‘I hope so, if they received my message. We will have to wait and see whether Lewys managed to deliver it. After Lord Edmund came here he told me Bettws Newydd must be the loneliest spot in South Wales. He said that people avoided it like the plague. It was his idea of a joke because the Great Pestilence had wiped out the whole village a hundred years ago. But at least those ghosts you find so spooky should preserve us from prying eyes.’

‘Did your brother not die of the plague?’ Evan asked anxiously. ‘He might have caught it here.’

A hollow laugh escaped me. It was an irony that people believed my brother died of the plague. I did not believe he died of plague at all; he was Black Herbert’s prisoner and was murdered.

For two days and nights we had waited, sleeping in the bare nave beneath its only ornaments, the large wooden cross and reliquary on the stone altar. A vast semi-circular cope chest sat abandoned in the lean-to vestry, mouldering and too big to move, like the empty houses left behind when the village was abandoned.

Then in the bright light of the third morning, they came.

Margaret’s smile caused my heart to perform its accustomed flip and I revelled in the blaze of her fine scarlet gown with its gold clasps and glossy fur trim, evoking the days of courtly show I had once relished and now lost. Then my eyes turned to Jane, sweet Jane in a dull brown cloak and a peaked linen coif, her expression a confusion of joy and uncertainty and I could see the effort she made to control her emotion. She bobbed a shaky curtsy and whispered something inaudible.

With unexpected consideration Margaret turned away and approached the dusty altar, making the sign of the cross as she approached, then she dropped to her knees before it and began to murmur a Latin prayer.

I took Jane’s hand and led her into the vestry. After she had greeted Evan with a sisterly hug, I shooed him out and shut the door. Freed from constraint she threw herself into my arms with a little cry. ‘Jasper – my dearest lord!’

I pulled her close so that she could feel the sudden urgency of my desire for her.

‘I still want you as much as ever, Jane,’ I said. ‘In other circumstances we could love each other here and now in God’s house and I am sure the Almighty would understand our need. But I need Margaret too.’

Jane nipped my ear painfully. ‘You worship the ground she walks on,’ she hissed, moving her hips against me. ‘She winds you round her little finger. I hate her. And I want this.’