Cully tightened a belt and set the tine of the buckle, and gave a tug at the laundry basket. It didn’t move.

“You ha’ any trouble with this animal, call me, my lady,” he said.

“I’m no lady,” Blanche said.

Cully grinned. But he said nothing, and then he was through the great double door of the barn.

“Archers—on me! Fall into the left with your horse to hand.” He took his bascinet—as fine as many a knight’s—off the pommel of his saddle and pulled the aventail over his head.

An archer brushed past her and his hands tried most of her body as he went past. The man leered back at her.

Blanche’s right hand caught him just above his eyebrow and slammed him against the doorpost.

Another archer laughed. “She’s a quick ’un, Cat!” he said. He grinned at Blanche, who glared.

Then the trumpet rang again, and armoured figures poured into the great barn’s yard. Pages scurried by with horses—chargers and riding horses, sometimes as many as three horses to a page. The men-at-arms began to mount.

She got the Queen up on another palfrey brought by a page she didn’t know. That page was also a woman, a pleasant, dark-haired woman old enough to be Nell’s mother.

“They call me Petite Mouline,” she said in an Alban deeply accented with Occitan. “The cap’n says that this ’orse is for the lady Queen, yes?”

Petite Mouline had a fine breastplate and her maille was dark and well oiled over a bright red arming coat. Her smile was warmer than the horse. “Oh, the petit bébé!”

The Queen emerged from her birthing room with the sister at her elbow, and she put a dainty foot into her stirrup and leaped into the saddle with a vitality that belied the last few hours.

Amicia mounted her own horse more carefully.

In the stone-flagged yard, Bad Tom’s voice—as loud as Archangel Gabriel’s trumpet—put the company—or rather, the fragment of the company with them—into order.

The Red Knight was in full harness. Outside, the moon was small and bright—bright enough to cast shadows on the ground and to light his shoulder armour in a dazzle of complex reflections.

He bowed to the Queen. “Your grace, I cry you pardon me. De Vrailly has moved faster than I expected.”

“We must run—I understand.”

He smiled. “Well, your grace, as to that—” He turned as Lord Corcy came up.

“I’m with you, my lord,” Corcy said. “I must get home, collect my harness and the men I can trust. I hope you’ll agree to let the sheriff and his men disperse.”

“I’m afraid I must ask you all to come with us for a few leagues,” the captain said.