It seemed a very long time before they came at last to another broad stand of trees. The ground underfoot abruptly became the loose crunch of finely gravelled road: they had reached the end of the estate. Across the road, the broad hedge of the palace garden rose before them. Lights distantly visible at either end of the lane, gleamed as small as fireflies: the guards on watch. But there were none directly ahead, the patrol idled near their sheltered posts.

Tharkay motioned Laurence to wait with Woolvey, and after a moment came back to silently guide them to a place he had found by the hedge: a low rock near the wall, with a thick elm branch above. He had already rigged a cord to hang down. Laurence nodded, and taking off the thick leather apron threw it over the top of the hedge. The scramble was as quiet as he could make it. Woolvey came after him, with some delay, panting heavily and in disarray: the fine buckskin of his breeches, was torn and bloodied. Tharkay last, silent and quick.

The great palace lay across a narrow lawn before them. Its windows were lit, and shadows passed back and forth before the lights. Another half a dozen dragons stood in their way; not sleeping beasts, either, but couriers wide awake and waiting for messages.

‘The stables,’ Woolvey whispered, pointing: the dragons had been positioned as far from the low outbuilding as could be managed. ‘There is a door, on the side, and from there we can cross a narrow gap to the servants' entrance into to the kitchens.’

The horses whickered at them uneasily, and stamped, watching their movements with liquid terrified eyes; but this was not unusual behaviour with the dragons at their door: no one stirred or came to look in at them. Tharkay paused at the far door, his fingertips resting against the wood. They could hear voices outside, surly and English voices. Through a crack Laurence peered at a pair of workmen, who were trundling manure to the midden without any semblance of pleasure.

‘Hst,’ he said, softly, when they came close, and the men jerked. ‘Steady now, men, and quiet, if you love your country.’

‘Aye, sir, only say the word,’ one whispered back, with an automatic touch of his forelock. He was badly wall-eyed, and had ink stained forearms: a sure mark of the sea. He scowled at the lanky young fellow with him, whose ready protest had subsided into silent fidgets and darting glances at them.

‘Is there a prisoner kept here?’ Laurence asked. ‘He would have been brought today: a man not thirty years of age, dark-haired—’