I said desperately, ‘Leave him to die here? Leave a body in this house to be found? That neighbour is already worried. He’ll be looking in the windows tomorrow. Then there’ll be a coroner’s enquiry – in public – and they’ll do a search to find out who owns the house.’ I continued rapidly, for I knew this was my last dim hope of saving Barak’s life, if indeed he was not already dead. ‘It’s known that Jack Barak works with me. Whatever you have planned for me, this is murder and it won’t be allowed to rest. Not when the Queen hears – she won’t let it.’

‘Our master could soon stop a coroner’s enquiry,’ the bald man said scoffingly. Stice frowned, though. He looked down at Barak; his face, from what I could see, was still and ashen against his brown beard. He could be dead already. I thought of Tamasin, pregnant. I had brought him here.

‘The hunchback could be right,’ Daniels said uneasily.

‘All right,’ Stice agreed. ‘Our master would wish us to be careful. Here, one of you make a tourniquet with your handkerchiefs, or he’ll bleed all over us as well as the floor.’

‘I know where we can put him.’ The bald man give a little giggle. ‘I came here round the back ways. There’s an empty building lot the people round here have turned into a rubbish heap. Two streets away.’

‘All right,’ Stice agreed. ‘Bind those two now.’

Cardmaker produced a length of rope from the bag at his belt, which he must have brought for Brocket. He cut it in two with his knife, then approached us. ‘Hands behind your backs.’

We could do nothing else. I looked desperately at Barak’s prone form as they bound our hands behind us. Meanwhile Stice bound Barak’s arm tightly with a handkerchief, making a tourniquet to lessen the flow of blood, and tied another securely round the stump. Bright red blood immediately began to seep through. Then Stice said, ‘Daniels, throw him across your horse. We’ll put these two on the horse we brought for Brocket, tie their legs together under the horse’s belly. If we’re stopped on the way to Whitehall, say they’re traitors and we’ve arrested them.’ He looked at Barak’s severed hand lying on the floor in a pool of blood, still gripping his sword. ‘God’s teeth, what a mess. We’ll have to come back and clean this up after. Our master often uses this house.’