Before a fight can start, Walter holds out a hand. He’s pointing at the woods.

‘Now who the fuck’s this?’ he asks. A man in green is casting about in the scrub. He has a short-legged dog on a lead.

‘Richard says he is a huntsman,’ Katherine tells them. ‘He had a boy with him earlier, but he sent him off back to town.’

‘Must have found a scent,’ Geoffrey guesses. ‘The boy’ll have gone to fetch the hunting party.’

Later that morning they watch a party of horsemen on the road to Newnham. There must be a dozen or so. Those at the rear are carrying flags and around the horses’ legs run the tiny dots of dogs.

‘A hunting party,’ Walter says. ‘All we bloody need.’

‘You recognise any of the flags, Kit?’

‘There is the red saltire,’ she says.

‘The Earl of Warwick,’ Geoffrey says. ‘Coming this way.’

‘Better let Richard know.’

Geoffrey goes to find Richard. Katherine watches the party crossing the bridge. The riders stop at the fort and then emerge from behind the castle and ride through the village and start up the road towards them, along the road where they fought on St George’s Day. The bodies are gone now, some buried behind the church in a piggery, some thrown in the river. The dead horses have been dragged away by a tanner and butcher.

By the time the horsemen come over the crest of the hill, Richard and Geoffrey are in the courtyard. There are about fifteen in the hunting party, including the standard-bearers, various grooms and servants. Trotting alongside are five or six greyhounds. One of the riders is a bishop in purple. He is swarthy-faced, wearing a long fur-lined cloak. It seems almost comical that he should be there. Katherine finds herself staring at him, ignoring the man in black behind him, a cleric of some sort, ill-at-ease on horseback, and the other huntsmen, each dressed in high boots and thick coats, each with a bow and a bag of arrows.

She remembers the nerves the sisters all felt when the Bishop of Lincoln paid the priory a visit. They had scrubbed their half of the priory for weeks beforehand, and each had washed their cassocks and their bodies so that nothing might offend him. And all the while they had known he would never see them, just as they would never see him.

Richard starts out as the riders draw up.

‘My lord of Warwick,’ he calls. ‘Good day to you, sir, and may God guide you safe.’

The man at the front of the party raises his hand in salute. The clouds of yellow dust the horses kick up slowly settle. His is a black horse, ostentatiously beautiful.

‘You are Richard Fakenham?’ he asks.

‘I am, my lord.’