The morning came in fine, with an early mist hanging wreath-like from the trees and veiling the hilltops. They reached the long hill that led down towards the ferry while the sun was just inching up behind the crests of the hills and sending shadows long and blue in front of them. Mist lay in long clouds along the waters of the estuary, and between its white banks the water gleamed, flat and quiet. The tide was rising, and seabirds circled and called. They could see the ferry’s brown sail about a third of the way over towards them. Brand had told them of a tavern he knew, a short way beyond the southern end of the crossing, and the thought of breakfast was a good one.

“If they’ve been this way, we’ll get news of them from the ferryman,” said Uwain. “And if they haven’t, why then, we’ll be ahead of them, and we can wait for them on the high road from Glevum. They won’t be pressing their horses, after all. They wouldn’t expect to be followed.”

In this last, at any rate, he was right. The Cornishmen had ridden the same way, and at their ease, not being over-anxious to get home with their news. They had not, as it happened, recognised Alexander, so their only news would be unwelcome, the loss of one of March’s trusted men. And March, as Alexander had guessed, was not a master who received bad news pleasantly. So they went slowly, with the result that they missed the last ferry, and had to spend the night in the ramshackle hut at the water’s edge, where the ferryman slept if chance or bad weather prevented him from making the last crossing of the day.

As Alexander’s party approached, coming out from the shade of the trees and clattering down the gravel road towards the jetty, the two Cornishmen were leading their horses out from behind the hut, their eyes on the approaching sail out on the tide.

At the sound of hoofs they turned, but not in alarm; their swords were still in their sheaths. The badge of the Boar showed white on the breasts of their tunics.

Then one of them, a big fellow holding the bridle of a roan horse, gave a sudden shout, and there was a flash as his sword seemed to leap into his hand.

“That’s him! That’s the murdering young bastard that killed Kynon!”

And almost before Alexander’s party knew what was happening, the two men were in the saddle, and were racing on them with swords drawn and at the ready.

The speed and anger of the attack left no time for words, or even thought. Swords met and clashed, and the horses circled, their hoofs sparking on the stones. There was no chance to cry halt, to manoeuvre for a parley; no way that Baudouin’s son could have identified himself and tested where the Cornishmen’s allegiance had lain all those years ago. What he could not have known was that the man he had killed in that fateful skirmish had been the brother of the man who now strove, with more strength and skill in combat than the young prince possessed, to kill him in his turn.