“Indeed. In a sense, our own – your own, now. My mother is buried there.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No need. I made my first pilgrimage there – so I am told – at the age of two. My father goes there always on special days – their wedding day, her birthday, and mine, which was the day she died. To him, I think, it’s a place where they still meet.”

“Then I’d have thought that he would retire there, near your mother, and nearer home, not away at St Martin’s.”

“This is a place for women only.” She laughed at his look. “Yes, I’m afraid it’s the outer dark for you and the rest, my dear lord!”

“While you and your women sleep warm on a goosefeather bed. I will put up with this,” said Alexander clearly, “for this one night only. And after that, my dear wife, if anyone, abbot, nun, or the High King himself, attempts once again to stop me sleeping in your bed –”

“No one will. And there’s the convent, see? Isn’t the rosy stone beautiful, set like that among the trees? That’s how Castle Rose is built, too. Shall we ride back and see how my father does? Oh, and Alexander –”

“My love?”

“When we do get to Castle Rose, I promise the bed is goosefeathers.”

He wheeled his horse beside hers to ride back to the duke’s litter. “No more than I expect,” he said, laughing, and added, but not aloud, “But I don’t expect to sleep very soundly, Alice my darling.”

35

When at length they came in sight of Castle Rose, they found that Count Madoc, in some state as kinsman of the duke, was awaiting them at the gate. With him was a group of his own men who, it was to be seen, went armed. But behind him, in the courtyard near the steps that led to the great door, was the castle’s own keeper, Beltrane, recovered from his ailment, and standing, keys in hand, with a crowd of the castle’s people near him. A rather larger crowd even than usual; there were farm tenants with their labourers, and estate workers and stablemen as well as house servants, as if Beltrane, feeling somehow threatened, had gathered as many of the duke’s own people as he could. And close behind him stood Jeshua, in a robe of office (somehow conjured up, it could be assumed, by the castle’s women) like the one he had worn as domesticus to Queen Clotilda.

The duke’s litter was carried at the head of his company, with Alice and Alexander riding to either side of it. After they had stopped to eat at midday, Ansirus had tried to insist on riding for the final stage; to avoid alarming his people, he said, though Alice suspected that he did not want to show any sign of weakness to Madoc. But in the end, for the journey had really tired him, he had let her persuade him to finish it as he had begun, though making the litter into a carriage of state rather than of sickness. He rode sitting straight against the cushions, with the litter’s curtains drawn back to show him fully, even grandly dressed, with a jewelled collar sparkling against the breast of his gown, and the great ducal ring, a rose of rubies, on his hand.