They huddle together under a tent of their clothes until one by one they fall asleep, last of all Thomas, his back against the stone, his legs stretched to the fire in front of him, Katherine’s back against his chest, her head against his shoulder. He presses his nose into the top of her cap, breathing in the mix of smoke, wool, dirt and that other distinguishable trace that is uniquely hers.

He shifts, so that she rests more fully against him, and he places an arm around her that, after a moment, she grips across her chest. He can feel her breathing and is conscious that his fingertips rest on her inner thigh. He cannot resist and he slowly strokes the worn wool of her hose, not intending anything other than intimacy, or perhaps, from somewhere deep within himself, to test how far he may presume on her. It is what he needs, he tells himself, after leaving Walter to die.

It is a moment before he realises that her breathing has changed and that she is holding her breath. Then she says something, perhaps in her sleep, and she shifts her legs so that his hand falls away, but she rests her head against his chest, and after a moment his own heartbeat slows and soon he too is asleep.

He wakes in the night to silence and registers that the fire is dead and that the wind has dropped and there are stars scattered thick above them. He can’t hear the stream any more and it takes a moment before he realises it has frozen.

It is only later, near dawn, that he misses Margaret coughing.

For a moment he is glad, imagines she must be over it, but then in the pale light of dawn, when they come to wake her, she will not move and she is stiff and her face is blue. Snowflakes have melted on her eyelids and then frozen again.

Katherine bends over the girl’s bent body and after a moment she looks up at him. He sees tears in her eyes and down her grubby cheeks. Thomas feels sick with guilt. In the night he had been thinking only of himself and Katherine, of himself with Katherine, and he had let the fire die. He had not checked on her. He had heard her silence and was himself comfortable and warm and had done nothing and all the while . . .

‘I am so sorry,’ he says. ‘It is my fault. I should have . . . I don’t know.’

‘No,’ Katherine tells him. ‘I did it. You said we should stay in the valley down there. I said let us ride. Oh God, forgive me.’

She begins gathering all their clothes, shaking the snow off them, and he hears her sob. Little Dafydd looks on with no expression.

‘There is a pit down there,’ Thomas says, nodding towards the river. ‘We can bury her there.’