Cudder pulled his dressing-gown over his round little stomach and knotted it tightly. He would have someone’s bollocks hung on the ironwork outside his front door if there was anything but a good reason for this, he thought, as he lit the stub of a greasy candle and felt his way down the stairs and into the hallway of his narrow house in Thames Reach. What fat-shanked whore’s purse had pulled his bell at this hour? What lifeless, fightless, old buttocks of a fool had the nerve to bang on his door with the force and bombast of a Turk’s cannon? Was it not known that Walter Cudder was a man of importance? A man whose sleep mattered? A man who, if he arrived at his place of work in the kitchens of the royal personage under-rested, might make a mistake with the tasting spoon?

Now, there it was again, that confounded bang-banging, as though the mayor of London himself stood with his silver mace and bashed at the Cudder door.

‘Wait will you! Wait!’ he called.

He put his eye to the peep-hole. A man stood out there with rain pouring onto his leather cap and a pair of little eyes in his head topped by great black beetles for eyebrows. It was Welton of all people, Cudder's under-taster, and behind him were soldiers of the King’s Guard, all of them milling about like men who haven’t any enthusiasm at all for their task in hand.

And then, hard by his ear, Welton shouting ‘Come out Master Cudder! Come out. You are undone! Shall we break down this door? Come out!’

Through the keyhole Cudder whispers. ‘Blast you Welton, what is it? What manner of excuse have you for this interruption to the Cudder household? Eh?’

‘Household?’ replied Welton, kneeling low. ‘Well that is just it. Your household is no more. You are undone Master. Now open. Open!’

‘Take your foul old bachelor’s breath away from my keyhole man, and tell me what this business is!’

But Welton had turned away from the door. He gestured to the soldiers, two of whom advanced, each with a woodcutter’s axe.

‘The king is ill Master Cudder,’ Welton called. ‘Near-dead this night from poison. And you are to pay.’

He stepped aside and the soldiers attacked the front door with careless, vicious strokes. The door collapsed. The soldiers entered and put swords to Cudder’s thin, old neck.

‘You are out, Master, and I am in, and this house is mine.'