In a little while the rain starts again. They turn inland, following a valley where dark water froths over a series of rocky falls. Ahead are more hills, barren flanks rising into the clouds, and already the ponies are blowing hard. At one point the boy turns and studies the sky behind them. It is coming on to the evening, and the temperature is dropping.

He says something.

‘What did he say?’

‘Snow,’ Margaret translates. ‘He says it’ll snow on the high ground tonight.’

‘All we need,’ Walter mutters.

Katherine is surprised Margaret understands the language. Hadn’t Dwnn said she had made no effort to do so?

‘We’ll have to find some shelter,’ Thomas says. It is all they ever seem to be doing, Katherine thinks, finding shelter from something or someone.

‘Let’s press on,’ Walter says. ‘More space between us and those bastards the better.’

A while later they join a road with the grass grown high on the berm between the cart tracks. A little farther on, there is smoke in the air and they find a bridge over the river’s fast-running black waters and, beyond, a large village with an inn. They stable their horses and gather around the fire for thin rabbit soup and more baked cheese. There isn’t much straw in the mattresses but in any case Katherine would not have slept much. She lies listening out for Riven’s men, hearing nothing but Margaret coughing.

It snows in the night just as the boy Dafydd said it would and in the morning the hills are capped white and there is ice on the water in the well. More cheese and they set off wrapped around in their travel cloaks, all except the boy, who has nothing, not even shoes.

‘Can’t even look at him, he makes me feel so cold,’ Walter admits.

After a while Thomas can stand it no longer, and they stop and open Margaret’s bag to find the boy something warmer. There is a quantity of dresses, shirts, a coif, some documents, gold coins in a blue leather purse, rosary beads, a pair of oak pattens with leather points, as well as fine-spun wool hose, linen underthings, a woollen jacket, and underneath it all a Book of Hours, probably worth more than everything else put together. They give the woollen jacket to Little Dafydd, and Margaret says nothing but shrugs and ignores his thanks.

They ride all day until in the afternoon when they come to a town dominated by its castle. The boy says something and Margaret translates.

‘Says this is Castell Nedd,’ she tells them. ‘He says it is best we stay here tonight, and in the morning take the road north.’