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Royal household, and I dose him weekly to maintain a regimen of good physick.”

    To Ned this was all news. He tried hard to look healthy and respectful, though his daemon saw fit to question whether this was a concocted story for the benefit of their particular visitor? Or was Mistress Black still consorting with that notorious trafficker in dark arts, Dr Caerleon?

    It didn’t matter. Lady Dellingham gave him the sort of long nosed, questioning stare he was sure she bestowed upon known lepers and ‘sweats’ victims. “Ahemm, if that is so…”

    Lady Dellingham left the statement open and shifted her bulk up from the chair in a slow ponderous upheaval and, ignoring his instant and very courtly bow, turned to her son. “Walter I leave you in the care of these two. Remember that in the city the devil lays out snares even for the pious.” Then giving both Ned and Meg a final lemon–sucking, pinch–mouthed glare, she strode out of the suddenly opened door.

    Ned was the first to recover from the abrupt departure and gave his companion–in–care a quizzical shrug before walking over to Walter with a friendly smile. “So Walter, what do you want to do and where do you want to go now you’re in the premier city of the kingdom?”

    Their mousy charge gave them both a timid hesitant smile that would shame a cony, and stared at them with those bulging, watery eyes and murmured his request. Later on Ned would curse that as his greatest mistake. If only Meg Black had spoken first the trouble may have been less. But then, when Lady Fortuna deals you a Ruff hand, it pays to play it bold.
    ***

Chapter Three: The Relics of London
    Ned wasn’t impressed. In fact to be honest, the sermon was boring. He lent against the stone pillar impatiently waiting for the service to finish. In the past he’d found the celebratory masses a real pageant of colour and the singing was as if angels had come to earth. As for the vaulting arches and painted ceiling of St Paul’s, the greatest cathedral in the country, it was still magnificent, especially when the light cascaded in a rainbow waterfall through the stained glass windows. Once upon a time when he was young and innocent, this had all been the most majestic experience, and even in the company of his uncle, the Christmas service was a glorious wonder bringing the treasure of the birth of our Saviour to life.

    Now however, a few years later, he felt jaded and cynical. Almost losing his life while caught up in a treasonous plot of the premier prelate in England had caused a monumental crisis in faith. After that the scales, to use a biblical phrase, had fallen from his eyes. Since then, he’d done some serious thinking and an awful lot of heretical reading. Erasmus of Rotterdam’s The Praise of Folly, an acceptable Church tolerated tome, had been the first. In it Ned had discovered that the flaws, faults and corruption of the Church looked so much worse when delivered in a satirical, chiding tone. Erasmus had lampooned the pompous vanity of Cardinals and the self serving priests, keener for gold than God. It had slotted in very nicely with Simon Fishes A Supplication of Beggars, which detailed the ravenous exactions of the Church in England. The part on indulgences and purgatory had been particularly interesting.

They say also that if there were a purgatory, and also if that the Pope with his pardons for money may deliver one soul then: he may deliver him without money: if he deliver one he may deliver a thousand: if he may deliver a thousand then he may deliver them all and so destroy purgatory. Then is he a cruel tyrant without charity if he keep them there in prison and in pain till men give him money.

    So simple. Ned had to admit it sounded an awful lot like how Cardinal Wolsey had acted in the courts. A decent ‘gift’ and you gained the verdict you wanted. It seemed to him such a betrayal, that Holy Mother Church also saw no difference in the gaining of access to Heaven.