeating gossip. I reminded myself the man had only been investigated, not prosecuted.

I RODE BACK TO Lincoln’s Inn. Genesis trotted along slowly. I thought how with his increasingly bony face and stiff whiskers he was starting to resemble a little old man, though mercifully a good-natured one. I remembered Isabel and Edward shouting about the things they could say about each other. What had they meant? I recalled again what Isabel had said to me in chambers: ‘If you knew the terrible things my brother has done.’ And Vowell, the servant whom they had otherwise ignored, intervening as though to stop them saying too much. Edward had said his sister was not in her right wits, and neither sibling had seemed entirely sane that morning. I hoped my client could now be made to accept that she could not win her case, but I doubted it.