Fool! Idiot girl! I berated myself with increasing fury over the following days. A sensible woman, he called you. A businesswoman. And you let yourself be gulled. He knew how to dupe you, to wind you ’round his grubby fingers!

By God he did! By the end of the week I knew I had seen the last of my morning gift. Greseley was elusive, exchanging not one word with me and avoiding my attempts to catch his eye. And when my impatience overcame my discretion…“What have you done with…” I hissed in his ear as he slid onto a stool to break his fast.

“Pass the jug of ale, if you please, mistress,” was all I got. With one gulp he emptied his cup, crammed bread into his mouth, and left the room before I could pester him further.

“Stir this pot,” Signora Damiata ordered, handing over a spoon.

So there was no chance of my hunting him down, and later that day he was sent into the city on business that kept him away overnight.

How could I have been so ingenuous as to trust a man I barely knew? I had lost it. I had lost it all! I would never see one of those coins again, and my misery festered, even though I was kept hopping from morning to night. My mind began to linger on the effect of a large spoonful of wolfsbane on the scrawny frame of the clerk.

And then Greseley returned. Well, he wouldn’t get away with ignoring me this time. Was he suffering from guilt? If he was, it did nothing to impair his appetite, as he chomped his way through slices of beef and half a flat bread, completely undisturbed by my scowling at him across the board.

“We need to talk,” I whispered, nudging him between his shoulder blades when I smacked a dish of herring in front of him.

His answering stare was cold and clear and without expression.

“Careful, girl!” snapped the Signora. “That dish! We’re not made of money!”

Greseley continued to eat with relish, but as I cleared the dishes, he produced a roll of a document from the breast of his tunic, like a coney magicked from the sleeve of a second-rate jongleur, and tapped it against his fingertips before sliding it into an empty jug standing on the hearth, out of the Signora’s line of sight. It was not out of mine. My fingers itched to take it. I could sense it, like a burning brand below my heart.

At last. The kitchen was empty: Janyn closed the door on himself and his ledgers, the Signora climbed the stair to her chamber, and I took the scroll from its hiding place and carried it to my room. Unrolling it carefully, I read the black script. No easy task! The legal words meant nothing to me, the phrases hard on my understanding, the script small and close written. But there was no doubting it. He had done what he had promised. There was my name: Alice Perrers. I was the owner of property in Gracechurch Street in the city of London.

I held it in my hands, staring at it as if it might vanish if I looked away. Mine. It was mine. But what was it? And more important, what did I do with it?

I ran Greseley to ground early the next morning with his feet up on a trestle and a pot of ale beside him.

“It’s all very well—but what am I expected to do with it?”

He looked at me as if I were stupid. “Nothing but enjoy the profits, mistress.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I doesn’t matter whether you do or not. It’s yours.”

He was watching me closely, as if to test my reaction. I did not see why he should, so I said what I wanted to say.

“It does matter.” And in that moment it struck home how much it meant to me. “It matters to me more than you’ll ever know.” I glowered. “You won’t patronize me, Master Greseley. You will explain it all to me, and then I will understand. The property is mine and I want to know how it works.”

He laughed. He actually laughed, a harsh bark of noise.

“Now what?”

“I knew I was right.”

“About what?”

“You, Mistress Perrers. Sit down! And don’t argue! I’m about to give you your first lesson.”

So I did, and Greseley explained to me the brilliance for a woman in my position of the legal device of “enfeoffment to use.” “The property is yours; it remains yours,” he explained. “But you allow others to administer it for you—for a fee, of course. You must choose wisely—a man with an interest in the property so that he will administer it well. Do you understand?” I nodded. “You grant that man legal rights over the land, but you retain de facto control. See? You remain in ultimate ownership but need do nothing in the day-to-day running of it.”

“And can I make the agreement between us as long or as short as I wish?”

“Yes.”

“And I suppose I need a man of law to oversee this for me?”

“It would be wise.”

“What is it—this property that I now own, but do not own?”

“Living accommodations—with shops below.”

