BRIDEWELL P ALACE WAS TYPICAL English in that, outside of whatever historical process had caused it to end up the way it was, it made no sense whatever. Like Botany, it could be Memorized but not Understood. The visitors had lost their bearings immediately, and by this point in the tour, none of them would have been surprised if Daniel had flung open a door to reveal a secret tunnel under the Thames, or a back entrance to the Inferno. But instead they found themselves on the uppermost storey of some wing, addition or out-building. Hannah Spates and her colleagues lived and worked here, in a large space under the heavy-burdened rafters of an ancient slate roof. It must have been as cold in the winter as it was stifling today; but it was dry, did not stink, had light from a few windows, and was not decorated with bleeding women. The rafters were steeply sloped, as if trying to shrug off their burden of stone flakes. This gave it the ambience of a Gothick church whose builders had succumbed to Black Death before they could kit it out with pews and pulpit.