She nods.

‘We should see if we can go around,’ Walter is saying. ‘This isn’t our fight.’

‘We go around?’ he asks the boy loudly, pointing north and indicating walking with his fingers.

The boy shakes his head and gestures forcefully at the burning cottage. He repeats something. Over and over.

‘What’s he trying to say?’

Katherine suddenly feels cold.

‘It’s Dafydd and Owen,’ she says. ‘That’s their home.’

27

THEY RETURN TO the horses. Walter and Thomas nock their bows. Katherine looses her sword.

Suddenly Walter swears.

‘Damn creeping Christ!’ he says. ‘Damn creeping bloody Christ! Some turd’s stolen them! Look! I’ve only got three left!’

He holds up three arrows.

Thomas has also been burgled, and is left with two.

‘Damned creeping Christ,’ Walter says again. ‘Five. Five bloody arrows and we’ve got to get across half of bloody Wales and most of bloody England.’

He stuffs his arrows in his belt and then turns to Margaret.

‘Wait here,’ he says. ‘If we don’t come back, ride back to Kidwelly.’

She looks at him with undisguised disgust. He ignores her, and climbs back up on his horse.

‘Come on then,’ he tells Thomas and Katherine.

They get into their saddles and follow him over the hill and down through the ford. When they reach the orchard they dismount. The dead man is lying on his belly, wearing a russet jack, cheap before it’d become old, and there is a hole in the back through which protrudes the black iron head of an arrow.

‘Bodkin,’ Walter says, tapping it with his bow. He puts his foot under the man’s torso and rolls him over. There is nothing special about him: just a man, now dead, a small scar in among his gingery whiskers, a broken arrow shaft buried in his belly. There is nothing to say who he is or what he did, other than the heft of his shoulders and tell-tale calluses on his right palm.

The dog is still yapping.

‘You go that way,’ Walter tells Thomas. ‘Kit, you stay here.’

Walter goes to the right, Thomas the left, up towards the back of the cottage. Pale smoke floats almost listlessly from the roof. She watches Thomas sidling through the stunted apples, arrow nocked, until he stops at the willow hurdle of a goose pen. He steps back suddenly, as if he’s found something at his feet, and he raises his face to the sky.

Walter has reached the door of the cottage. He pushes it open and steps back as smoke billows out around him. When it has dissipated he steps forward and shakes the frame, wondering if the rushes on the roof will fall in on him. Katherine can smell meat cooking.

A moment later and Walter is out again. He looks grim.

‘Gwen,’ he says, jerking his head.