“My brother, princess. My brother Erbin. You know him.”

“Yes. Very well, then. I am coming.”

Behind her she could hear the creak of leather as Goren mounted. Alexander was quiet. She turned the bay’s head, and rode out into the open moonlight of the road.

Neither of the waiting riders made any move towards her, and though they must certainly be armed, they had not drawn their weapons. Was it possible, then, that there really was some hope? She tried to steady her breathing as she drew rein beside Sadok’s horse, and put back the hood of her cloak.

The moonlight was stronger now, and she could see both men clearly. Sadok was a young man, much of an age with the dead Baudouin; he had been at March’s court since boyhood, and the two men had liked one another. Sadok and his brother had been with Baudouin in the adventure with the Saxon longships. It was possible, it was surely possible – ran Anna’s desperate thoughts – that in this night’s expedition, as in so much else in his chequered and violent reign, King March had made the wrong choice?

Sadok cleared his throat. “Princess, I am sorry. God knows I loved Baudouin, and could wish no harm to you, but –”

“Or to Baudouin’s son?”

Her horse was close to his, shoulder to shoulder. Her face, framed by the dark folds of her hood, looked fragile and lovely, wiped clear by the moonlight of the lines of stress and grief. Her eyes, large and dark, were on a level with Sadok’s. He read fear in them, and appeal. Her hand looked small and fragile on the rein. Anna the fair, Anna the chaste, who had never looked at any man but her husband, would have used any weapon available to save her son. So now she looked at Sadok with those frightened, appealing eyes, and under the muffling folds of her cloak her right hand was steady on the hilt of Baudouin’s sword.

She held her voice steady, too. “Sadok, Erbin – both of you – if you know what happened to my lord tonight, you know why it happened. And you know that there can be no good purpose in the king’s wanting me and my child taken back to the castle. He may spare me, but assuredly he will kill Alexander. As he murdered his father, and for the same reason.”

Sadok, who, with half the inhabitants of the castle, had been roused by March’s drunken shouting as he tore himself free from the restraining hands of doctor and servants and lurched, sword in hand, through the rooms and courts of the castle in a murderous search for Anna and her child, could do nothing but say, hoarsely: “Princess –”

“You called me by my name in happier times.”

“Anna –” Ironically it was Sadok, rather than Anna, who sounded desperate. “What you say is true, God knows! And God knows I wish you no harm, nor does Erbin neither. But what can we do? King March would never believe that we couldn’t come up with you, and even if he did, he would send others after you. And you – on this long road, exposed as it is on the moor-top to the very edge of the kingdom, you would surely be overtaken before you could come clear of his borders. But if you let us take you home now, and we go slowly, giving due care to the child … then by the time we get back the king will be sobered, and it will be daylight, and the castle is full of folk who were friends of your lord and you … Then surely, even he –” He broke off.