He crossed to the Star and looked in. Though it was no later than ten in the morning the place was full of trade. Men drinking with their shadows, men in a huddle. He did not want to go in and perhaps have to spend hours in the place. He would stroll while he was still free to do so, and he set off, walking away from the water and turning into a narrow street of gabled buildings, part of the city’s medieval guts. Through cellar windows he saw backs bent over benches, cutting, sewing. He saw through two windows—the whole body of a house—a garden where men were twisting rope. At the gates of a yard he saw three giants stripped to the waist, their skin blushed blue from some process they were resting from. They watched him as he passed. They looked like men made almost mad by what they did.

He imagined the street would lead somewhere—a market square, a crossroads—but it wound on, blindly, and he was at the point of deciding he must turn back when he noticed, slung above the entrance of a shop some twenty yards ahead, a wooden blunderbuss big as a drummer boy. He went to the window and leaned close. The place looked shut, lifeless, but when he tried the door it opened with the singing of a small bell and he stepped inside.

So little daylight found its way into the shop it took him a while to see how big it was, that it extended back beyond its own rear walls and seemed to burrow into the side of the hill, a sort of cave. Everywhere, there were guns. A rack of Baker rifles (with folding rear sights), a half-dozen Ferguson breech-loaders, a cabinet of assorted carbines—Elliots, Pagets. A second cabinet displayed volley guns of the type intended to clear a room with a single pull of the trigger but more likely to take off the shooter’s hand. He was admiring a box of long-barrelled sea-pistols with all their gear around them—powder-flask, flints, wads, patches and greasers—when the gunsmith appeared from the depths of the cave and hung his lantern from a hook over the counter. He was stout, cheerful as a butcher, immediately full of talk, of little courtesies. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbows, his forearms hairless and mottled with the scars of old burns.

Lacroix explained what he had and what he wanted.

“Private manufacture or military issue?”

“Military.”

“Tower stamp?”

“Yes.”

The gunsmith moved among his wares, dipped down to open a drawer and lifted out a sacking pouch of shot. He poured some into his hand. “Bristol-made,” he said. “Very exact. You won’t find better.”

He offered one to Lacroix, who took it and turned its coolness between his fingers.

“The dog’s particulars, sir, if you’ll allow it. And you’ll want some powder too?”

“Yes.”