‘I fear it is too late for that, Mistress Jane,’ he said sadly, ‘and we will never see Pembroke again.’

‘Never say never, Harri, and do not tell anyone else how you feel. The Herberts have treated you well. It would spoil all Lord Jasper’s plans if you were suddenly to be considered a hostage rather than as you are now, a member of the family.’

His alarmed expression told me I had touched a raw nerve. ‘Do family members threaten each other?’ he asked. ‘Walter says if there is a battle he will hold a knife to my throat. I think he imagines I can somehow assist his father’s enemies.’

‘But there will be a knight with orders to protect you both,’ I reminded him. ‘Do you know who he will be yet?’

‘Yes,’ replied Harri with an ironic twist of his lips. ‘We are to have Lady Anne’s nephew to watch over us, Richard Corbet.’

I frowned, trying to fit the name to a face. ‘But he is not a knight, is he? He is only eighteen, a mere squire.’

‘Yes, he is a squire but also a close family member. There will be just him and Walter and me on some hilltop viewpoint, watching and waiting to see who wins.’

I stared at him, a knot forming in the pit of my stomach. There was a fraught silence, as if neither of us could actually voice the fear that was uppermost in our minds.

‘Will you have any weapon about you, Harri?’ I asked faintly.

‘Walter and I have been issued with daggers but Richard Corbet will also have a sword.’

I drew him into a tight hug and for once he did not resist. He is twelve years old, I thought, too young to find himself in such a potentially perilous position.

We sprang apart at the sound of footsteps approaching the chamber door. It was Davy, nursing a cut lip, the neck of his chemise smeared with blood. ‘Have you been fighting again?’ I asked him, as I pulled a clean shirt from a clothing chest and Davy sounded off about ‘That lying snake Walter’ who had claimed that Harri ‘was only going on the muster because my father does not trust him enough to leave him behind.’

‘Thank you for defending me, Davy,’ Harri said with a grin. ‘I can always rely on you.’