‘But...’

‘Also, I might as well warn you, Sir Robert is wary of taking regular money, but he might be persuaded to accept a gift.’ The servant grinned widely, showing a very black set of teeth. ‘I can usually convince him if I set my mind to it.’

This Thomas understood. He nodded sadly. ‘But my ledger...’

‘Well, you’ve lost it for the moment, sir, you might as well...’

Carey poked his head back round the door.

‘I forgot to ask. What was the name of the pedlar you didn’t buy the horse from?’

‘Daniel Swanders.’

Carey’s face lit up.

‘Splendid. At least that’s the truth,’ he said. ‘Do you know where he is?’

‘No sir.’

‘Let me know if you find out. Goodbye to you.’

THURSDAY, 22ND JUNE, 11 A.M.

Barnabus had run back to the castle, stored the ledger in Carey’s lock-up chest, and run back again to find Carey drinking ale at a small boozing den on the corner of Scotch Street.

‘You know the establishment, do you?’ said Carey, nodding at Barnabus to sit down and refresh himself.

‘Of course, sir.’

Carey smiled. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘There’s a backdoor leading into a courtyard and then into another alley and it’s backed onto the castle wall. Madam Hetherington...’

‘Good God, another one?’

‘Yes sir, I believe she’s a distant cousin.’

‘Go on.’

‘Madam Hetherington is from London and it’s a very well-ordered house: she has six girls, one Irish, two Scots, one French and two English...’

‘Pox?’

‘Not as far as I could see.’ Carey grunted and drank. ‘It’s expensive, a shilling a room, not including food or drink or clean sheets...’

Carey was surprised. ‘She provides clean sheets, does she?’

‘Only if you pay for it,’ said Barnabus, who hadn’t bothered. ‘There’s a man called Arthur Musgrave acts as her henchman and this man Daniel Swanders...’

‘Late of Berwick town...’

‘...was playing dice there when I went yesterday.’

‘Any good?’

‘He had a couple of bales of crooked dice, a highman and a lowman and one with a bristle on the pip, but he hasn’t the way of using them properly yet. I was going to give him lessons.’

Carey laughed. ‘I’m sure you’ll make a fine teacher.’

‘Well, it offends me, sir. I like to see a craft practised well and he was trying but it was no good. Madam Hetherington says she’ll pay me for the teaching, if you take my meaning, sir.’

‘I have no intention of offending Madam Hetherington,’ said Carey. ‘She might well object to me arresting someone in her house. On the other hand, I want a quiet chat with Swanders.’

Suddenly he leaned forward.

‘This is what we’ll do.’

THURSDAY, 22ND JUNE, NOON

Daniel Swanders had only just crawled blearily out of a tangle of blankets next to the fire in the kitchen of Madam Hetherington’s. The girls were all at their meal at the big table, laughing and chatting and making occasional snide comments to each other. The curling tongs were heating up on the hearth and a couple of pints of ointment, guaranteed to help a man’s prowess, were being strained into little pots by Madam Hetherington’s cook. The smell was awful: rendered lard and lavender, rosemary and pepper.

‘Good morning, ladies,’ he yawned as he pulled on his jerkin and shambled to the table. ‘Any room for a little one?’

The girls shoved up for him, packing their petticoat-covered bumrolls together and making an enchanting sight with their hair pinned roughly and their breasts pushed up by their corsets. Two of them were magnificent that way and with typical female perversity, Madam Hetherington insisted that they wore high-necked smocks, the better to entice the customer into wanting to undress them.

‘This is Barnabus Cooke, Daniel,’ she said. ‘Are you listening?’

‘Yes mistress,’ said Daniel humbly. ‘I’m sorry, I was only admiring Maria.’

‘Maria, cover yourself, you’re not working now. I want you to pay attention to what Barnabus teaches you, since he’s a master craftsman at this game.’

‘Yes mistress.’

Barnabus Cooke gave him a considering look and then said, ‘Madam Hetherington, I’m happy to teach Swanders some of my secrets but they’re worthless if everyone knows them, so...’

‘Of course,’ agreed Madam Hetherington, ‘you may use the private banqueting room at the back, no one is using it.’

Arthur Musgrave came struggling in with his arms full of firewood and glowered at Barnabus who smiled back and raised his hat.

‘I was going to suggest the courtyard, but the private room is even better,’ he said. ‘Come on, Daniel.’

The smell of roast beef and wine always clung to the walls of the private room which occasionally saw some very strange behaviour. Barnabus carefully cleared the rushes away from the floor at one end of the big table and then went to the glass-paned window and opened it.

‘Well, here we are,’ he said loudly, breathing deeply. ‘Let’s begin with the basics of palming dice. After all, it’s no good using highmen if you can’t swap them for lowmen when your opponent is playing, is it?

‘This is called Find the Lady,’ said Barnabus wisely, ‘and it’s not much good for catching coneys in London now, since even the coneys have heard of it, but you might find it worthwhile here or in Scotland. The idea is they bet on where the Lady—the die—is going to end up. See it’s all done with the fingers, like that. All right? Now you try.’

Daniel tried and found it much harder than he had thought at first and very different from the way he usually palmed dice. For ten minutes he moved the beakers and tried to shift the dice without being spotted by Barnabus’s beady eye, and although Barnabus said he was improving, he felt a little the way he had when his father had first begun teaching him the ways of persuading people to buy. There was so much to learn, so little time, and so many men who were better at it than him, he became quite depressed. Though that could have been the effect of living with so many beautiful girls and no money to pay them.