“You give me that, sir. I’ll do it.” He took the saddle and lifted it to the horse’s back, then stooped to pull the girth tight. “’Tis a rare handsome beast you’ve got here. I did him last night myself. He was tired – come a long way, had you? – but I gave him a warm mash with a drop of beer in it, and he ate up a treat. There he is now, ready to go. You going far, young sir?”

“That depends. I see people have come in this morning, country folk. Have you heard if the river’s still in flood?”

“It’s well down this morning, so not to worry, young master. It’ll be down to no more than knee-deep by this. The track this side never gets flooded – not so’s you can’t get through – and the footing’s good.” He gave the horse’s rump a caressing slap. “You’re going north, I take it?”

“Yes, for Rheged and then the north-east.” Alexander, grateful to the man for his care of the horse, stayed chatting for a few more minutes, then thanked him and took the bridle, leaving the groom beaming over a couple of copper coins. Without exciting more than some curious stares and a civil “Good morning” or two from the crowd in the courtyard, he led his horse out, and across to the gate. He saw no reason to reward the porter there, merely waiting in silence while the man pushed the heavy door open for him. Once across the moat he mounted and turned his horse’s head along the track north of the river, heading for the road he had glimpsed yesterday, that led up past the monastery buildings from the end of the broken bridge.

He never reached it.

Three of Queen Morgan’s escort, up and about even earlier than Alexander, had ridden out hunting, to find something more substantial for the castle’s table than the fat geese and capons brought in by the local peasants.

They rode up into the woods that clothed the sides of the valley. Here the going was rough, the trees close-growing, with dense underbrush, and they soon scared up a deer. That it was a young doe, heavy with fawn, did not trouble them. The chase was all. The hounds were urged on with shouts and laughter, and the party galloped helter-skelter, necks for sale through the trees as the doe made downhill for the river.

The river, though it had certainly fallen during the night, was still fairly high, and running noisily, so that Alexander, riding at a swift canter along the bank, heard nothing of the hunt. The first he knew was when the doe broke suddenly out of the trees, which here grew close down to the water, and sprang clear into the road, barely three inches in front of the horse’s nose.

The chestnut was a good horse, as steady as he was swift, and did not easily take fright, but the inevitable check, with the violent swerve and plunge to one side, only narrowly avoided collision with the fleeing doe. Even so, Alexander might have stayed in the saddle and kept control, had not the beast’s sharp swerve taken it off the track and right to the river’s edge, where the recent flood had loosened a section of the bank.