Later that night, I read again the most recent one, squinting in the flickering light of a single taper. At Pembroke Jasper had been used to relying on clerks to pen his correspondence but now that he was an outlaw and an exile he did not trust others to write for him and he had crammed the words onto a single sheet of paper in his characteristically quirky hand.

My dearly beloved and woefully neglected lady, it seems so long since I kissed your lips that my own are sadly withering and my heart is sorely aching. But I write to tell you that I have made plans, which I hope and pray will bring us briefly together again. My sailing skills have improved and I am now confident of steering my own ship towards a rendezvous with those that I love most in the world. I cannot say where or when I will make landfall but God willing I will see you soon and hold you in my arms, my sweetest Jane. I trust that you are not too closely watched and that you are able to make excursions outside the castle walls without arousing suspicion. In the hope that this is so I will send word of my arrival in the vicinity. It may be that a certain other person, well known to us both, will also be visiting your hosts and I hope you will be able to liaise with each other. I dare write no more on this and have only space to assure you of my unending devotion to you and to our children. If you think it safe, please assure the boy that I think of him constantly also and please, my sweeting, burn this after you have read it and taken from it this ardent kiss, which I make in lieu of signing.

There was a slight smudge on the last words, which I assumed to have been made by his lips. I pressed the paper to mine, tasting ink and persuading myself it held the flavour of Jasper. I had found the letter earlier in the day pushed into a crack in the retaining wall of the moat. It was only a matter of casually leaning over the parapet to look at the fish kept there ready for the kitchen and slipping my hand in, hidden by the folds of my skirt. That was how I knew that an undercover Lancastrian agent either worked in the castle or made frequent visits but I had no idea who it might be. The location of the secret cache had been delivered to me anonymously in a note slipped into a pile of Harri’s clean laundry, which I alone handled.