They were not only conjurors and tumblers, they bought old rags and bones which they traded along their route with paper makers and glue renderers. Picking over the rags for anything wearable was a job for the children while the carts were on the road and many a fluttering ribbon on their clothes had come from an outworn or outgrown lady’s kirtle. Their payment for the rubbish they removed was a bright doll of paper, or a folded windmill for the children which rattled and hummed when it was blown round on its stick. It was almost like a game for Marlowe to track these tawdry leavings; out past Stow cum Quy and Lode’s Mill, through Swaffham and across the Devil’s ditch, dark and foreboding as darkness fell; and to find, at the end of the fluttering trail, the camp. As he rode, he planned his strategy. He knew he would scarcely be able to simply blend in. Even if he had changed his clothes, he knew so little of their way of life that he could never hope to pass as one of them.
