They hoick themselves up into their saddles. Goodwife Melchyn and Dwnn help Margaret, who takes a moment to spread her skirts and then her cloak. She sneezes wetly and Thomas notices an exchange of glances between Goodwife Melchyn and Dwnn.

‘So then farewell, Meg,’ Dwnn says. ‘We’ve had some times, haven’t we? Is there anyone you’d like to bid farewell?’

‘No,’ the girl says from behind her linen. ‘I shall be pleased to be elsewhere.’

‘Right,’ Dwnn says, stepping back, raising a hand and smiling weakly. ‘Well, farewell then. Safe journey.’

They follow a drovers’ path winding through the low hills. Black rainclouds reinforce themselves, coming in from the sea, and a kestrel dithers on the lip of a scarp. Little Dafydd is at the front on his sure-footed pony, then Walter, then Thomas, then Margaret and finally Katherine.

She finds she cannot take her eyes off the back of the girl, watching the way she moves on the saddle, the way her cloak masks her body, even the shoes she wears – red leather, slightly pointed, clean – poking from under the hem of her long skirts. They even match her riding gloves.

And the girl keeps glancing back at Katherine, as if she has divined some mystery, some difference. Katherine rips her gaze away and finds herself blushing, yet a moment later she is back, watching.

After they stop to eat – three cold pigeon pies – Thomas lets Margaret go ahead and drops back to talk to Katherine.

‘What woke you in the night?’ he asks.

‘I was dreaming of Fournier,” she says. ‘He has often been on my mind since we left Marton Hall.’

Thomas snorts.

‘Because he accused you of being in league with the devil? You can forget that we all saw you cut Sir John’s fistula. There was no witchcraft there, only a sharp knife, a steady hand and a lot of blood.’

‘It is not that,’ she says, and she tries to describe the look Fournier gave her as she left Marton Hall the next morning, and why it has stuck with her.

‘So what do you think he’s divined?’ Thomas asks. ‘That you are a woman? That you are an apostate? That you have killed a woman? If so, he would have unmasked you to Sir John, there and then.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘It was as if he’d discovered something new and had recently recognised its value.’

‘Such as what?’ Thomas asks.

‘I thought perhaps he knew we were headed here to find Margaret.’

He turns on her.

‘But—’ he begins, then understands her meaning and breaks off. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘If he knew that, then there is only one man in the kingdom with an interest in Margaret’s whereabouts.’

Katherine nods.

‘Dear God,’ Thomas breathes. He looks at Margaret. ‘And he was riding to Riven’s the morning we left.’