They have overstayed here; long ago they should have left London, left England. There are places in the wild east of Europe where it is still possible for Miriam’s kind to thrive. They had been planning, considering and suddenly here was Lollia, captured as a witch.

A witch, of all the superstitious blather!

“Lady, farthing, please farthing.”

She tosses some copper to the ratcatchers who have begun to creep up from the Bourne. Swarms of them live off the rats of the open sewer. She has seen them devour rats raw. She has seen them drain the blood of rats down the throats of their children.

She has heard their songs: “He that will an alehouse keep, sing hey nonny nonny . . .”

Occasionally, the King’s men come and kill some of them. But they multiply in the benighted ruin that is fifteenth-century London. Everything is wrong here. Death and disease stride through the populace. Houses burn nightly and the rains bring the roar of buildings collapsing. The mud is always ankle deep and full of rotting garbage. The streets are sewers. Wild pigs, pickpockets and cutpurses seethe in the markets. At night come the cutthroats and the shrieking mad. Over it all there hangs an endless brown pall of peat smoke. The city does not rumble as Rome did or clatter as did the marble streets of Constantinople, but rather it breathes a great moan, as winter wind coming down a moor. Occasionally, amid a flash of silk and the rickrack of a gaily painted coach an aristocrat passes by.

The sundial tells her that four hours have passed since Lollia was taken away. The bailiffs will be heard in Lombard Street soon, bearing their burden in its black muslin shroud. Then Miriam must be ready, for Lollia will have “confessed.” Oh yes, Miriam has seen them at their art of torture. Beside it the other arts of this age are but pale shadows. Men are skinned amid jovial crowds, their parts tossed as souvenirs to putrid children. The victims howl out any calumny or sorcery, whatever is wanted of them.

Miriam cannot find the depth of her contempt. She goes through the night streets with real pleasure, a thousand times more dangerous than the quickest knifeman, stronger, faster and more intelligent.

Her belly is always full. Or was, until the soldiers of King Henry began to organize a competent night watch.