He is pointing at Thomas’s copy of the round window of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Thomas has added some colours since: reds and blues and yellows, and the design glows. The stationer offers some money for it, but Thomas shakes his head, and the old man hands the book back and they leave him just as the bells chime the half-hour.

Master Daud’s house is down the hill on the right. It looks shuttered and empty, but after Thomas pounds on the door, a blank-faced girl in a kirtle and a cloth cap opens up.

‘Is Mistress Daud at home?’ Katherine asks. Without a word the girl holds open the door and with quick glances at one another they go in. She shows them across a rush-strewn hall and into a wooden panelled parlour where the shuttered windows let in only a little light. There is a long table against one wall, and cushions on the window seats and tapestries of scenes she does not recognise on the walls. There are even silk rugs under their feet, but it is the books on tables all around the room that draw the eye, for they show up the worst of the dust. It lies everywhere, a pale coating half of an inch thick. It is as if no one has been in the room for weeks, maybe months, possibly years.

‘She always said you’d come one day,’ the maid says.

‘Who?’

‘Mistress Daud.’

‘But you don’t know who we are.’

The girl nods and withdraws.

‘Strange,’ Thomas says, his eyes on the books.

Katherine thinks for a moment. Then it hits her.

‘She doesn’t know he is dead.’

It has occurred to neither. Thomas starts shifting his feet and is tugging at his collar when the door opens again and a woman enters. She is tall and slight, with a high forehead, as if her hair is plucked, and skin pale as ivory. She wears a dress dyed the colour of old sage leaves, with sleeves that droop to the floor, and once inside she stands unnaturally still, her only movement from her elbow as she gestures to the maid to offer the wine she has brought in on a silver tray.

‘Good day, Mistress Daud,’ Katherine begins. Her voice sounds loud in her own ears.

‘Good day to you,’ Mistress Daud whispers. Her eyes are fixed on Katherine’s. They are almost as pale as her face, tinged yellow. For a moment Katherine does not know how to start. Mistress Daud remains immobile while her girl passes them each a silver cup.

‘He is dead, isn’t he?’ the woman says.

After a moment Katherine nods. Mistress Daud closes her eyes. When she opens them such light as was there has faded further.

‘It is as I feared,’ she says. ‘God has not looked kindly on me.’

God has not looked kindly on the pardoner, either, Katherine thinks.