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a draught.’
    Marcelle was dumbstruck. She grasped the tray tightly and then, on shaking legs, she crept towards the centre of the room looking for somewhere amongst all the debris to put down the tray. Then the next sight sickened her. For on the table were two young starlings. They were alive but pegged down by their wings as they gasped and struggled to release themselves. Behind them was a headless rat and next to that lying very still was one of Mini’s black kittens. The tray crashed to the floor as Marcelle grabbed the kitten’s lifeless body and fled screaming hysterically down to the kitchen and straight into the arms of Abe.
    Having heard the crash and Marcelle’s sudden descent Annabelle came running in and tried to comfort the girl. But no one could console Marcelle as she hugged the dead kitten to her breast. ‘He killed it,’ she sobbed. ‘There are birds being hurt up there, too, it is terrible.’
    ‘The kitten died in the night,’ Annabelle explained, ‘so I gave him to Merlin. He did not hurt it.’
    ‘But why did you give it to him? What is he doing to those poor wild things?’ cried Marcelle. She was still trembling.
    Annabelle looked at Abe but he was flummoxed, too. ‘She’s a sensitive girl, all right. She ain’t going to let no one fool her. She’s too fond of animals,’ he told Annabelle quietly.
    Annabelle looked down at him disdainfully, and then turned back to Marcelle. ‘Listen, Marcelle,’ she said. ‘Merlin is a clever man. He makes sick people well, just as Our Lord did.’
    ‘Oh, do not say that!’ begged Marcelle. ‘It is evil what I saw up there,’ she cried. ‘Horrible faces looked at me. Demons live up there, I saw them.’ Her sobs became relentless. ‘My mother,’ she cried. ‘My poor mother, they killed her, poked her under the water with long sticks, they did, the evil ones.’
    Abe and Annabelle looked at each other in puzzlement. What preyed on this child’s mind? Whatever it was, Dour Thomas might have given them some warning.
    Marcelle was still clinging on to the limp body of the kitten and sobbing as if her heart would break. Abe knelt down beside her. ‘Come little one,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t take on so.’
    Annabelle swept out of the room and returned with Merlin behind her. In the light Marcelle could see that his straggly beard was dyed several colours and his hands stained with dye and blood. She took one look and started to scream again. But Merlin came over to her and placed those long fingers on her brow. She immediately went limp. ‘Sleep, little one, sleep in peace,’ Merlin said. He spoke the words slowly and distinctly and Marcelle lay down on the bench and closed her eyes. Her body was relaxed completely as she slept.
    Annabelle took the kitten and gave it back to Merlin who looked at the sleeping girl with a strange love in his eyes. ‘This child has been through a bad time,’ he said softly. ‘But it will not trouble her now. When she awakes she will have forgotten.’ Then taking the dead cat, he turned and glided out of the room with his stained robe flowing out behind him.
    Annabelle covered Marcelle with a rug. ‘Look after her, Abe,’ she said to her husband. ‘We had better not let her go up there anymore.’ With that, she returned to her boudoir upstairs.

5
    Whitehall
    Thomas Mayhew was at Whitehall, having spent many frustrating hours sitting in Robert Carr’s apartment waiting for his master to dress for the evening’s entertainment.
    ‘Stay here, Mayhew,’ Robert Carr had ordered. ‘I will probably need you,’ his voice was shrill and irritating.
    So Thomas sat waiting bored almost to tears, while Robert pranced and paraded around his chamber trying on first one coat then another. In the dressing room an old fellow was busy curling and primping his master’s blonde hair and a young lackey was sent chasing in and out for wine and the various potions and pills which his master mixed up and swallowed,