Hi, we're your host's Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling.

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It's August 1675 and along the south coast of England the choppy waves are swilling.

A shoal of silver fish called Pilchards are swimming past. From the fisherman's boat the shoal looks like a greasy, purple smear. Out

goes the net to gobble the fish up into the boat where they lie and gaze at the clouds.

The boat heads for home, the harbour of Plymouth,

finest port in all the land that bristles with masts and bright flags.

It was from here that the Mayflower left for a new world in 1620,

where Sir Francis Drake set off to circumnavigate the world, it's also a port that

dozens of privateers called home. Eventually, the catcher unloaded and sold off to merchants,

maids and housewives. Some go one way, some another, and some end up in a house two streets back from the key where William

Weeks, the Dyer, lives with his family and servants. This is where the trouble starts.

In a sense, it's all the fish's fault, because as their silver corpses lie there in the kitchen,

an argument erupts over how they should be fried.

The mistress of the house, Elizabeth, is giving the nursemaid, Philippa, a peace of her mind.

Things escalate as comments about housekeeping spiral into more serious, well, personal words.

Elizabeth, in frustration, calls Philippa a whore,

saying she knows that she is sleeping with her husband, William.

Her words hang in the air like poison, darkening the room.

...