It is interesting to see how Walter’s tone has changed. He has become almost respectful, and she cannot decide if this change is since the operation on Sir John’s fistula, or since Fournier’s accusation that she was in league with the devil, and her reaction to it.

She mutters something, and huddles down into her cloak.

The odd thing is that when she’d heard Fournier accuse her of sorcery, the blood had rushed to her face and she’d been at a loss for words, but then, when the pushing and shoving started, and she found herself with a knife in her hand, it occurred to her that this was what she had been waiting for ever since the operation. Because it struck her, just as she pushed Fournier back off the bench, that she had been wondering the exact same thing herself.

Thomas had pulled her off before she’d ever really been a threat to Fournier, and she had been relieved of course. She would not have wanted to kill a man, not even Fournier, but she is sure that in attacking him she’d done the right thing. It had been an instinctive thing, a human thing. A witch would have waited, bided his time. A boy with a knife was something to which they could all relate, and it only increased their liking of her.

They reach the city of Leicester that night and find boiled mutton at the inn but the straw for the mattresses stinks as if something has lain dead on it for a week or more and the next morning they can’t shake the smell from their clothes.

‘Sorry about that,’ the innkeeper says, but gives them no explanation.

They ride on, heading south and westwards. Jackdaws clack in the hawthorns and there is an empty gibbet at a deserted crossroads. Owen lags behind, twisting in his saddle.

‘What’s up with him?’ Walter asks.

‘Thinks someone’s following us,’ Dafydd announces.

‘Honestly?’

Dafydd nods.

‘He’s normally right,’ he says.

Walter glances at Katherine.

‘Reckon you can keep up if we ride for it?’

She nods.

They canter along the road and then pull their horses over a ditch and in between the trunks of a clutch of trees close to the roadside. Overhead the branches knock and scrape and meltwater patters on their shoulders. They wait, leaning forward in their saddles, shivering while the horses steam.

Nothing.

‘You sure, Owen?’

Owen nods fiercely.

‘Not just travellers?’

He shakes his head.

They wait under the trees until the horses begin to shudder in the cold. Still nothing. After a long while Walter tuts and forces his horse back over the ditch to rejoin the road. They go on, descending a slope, but still Owen keeps turning in his saddle.

‘Someone’s still there,’ Dafydd calls out.

‘Kit,’ Walter says, ‘go back and have a look, will you? Welsh bastard’s got me all spooked.’