The cart had left on the city side of Newgate, down the road that bore its name. So it was down his most familiar streets that he was taken, and he found comfort in naming them, distraction from his situation. As he peered between limbs stiffening and blue, for a moment he thought he might even glimpse the spire of his parish church, St. Martin’s Le Grand, wondered if he’d be able to restrain himself as the cart passed within a stone’s throw of his shut-up home. But he was spared the temptation. The vehicle turned left up Butcher Hall Lane, right onto Bull and Mouth Street, and then paralleled the Wall as far as the twisting lanes allowed, past Cripplegate to Moorgate, where the gate guards averted their eyes from the grisly cargo and waved it through.
Moorfields was the destination the d
