This was Tuesday. Friday was a Hanging-Day at Tyburn. The streets would be impassable then, and on Thursday. Meat that was brought into the city on the hoof today or tomorrow would fetch a good price later in the week; accordingly, every few minutes a drover would come by, moving a small herd of doomed cattle down towards Smithfield. So the usual traffic of hay-wains, manure-carts, and holiday-makers coming back down from the open swales to the north of town, had to be crammed into the intervals between these herds. Northbound pedestrians, such as Saturn and Sean Partry, had a bad time of it. They entered the shop in a choleric mood, smelling of all the cow-shit they’d been forced to step in. But compared to Newgate this smelled like the gardens of Shalimar.