It was only after I had rounded up my father and Thomas ap Gruffydd and their choice of trackers and set off hot-foot on York’s trail that I realized I had not been able to inform the king privately, as I had intended, that he had a new niece and a new stepbrother. Royal recognition would have to wait. Being illegitimate, the births would not appear in the official court record.

Owen, through his office as a Royal Parker, knew the northern part of the Welsh March well and when we picked up the trail of a small group of horses heading north from Ludlow up the valley of the River Onny he was certain this must be York and his band of followers heading for the duke’s favourite embarkation port for Ireland at Penrhyn. It was a small harbour on the estate of one of York’s faithful followers and it was also close to Anglesey or Ynys Môn as Owen called it, the seat of our Tudor ancestors and a good source of reliable information, should we need it. We thought the York party could not have more than ten hours’ start and, being fugitives, would probably move cautiously, avoiding the towns and villages and keeping to any cover available. But even the deep valleys were peppered with farmsteads and pockets of population where people would be bound to notice a group of armed men on well-bred horses. If we asked questions, cut corners and kept up a good pace we believed we might just catch them up.

At the end of the first day the trail branched off into the trough of an ancient earthwork, the great ditch and rampart built to mark the border between the old territories of the Welsh Britons and the insurgent Anglo-Saxons. Although its origins were unknown, on maps I had seen it marked as Offa’s Dyke, named after a mysterious Saxon lord or king. We followed it north, skirting the settlement of Welshpool and hugging the western foot of a steep, bare-topped hill, which our trackers called Long Mountain. I took a diversion with Owen to the summit of this mount, hoping it might prove a useful viewpoint from which to scan the surrounding countryside. To the east it offered a panorama over the rolling hills and forests of England through which we had just ridden and to the north-west, the direction we expected York to be taking, a commanding vista towards the high peaks of Gwynedd, but it did not grant us any sight of horsemen; the foothills were thickly wooded and the bleak summits too distant. All that the climb had afforded me was a vivid impression of the empty wilderness confronting us and a depressing hint of how small was our chance of finding anyone in it that did not wish to be found.