Marion glanced quickly round. 'Gently, Zacchary,' she said. 'Don't take any notice of me, if I think of speaking to him.'
Zacchary fell back, his face sombre; the world seemed very much awry.
In the meantime, Marion's wits were hard at work. She was walking slowly on.
'Now I think I want to buy a yard of ribbon I had forgotten, for my aunt's lavender cap. Did you not see how the ribbon was worn, Simone?'
Simone made a slight moue. 'As you like, Mademoiselle.'
The haberdasher's shop was at the extreme end of the street down which, Marion had noted, the sailor had gone. Making a detour, she entered the street from another direction, timing her arrival at the door so that the clumsy figure rolled by just after she had bidden Simone enter the shop. Zacchary stood a few paces away, chewing a straw, his eyes in the opposite direction. Marion followed the sailor a couple of yards.
'Jack!'
The man stopped and turned, a smile lighting up his features as he recognised the speaker. Marion looked affectionately up into the face of the sailor-boy of her childhood's days. The rough beard he had assumed for a disguise changed him greatly. But the merry eyes were the same. Marion went straight to the point.
'This is a great danger for you, Jack.'
Poole nodded. 'I couldn't stay down along, or sail, or anything, with Master Roger in gaol, Mistress Marion.'