Chapter 3Early next morning, Gregory gathered the two dogs before the household awoke, as was his habit from boyhood. Pulling at their leads along Berwards Lane, the hounds eagerly trotted before him in anticipation of freedom. He set them loose on the green stretch of Spitalfield, where sections of the old Priory of St. Mary still stood.
It was a crisp, misty morning, and he was glad of his thick doublet. Gregory stamped his feet to keep warm and started to tramp around the field border to keep the dogs within sight in case one of them forgot themselves and went racing away after a rabbit over someone’s precious crops in the nearby market gardens.
When he first noticed the dirty bundle of cloth on the ground below the hedge, he assumed it had fallen unseen by the women as they laid out
