IN THE DAYS that follow the victory below Wigmore Castle, named by the heralds after the nearby village of Mortimer’s Cross, Thomas and Katherine lodge at the White Hart Inn by the river in the city of Hereford. There are the dead to be buried, wounds to be healed and scores to be settled. All that first week crowds gather in the market square beneath the guildhall to watch as whey-faced wretches are held over a broad green log, already gummed with blood and cross-hatched with axe marks, to have their heads struck off into the bloody straw below. The crowds jeer and whistle and laugh to see it done, but it turns Katherine’s stomach.

‘They like to see bears baited and women strangled,’ Thomas tells her. ‘Someone having his head chopped off is nothing to them.’

It is Grylle who insists she comes. He is intent on her and whenever Thomas is absent, which happens whenever William Hastings wants him for some errand or other, Grylle is there. She says no at first, but then is caught by the thought that perhaps this is what ladies do? Watch executions? Suddenly she fears that if she says no, he will see through her disguise, and so it is that she finds herself standing with him watching as the old man Owen Tudor is dragged to the block.

Grylle talks to her as if she is a simpleton, but she is pleased when he explains that Owen Tudor is the man who married King Henry V’s widow – which makes him the current King’s stepfather – and, worst luck for him, also the father of the Jasper Tudor, the Earl of Pembroke, the man who’d raised his banner in Wales and paid for all those Irish mercenaries now lying slaughtered in the fields above Mortimer’s Cross.

When he is standing there by the log, the old man doesn’t believe they’ll do it.

‘Thinks he’s English,’ Grylle laughs.

But when the guards remove his fur collar to keep it clean for selling on, he realises they will, and he looks wistful, his silver locks and wrinkled skin giving him an almost exotic appearance in a world where few live to celebrate their fiftieth birthday. He mutters something about being used to rest his head in more comfortable places than on the log, and just before he kneels he takes the chance to stand a moment and study the crowd.

‘Speech!’ someone in the crowd calls. ‘Come on, tell us a joke, you old Welsh goat!’

Just then Tudor catches Katherine’s gaze and he stops short. It is as if he recognises her. Katherine can feel her face flush, and next to her Grylle is puzzled and watches her reaction. Tudor shakes his head as if he cannot believe what he is seeing, and he takes a step towards her and gestures.

‘Do you know him?’ Grylle asks.

Katherine shakes her head.