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course were long gone. Nothing she’d acquired during her tenure with William was any color other than black, and though the fabrics were sometimes silken, all were plain Puritan style, with long sleeves, high necklines, and white collars that on occasion brushed the earlobes. Daniel had just come from the Continent, accustomed to the latest French fashions, so though the gray dress was hopelessly out of style for any country, at least it wasn’t unadorned, funereal black. For hair dressing she robbed an old hat of some feathers and pinned them securely over her right ear.
    At the door she had Sheila strap on her pattens, drew on her cloak and gloves against the spring breezes, placed the holder of her vizard between her teeth, and stepped out into the neighborhood, headed for Bank Side.
    Horse Shoe Alley, where Suzanne’s rented town house stood, was a place of bawd houses and pubs, where the streets teemed with the working and criminal classes. It was cheap and out of the way, suitable for the mistress of a Puritan who needed to hide his hypocrisy, but not so filthy as some other areas of London. Suzanne was a longtime resident and knew who her neighbors were, but a stranger shouldn’t care to be out and about these streets late at night.
    Off down Maid Lane stood the great old Elizabethan structure of the Globe Theatre, closed these past sixteen years. Beyond that towered the even older bear and bull baiting arenas, just as empty as all the theatres during the interregnum, when most forms of entertainment had been outlawed and the majority of theatres had been torn down. The neighborhood was hardly fashionable, even during the Commonwealth when the very idea of fashion was unfashionable and enjoyment of anything was a sin and evil to contemplate. Unforgivable sin apparently, since confession and absolution had been heresy for about a century and a half. Suzanne wasn’t Catholic, nor a particularly religious person, but even she was made jumpy by the idea that one could go to hell for wearing the wrong dress or stopping to watch a play. Even worse, to be arrested and incarcerated for it, for that was immediate misery. She longed for the days when those things hadn’t even been a question and one had been free to enjoy life.
    In any case, though the neighborhood she had lived in for the past two decades was rather dodgy, the house she lived in was sturdy, proof to the weather, not too terribly overrun withrats, and it boasted a kitchen roomy enough to please Sheila as well as southern-facing windows to let in whatever light could be had from the street. Today the sun was out, but still spring-thin and almost watery as it moved toward summer. The gentle warmth on her shoulders helped her think the meeting with Daniel could be a pleasant one. The neighborhood had a glow about it today, which could only mean good fortune. She didn’t need to consult her astrologer to know the stars were aligned well today. She could almost smell the hope drifting in the air.
    At the north end of the alley a narrow passage let out onto the Bank Side, which ran along the Thames between the Skin Market and the Bank End Stairs. Whenever the wind came from the west, the tannery stench of the Skin Market overpowered even the sewage-filled Thames with a reek that only the most seasoned residents could ignore. Fortunately today was not such a day, and only the ordinary smells of street food, horses, garbage, and dank river were evident during Suzanne’s walk from Horse Shoe Alley.
    Children played in the street, ones belonging to families in the house next to hers named Andrews and Williams. They kicked around an inflated pig’s bladder in an enthusiastic though unskilled game of football involving goals known only to the players. Most of the children were barefoot, though a couple wore ill-fitting shoes and one boasted a rag tied around one foot, which had probably been injured, though no limp was evident as she tore this way and that after