‘Amen to that,’ Dwnn agrees, raising his cup. ‘I was fond of old Cornford. He had foreign ways of looking at things, perhaps, but we appreciated his company in these parts. In the meantime though, I have his daughter here. He entrusted her to me when he went off to serve the Duke of York last year, as was usual, though I was given to understand she is Sir John Fakenham’s ward? I have to say, I expected to hear from him sooner. It has been more than a year since Cornford’s death.’

‘Been a bit busy,’ Walter mutters.

‘Well, I am glad you are here, at any rate,’ Dwnn says. ‘You’ll take the girl with you?’ There is a hopeful catch in his voice.

This was not the plan. But then: what was the plan? Thomas doesn’t know.

‘Is she so troublesome?’ Katherine asks.

Dwnn looks caught out.

‘Not troublesome, no,’ he says, not quite quickly enough. ‘She is easy on the eye, that I will grant, but she—’ He stops.

‘What is wrong with her?’ Katherine presses.

Dwnn is uncomfortable.

‘Her breathing,’ he says quickly, alighting, even Thomas can see, on something, anything, other than the real reason. ‘It is. Difficult. And. Well. She is – She has a strange temperament. You’ll see. She will be beside herself with joy to see you.’

Thomas wonders why.

‘Come,’ Dwnn says. ‘Let us go and find her. You may see for yourselves.’

They put aside their cups and troop down the stone stairs and out into the ward.

‘We were not intending to take her with us, were we?’ Thomas asks Walter.

‘I don’t know,’ Walter says. ‘I thought you knew?’

They both look to Katherine.

‘She does not rest with you in your apartments?’ Katherine is asking Dwnn. She is surprised.

‘No,’ Dwnn admits. ‘She rests with the priest. On account of the smoke of the fires, and of the villagers themselves. She has not made a point of endearing herself to them.’

They cross into the shadow of the towers that make up the inner keep. Once again there is a gate and a portcullis that can be closed, but in the inner ward there are no tents or fires, only a priest in his robes sitting on the grass hulling dried beans with a pregnant woman and a small child who is obviously his son. Dwnn ignores them and takes Walter, Thomas and Katherine through another low-lintelled door and up a twisting flight of stone steps.

Margaret Cornford stands at the far end of a long unheated solar. She is wearing a dress of indeterminate colour, cinched at her narrow waist, and a close-fitting green headdress with a castellated fringe. She does not move when she sees them, but stands there, waiting. No dust motes swirl in the slices of grey light that fall from the windows and it strikes Thomas that she has been standing still for a very long time.