They rode for three hours. Every hour, the column halted for a few minutes—pages offered nose bags to horses, and water. At the third hour they came to an inn, and its gates were open and torches burned in the fog to guide them to water, a bite of fresh, warm bread and a cup of warm honey-mead in the dripping darkness. They halted for perhaps twenty minutes in the inn yard, and then rode out again—forty horses, twenty men and two women. She didn’t know where they were, but she suspected they were very close to Harndon. The countryside around them was waking up, cocks were crowing, and from the sounds, the Albin River had to be to her left and the bells were probably Harndon bells ringing across the river.

The fog grew lighter, but no less dense. Somewhere over her head, the sun was rising, but not a ray of it penetrated the dense grey cloud that clung to all of them like wet smoke.

Then, to her confusion, they were among trees—big, old trees, oaks and maples and another tall, magnificent type she did not know from the Adnacrags that grew as wide around as a peasant’s hut and so tall they vanished into the grey above.

“We’re in the Royal Park at Haye,” Nell whispered to her. The youngster seemed to know far more about the morning’s plans than she did. “Ser Gelfred cleared all this an hour hence. Our people are at all the gates. This is where we wait.”

“Wait?” Amicia asked.

Nell looked at her as she probably looked at new pages and archers. Don’t you know anything? “We have to ride into the lists at just the right moment, Cap’n says.” Nell spoke of the captain as a nun might speak of God. Her trust was absolute.

Most of the column dismounted. A young man—Daniel Favour, whom Amicia could remember as a boy in Hawkshead—rode out of the fog. He rode to the captain, exchanged a few words and then rode to Ser Gavin. The three men spoke perhaps three sentences, and then Favour mounted again. He paused his horse by Amicia and bowed. “Morning, Sister!” he said. “Funny thing, a couple of mountain brats meeting here, eh?”

Amicia laughed—her first unforced laugh of the morning. “You seem in high spirits, Daniel,” she said.

Favour grinned. “Oh, we’ve put a rare jest over on the Galles, ain’t we, Sister? I reckon they’ll make a song o’ us.” He saluted her with his riding whip. He was in a light saddle such as the easterners used, on a tall, athletic horse. His breastplate shone, and she noticed that the day had brightened considerably.