The poisoned chalice

bequeathed to him by his father. He had not yet unleashed his army of tax gatherers, commissioners, purveyors and assessors. The bridges were mended, the ruts in the roads filled in, the spring corn sown, and fat-tailed sheep browsed in the fields.
    Oh, there were signs of the furies to come. At crossroads the gibbets provided plump carrion for the hungry crows and ravens; landless men turned out of their fields as the great lords changed to tending sheep rather than raising crops. Some were sturdy beggars, thieves and rogues but now and again you passed the honest yeomen, the skeletal, white-faced, puny children and worried, dark-eyed wives who tramped the roads looking for work. Shallot did what he could. I have a list of vices as long as your arm but I am not mean. I scattered pennies and rode on like a young lord through Aldgate and into London.
    Now, I have always loved that city, its stench, the colour, bustle and noise, the way the blood beats ever faster through your veins. I had worked there many years before as a footman in one of old Mother Nightbird's molly houses, from where she sold plump, perfumed flesh to the great lords and merchants of the city. Now things were different. At nineteen Shallot was virtuous, a prosperous man soon to be a merchant prince who would show both Master Benjamin and the great Wolsey that he could rise without their help. I rode through Cheapside, greedily drinking in the sights and sounds. I noted with envy the gold-embossed timber mansions of the merchants, the stalls in front of them piled high with goods of every kind: rich cloth of gold, rolls of murrey, silks and satins, leather bottles, Spanish riding boots, gold cord and testers, blankets of pure wool, and tapestries heavy with silver needlework and gold filigree.
    The air dinned with the cries of the apprentices, the roar of the crowd, the curses of carpenters, whilst in every corner hawkers and tinkers shouted their wares. Young nobles from the court, their horses' harness shining in the sunlight, rode through with hawks, falcons and peregrines perched on their wrists, cruel faces hidden by small leather hoods, jesses tinkling like the bells of a tiny church.
    I found the Golden Turk where it nestled in a small alleyway, just beneath the great mass of St Paul's. A fine, well-kept establishment, three storeys high, made all the more welcoming by horn-glazed windows, the beams smartly painted and the white plaster glowing like freshly laid snow. The landlord knew me, for Benjamin and I often lodged there when we came up to town. I did think of going down to Syon House but remembered Benjamin's instructions never to approach Johanna without him being present for she dwelt in a twilight world where every man, except Benjamin, was her seducer. So I made myself at home at the Golden Turk; the two-faced landlord greeted me civilly enough, providing a chamber on the second floor with a pallet bed and a few sticks of furniture. He also promised to change the sheets and rushes at least once every six weeks, provide stabling for my horse as well as a meal at morning and night for myself. On my first day there I acted like a young lord, lying on my bed, my boots on, sipping from a cup of canary and wondering what steps I should take next.
    However, business is business and pleasure is pleasure. I went down to the tap room and ordered a meal though I was hungrier for the dark-eyed slattern I had glimpsed on my last visit with Benjamin.
    She was a veritable Venus with her dark eyes and black, curling hair which tumbled down to her shoulders. And what shoulders! White as marble, with the juiciest and roundest pair of tits I had ever clapped eyes on. (There goes my chaplain again, squirming on his stool. I notice he does that whenever I talk about my 'amours', my little love trysts. The colour of his face always reddens just as it does when fat Margot, the launderess, who keeps me supplied with cups of sack, bends and dips to provide me with a generous view of the most famous cleavage in all of Surrey.)
    Anyway, on that spring day so many years ago, I lounged around, teasing and humouring the girl. Now you know the way of the flesh! A glance, a smile, a love cup shared, silver exchanged, then heigh-ho to the bed-chamber. Lack-aday, lackaday, what a time we had! We bounced round on that pallet bed, so much laughing and shouting that the landlord came up. He banged on our door, saying he was running an honest house, not some bawdy