Next to him are two men who must be brothers, they look so alike. They’re familiar, but I don’t know from where. Mayhap my mother or I washed their laundry. One of the brothers says something, and the Country Mouse makes the nodding sort of face you do when you don’t know what to say. It makes me laugh a little.

Another trumpet sounds, which must mean something’s happening. Then a small man rides past on a tall horse. From the way everyfolk stares, this must be the emissary. The big horse makes him seem no more than a child. Near me, folk snicker and some even spit.

I look back to the Country Mouse. He’s saying something to his groom. If I were the groom I could tell the Country Mouse my noticings, like that the emissary looks like a child. And that our country seems so big and our queen so mighty, but how little our country must be if the Norman prince can send a messenger to propose marriage. The Country Mouse would find me clever for saying this. A clever friend to help him sort his thoughts. He’d invite me for a walk along the river. Not the awful part in Dungsbrook, but the fine part, upstream. He’d say, Why should either of us be lonely when we can pass the time together?

One of the brothers next to the Country Mouse pulls out a small silver box. It catches the sunlight like the Country Mouse’s ring did in the castle garden. The man opens the box, pulls something out with two fingers, and then, as if it were a perfectly usual thing to do, sniffs it up his nose. I’ve never seen the like. He offers the box to his brother and the Country Mouse. I look harder at the brothers.

All at once, I know them. Or one of them at least. And not because I did his laundry. It’s the recorder, the man who sentenced me to be a sin eater. The one who was married to Ruth and made her a sin eater too. My neck burns hot, and even with the Country Mouse there and all, I don’t have a mind to watch any more.

I turn down a small lane back towards home, but I’m stuck in a second crowd, clinging like a leech to the first one. It’s a beggar crowd. The beggars all wait on the small lanes so folk must walk by them on their way to and from the procession. There’s lame beggars, old beggars, beggars with babies wrapped round their middles, and poorer sorts of actors and jugglers. They all wear passports with the seal of the Queen’s office on their rags that say they’re deserving poor, permitted to beg by the Queen’s mercy.