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landed was a job in a seamen’s ale house, washing the pots and scrubbing the floors. Her bed consisted of a few sacks in the cellar.
    It was around Michaelmas when the landlord threw her out. He said she’d stolen some money, but that wasn’t true. All she’d done was refuse to let him have his way with her. Without a reference she couldn’t get another job, and she was too proud to go home to Fowey to hear ‘I told you so’.
    The moment she met Thomas Coogan down by the harbour, she knew that she was on the way to hell in a handcart. Surely no decent young woman would allow a complete stranger to buy her a dinner, let him hold her hand, and not run a mile when he suggested she stayed with him until she found another job? But there wassomething about his lean, bony face, the sparkle in his blue eyes, and the stories he told her of voyages to France and Spain that captivated her.
    Thomas wasn’t bound by any of the rules Mary had been brought up with. He cared nothing for the King, Church, or indeed any authority. He had a gentlemanly manner and was fastidious about his appearance, and he was more fun to be with than anyone she’d ever met before.
    Maybe it was partly because he seemed to desire her so much, to hold her and kiss her. No man had ever wanted her that way before, they saw her just as a friend. Thomas said she was beautiful, that her grey eyes were like a brewing storm and her lips made to be kissed.
    That first day with him was utterly magical. It rained hard and he took her into a tavern by the harbour and dried her cloak in front of the fire. He introduced her to rum too. She didn’t like the taste, or the way it burned her throat, but she did like the way he leaned forward and licked her lips lightly with the point of his tongue. ‘It tastes like nectar on you,’ he whispered. ‘Drink up, my lovely, it will warm you all over.’
    He made her feel so wanton, her whole body seemed to glow, and it wasn’t just the rum. It was his wit, the feel of his hand in hers, the suggestion that she was on the brink of something dangerous yet wonderful too.
    With hindsight she ought to have suspected there was something amiss when he never attempted to bed her. He kissed her passionately and told her he loved her, but it never went any further than that. At the time Mary hadfoolishly believed his caution was out of love and respect for her, but it was only later she discovered the truth.
    Thomas Coogan cared for no one but himself. He was a pick-pocket, and when he’d spotted her crying down by the harbour, he knew her well-scrubbed, innocent country girl appearance would make her an ideal accomplice. All it took was a few sympathetic words to win her trust.
    It never crossed Mary’s mind in the first few weeks after meeting him that as they stood arm in arm looking in shop windows or strolled around the market, he was often engaged in helping himself to someone’s pocket-book, fob-watch or other valuable with his spare hand. She was too enamoured with his charm, excited by his interesting friends and acquaintances, and bowled over by his generosity to her to study him closely.
    By the time she did become aware of it, she was so entrenched in his easy, fun way of life that he could have told her he was a grave robber and she wouldn’t have turned a hair. When he disappeared just after Christmas, leaving her in the dwelling-house he’d taken her to, she was inconsolable.
    The chances were that he’d been caught by the constables, and that was what made her fall in with Mary Haydon and Catherine Fryer. She didn’t want to lose face with these two cut-purses, whom Thomas had held in such high esteem. They appeared so worldly, so very daring, and she needed money to pay the rent on Thomas’s room for when he came back.
    At first she was just a lookout while the other twosnipped off purses in the crowded streets and markets. Sometimes she caused a diversion by pretending to faint or claiming that she’d had