There was a little crowd in Fleet Street, for today was hanging day and people always gathered to watch the cart that carried the condemned to the great gibbet at Tyburn, its occupants standing with nooses round their necks. Some of the crowd shouted insults, others encouraged the condemned to die bravely. Though I shuddered as always at this spectacle, I stopped and asked people if they had seen Timothy. But none had.

I went along Cheapside, calling in all the shops. I had dressed in my robe and coif, to impress the shopkeepers, but perhaps some thought I was mad as I asked each a set of questions which soon became a chant: ‘I am looking for a lost stable-boy . . . ran away yesterday afternoon . . . thirteen, medium height, untidy brown hair, his two front teeth missing . . . Yes, five pounds . . . no, he hasn’t stolen anything . . . yes, I know I could get another . . .’

I asked among the beggars at the great Cheapside conduit. At the sight of a rich gentleman they crowded round me, their stink overpowering. There were children among them, filthy, some covered in sores, eyes feral as cats’. Women as well, too broken or mad even to be whores, in no more than rags, and men missing limbs who had been in accidents, or the wars. They were all blistered by the sun, with cracked lips and dry, matted hair.

More than one said they had seen Timothy, holding out a hand for a reward. I gave each a farthing to whet their appetites and told them the extraordinary sum of five pounds awaited if they produced the boy – the right boy, I added emphatically. One lad of about twelve offered himself in Timothy’s stead, and bared a skinny arse to show what he meant. One of the women waiting for water at the conduit called out ‘Shame!’ But I did not care what they thought, so long as Timothy was found.

THERE WAS ONE further resource I had not tapped. Guy had met Timothy several times at my house, and the boy liked him. What was more, if something happened to him, he might turn up at St Bartholomew’s. Despite the distance that had come between us, I needed Guy’s help.

His assistant Francis Sybrant opened the door and told me his master was at home. He looked at me curiously, for I was dusty from the streets. I waited in Guy’s consulting room, with its pleasant perfume of sandalwood and lavender, and its strange charts of the human body marked with the names of its parts. He came in; I noticed he was starting to walk with an old man’s shuffle, but the expression on his scholarly brown face under the thinning grey curls was welcoming.

‘Matthew. I was going to write you today, about Mistress Slanning. I am glad you told me about her.’

‘How does she fare?’