Feeling only the blunt leather cap against his skin, Harold regained his courage. ‘Oh, it’s a practice rapier!’ he sneered. Then, laughing off Jack’s threat, he pushed the blade aside and rose to leave. But in a lightning-quick flick of his wrist, Jack slashed the blade’s edge across Harold’s face, leaving a thin line of blood along his cheek. Harold gasped.

‘Sit down!’ ordered Jack. ‘Now, unless you want a matching scar on your other cheek, give me back my locket.’

Offering no further resistance, Harold hurriedly removed the chain from round his neck and shakily passed the locket to Jack. ‘I hope you don’t bear me any ill-will,’ Harold pleaded with an ingratiating smile. ‘I looked after it well.’

Looping the chain over his own head, Jack considered the grovelling thief before him. Then he flicked the leather cap off the rapier’s tip and thrust the blade at Harold’s gut.

‘NO!’ shouted Akiko in alarm. The courtesy-man screamed and the gathered onlookers gasped in horror.

Slowly, Jack withdrew the blade. There was no blood. But the rapier’s tip had pierced a red leather purse that he now extracted from the folds of Harold’s jacket. ‘No doubt as well as you looked after this lady’s purse!’ said Jack, as Harold, pale-faced and panicking, checked himself for serious injuries.

‘Oi! That’s mine!’ cried the wide-eyed woman in outrage.

Tossing the purse back to its rightful owner, Jack then sheathed his rapier and strolled away from the scene. He’d got what he wanted.

Akiko hurried to catch him up. ‘For a moment, I thought you were going to kill him,’ she said.

Jack shook his head. ‘No, I’ll leave justice to take its natural course.’ And behind them there came a sharp cry followed by a plea for mercy as an angry mob dealt with the thief.

‘Offence is defence,’ Signor Horatio declared, as Jack and Akiko again took up their positions in the courtyard. ‘Any direct attack by an opponent must be defended and countered in one fluid action – parry and riposte.’

He beckoned Jack forward. ‘Lunge at me, signor!’

Jack thrust for the sword master’s heart. Before the blade could make contact with its target, his rapier was deflected and Jack felt the hard prod of a leather tip against his own heart, his sword master’s parry and riposte quicker than the blink of an eye.

Signor Horatio grinned, enjoying the look of astonishment on both Jack and Akiko’s faces. ‘I’ll slow the action down to teach you.’

This time Jack was able to see how the sword master rode the rapier with his own blade, redirecting the attack even as he counter-thrusted. It reminded Jack of Masamoto’s Flint-and-Spark strike.