“Yes,” said Mariamne, who, before her first sight of Castle Rose, would certainly have judged this to be, if not a palace, a very prosperous-looking place indeed. “But it looks nice, doesn’t it, like being in the country? I didn’t think much of the town! Those beggars everywhere, poor things – I’d hate to have to go anywhere without an escort to keep them off! And didn’t the streets smell bad?”

Since at that moment they were riding up a narrow roadway, something like a farm track at home, their progress hindered by a herd of pigs being driven in from the woods, Alice laughed.

“I suppose that anywhere a queen lives is a palace. It’s the queen that makes it, after all. But I do hope that the floors are clean!”

Queen Clotilda, widow of the great Merwing king Clovis, would have lent royalty to a pigsty. Which may have been just as well, since the byres and sties of what was certainly a farmstead were very near the room where the duke’s party was received. This was a large, long room, a hall which still had about it some of the dignity of its Roman origin; the floor was of well-made mosaic, the wall-hangings were worked in bright colours which had faded pleasantly, and the fourth wall of the hall was open, where a series of arches gave on a courtyard with some tubs of flowers and orange trees gay with both fruit and blossom, and a very pretty fountain. The sleeping-chambers and guest rooms made up two other sides of the court, and the fourth was open to a slope of pasture leading down towards the river. Beyond the guest-chambers lay the kitchens and servants’ quarters, and separated only from the royal rooms by a narrow strip of garden and orchard were the stables and barns and store-houses of a large and prosperous farm.

The ‘palace’ was indeed a farmstead, but rather more; like most of the houses of the Frankish nobles, it was a unit, a settlement in miniature, self-sufficient in times either of peace or war. On the April breezes, along with the smells of stable and sty, the lowing of cattle and the incessant cackling of poultry, came other sounds: the clink of a smith’s hammer, the different clangour of an armoury, the clack of shuttles and the laughter and calling of women’s voices busy over the washing down at the river’s edge.

But inside the hall there was, if not ceremony, a respectful silence. At the end of the hall was a low dais, at the centre of which stood the great chair of state. Some score of men stood near, and a couple of women, the latter both in the sombre habits of nuns. Most of the men were obviously warriors, dressed in armoured leather, with jewelled belts and armlets; to a man they were tall and blue-eyed, with shoulder-length fair hair and long moustaches. Two other men waited in the background; one in priestly habit, his face hidden by his cowl, the other a young man, tall and dark-haired, in a long robe, with round his neck a silver chain that seemed to denote some sort of palace functionary.