But where in all this is Thomas? Katherine dodges through the crowds, a single woman with no maid, attracting stares from the men and comments she cannot even begin to understand. A moment later she is lost. She’s taken a wrong turn and is now in a narrowing lane, the way ahead blocked with all manner of foul-smelling filth, the upper storeys closing in on one another so that the occupants of one house could lean out of their windows and comfortably shake the hand of their neighbour. Two dogs and a pig compete for some stinking gobbet on the steps of one of the houses and as she passes the door of another it is slammed shut by an unseen hand.

The snow has turned to sleet, and the air is full of ashes, and someone pours a bucket of something from a window up ahead. She hears a laugh, bitter and humourless, and she picks up her hem and steps around a bloody hank of hair attached to a fragment of pale bone as rats slide away into the shadows. Coal smoke washes down the alleyway, catching her throat.

She turns up another alley and shadows move quickly towards her. She reverses to continue down the first alleyway. Dear God, she wishes Thomas were with her now. She stops. Ahead is a broad ditch, steaming and repugnant, a sewer where not even pigs venture.

Behind her a man is moving, two of them, emerging from the alleyway, one dragging his foot. They call to her and she feels her guts heave. She starts running, her pattens slipping in the filth, her new headdress slipping around her neck. She fumbles for the knife at her waist and draws it now, taking a crumb of comfort in its worn wooden handle. She jags past the dogs and the pig, and then hears one howl as it is kicked aside behind her.

‘Come here, missus!’

‘We only want to talk!’

She leaps up on to the walkway, slipping on the wet wood, catches a pillar, hauls herself up and runs on. She can feel their feet behind her. She throws herself out into the road, East Street, leading down past a friary to a little church and on through the east gate. A man on horseback has paused by the junction; wrapped in his cloak, a cap pulled down over his eyes, he is watching the processing carts. Katherine grasps his stirrup strap and turns to face her attackers.

He looks down.

‘Kit,’ he says.

It is Thomas.

‘Oh Christ,’ she says. ‘Thank God it is you.’

The relief overcomes her and she remains gripping his stirrup. He gets down and comes around from the other side of the horse.

‘I have been looking for you,’ he says. ‘I went back to the inn. The innkeeper said you had gone.’