Most profoundly did I long to be out of this hovel, but knew that I would not be allowed to leave until I had performed my examination, for at the door to Nell's cottage were pressed the parents and brothers of the dead Sarah, their mouths full of accusation and cries for justice, and accompanied by others of the village, all having an unmistakable air of poverty and wretchedness upon them and thus causing me to wonder if they – who looked to me today for a judgement – would look to me tomorrow for sixpences.

Hoping to get the matter done with as speedily as I could, I approached Nell and told her, as gently as I was able, that I accused her of nothing, but, as sometime physician at Whitehall (I did not tell her my patients had been dogs), I was there "to look at this small thing upon your neck and see what manner of fleshy matter it truly is."

Nell turned upon me, then, her dog's eyes, pulling her shawl up round her chin, as if to bandage a wound. "Succuba… Devil's Woman… what words they lay upon me! Words from the very hell of their own skulls. But God knows my heart and I have done no evil spell in all my days…" Nell ranted on thus, her eyes staring the while at my badger tabard, in which, slightly to my surprise, I found myself still attired. Sackpole repeatedly tried to interrupt Nell's protestations of innocence, but what I now began to perceive was that Nell was so fascinated by my furs that thoughts about them (and indeed their wearer) were distracting her so that her speech was slowing and the words of her defence gradually being forgotten and I guessed – correctly – that she would soon enough lapse into silence.

I understood then that, if I applied a small amount of cunning, I would be able to calm Nell sufficiently for me to look at her neck without having to restrain or frighten her, the idea of which repelled me. I thus whispered to Sackpole that he should withdraw a little, to observe the proceedings from a corner of the dank room, but talk no more to Nell until the examination was over.

Sensing, no doubt, that Nell was less afraid now, he did as I requested. I approached Nell and knelt down by her chair, forcing myself not to gag, for the smell from her body was indeed very odious.

Fumblingly, from her shawl, she reached out a bony hand and laid it very tenderly on the badger's snout at my left shoulder then began stroking the head. I watched her closely. Her head was nodding, as if in recognition of something. For a long while, I said nothing and did not move. Nell's hand now moved to my right shoulder and touched the badger's nose there. When I looked again at her eyes, I saw that much of the fear had left them. Now, I thought, I will move the rushlight nearer and ask her to unbind her shawl and lay her head back, so that I may see the growth. But just as I was about to reach out to move the light, Nell began to speak again. "I dreamed of this," she whispered. "A man wearing an animal. He was not my accuser, but I his."

I said nothing.

"I his," Nell repeated.

"Of what did you accuse him?" I asked quietly.

"Gone from me," she said. "Forgotten."

"But he had done some wrong?"

Nell nodded. "Some wrong. And a long fall would be the way of it."

"In your dreams, he fell?"

"Yes."

"From the Lord's grace?"

"From all grace. And into confusion."

I was silent. My hand was out, about to take hold of the rushlight and yet I could not complete this simple action, so perturbed did I now feel. I could no longer look at Nell's face. My heartbeat had quickened. My hands were clammy. I tasted bile in my mouth. If she can see into my future, I began to tell myself, then it is certain she possesses some kind of devilish power. But then I reined in my thought, knowing it to be a judgement born only of fear and reminding myself that there are many kinds and species of bewitchment in mortal existence, of which fear may be the most terrible and love the most everlasting. That she had made this pronouncement about my life troubled me awesomely, the more so because it was my birthday. Part of me wished to question Nell further, to "Know the worst" as the saying has it, yet the other, cowardly, part wished to know no more whatsoever, being in no way equipped to conduct itself courageously should "the worst" turn out to be very bad indeed. The notion of a "fall into confusion" was quite frightening enough.

I heard, at this moment, a knocking on Nell's door and some shouting from the crowd, and Sackpole, whose presence in the room I had all but forgotten, whispered urgently to me that I should proceed with the examination "now, at once, Sir Robert."

Thus, with my hand still shaking, I moved the light towards Nell and asked her to show me her mark and tell me what she thought it to be. "For it is your mark, Nell, and you alone know when it first came there, and whether any have touched it and of what kind, if any, is the fluid or matter that comes out of it."

But Nell did not speak or move. With the light upon her face now, I could see on her cheek a number of large moles or warts, of the disfiguring kind that so distressed poor Oliver Cromwell, our sometime leader and chief of the Commonwealth. It is common medical knowledge that a body, once afflicted by these things, is very often host to terrible flowerings and crops of them, as if they grew from spores of themselves like mushrooms, and I fully expected, as Nell at last unwound her shawl, to see another such a one upon her neck.

Revealed eventually, however, the growth, seated below the ear and on the pathway of the jugular vein, did not resemble a wart. It was the size of a small coin and of a liverish brown colour, the skin being most raised towards its centre. I had seen nothing like it during all my anatomical years. Had the skin not been discoloured, I would have pronounced it to be the puckered vestigial scar of some boil or fistula, but the pigmenting of the skin was most pronounced, whereas scar tissue becomes white over time. The thing that it most brought to mind was indeed a small nipple, such as one might see upon the half-grown breasts of a child of twelve years.

Most crucial in my inspection of the thing would be my touching of it – to see what reaction this could cause in the old woman and to determine whether any issue came forth from it.

Nell stayed still, one hand always caressing my fur, but I now felt her body wracked by a violent trembling. At my back, the thumping on the door and the shouts from the village people became more impatient.

"Well?" hissed Sackpole. "What do you find?"

And I faltered.

A moment ago, I had felt disgust, then fear. I had bid myself to be calm and go about my task with the alert yet passive mind of the physician. But now as I tried to take the nipple (or whatever the thing might prove to be) between my finger and thumb and I felt the intensity of the fear in Nell's being, I was prey to a most sudden and profound feeling of sorrow and despair. For one last moment, I remained kneeling, regarding the hard, cold, knotted hand of Wise Nell on the badger snout. Then I stood up. I turned to the shadows where Sackpole waited.

"To the best of my knowledge, there is no matter out of the ordinary here," I said. "The thing is a simple cyst."

And I fled from the place, pushing my way out through the throng of people who snatched at me – with hands and words – and then breaking into a run.

I have no recollection of what I did next. Presumably, I found my horse and mounted and rode home, but I do not remember doing this. The next memory that I have is of lying in a hot bath and being stared at by Will who had noticed several welts upon the skin of my shoulders, as if something or someone had scratched me there. "Badly, Sir," he says. "Very badly."

Then I am readying myself for my soirée. My shoulders are bandaged. I feel, in my stomach and in my mind a deep unease.