“How was he killed? You told me – you let me think he had died of some sickness! But this – why have you kept this dreadful thing all these years? He was foully killed, that’s it, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Who killed him?”

She turned then. Alexander was standing full in the sunlight, with the embroidered shirt clutched to him. “King March,” she said.

“I guessed it! I guessed it! Whenever that name has been mentioned, you’ve had this same look. Mother, tell me how!”

“Yes, I’ll tell you. It’s time you knew.” She motioned him to lay the shirt down in its box, then sat back against the cushions with a kind of relief. The moment had come and gone, and it was time, more than time, to let the long-cherished ghost recede. “Sit down, here beside me, my dear, on the window-seat, and listen.”

She told him from the beginning, from the day when the Saxon warships sailed into the bay below the cliffs. Her voice was dry and even, long since purged of grief, but at one point in the narrative, when she described how Baudouin had put on the shirt and laughed with her, Alexander reached a hand to lay it over hers. She went steadily on; the flight, the encounter with Sadok and his brother, the safe refuge at Craig Arian.

He began to say something, some word of comfort, but she shook her head. Drawing her hand from under his, she turned her eyes on him. They were dry and very bright.

“I don’t need comfort. I need vengeance. I vowed many years ago that when you, my son, were grown, you would seek out this vicious fox of a king and kill him. Will you do that?”

It would not have occurred to the young Alexander that he might do anything else. He said so, hotly, and jumping to his feet, began at once to make plans for a journey into Cornwall, but she stopped him.

“No. Listen still. I told you that I’d planned to tell you this story when you were turned eighteen. I have done it now because your meeting with March’s men this morning changes things.”

“But how?”

“Didn’t you take it in? Sadok was sent after us that night to murder us. He promised me that he would tell March that you were dead, and, if it seemed needful, that I was dead too. Don’t you think that if the Fox had thought you were still alive, he would have sent long since to seek us out and kill you? And he would surely have sent spies up here. Where else would I take you?”

“Then these men today were spies?”

She regarded him. He was a tall youth, blue-eyed like his father, with brown hair falling thickly to his shoulders, and a slender but well-muscled body. Standing tall and aggressive-looking in the bright sunlight from the window, he was the very picture of a splendid young fighting man. No need – Anna admitted it to herself, indulgently – no need for such a man, young and handsome and lord of a snug little castle and fertile lands, with good servants and a clever mother, to have quick wits as well.