What else did I need to ask? “Was there any money left over from the transaction?”

“You don’t miss much, do you?” He tipped out the contents of the purse at his belt and pushed across the board a small number of coins.

“You said I needed a man of law.” He regarded me without expression. “I suppose you would be my man of law.”

“I certainly could. Next time, we will work in partnership.”

“Will there be a next time?”

“Oh, I think so.” I thought the slide of his glance had a depth of craftiness.

“Is that good or bad—to work in partnership?”

Greseley’s pointed nose sniffed at my ignorance. He knew I could not work alone. But it seemed good to me. What strides I had made. I was a wife of sorts, even if I spent my nights checking Janyn’s tally sticks and columns of figures, and now I was a property owner. A little ripple of pleasure brushed along the skin of my forearms as the idea engaged my mind and my emotions. I liked it. And in my first deliberate business transaction I pushed the coins back toward Greseley.

“This is my…What is the word? Retainer? You are now my man of law, Master Greseley.”

“I am indeed, Mistress Perrers.”

The coins were swept into his purse with alacrity.

And where did I keep the evidence of my ownership? I kept it hidden on my person between shift and overgown, tied with a cord, except when I took it out and touched it, running my fingers over the words that made it all official. There it was for my future. Security. Permanence. The words were like warm hands around mine on a winter’s day.

I did not dislike Greseley as much as I once had.

Plague returned. The same dread pestilence that had struck without mercy just before my birth came creeping stealthily into London. It was the only gossip to be had in the streets, the market, the alehouses. It was different this time, so they said in whispers. The plague of children, they called it, striking cruelly at infants but not the hale and hearty who had reached adult years.

But the pestilence, stepping over our threshold, proved to be a chancy creature.

Of us all it was Janyn who was struck down. He drew aside the sleeve of his tunic to reveal the dread whirls of red spots as we gathered for dinner on an ordinary day. We stared at the signs as if we could not believe in their existence. The meal was abandoned. Without a word Janyn walked up the stairs and shut himself in his chamber. Terror, rank and loathsome, set its claws into the Perrers household.

The boy disappeared overnight. Greseley found work in other parts of London. Mistress Damiata fled with disgraceful speed to stay with her cousin, whose house was uncontaminated. Who nursed Janyn? I did. I was his wife, even if he had never touched me unless his calloused fingers grazed mine when he pointed out a mistake in my copying. I owed him at least this final service.

From that first red-and-purple pattern on his arms there was no recovery.

I bathed his face and body, holding my breath at the stench of putrefying flesh. I racked my brains for anything Sister Margery had said of her experiences of the pestilence. It was not much but I acted on it, flinging the windows of Janyn’s chamber wide to allow the escape of the corrupt air. For my own safety I washed my hands and face in vinegar, and ate bread soaked in Janyn’s best wine—how Signora Damiata would have ranted at the waste—but for Janyn nothing halted the terrifying onset. The empty house echoed around me, the only sound the harsh breathing from my stricken husband and the approaching footsteps of death.

Was I afraid for myself?

I was, but if the horror of the vile swellings could pass from Janyn to me, the damage was already done. If the pestilence had the ability to hop across the desk where we sat to keep the ledgers, then I was already doomed. I would stay and weather the storm.

A note appeared under the bedchamber door. I watched it slide slowly, from my position slumped on a stool from sheer exhaustion as Janyn labored with increasingly distressed breaths. The fever had him in its thrall. Stepping softly to the door, listening to someone walking quietly away, I picked up the note and unfolded the single page, curiosity overcoming my weariness. Ha! No mystery after all. I recognized Greseley’s script with ease, and the content was written as a clerk might write a legal treatise. I sank back to the stool to read.

When you are a widow you have legal right to a dower—one-third of the income of your husband’s estate. You will not get it.

You have by law forty days in which to vacate the house: for the good of the heir—her nephew—who will take his inheritance. You will be evicted within the day.

As your legal man, my advice: Take what you can. It is your right. You will get nothing else that is due to you.

A stark warning. A chilling one.