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while you loiter as if betting on the bearbaiting. Will you deprive me of my servant below-stairs and my companion above for such a paltry sum?”
    “I fail to take your meaning, sir,” said Mr Alleyn, looking towards the row of daughters as if the Dean had an ample supply of waiting-women in reserve.
    “You are a cold-hearted lover. What price can you put upon my daughter’s love? She has offered you all her riches.”
    What riches were these? Unless Pegge had missed one of her father’s thrusts, all he had offered was a lease worth a scant £500 at Michaelmas.
    “I have matched your offer,” Mr Alleyn said, shifting his buttocks.
    He was a big man, and prolonged sitting had stiffened him, filling up his legs with blood. As he worked the pain out of his large hams, Con sprang up and grasped the bottle of sack. Pegge watched her sister lean over to pour him a measure and let her hand glide down his arm, until his neck reddened and his eyes met hers.
    “She is young enough to be your daughter,” their father persisted, doing the calculation on his bony fingers, “in fact, your granddaughter.”
    There was a skill to this that Pegge admired. Mr Alleyn was made to feel ashamed of claiming a woman forty years his junior when, at twenty-one, the bride was past the flower of marrying. Con had been losing currency for five years and even Lucy and Bridget were being discounted daily. Lucy would be bartered off next, then Bridget, then Pegge. Her father was playing the hypocrite by arranging marriages for his daughters, though he had made a famous love-match for himself.
    The Dean’s lesson in arithmetic seemed to have frightened Mr Alleyn. “I shall be most generous upon my death,”he blurted out. “My widow shall receive another £500 when I die.”
    “Much can be said in favour of an older husband,” acknowledged their father, his tone more cordial now. “I am sure that you can be persuaded to find even more love where you have found this much already. What say you to £1,300?” Without allowing time for a rebuttal, he clapped his thigh and stood, his priest’s stockings still cowering around his ankles. “Come into my library, Grymes. Let us draw up an agreement for these young lovers. Enjoy your glass at leisure, Mr Alleyn! Constance, the sack, do not begrudge the sack, our guest is thirsty.”
    Uncle Grymes cast a regretful glance back at the bottle, and Con slipped into his chair to dish out Mr Alleyn’s pudding. She helped him to some syrup, as if he could not tip the jug himself. Pegge let the syrup run off her own knife and drizzle onto the table, until Con kicked her in the leg. Was this the man who had played Tamburlaine the Great, declaiming the immortal lines of Marlowe? Mr Alleyn had proved a disappointment, content to have the spittle wiped from his lips, a bitten and sorry bear.
    And what of that flea bite upon her father’s ankle? He was fond of pointing out the dangers of such minuscule things. Pins and combs and pulled hairs could gangrene and kill, he told his children, and men could laugh themselves to death. That flea bite had looked remarkably like the points of Con’s scissors to Pegge. She had often received a bite from them herself when she had provoked her sister. Her arm was pinked with Con’s anger, a row of chicken feet blooming from wrist to elbow.
    A pink was a small thing, a pale-red flower or a squinting eye. Even the small finger on which her father wore his diamond ring. But it was also, Pegge knew, a small and deadly warship.

    Pegge wanted to be the first to tell Izaak Walton about Con’s betrothal. Down on her knees in St Paul’s the next morning, Pegge ran her thumb over the initials Iz. Wa. scratched into Duke Humphrey’s tomb where, later in the day, the loiterers would play cards and drink, barely turning their backs to relieve themselves. Their wide boots made their hips thrust out like ships rolling at anchor, but Walton had an easy sway, a confidence of bone and