If I couldn’t distract them, then I’d need some way of getting to the vault without them noticing what I was doing. Some of the pilgrims had left offerings. Maybe if I did the same?

I stared at the primroses on the tomb. “That’s it,” I said.

“What is?”

“I have an idea.”

“Oh no,” Tom said.

I stormed out of the church.

CHAPTER 28

I STOPPED AT THE ENTRANCE, looking around.

“Where are you going?” Tom said.

“I’m looking for… there. Come on.”

We hurried past the preachers to the edge of the cathedral grounds, where booksellers touted their wares to passersby. Beside them, huddled in worn clothes, was a girl of about ten. A quartet of baskets lay at her feet, full of flowers.

“Cooee!” she called. “Flowers, o! Flowers, o! Flowers!” As she saw Tom and me approach, her face, thin and gaunt, turned hopeful. “Flowers, my lord? Handpicked.”

I scanned her baskets for pale yellow. Sure enough, she had a few primroses. “Did anyone buy some of those today?”

“No one, my lord.” She sounded resigned. “It’s hard going, even with the sickness gone. Haven’t sold anything for three days now.”

The girl’s hands were red from the chill, her fingers scarred with the pricks of thorns. The deep winter had taken its toll on her. If she weighed three-quarters as much as Sally, I’d have been surprised.

“How much?” I said.

She brightened. “A farthing a bunch. Picked them fresh myself, honest.”

“No, sorry, I meant how much for the lot?”

Her eyes went wide. “All of them?” She cast a quick glance over her baskets. “Sixpence?”

I reached into the coin purse Lord Ashcombe had given me and handed her six pennies. She stared, like she couldn’t quite tell if she was dreaming. “Thank you, my lord, thank you.”

The girl and I began to load the flowers into Tom’s arms, until I could barely see his face.

He sneezed. “Why do I have to carry these?”

“Because you wouldn’t let me use the fireworks,” I said.

I stuffed the final bunch under Tom’s collar. The flower seller tugged on my sleeve. “I’m here every day, my lord. Or,” she said desperately, “if you like, I can bring flowers fresh to your home? New flowers every morn, wouldn’t that be lovely?”

I didn’t really have any need for flowers. But I felt terrible for the girl. Here she was, scrounging every freezing morning in the meadows, hoping to earn a farthing, when I’d just got a pension from the king. And all because Master Benedict had taken me in, three and a half years ago.

“You think Sally would like some flowers?” I asked Tom.

He nudged the petals aside with his chin and grinned. “I bet she would.”

“You’re just going to keep saying that, aren’t you?”

“For the rest of my life.” He sneezed. “Which, at this rate, may not be all that long.”

I handed the girl a half crown—worth two shillings and sixpence, or the equivalent of thirty pennies. “Bring flowers for a week,” I said, “to Berkshire House, on Saint James’s Park. Say they’re for Sally Deschamps.”