They ride on. The path flattens, dips into a hollow where there are traces of some workings, a mine perhaps, and a stand of fir trees. They ought to stop, he thinks. They might even risk a fire. Get the girl warm. Beyond the hollow, the track rises steadily. Katherine pauses in the copse, perhaps thinking the same thing. But it is too soon. They have not ridden far enough yet.

‘We go on?’ Thomas asks the boy, pointing up the hill.

Little Dafydd looks anxious. His gaze strays to Margaret, whose cough has not caught, but goes round and round, a constant churn. Katherine looks at her too, then back down the hill.

‘What do you think?’ he asks.

‘We should go on,’ she says. ‘We have not gone far enough.’

Thomas nods, and turns his horse and uses his heels to set it trudging up the hill. The others begin to follow. The wind strengthens, and the snow stings their eyes. It gathers and hardens in the folds of their cloaks. They lean into the wind and the slope and press on until night is about to overtake them and they can stand it no more.

‘We can’t go on!’ Katherine shouts over the wind. ‘It is too dark.’

‘But we can’t stay here! There’s nowhere to shelter. If we get over the top, there’ll be somewhere on the other side.’

They carry on, heads buried against the wind. The road continues on up.

‘Thomas,’ Katherine is shouting again. ‘Thomas! What’s that?’

She is pointing ahead, on the left where a dark shape looms out of the snow. Thomas reaches for his pollaxe but remembers it’s gone. Little Dafydd starts saying something and pointing. The shape doesn’t move and they ride on towards it, watching it grow larger through the snow.

‘A stone,’ Thomas says at last.

‘Is there shelter?’ Katherine calls.

Margaret is really bad now, her breathing a constant haul. Its noise mixes with the wind.

‘We’ll have to,’ Thomas says.

He dismounts and pulls his horse off the track and up towards the stone. It is a thick slab of grey rock, twice the size of a man and almost as wide as it is tall, placed on its end by who knew what forces? Instinctively the horses huddle behind it, sheltering from the wind, nose to tail.

‘We’ll have to get Margaret up against it,’ Katherine shouts. ‘Where there is most shelter.’

Thomas helps Margaret from her saddle. She is rigid and light in his arms, like a strung bow, he thinks, but too hot to the touch and her breathing is a jerking scrape that makes him want to cough himself. He carries her to the side of the rock where Little Dafydd is scraping away the snow with his bare feet. Thomas sits her down, her back to the gritty surface. Her head rocks back and she gasps for breath.