‘They might not’ve been there, you know?’ Thomas says. ‘They might have stayed in Marton Hall. D’you remember what Sir John said? That they’d go in the spring, when the fighting was supposed to start?’

She nods. It is a slim hope.

‘And what of – What of Walter?’

Thomas shakes his head.

‘Nothing,’ he says, ‘but nor have I heard anything of Riven’s boy or the giant either.’

‘You think Walter might have—?’ She cannot finish the sentence.

‘I hope so. He was the sort of man who might have liked the idea of selling his life dearly.’

Then Thomas lowers his voice and glances at the screen across the buttery where the innkeeper and his servants come and go.

‘Tudor’s scurriers have been through,’ he whispers. ‘The army is working its way around those hills we crossed, from the west. The innkeeper thinks they will be here within the next two days.’

‘Then we must be gone,’ Katherine says, trying to sit up.

Thomas nods.

‘The innkeeper says the road to England runs northeast from here,’ he says, ‘to a town called Leominster. He tells me to be careful to whom I speak when we get there, for the area is what he calls the Marches, and is supposed to be full of traitors.’

She struggles up on to her elbows and looks down at her clothes. Seeing them, something like relief runs through her, as if something has been decided for her.

‘Why am I dressed like this?’ she asks as she prises the blankets off.

‘D’you not remember? They are Margaret’s clothes. They were all that was dry. I sent your other clothes to the washerwomen but they would not touch them for fear of having them fall to pieces.’ He pauses, looks at her keenly. ‘Are you strong enough to travel?’ he asks.

They stare at one another. Both have heard the words before, when they were about to leave Kidwelly and someone asked the same question of Margaret Cornford. Are you strong enough to travel? Margaret had given them the answer they’d wished to hear, but it was not necessarily the right one.

‘So long as there are no more of those hills,’ she says.

Thomas frowns. ‘I cannot promise you that,’ he says.

She looks up through the bars of the hall’s window. Nor can he promise she will not be snowed on. The early-morning sky is white with it, and while the ostler’s boy saddles their horses they finish a mutton pie and get the fat girl to fill Margaret’s leather flask with ale. Katherine fastens Margaret’s beautiful blue cloak around her shoulders and presses the blue headdress over her coif, and she leaves the inn for the first time in more than a week.