Edmund rose early. He saddled the bay and rode slowly down the High Street. St John’s, where he was baptized, in its grove of yews; the Grammar School in the old monastic hospital, where Dr Beard taught him Latin and sums and Scripture. The squat pile of All Soul’s in the market square, the Cromwell crypt beneath the chancel. Someone sweeping out the Falcon Inn, someone beating a rug out the first-floor window. A fat sheep painted on a creaking sign hanging from the Shire Hall.  A drunk snoring in the doorway of the Three Tuns; Edmund clenched his jaw, looked away down Cobbler’s Lane where prisoners, beneath the bored gaze of  a yawning beadle, shoveled filth into a barrow. The bay nickered, disapprovingly it seemed.