‘Margaret,’ Dwnn announces. ‘The visitors are from England. They have come from Lincoln. To see you.’

Margaret’s face is spectrally pale and her eyes empty, but she is astonishingly beautiful. Thomas holds his breath. He can hardly stand to look at her and he tears his gaze away for fear of betraying himself. Walter opens his mouth to say something and then shuts it again with a dry tick. Even he removes his hat. The girl stares at them and Thomas risks another glance. Christ, she is lovely. She reminds Thomas of the representation of St Mary Magdalene painted on the rood screen in one of the chapels at the priory. She has fine curving brows, high cheekbones and wonderfully smooth, creamy skin, and her lips are plump and seem to promise something he cannot identify.

Then she speaks.

‘Finally,’ she says.

26

‘I HAVE HAD enough of this place,’ she says, ‘and these people.’

Margaret Cornford gestures first at the stone walls and the narrow windows with their sliding shutters, then the truckle bed in one corner, the linen sheets and rough woven blankets, the earthenware pots, the chest, the table, the tapestries. As she singles out each item she seems to expect her visitors to agree that her life has been hard. Yet here they stand in bloodstained, salt-crisp, sodden clothes, famished and exhausted.

Gruffydd Dwnn raises his eyebrows fractionally. He is obviously used to such displays of ingratitude.

‘Are you strong enough to travel, Margaret?’ he asks. ‘It is winter, and the cold – you know?’

His tone is ambiguous: half-doubtful, half-hopeful.

‘Of course I am strong enough,’ she says.

But with this she begins to cough and once she’s started she doesn’t seem to be able to stop. The cough never catches in her throat, and after a moment her cheeks are aflame and she is hunchbacked and gasping for breath. Katherine steps towards her but Dwnn shakes his head.

Another woman – older, shorter, a nurse of some sort – bustles from a door hidden in the gloom of the far end of the room and takes her and guides her back towards the bed.

‘Come,’ Dwnn says, gesturing back towards the doorway through which they came. ‘It’s best we leave her now. These fits come on her for no reason, but they pass, and Goodwife Melchyn makes her drink horses’ urine – and bats’ blood if she can find it – mixed with some herb or other.’

Thomas half expects to hear Katherine say something about the treatment bringing more harm than the illness, but for once she bites her tongue. She looks worried though.