They half cocked their heads as the stairs funnelled the sound from below. At first there was only the whisper of splashing water. Then, another sound was caught between the splash of water against rock. A sharper sound. Indistinct. Voices.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

The shallow river flowed beneath the rock’s curved roof and led out through a low opening to an area beyond the castle walls. The breeze had strengthened, sweeping the smell of the damp earth and the voices of those in the tunnel’s entrance. Ranulph de Hayle stood with Velasquita, her cloak wrapped tightly against the wind’s bite.

‘We have found the boy you seek,’ said de Hayle after explaining how they had been caught in Blackstone’s trap. It had been his voice that Blackstone had heard; its strength had carried into the tunnels, but not the words.

Velasquita showed no sign of relief or surprise that the witness to the Queen’s murder had been found. Her cold demeanour offered the mercenary no room to ingratiate himself. ‘I do not see him among your men,’ she said, glancing at the several men on horseback, obscured from being seen from high above by the rock face.

De Hayle wiped a hand on his greasy jerkin. He was nervous of this woman. ‘He died trying to escape. We had no choice.’

‘You killed him?’

De Hayle winced. The woman’s dark eyes bored into him. He had faced men in battle, he knew the grip of fear when facing a vicious enemy, but she made his heart squeeze tight in his chest. ‘I brought his head.’

He beckoned one of the men, who offered the rundlet, prised open the lid and reached into the brine. He hauled out Andrés’s head. The setting sun’s rays bled across the boy’s sallow features. Velasquita stared at the face, the gaping mouth exposing the discoloured tongue. Was this the boy? She had seen him once when they banished the queen to Medina Sidonia. A glance only. Years before. She remembered the room into which the Queen had been ushered by the ballesteros. The frightened women who served her and who would later go under the knife. A boy, a peasant child, serving her loyally, skulking in a corner, head down as the High Steward instructed the guard commander how she was to be treated, how she could not leave the grounds, how she was to be kept under surveillance. There had been too many people in the room for her to remember one nine-year-old boy.

De Hayle grimaced when she reached out. Her fingers lifted the dead boy’s eyelids. The glazed opaque eyes stared sightlessly at her. After a moment she sighed.

‘This is not him.’

‘My lady. It’s the boy who sought refuge before Blackstone attacked us. Who else could it be?’ he bluffed.

‘You have failed.’ Her calm words were as deadly as a judge’s sentence of death.