They spend the night in the hall above the gatehouse, on benches gathered around the board in front of the fire. Dafydd and Owen are not asked to join them, for they have reputations, and they stay with their women out in the ward, but Thomas and Katherine and Walter eat buttery pies filled with some fishy-flavoured seabird. They eat roasted cheese, plenty of it, and drink sweet dank ale until their eyes become pouchy and Dwnn orders his servants to fetch straw for their mattresses.

Thomas shares his blanket and warmth with Katherine as usual, while Walter shares his with the bearded man who can’t speak English on the other side of the covered fire. Dwnn retires to his private rooms above.

Thomas usually lets Katherine sleep nearest the fire, but tonight she does not want to and they swap.

‘Kit?’ he whispers.

She nudges him with a knee to show she is listening.

‘Are you all right?’

He feels the straw shake as she nods. She turns over, moves her back towards him, and a moment later he can hear her steady breathing. He lies awake a while longer, his head on the pardoner’s ledger, perhaps too tired to sleep, just able to hear Dwnn snoring through that mangled nose of his on the floor above. He isn’t thinking of the storm or the horses, but of Katherine. He wants to put his arm around her and touch her. He wants to feel her skin under his fingertips. He cannot sleep. He can hardly breathe.

In the night he feels Katherine stiffen and he wakes instantly but doesn’t move. He feels her roll across the straw and hears her getting to her feet among the rushes. Is she going to relieve herself? She crosses the room on careful feet and draws the bar on the window shutters. A band of moonlight bisects the room. A dog is barking in the distance.

What is she doing? She climbs up on to the bench and presses her face into the aperture and stays there, perfectly still, for a long few moments before climbing down again and closing the shutter.

‘What is it?’ he whispers when she returns to the blanket.

‘It’s just . . . No. Nothing,’ she says, but he doesn’t feel her ease before he goes back to sleep himself.

The next morning she is gone. He searches for her and finds her on the walkway in the tower, with the boy still asleep just inside the doorway, cramped into an impossible position. She is in her still-damp travel cloak, her hat pulled around her ears; long strands of hair that have escaped from its brim lash her face.