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Jack’s hand.
    â€˜Leave it, will you?’ Jack snatched it away.
    â€˜Did you steal it or what?’
    Down the lane, Peg was shaking her head gravely. Her neighbours were standing around at a discreet distance, but all within earshot.
    â€˜What you going to do with it, Jack?’
    â€˜Shh!’
    â€˜You going to sell it?’
    Peg and Tom were nodding together and, with a sudden sense of horror, Jack understood that they were allies. Peg wasn’t defending him against the blacksmith’s wrath, she was in agreement with him. There was no one now, no one in the world who would shelter him. He felt suddenly, desperately alone.
    Tom shifted his weight and turned to look up the lane. Jack ducked rapidly behind the cornerstone, but Sally had lost all awareness of the danger.
    â€˜You going to bring it to Nancy?’ she said. ‘Can I come with you?’
    Jack didn’t answer. Shaking free of the girl, he got up and ran back the way he had come. But this time he didn’t go far. Despite her irritating curiosity, Sally had been useful. Not only had she saved Jack from walking straight into a trap, she had also given him an idea that he might not have come up with himself.
    Nancy.

Chapter Four
    T HE MARKET WAS A dangerous place for Jack to be. He was there nearly every day, running one sort of errand or another, and most of the stall holders knew him by name. Although he had no way of knowing whether Tom had put the word out about him, he was certain that everyone would have heard about the abandoned pony and cart, and that it would soon get back to the blacksmith if he was seen. So instead of walking through the centre, he arrived by way of the back lanes and alleys. This brought him out at the end of one of the side streets that radiated outwards from the market square.
    These streets were never too busy. The stalls which lined them offered specialist wares which people didn’t need every day. Shoemakers set up on low stools with their lasts and tools spread out in front of them. Tailors patched and altered and occasionally got an order for a new garment. New pots and pans could be bought from the ironmongers in the square, but out here, tinkers mended old ones. Beside them, men with whetstones sharpened knives and scissors and shears. Bakers passed through with trays of penny loaves, and among them all, children dodged and begged and thieved.
    Nancy was well known to every one of them, and to many more besides. Her little stall at the top of the street sold anything old that had any use left in it at all. She sold dented ladles and bent spoons and billy-cans ten times mended. She sold chipped chamber pots, buckets without handles, bits of rusted harness, twig brooms, butter churns. Best of all, for the hungry children of the town, she sold buttons and buckles and bootlaces, hooks and handles and hairpins, needles, thimbles, harness rings; all those small things that got dropped from time to time around the place and could be found by sharp eyes and retrieved by nimble fingers. A good collection of things might earn a small coin, but in general Nancy paid her suppliers with a piece of toffee or a pickled onion or, in the season, a plum or an apple. No one, whether they were buying or selling, ever left Nancy’s stall feeling cheated. She was known throughout the entire city. If it wasn’t to be found anywhere else, Nancy was sure to have it.
    She was there as usual, sitting broadly on a chair with three and a half legs and no back. Jack waited, hugging the shadows of a workshop door until a couple of women who were browsing through boxes of oddments got bored and wandered on to the basket maker on the next stall. Then he darted over and slipped in between Nancy’s stout knee and a stack of boxes filled with dented pewter. Nancy whooped with surprise, then burst out laughing.
    â€˜Gracious, Jack. What will you be up to next?’
    Jack put a finger to his lips and shook his