He looked at her and seemed surprised; then he looked away and addressed the assembled diners. “Unexpectedly,” he began, and they all started to laugh. “Unexpectedly, I find I am called away.”

No, Ragna thought; this can’t be happening.

But it was. She struggled to hold back tears.

“I shall return later,” Wilf said, walking to the exit.

At the door he paused and turned back, with the instinctive feeling for dramatic timing that he had always had.

He said: “Much later.”

The men roared with laughter, and he went out.

Wynstan, Degbert, and Dreng left Shiring quietly, in the dark, leading their horses until they were outside the town. Only a few trusted servants knew they were leaving, and Wynstan was determined that no one else should find out. They had a packhorse loaded with a small barrel and a sack as well as food and drink, but they took no men-at-arms with them. Their mission was a dangerous secret.

They were careful not to be recognized on the road. Even with no entourage, anonymity was not easy. Degbert’s bald head was conspicuous, Dreng had a distinctive reedy voice, and Wynstan was one of the best-known men in the region. So they wrapped up in heavy cloaks, buried their chins in the folds, and shrouded their faces by pulling forward their hoods—none of which was unusual in the cold, wet February weather. They hurried past other travelers, spurning the usual exchanges of information. Rather than seek hospitality at an alehouse or monastery where they would have had to reveal their faces, they spent the first night at the home of a family of charcoal burners in the forest—surly, unsociable people who paid Wynstan a fee for the license to follow their occupation.

The nearer they got to Dreng’s Ferry, the greater the danger that they would be recognized. They had a mile or two to go on the second day when they suffered a tense moment. They met a group coming in the opposite direction: a family on foot, the woman holding a baby, the man with a bucket of eels that he must have bought from Bucca Fish, and two more children trailing behind. Dreng murmured: “I know that family.”

“So do I,” said Degbert.

Wynstan kicked his horse into a trot, and his companions did likewise. The family scattered to the sides of the road. Wynstan and the others rode past without speaking. The family were too busy getting out of the way of the flying hooves to take a good look at the riders. Wynstan thought they had got away with it.

Soon afterward, they turned off the road onto a near-invisible track through the trees.

Now Degbert took the lead. The woods thickened, and they had to dismount and walk the horses. Degbert found his way to an old ruined house, probably once the home of a forester, long abandoned. Its broken walls and half-collapsed roof would provide some shelter for their second night.