‘You want the little bastards or not?’

‘Any girls?’

‘Three ripe ones.’

‘Wait.’ The hatch closed and we waited. I assumed the man had gone to wake his master, or perhaps an overseer. The grey wolf-light seeped into the east, turning the sky brighter and touching the edges of the high-flying clouds with a silvery gleam. A door opened further down the street and a woman appeared with a pail, presumably to fetch water. She looked nervously at my warriors and went back into her house.

The hatch opened again and there was just enough light to see a bearded face. The man stared and said nothing. ‘Lord Varin,’ I said, ‘does not like being kept waiting.’

There was a grunt, the hatch closed, and I heard locking bars being lifted, then one of the two heavy gates was dragged open, scraping on the paving stones, which, I suspected, had been there since the Romans first laid the yard. ‘Bring them in,’ the bearded man said.

‘Inside!’ I snarled at the children.

There were three men in the yard, none wearing mail, but with thick leather jerkins over which they wore short swords in plain wooden scabbards. One man, tall and lank-haired, had a coiled whip hanging at his waist. He was the man who had opened the gate and now watched the children file in, then spat on the stones. ‘Miserable-looking bunch,’ he said.

‘They were caught in the palace storerooms,’ I said.

‘Thieving little bastards. Not worth much.’

‘And you need Lord Varin’s goodwill,’ I said.

The man grunted at that. ‘Shut the gate!’ he ordered his companions. The gate scraped shut and two locking bars dropped into place. ‘Make a line!’ he snapped at the children, and they obediently shuffled into a rough line. They looked terrified. They might have known this was all pretence, but the lank-haired man with his coiled whip was frightening. He began inspecting them, lifting Aldwyn’s face to look closer.

‘I know none of these men,’ Benedetta whispered close to me.

‘They need feeding,’ the man said, and stopped to look at Alaina. He tilted up her face and grinned. ‘Pretty little thing.’ I felt Benedetta stiffen beside me, but she said nothing. ‘Very pretty,’ the man said and put his hand to the neck of Alaina’s dress as if he was about to rip it down.

‘She’s not yours yet,’ I growled.

The man looked at me, surprised to be challenged. ‘Something wrong with the bitch?’ he asked. ‘Got pox rash, has she?’

‘Leave her alone!’ Father Oda and I said at the same time.

The man snatched his hand away, but scowled. ‘If she’s clean,’ he said grudgingly, ‘she might be worth something, but not this little bastard.’ He had moved on to the Ræt.

I was looking around the yard. The entrance gates faced a high building as large as any mead hall. The lowest floor was made of big blocks of dressed stone, while above that the higher floors were constructed of tarred timber. There was only one door, and a single window that was a small shuttered opening set very high on the forbidding black gable. To the right was a smaller shed, which, from the horse-droppings in the yard, I suspected was a stable. That too had a closed door. ‘How many men are usually here?’ I asked Benedetta in a low voice.