Lord Robert went reluctantly to the door. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Come, both of you, and we’ll take a glass of ale to wash down the dust from the road.’

I hung back. ‘I cannot come,’ I said when he held the door for me.

‘What?’

‘She does not receive me,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I am not invited to sit with her.’

Robert’s dark eyebrows snapped together. ‘I told her that she was to keep you with her as her companion until we decided where you should live,’ he said. ‘Where do you dine?’

‘At the table for the maids. I am not seated with your wife.’

He took a rapid step towards the stairs and then he checked himself and came back. ‘Come,’ he said, holding out his hand to me. ‘I am master here, I do not have to argue to see my wishes done. Just come, and you shall dine with me now. She is a stupid woman who does not reward her husband’s loyal servants. And a jealous woman who thinks that a pretty face is safer seen from afar.’

I did not go to his outstretched hand. I smiled at him steadily, keeping my place in the window-seat. ‘My lord,’ I said. ‘I imagine you are going back to court within a few days?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What of it?’

‘Shall you take me with you?’

He looked surprised. ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.’

I felt my smile turn into a giggle. ‘I thought not,’ I said. ‘So I may have to stay here for some weeks yet?’

‘Yes. And so?’

‘And so I would rather not spur your wife’s irritation into rage if you are going to blow in and out again like a spring wind that spoils the peace of the orchard.’

He laughed. ‘Are you at peace, my little orchard?’

‘We are in a state of quiet enmity,’ I said frankly. ‘But I would rather that, than the open warfare you would bring. Go and sit with her now, and I will meet you back here tonight.’

Robert patted me on the cheek. ‘God bless your caution, Hannah. I think I should never have given you to the king. I would be a better man today if I had kept your counsel.’

Then he ran downstairs whistling, and it made me shiver when I heard the wind at the castle windows whistle back at him.

* * *

I watched Amy at dinner. She never took her eyes off her husband throughout the prolonged meal. She ached to be the centre of her husband’s attention but she had no skills to fascinate him. She knew nothing of the gossip of the court, she had not even heard of half of the names that he mentioned. I, seated below the salt, kept my eyes on my plate to prevent myself from looking up and laughing at a story about a woman I knew, or interrupting to ask him what had become of one young courtier or another.